Private Paris (Private 10)

“Need a job, Randall Peaks?”

“I don’t think you could afford me.”

“Probably not. Can I go have breakfast?”

“Just don’t get near the princesses, and you’ll be fine.”

“So the royals don’t use Saudi bodyguards?”

“A few,” he said. “The rest of us are contracted.”

“How long have you been working there?”

“Seven years,” Peaks said as the elevator pinged behind me. “Have a good day, Mr. Morgan.”

I left him and went into the dining area, spotting a large table of Middle Eastern women who looked ready for fashion week. Every one of them was wearing a couture dress. Every one of them had flawless makeup, a dramatic hairdo, and stunning jewelry.

Laughing, chatting, and generally having a good time, they paid no attention to me. But the guards positioned discreetly around the room watched me all the way to my seat.

I read the International Herald Tribune and had an exceptional breakfast of poached eggs, asparagus, and a dill sauce that I wanted to eat with a spoon.

The princesses left before I had finished. Only one of them looked even remotely my way as they exited the room. She was the youngest, probably in her mid- to late teens, and by my estimation the most beautiful of them all. It took me a moment to realize that she wasn’t looking at me, but studying a painting over my right shoulder.

Brought back to earth, stuffed and caffeinated, I was at the offices of Private Paris by seven fifteen and not surprised to find Louis already at his desk drinking an espresso.

“Do you ever sleep?” I asked.

“Five hours, every night,” he said, and snapped his fingers. “Five hours and I am ready to go. I have only just heard from Le Chien.”

“Yeah?” I said, taking a seat. “He find anything on Richard?”

“Many things,” Louis said. “Including the fact that several times in the last week he ate at a very famous restaurant in Paris, Chez Pincus. By the amount of money he spent, it suggests that he was entertaining a woman. Perhaps the woman in the—”

Ali Farad, Private Paris’s newest hire, came in. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” Louis said, leaning over a desktop computer and typing in a command. When he finished, he peered over the screen at Farad and said, “Ali, what you’re about to see you aren’t going to like, and you are to keep what you are about to see completely to yourself.”

“Okay…” Farad said.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, okay.”

Louis pivoted the screen to show the hijab and veil that I’d photographed with my phone when we were inside the opera director’s love shack. Farad looked at them with little expression, and then shrugged. “Why are these important?”

“Because of these,” Louis said, and gave the computer another command.

The screen blinked, divided into quadrants, and up popped four photographs of the opera director in the Catholic priest’s collar having sex with the fierce-eyed woman in the hijab and veil.

Farad’s lips thinned. “That’s Henri Richard.”

“Correct,” Louis said. “He seemed to have a fetish about priests and Muslim girls. He was writing an opera about it.”

“We think he might have been killed because he was also living out his fantasies,” I said. “Are we off base on that? Could you see a Muslim father, or brother, or uncle finding out about the affair and deciding to kill Richard?”

Farad nodded without hesitation. “Sure, I could see it. I mean, this is just the rankest porn imaginable. Among radical sects, it would be just cause for revenge on Richard, and perhaps her death as well.”

“Richard was with a woman last night, before his death. A redhead,” I said. “Maybe this woman.”