Paris is a Bitch Read Free

happened.”
    “You know why I’m so attached to you?”
    “No.”
    “Because most people wouldn’t consider something like that fit dinner conversation.”
    I smiled tightly, liking that even though she was taking the situation seriously now, she was still cool under pressure. “But if it’s something other than a hit, and they need to set up carefully, they’d want to know it was you before committing. The only thing is, that guy didn’t feel like a pro to me. And anyone who really knows you wouldn’t send an amateur to do the job.”
    “Well, it could be someone who doesn’t really know me.”
    “Why would anyone who doesn’t really know you want to kill you?”
    She smiled, a little sadly. “Remember the kind of work I do. The target wouldn’t have to know of my professional affiliations to develop a grudge. What he thought was personal would be enough.”
    That was a good point. I said, “Well, whatever it is or isn’t, I’d rather not find out. But there’s no rear entrance to this restaurant. They take deliveries straight through the front door.”
    She didn’t have to ask. She knew I never went into a room I didn’t know every way out of.
    “How do you want to handle it?” she said.
    I considered. “Ask the waitress if you can bum a cigarette. Woman-to-woman, she’ll be more likely to want to help out.”
    “You’re going to have a smoke?”
    “Just outside the door. Like any well-mannered Parisian.” Paris had gone no-smoking, thank God, forcing smokers to head outdoors to indulge.
    “I don’t like it. You don’t know what’s out there.”
    “That’s why I want to have a look. They’re not after me, remember? Anyway, if I see something I really don’t like, I’ll head back in and we’ll reconsider.”
    Delilah told the waitress that
Zut!
, she really needed a smoke but had forgotten her cigarettes; could she hit the waitress up and thank her in the tip? The waitress smiled understandingly and produced a Gauloise Blonde. Delilah requested a lighter, and that was forthcoming, too. I put four twenty-Euro notes on the table, which would cover the meal if we had to bug out, nodded to Delilah, and went to see whether there was anything to my suspicions.
    I kept as far left as possible as I headed out of the restaurant, maximizing my view of the street to the right, then cut the other way just before I got to the door, widening my view left. I saw nothing, but any reasonably competent surveillance would have accounted for a maneuver like mine before taking a position.
    At the threshold of the door, I could see there were no immediate problems to my left, so I immediately swept right. Twenty meters down the street, on the opposite side, I saw Ferret Boy, leaning with his back against the dark stone façade of the École de Garçons, bathed in shadows.
    Houston, we have a problem.
    This was the quiet end of Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, far from the gravitational force of Notre Dame. There were few stores down here, just some galleries, all of them closed and almost all of them dark, and the opposite side of the street was occupied entirely by the lightless monolith of the École. The only illumination came from a few widely spaced yellowish streetlights affixed to the façades of the old buildings on one side of the narrow street and the École on the other. The nearest cross street was Rue Poulletier, sixty meters to the left. When we departed, we wouldn’t just be walking out into the dark. We might as well be entering a tunnel.
    Well, that’s the thing about the dark and tunnels. They work both ways.
    I noticed another guy walking toward Ferret Boy. They did nothing to acknowledge each other, but they both looked the same to me: young, Arabic, somehow jumpy. I fired up the cigarette and gave no sign that I had particularly noticed them or particularly cared.
    To my left, ten meters down on the opposite side of the street, was a panel truck. Could have been a coincidence, but I