Private Paris (Private 10)

“No, no,” Louis said a little too quickly. “A different case entirely. Michele had merely joined us for a drink.”

I hated to think what would happen if Michele mentioned that her expertise was in graffiti art. Me deported. Louis tossed in some dungeon.

“True?” Hoskins asked the artist.

Michele nodded. “Just as they said.”

Clearly exasperated, the investigator said, “And you have no idea why the pale guy wants to kill her?”

“None,” Louis said.

“What about the man she was sitting with? The one with the curly brown hair and the white tennis sweater?”

“I didn’t get a good look at him,” I replied. “And I haven’t seen him since. Believe me, I looked.”

“I saw him,” Michele said. “He ran right by me after the shooting stopped.”

“Which way was he going?” Hoskins asked.

“South on Rue des Archives.”

We were kept on the scene for another two hours and then brought to La Crim, where we made formal statements. Because he had discharged his weapon in the city, Louis was still giving his statement when Michele and I were released.

We were both hungry, so she took me to a bistro near her flat in the 8th Arrondissement.

“The best frites you have ever had,” she said on the way in, and she was right. They were shoestring, hot, salted, and crispy.

“These could be addicting,” I said.

Michele smiled. “I try to stay away, but I can’t. I must have them at least once a week.”

“If I lived in Paris, I think I’d be here every other day.”

“Your job,” she said after we’d finished and were drinking coffee. “It is always dangerous like today?”

“No,” I said. “Well, sometimes.”

She made a throwaway gesture with her hand. “It makes me think that what I do is—how do you say?—trivial.”

“Oh, I don’t think that at all. Artists help us explain the world to ourselves.”

“I like that,” she s

aid later, when I was walking her back to her apartment.

“What?”

“What you said about artists,” she replied.

“I think I read it somewhere, but it makes sense.”

We got to her building. “Thank you for the most exciting day I think I have ever had,” Michele said.

I smiled and said, “My pleasure.”

She walked up the stoop, used her keys to open the front door, stepped inside, and turned to me with that impish expression on her face.

“You have nice eyes, Jack Morgan,” Michele said, and shut the door.