“Meester,” the Colombian was pleading, “I got civil rights.”
“Civil rights? You got no civil rights, you little cocksucker. Your civil rights are down there where you left ‘em, in Bogota.”
The detective moved closer to Torres. He was at least a head taller than the Colombian. Torres was shivering from the cold, from fear, from the terrible sense of impotence nakedness always imposes in a prisoner before his captors. His hands were spread over his genitals, drawing together his shoulders and making him look even more emaciated than he was. He had just taken another half-step toward the wall when Angelo moved. The detective’s gesture was so swift Torres didn’t even see it coming. Angelo’s right hand shot up, caught him by the neck under the chin and literally threw him against the wall. The Colombian’s head banged twice against the plaster. He went limp. His hands fell to his sides. As they did, Angelo’s left hand ripped into his crotch, grabbing and squeezing his testicles with all his strength.
The Colombian shrieked in agony.
“Okay, motherfucker,” Angelo growled. “Now you either tell me where that card went or I’ll rip these things out of here and stuff them down your goddamn throat.”
“Talk! I talk!” Torres shrieked.
Angelo relaxed his grip slightly.
“Union Street. Benny. The fence there.”
Angelo squeezed again. “Where on Union Street?”
Torres shrieked, tears of pain rolling down his face. “By Sixth Avenue.
Across from supermarket. Second floor.”
Angelo released the pickpocket. He tumbled to the floor, writhing in pain.
“Get your pants on,” Angelo ordered. “You and I are going to see Benny.”
Laila Dajani had been silent through most of her lunch at Orsini’s, picking indifferently at her tagliatelle verdi and salad, barely touching her Bardolino wine, destroying, apparently, what little appetite she had with half a dozen cigarettes. Yet, on the way to the restaurant, she’d told Michael at least three times she had something very serious to talk about.
Her silence had not disturbed her lover. Michael had devoured a plate of fettucine, followed by fegato alla Veneziana, calf’s liver and onions, all to still the ravenous appetite for which she was largely responsible. The waiter cleared away their dishes and gave the table a desultory flick of his napkin.
“Dessert?”
“No,” Michael replied. “Two espressos.”
As he left, Michael leaned toward Laila. She had changed her clothes and was wearing an eggshell-white Givenchy blouse that clung hungrily to every indentation of her braless breasts. “You said you had something you wanted to talk to me about.”
Laila reached for another cigarette, lit it, exhaled slowly, thoughtfully.
“I want to think about us a moment.”
Michael grinned lasciviously. “Okay, I’m thinking.”
“Michael, we need more fantasy in our lives.”
Michael had just taken a sip of his espresso, and he almost spilled it with the laughter that followed her words. “Darling, what did you have in mind?
Do you want me to whip you or something?”
“Michael, we’ve got to do crazy, wonderful things together. Like that.” She snapped her fingers. “On a whim. Just because we want to. Because it’s for us.”
Michael gave a gentle laugh and reached for her hand. “Like what?”
Laila swallowed nervously, trying to feign thought.
“Crazy things. I don’t know. Like going off somewhere on the spur of the moment together. The two of us, alone. No baggage even, just ourselves.” A smile suddenly brightened her face. “Look, I’ve got to go to Montreal one day this week to see a collection. I’ll go tomorrow on the first plane. You come up tomorrow, too. There’s a direct flight to Quebec at noon. We’ll meet at the Chateau Frontenac. Do you know it?” She was rushing on, now trying to sweep him up in the torrent of her words, painfully aware of the undertow of hysteria in her voice. “It’s the most marvelous place! Lovely, quaint streets just like Paris. We’ll ride on sleighs and eat warm croissants in bed for breakfast and walk along the Saint Lawrence and go shopping in the wonderful little shops they have. Oh, Michael darling, do it. For me. Please.”
Her hands took his, stroking them tenderly.
Michael kissed her fingertips. “Angel, I can’t. Impossible. I’ve got two Vogue shootings tomorrow I can’t possibly cancel. Besides, I thought we were going to Truman Capote’s lunch.”
“Oh, Michael! Who gives a damn about that little creep and all those fawning toads swarming around him? I want us to do something for ourselves, for ourselves alone.”
Michael sipped his espresso. “Now, if you want to do something really crazy, I have an idea. I’ve got a friend at one of the agencies who has a flat down in Acapulco. He’s always offering to lend it to me. We’ll take the Friday-night plane and spend a mad, crazy weekend in the sun together.”
He shivered. “I mean, Quebec, it’s cold up there.”
Laila extended a hand and lovingly caressed his cheeks, playfully skimming the skin of his ears with her long fingernails. “That’s a wonderful idea, darling.” She paused. “But I just have this feeling about tomorrow. You know how superstitious we Arabs are. Come on, let’s do it. Please.”
Michael picked up the check the waiter had just set on the table. “Angel, I can’t. Really. If I break these shootings I’ve got tomorrow, I might as well go down and sign up for my unemployment checks.”
Laila watched him counting out the money for the check. How far do I dare go, she asked herself, how far?
Outside, the air was chill with the moist, gray promise of snow. “Do you have another shooting?” she asked.
“No, I’m through for the day.”
Laila slipped an arm around Michael’s waist. “Then let’s go back to the studio,” she said.
“To what,” the Baron Claude de Fraguier, Secretary General of the French Foreign Office, asked Henri Bertrand, “do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit?”
The director of France’s intelligence service was looking for an ashtray.
With a gesture of his head, the Baron indicated one on an Empire gueridon halfway across the room.
“On April fifteenth, 1973,” Bertrand replied, returning to his armchair, the outsized ashtray clutched awkwardly in his hand, “you people signed a Monsieur PaulHenri de Serre of the Atomic Energy Commission to a threeyear contract to serve as a technical adviser to India’s nuclear program. He returned to this country in November 1975, some six months before his contract was due to expire. The dossier which my colleagues at the DST have given me on Monsieur de Serre fails to indicate why he came home early.
Perhaps your people could enlighten me?”
The Baron stared at Bertrand. He disliked both the man and his service.
“May I ask why you wish to know?”
“No,” Bertrand replied, concealing with his inscrutable features the pleasure he took in pronouncing the word. “You may not. Although I might add that my inquiry has the sanction of the highest authority.”
These people, the Baron reflected distastefully. Constantly invoking the office of the Presidency to cover their intrusions into the domains of others. “You will probably find, cher ami,” he said, ordering up the dossier, “a reason as commonplace as a poor widowed mother dying of cancer in the Dordogne.”
When an aide laid de Serre’s dossier on his desk, the Baron opened it himself, careful to keep its contents well out of reach of Bertrand’s eyes.
A reference tab was affixed to the document terminating de Serre’s Indian service. It referred to a sealed envelope in the dossier containing a letter from the French ambassador in New Delhi to the Baron’s predecessor.