Private Paris (Private 10)

“What did you tell those guys?” I asked.

“I said that the toilet in 412 was backed up and there’s shit all over the place. It shuts down their curiosity every time.”

We didn’t have to use a buzzer, because there was no buzzer or security of any kind. A young Muslim woman in black robes and head scarf came down the stairs and glanced at us with enormous brown eyes that showed suspicion until they focused on the logos on our jumpsuits. She nodded and went on. Two Asian teenagers came bouncing down the stairs as we climbed, and never gave us a second glance. Nor did the African woman carrying a load of laundry.

“I’ve got to remember this,” I muttered to Louis as I followed him toward a cement staircase.

“Plumbing is a beautiful thing,” he replied.

When we reached the fourth floor of the tenement we opened the door into an empty hallway with a rug frayed down to the floorboards. The smells of the place hit me all at once: lamb cooking in garlic and onions, cigarette smoke, marijuana smoke, and the odor of too many people living in tight quarters.

The apartment walls and doors could not have been very thick or insulated, because a general din filled the passage: babies crying, pots banging, men shouting, women shouting back, televisions and music blaring in Arabic and other languages I couldn’t identify. It all felt depressing—suffocating, even—and I’d been in the building less than three minutes. Louis said there were people who’d lived in Les Bosquets their entire lives, and I began to understand some of the pressures that contributed to the riots.

But why had Wilkerson’s granddaughter come here of all places?

Louis knocked on the door to 412. Several moments later, a woman’s voice asked who we were, and Louis replied that we were from Private and had been sent by Kim’s grandfather.

A minute passed before a dead bolt was thrown. The door opened on a chain, and a wary woman who looked Polynesian and was wearing a blue skirt and floral blouse looked out at us, and asked to see our identification. We showed it to her, and she shut the door.

Nothing happened for several minutes, and Louis was about to knock again when we heard the chain slide, and the door opened. Louis stepped inside a dimly lit, narrow hallway, and I followed.

The door shut behind us, and I turned to find myself face-to-face with Kimberly Kopchinski. In her late twenties now, wearing jeans, a black blouse, and a rectangular silver thing on a chain around her neck, she was undeniably beautiful in person. But I could tell by the color of her skin and the way she held herself that she’d been through some terrible physical ordeal recently, and that she was very, very frightened.

We introduced ourselves and showed her the badges and identifications.

“How do I know my grandfather sent you?” she asked.

I showed her Sherman’s text and the picture of her. Kim stared at the picture for several moments as if she barely remembered the girl in it.

“He says you’re in danger,” I said.

“I am in danger,” she said.

“He said something about drug dealers?”

“I just need somewhere to go, to disappear for a while,” she said in a strained whisper. “Can you help me do that?”

“We can,” I replied. “But it helps if we know who we’re hiding you from, Kimberly.”

Her face twisted with inner pain, and she said, “Call me Kim. And can we have this conversation later? Once I’m somewhere safe? I can’t stay here anymore. My friend’s husband is coming home from Lyons in a few hours. He doesn’t know I’m here, and if he did I’d be…”

Her lower lip quivered.

“Don’t worry, Ms. Kopchinski,” Louis said. “You are under the care and protection of Private Paris now. Already you could not be safer. We’ll take you to the same hotel where Jack is staying.”

“A hotel?” Kim said, alarmed. “No, that’s too public.”

Louis said soothingly, “This hotel is the most discreet in Paris. Already I have you registered there under an alias.”

The Polynesian woman emerged from a doorway at the other end of the hall carrying a canvas bag. She set it down and tapped on her watch.

Kim appeared to be torn, but nodded, and went to the woman. She talked quietly to her for several moments before hugging her. Both women looked distraught when they parted.

Grabbing the bag, Kim said, “Let’s go.”

We got more scrutiny leaving with her than we had when entering, and plenty of hostile glances, but no one challenged us directly. With Kim in the backseat and Louis starting the Mia, I thought we were home free. Thirty minutes from now we’d have her safely in a suite at the Plaza Athénée and I’d be talking to Sherman Wilkerson, trying to figure out a way to get her quickly to L.A.

Louis threw the Mia in gear and was pulling a U-turn to head west toward Paris when headlights went on a block in front of us. Another set went on half a block behind us.