Private Paris (Private 10)

Her eyes and hand lingered on me before she pressed her tongue again to that gap in her teeth and turned, gesturing to the old guy with the frizzy hair.

“Louis?” she said. “Do you know François? My representative?”

François took Louis’s hand and then mine in that weird little three-quarter thing the French call a handshake.

“Michele has made a miracle, yes?” he said, pointing at the collage.

Louis nodded and said, “Something that the French can ponder and argue about for years to come.”

“And Monsieur Morgan? It pleases you?”

“It intrigues me,” I said.

“‘Intrigue’ is good, yes?” said Michele Herbert, who smiled impishly.

“I’ve made a good living out of intrigue.”

“And Michele will do this as well,” her rep said. “I have galleries all over the world clamoring to represent her.”

Herbert blushed and said, “François, you make too much of me.”

“I must be going, to make much of you everywhere I can,” he replied. He blew kisses past her cheeks and then sort of shook our hands again before leaving.

“So, how may I help you?” the art professor asked.

“I told Jack that you are an expert on graffiti,” Louis said.

Herbert turned the smile on me again and said, “He also makes too much of me. Graffiti is my interest as a historian, and it has become a part of my own work over the years.”

Digging out my iPhone, I showed her the photograph we’d taken of the AB-16 tag outside Henri Richard’s pied-à-terre.

She said, “I have never seen this before. What does it mean?”

“We don’t know,” Louis said.

Herbert looked at it again, a frown appearing as she said, “C’est bizarre.”

Chapter 27

“WHAT’S BIZARRE?” LOUIS asked.

“Can you e-mail this photo to me?” she asked. “So I can see it better?”

I did, and she blew it up on a computer screen in a corner of the studio. She made a little puffing noise and then gestured at the loops and shadow work on the A and the B of the tag. “You see how these come together to create that—how do you say?—pop?”

“The three-dimensionality?” I asked.

“This too,” Herbert said. “But you see the letters, how they seem to hover? It is one of the signature methods of a Parisian graffiti artist who called himself Zee Pac-Man.”

“Where can we find him?” I asked.

“He was murdered late last year, just after Christmas. Found dead in the 9th beneath his last tag. Stabbed several times in the back.”

Louis said, “So what? This could be a follower of Zee Pac-Man?”

“Or simply a thief,” Herbert replied, and then looked to me to explain. “Artists steal what we like and admire, you know this?”

“Makes sense,” I said.