Killer Critique Read Free Page A

of paper on day one? All we have to do is slog through the grunt work and we’ll have the guy in cuffs in no time at all.”
    â€œLet’s hope it’s that simple. It might not be. I’ve been ordered to see the juge d’instruction in charge of the case tomorrow.”
    â€œBig deal. Aren’t those guys just a formality?” David asked.
    â€œNormally they are. But I’m sure you remember the most excellent Juge d’Instruction de La Martinière?”
    â€œAugust-Marie Parmentier de La Martinière?” Isabelle asked. “How could I forget that pompous little faggot? The sun just went out of my life. Merde, it makes you want to quit the force.”
    â€œThinking about becoming a nun again, Isabelle?” David asked.
    With blinding speed Isabelle landed a short right jab on David’s upper arm. The pain was enough to take his breath away.

CHAPTER 4
    A t lunchtime, La Dacha—a caviar bar smack in the middle of Paris’s Golden Triangle, home to the cream of its business world—was the canteen for a select handful of investment banks, management consulting firms, and advertising agencies, the senor staffs of which felt that their expense accounts fully entitled them to lunches as exorbitant as the portions were small. In the evening the fauna expanded to include talking heads from TV news shows and senior officials from government ministries. Cécile de Rougemont was a frequent participant at both servings.
    From early childhood Capucine and Cécile had been best friends, with that white-hot intensity that men invariably mistook for sexual glue. Their friendship had survived the cruel watershed when intimacy was transferred to the opposite sex and had even grown as they evolved into womanhood.
    As Capucine entered, Cécile rose from the miniscule table to greet her. The two women stared deeply into each other’s eyes, embraced, kissed on both cheeks.
    â€œI loved seeing you at work last night. Right out of a movie. So tough, so completely in charge, so ordering people right and left!” Both women laughed. “All I get to do,” Cécile continued, “is humbly offer my little opinions to my clients.”
    â€œHumble. Right. You charge three thousand euros a day and you order your associates around like slaves. If I took that tone with my brigadiers, they’d probably shoot me in the leg.” Cécile was an associate partner—one small step away from becoming a full partner—at the most prestigious of management consulting firms, Beisdean and Company, a firm so elite that knowing the correct pronunciation—BASE-tchan—separated the winners from the losers throughout the Western business world.
    A waiter in a severely starched formal white mess jacket cut off at the waist, trimmed with shiny brass buttons and gold brocade epaulets, came up with the menus. The intended effect was to vaguely evoke Czarist Russia. The menus were entirely superfluous. Both Cécile and Capucine had known the contents by heart for years.
    Cécile smiled warmly at the waiter. “Hervé, just bring us a quarter of vodka and give us some time to sort ourselves out.”
    The vodka came promptly: a small quarter-liter decanter frozen into a solid block of ice in a silver-plated cooler. The cooler has been dipped briefly in very hot water so that the block of ice would come free when the decanter was lifted. The waiter filled two dollhouse-sized crystal stemmed glasses. The liquid was thick and oily from being so close to its freezing point.
    Both women raised their glasses and giggled happily. Capucine took a sip. The vodka was so cold, it had no taste at all, just a numbing feeling on the tongue. But once in her stomach it spread with an acid flame that melted the edge of her perpetual angst. Her shoulders relaxed a half a notch. She grabbed Cécile’s hand.
    â€œIt always does me such a world of good to see