Private Paris (Private 10)

“But there is not someone special?”

“Not at the moment,” I said, feeling my cheeks burn slightly. “You?”

“Just my art,” Michele said, doing that tongue-in-the-teeth thing before draining her glass. “More?”

I finished my glass and poured us both another. Louis returned and said, “Henri Richard’s murder is the talk of the café.”

“A terrible thing,” the artist said. “Have they got a suspect?”

“Not yet,” Louis said, and eyed the bottle. “Shall we order another?”

“Why not?” Michele said.

I was about to agree when I felt my phone buzz with an incoming text. I read it, looked up at Louis, and said, “She just bought something at Open Café.”

He jumped up and said, “It’s two blocks. One of the big gay clubs.”

We both looked at Michele, who started laughing and making shooing gestures. “Go, go!” she said. “I’ll pay an

d then come to find you.”

Louis was already moving. I had to run hard to catch up with him.

“Why would she be in a gay bar?” Louis grunted.

“Good place for a woman to hide?” I said.

We ran to the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie. Open Café was on the southwest corner. A crowd of men had spilled from the club onto the sidewalk, blocking our view of the tables inside and out.

Rather than go straight into the bar, however, Louis kept us on the opposite side of the intersection, walking north across the Rue Sainte-Croix and then west across the Rue des Archives. In front of the Agora bookstore, I panned the crowd and looked right past Kim Kopchinski at first and second glance.

Then she turned and I caught her in profile, sitting at a table by the club entrance. Her shoulder-length brown hair was gone in favor of short spikes dyed the color of straw. She wore no makeup, a black T-shirt, and pants. If I hadn’t just spent time with her, I might have thought she was an effeminate-looking guy.

“You see her?” Louis said, still searching.

“Yes,” I said. “Let me do the talking.”

Crossing the street, I felt many eyes in the crowd turn toward me, sizing me up. I’m over six feet with a football player’s build. The men ogling me looked as though they’d never seen a gym, but one came at me straightaway and started propositioning me.

I told him I was flattered, but straight, and on my way to meet a friend. He said something unflattering that I didn’t catch and turned his shoulder.

Kim lit a cigarette with that lighter she kept on a chain around her neck. She was chatting with a man in a white tennis sweater who had his back to me. I was trying to close the last few feet to her table when an older Brit got in my way.

“Don’t you even think of not talking to me, cowboy,” he said loudly.

“I’m straight,” I said again, trying to get around him, only to bump into a waiter, who dropped a tray.

The sound of breaking glass was enough to split the crowd and draw Kim’s attention. She took one look at me and got to her feet fast.

Her wineglass exploded.

Hit by flying glass, she panicked and pivoted right to get inside the club, but another waiter holding a tray at shoulder height blocked her path.

She ducked as if to go under his arm. The waiter jerked, dropped his tray. A plume of bright blood appeared on his white shirt, and he collapsed.

“Shooter, Jack!” Louis shouted.

I dove to the ground, twisted, and saw that pale, gaunt guy from the night before crouched in a combat shooting stance and aiming a suppressed pistol from twenty-five feet away.