“Have a good time, sweetheart,” she said. “But get some rest.”
When they left Harry’s four beers and an hour later, and were walking toward the Opera, where Matt remembered a restaurant his father particularly liked, Mickey offered a philosophical/historical/literary observation:
“Did you know that’s the joint where Hemingway used to hang out?” he asked.
“I heard.”
“Did you know that before he became a writer, he was a newspaperman?”
“I heard that too.”
“I don’t mean some schmuck on a small-town rag, he worked for the Herald-Tribune, here,” Mickey said. “He gave a speech one time where he said he thought working on a newspaper was the best training he ever had to become a writer.”
“I didn’t know that, but I’m sure he was right,” Matt said.
“Yeah,” Mickey said, thoughtfully. “He probably was.”
Am I in the company of the next Tom Clancy? The next Whatshisname, the guy who made millions writing about dinosaurs?
“When do you want to go to Cognac-Boeuf, Mick?”
“What’s that?”
“That’s where Festung is.”
“Soon, but not right away. I told you, I want to go back to the Louvre. You can’t see half what they have in that place in one day, for Christ’s sake.”
Over the next five days, they developed a routine. On waking, while Matt ordered their room-service breakfast, and while waiting for it to be delivered, Mickey first got on the phone to the embassy’s press officer, then would get on the Internet with Matt’s laptop, go to the Bulletin’s Web site, and catch up on what was happening in Philadelphia.
After breakfast, they took a cab to the Louvre. Matt thus got to see more of the museum than he’d seen in his previous- more than a dozen-visits to the City of Lights. Once they went out of the museum to lunch, but that took too much time for Mickey, so the other days they had eaten lunch standing up at a museum concession.
He did manage to get Mickey briefly to the top of the Eiffel Tower-to which Mickey’s reaction was “What’s the big deal?” and “Are you sure it’s safe? It’s rusty all over”- and to Napoleon’s Tomb, but that was about all.
They called their respective maternal parents daily, usually from Harry’s New York Bar after the Louvre closed. And then they went to dinner, and after that, twice, to jazz places on the East Bank.
Matt realized that he was having a good time, largely because Mickey was what his father described as “a good traveling companion.”
On the morning of the sixth day, Mickey called, “Hey, you better take a look at this!”
Matt, munching a croissant, walked to where Mickey was at his laptop. The screen showed the front page of the Bulletin, and for a moment Matt didn’t understand what he was being shown. And then, in the “Inside Today’s Bulletin” box, he saw: “Police Arrest Two in Fast-Food Restaurant Murder. Page 3, Section 2.”
There wasn’t much of a story there, even though it had a double byline on it.
TWO ARRESTED IN FAST-FOOD DOUBLE MURDER BY RICHARD HIGBEE AND BETTY-JO WOLFF BULLETIN STAFF WRITERS
Philadelphia-Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariani announced the arrest early this morning “without incident” of Lawrence John Porter, 20, and Ralph David Williams, 19, at their homes in the Paschall Homes Project. The two, who are cousins, have been charged with the double murder of Ms. Maria M. Fernandez and Police Officer Kenneth J. Charlton during a robbery of the Roy Rogers restaurant at South Broad and Snyder Streets earlier this month.
“We’ve had the two under round-the-clock surveillance for some time,” Commissioner Mariani said, “but delayed arresting them while assembling irrefutable evidence against them.”
Mariani said that evidence included the murder weapon, a. 38-caliber handgun, which police divers, assisted by the Philadelphia Treasure Hunters Club, recovered later yesterday from the silt banks of the Schuylkill River, where it had been thrown.
Mariani cited the involvement of the Treasure Hunters, who joined the police in searching the murky waters of the Schuylkill, as another example “for which I am grateful and proud” of civilian cooperation with the police.
Philadelphia mayor Alvin W. Martin, in a separate statement, said that all Philadelphians “can and should take pride in the professionalism and dedication of the officers of the Special Operations Division Task Force, which I ordered formed, in apprehending these individuals under extremely difficult circumstances.”
“Jesus, what a shitty story,” O’Hara said. “And it took two of them to write it.”
“There’s not much, is there?” Matt said. “For all the effort that went into that job.”
“On the other hand,” O’Hara said, more charitably, “it might have been my pal Kennedy’s editing. I know the broad. She’s got talent.”
O’Hara looked thoughtful for a minute, and judging by the look on his face, Matt was not very surprised at what came next.
“Matty, unless you really want to go back to the Louvre… You’ve been there before a lot, right?”
“Yeah, I have.”
“How would you feel about making arrangements to getting us to where… I forget where you said…”
“Cognac-Boeuf,” Matt furnished.
“Right. Where this sleazeball Fort Festung is.”
“Sure, Mick. Good idea. We better rent a car. I don’t know if we can find one to rent down there.”
“See if you can get us a Lincoln, or a Cadillac. These Frog cars look tiny to me. What I’d really like to have is my Rendezvous.”
The concierge in the lobby of the George V said it would be impossible to provide either a Cadillac or a Lincoln-much less a Porsche or a Buick Rendezvous-and he would therefore recommend a Mercedes.
“Unless M’sieu would like a Jaguar?”
“Tell me about a Jaguar,” Matt said.
He put the Jaguar rental on his American Express card, because every time he’d tried to pick up a bill, O’Hara had been adamant that the whole trip was on him. “Put your goddamn money away,” he’d say.
Signing the receipt triggered the memory of what Detective Olivia Lassiter had said to him in Alabama about his not even looking at the bill there before he signed it, and his first reaction was, “Screw her!”
But she stayed in his mind all day, and about six-thirty, as he sat in the hotel bar in the vain hope that Mickey would leave the Louvre before they threw him out, he remembered that Mickey had left his worldwide telephone in the suite. And after one more drink, he went to the suite, dialed Zero Zero One, and after some difficulty was connected with the Northwest Detectives Division of the Philadelphia police department.
“Detective Lassiter, please.”
“Who’s calling?”
“Sergeant Payne.”
“Hello, Matt. How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“I heard-”
“I’m fine, Olivia. Thank you for asking. I was about to send you one of those ‘having lovely time in Gay Paree wish you were here’ postcards, but I figured what the hell, I’d call you.”
“Matt, I’m working.”
“Can I call you later?”
'I don’t think that would be a very good idea,” Olivia said. And hung up.
The next morning at ten, Matthew M. Payne and Michael J. O’Hara, both more than a little hungover, watched their luggage being loaded into a powder blue Jaguar XK8 Cabriolet. Then they got in and, with Matt at the wheel, drove across Avenue George V onto Rue Pierre Charron, then turned right onto the Champs Elysees and headed for
