Private Paris (Private 10)

Epée turned left out of the station and then left again onto a pedestrian mall that wandered north. Trees made the mall a place of shadows and a surprisingly popular hangout for the youth of Pantin.

Using the shadows and the thirty or forty teenagers smoking and posturing in the area, I was able to stay in visual contact with Piggott until he reached the far end of the mall and took a right onto a footpath.

The footpath ran along a canal. There were many joggers on the path. Still, I felt uneasy as I followed Epée past construction sites toward abandoned factories and warehouses along the canal’s south side.

Light was fading. We were a solid eighty yards apart, but I didn’t think I could remain below his radar if he led me to a less frequented spot. Piggott neared a bend in the path and an old building covered in brilliant graffiti. The tagger didn’t give the art a second glance.

He did, however, stop to look back along the footpath, and there weren’t enough joggers in the way to shield me. He saw me ambling along for sure.

But I didn’t seem to pose a threat because he calmly pivoted and strolled on beneath a pedestrian bridge that spanned the canal. The closer I got to the bridge, the more I thought about the fact that he had ignored the graffiti on the building. Even in the streetlight, the colors were impressive.

Then it hit me. He knows this place. He comes here often enough that he wouldn’t give the artwork a second glance. Epée was close to his destination.

A jogger went by me, and up the stairs to the pedestrian bridge. I followed him. The bridge had high steel-mesh walls to keep people from jumping off into the canal, which stank.

I walked out onto the bridge and casually glanced back along the footpath. Piggott had turned toward a large four-story building. It was old, perhaps the oldest of all the abandoned buildings in the area, and the only one that seemed to have been constructed entirely out of wood.

The roof had once been tin like the others, but it looked as though the metal had been stripped for salvage. There were stacks of it leaning up against the front of the building, partially covering faded white paint and the word linen.

Walking on across the bridge toward the north bank of the canal, I saw Epée go to a door that had a condemnation notice on it and knock. A moment later, the door opened and he disappeared inside.

Chapter 82

Pantin, northeastern suburbs of Paris

6:15 p.m.

HAJA CLOSED THE door behind Epée, saying angrily, “You’re not supposed to be here. We’re just about to leave.”

He noticed that she and Amé were wearing robes.

“What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Why are you wearing robes?”

“Forget the robes,” Amé said. “Why are you here?”

The tagger said nothing for several beats before blurting out, “Louis Langlois—the head of Private Paris—he came after me as I was leaving my flat.”

Haja’s expression soured. “What do you mean, came after you?”

“He was just there all of a sudden, saying something about my father. But why would he be there, you know?”

“So what happened?” Amé demanded. “What did he say? More importantly, what did you say?”

“I didn’t say a goddamned word,” he replied fiercely. “I took one look at him, figured it couldn’t be a good thing, and took off. He’s, like, in his fifties. Didn’t stand a chance. I climbed the

back wall of Père-Lachaise, and it was over.”

“You’re sure you weren’t followed?” Haja asked.

“Like I said, it was over at the wall.”

“But now he thinks you’ve got something to run about,” Amé said.

“I do have something to run about. We all do.”