Paris is a Bitch Read Free Page A

didn’t like it. I couldn’t see on the other side of it, but I had a feeling someone else was leaning against a stone wall in the dark there.
    I tracked a few degrees further left. All the way down at the corner of Rue Poulletier was another guy. I didn’t think it was a hit before, but now I was nearly sure it wasn’t. No one needed this kind of manpower for a hit. And with that panel van parked where it was, I was starting to think it might be a snatch. Overall, compared to a hit, I rated a snatch as a positive. More people to deal with, true, but they would be constrained in their actions.
    Also, as I’d told Delilah about Ferret Boy initially, these guys didn’t feel like pros to me. In which case, Delilah must have been right. Whoever had hired them didn’t know who she really was, or what she was capable of. They’d be assuming they were here to grab a helpless woman, maybe after knocking down her feeble dinner date.
    Dinner for two at Auberge de la Reine Blanche? Eighty Euros. Being underestimated by the punks outside? Priceless.
    I puffed on the cigarette for a few minutes without inhaling. I hadn’t smoked since I was a teenager, and a coughing fit would have been bad for my cover. When I judged I’d been there long enough, I pinched off the filter, which had my DNA on it, and shredded the rest of it on the sidewalk with the sole of my shoe. Then I went nonchalantly back inside. I handed the waitress her lighter. If she was annoyed that I had smoked the cigarette Delilah had asked for, she gave no sign of it.
    I sat down and said to Delilah, “It’s not a hit. I’m guessing a snatch.” I told her about the panel truck and the disposition of forces.
    She listened quietly. When I was done, she said, “It doesn’t make sense. How could they have found me? No one followed me here. I’m certain of that.”
    I glanced at the python shoulder bag slung over her chair back. “Your cell phone?”
    “But you said they look like amateurs. How could they have tracked my cell phone?”
    “Maybe they’re working for someone a little more sophisticated than they are. Someone who provided your whereabouts and turned the risky part over to them. What I don’t get is, why would someone want to snatch you? I mean, if they want to take you, it’s because they know who you are. If they know who you are, they don’t outsource it to a handful of punks from La Goutte. They bring in professionals.”
    A moment passed, then she said, “I think I know what this is.”
    “What?”
    “I can’t tell you.”
    I felt the blood drain from my face. “Delilah. I’m about to walk out that door with you into I don’t know what. I don’t
care
what. Now you don’t have to thank me for that. But Goddamn it, you do have to tell me what you know so I can be as prepared as possible for whatever it is I’m about to deal with.”
    Another long moment passed. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just—”
    “Forget it. Who are they?”
    “For the last year, I’ve had to spend time with a wealthy man. A Saudi. A financier. You can imagine what he finances.”
    “Okay.”
    “He’s very well connected. Which is why I was assigned to him. When my organization had learned what it needed to learn through me and had acted on the intelligence, I broke the connection with him.”
    “He never knew you were using him?”
    “No. He thought it was just an affair. The problem was, he became obsessed with me. To get him to stop contacting me, I told him I was in love with someone else. He still wouldn’t stop. So I told him if he didn’t leave me alone, I would tell his wife of the affair. He’s a very pious man, or pretends to be, and his piety is critical to his influence. So it was a serious threat.”
    “How did he take it?”
    “He was enraged.”
    “Enraged enough to want to do something in response?”
    “He’s a selfish man,” she said. “And cruel. The kind of man who, if he couldn’t have something for