Kill Me If You Can

questions?”

“It’s all a blur,” I said. “This crazy man attacked me and my girlfriend. I tried to fend him off, but the New York subway finished the fight.”

Katherine nodded in total agreement.

“Did either of you know this guy?” Watt said.

“No.”

Watt smiled. “Vadim Chukov. He had a record on two continents. Smuggling, arson, robbery, murder — the list goes on — but this is the first time he ever tried to pick a fight with an innocent young couple waiting for the subway. Are you sure you didn’t know him?”

“I don’t know anyone like that,” I said. “I’m just a struggling art student.”

“A struggling art student and a war-hero Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Garber said.

“My Marine days are over,” I said.

“Were you aware that Chukov and five of his men launched some kind of terrorist attack in Grand Central Terminal earlier last night?” Garber asked.

“It was in the paper this morning,” Katherine said.

“Was anybody hurt?” I asked.

“Counting Chukov, there are six dead. All bad guys. It seems like somebody knew they were coming and cleaned up the mess without any help from the cops.”

“Good Samaritans, I guess,” I said.

“But you weren’t there,” Watt said.

“No,” I said.

“It’s easy enough to check,” Watt said. “They have the whole incident on video.”

Katherine’s eyes opened wide, and she squeezed my hand.

“Oh, crap, I just remembered,” Garber said. “The terminal is not our jurisdiction. That’s MTA — the state cops.”

“Then I guess there’s no sense in looking at the tapes,” Watt said. “We’re just here to ask questions about the incident down in the subway. Does either of you have anything else to add?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Then I think we’ve got it all,” Watt said. “Detective Garber, why don’t we let this young war hero and his girlfriend get some rest.”

They headed to the door. Watt stopped and turned around.

“Mr. Bannon, I have to take issue with just one thing you told us.”

“What’s that?”

“You said your Marine days were over,” Watt said.

“Yes, sir.”

“They’re never over. My partner and I both served in Desert Storm.” He grinned. “Semper fi, bro.”

He threw me a wink and a salute, and the two of them walked out the door and never came back.

Chapter 98

WE FLEW TO Paris and rented a funky studio on the fourth floor of an art deco building in the Quartier Saint-Germain-des-Pres. The mattress was too soft and the toilet was temperamental, but the northern light that streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows made it an artist’s dream. My broken nose healed. My cracked ribs healed. And three months after that night in the subway tunnel, my relationship with Katherine was also mending rather nicely. She had told me she loved me in the heat of the moment, but I wanted to make sure that she could forgive me for the life I had led and for dragging her into it.

It was a Sunday morning in September. I woke to the aroma of fresh-brewed french roast, the sounds of Coldplay on the stereo, and the sight of Katherine in jeans and a paint-spattered tank top, sitting on the sofa. There was sunlight on her bare shoulders, and my cat, Hopper, was curled on her lap, purring gratefully.

“Hold that pose,” I said. “I’ll get some coffee and a paintbrush.”

“You don’t do portraits,” she said.

“I do nudes,” I said with a smile. “You know where I can find one?”

“I just happen to have one under here,” she said. Then she peeled off the tank top. She scrambled out of her jeans. Lord, she was good at undressing.

“The coffee can wait,” I said.

Morning sex for us was usually fast, urgent — kind of like an asteroid is heading for the planet and we only have a few minutes left fast.

That morning we took the better part of an hour.

“I hate to be practical, especially at a time like this, but we should shower and get dressed,” Katherine finally said.

We were lying in a heap of tangled sheets, skin to skin, soaked in sweat. I was still inside her. More or less.

She put her lips on mine, kissed me gently, and found my tongue with hers. That’s all it took to reboot my libido.

“We need to go, Matthew,” Katherine said. “We have to get up.”

“As you may have noticed, I’m pretty much up,” I said. “Give me two good reasons why we should leave this bed. Ever.”

“Your mother and your father,” she said. “We’re meeting them for brunch at ten o’clock.”

“We’ll be late,” I said. “They’ll understand.”

Chapter 99

AN HOUR LATER we were sitting at a sidewalk cafe, eating duck eggs Benedict and buttery petites brioches, while my mother, giddy on half a mimosa, extolled the joys of Paris. She was like a Colorado schoolgirl on her first holiday. Even my father was smiling some.

It was our au revoir brunch. My folks had spent a week in Paris, and now they were moving on to Rome, Florence, and Venice. They were capping it all off with a two-week Mediterranean cruise. It was outrageously expensive, but it only put a small dent in the seven-figure account I’d opened for them at my Dutch bank.

We drove them to the airport and went back to the apartment, where I painted for six hours straight, breaking only for coffee and a few words of inspiration.

At seven, Katherine and I sat on our tiny terrace, sipping a light white burgundy while watching the steel- gray western sky slowly turn spectacular shades of red, orange, and indigo.

The doorbell rang.

“Poor man,” Katherine said. “I hate to put him through this.”

“It’s good for him,” I said.

We were expecting company, but old habits die hard, so before buzzing our visitor in, I checked the tiny security camera I had installed at the front door.

He tromped noisily up the steps, stopping often to catch his breath or complain.

“My darlings,” Newton gushed as he finally made it to our front door. “You’re coming down in the world.”