“The girl lived in his flat.”
“She was his? He has so many.”
“Yes. She was one of his women.”
“He is greedy. Like a Chinese.” He cleared his throat and looked briefly at Chen. “So you think that he . . . you know? She was stabbed. Many times . . . In the vagina you say?” He grimaced.
“Yes.”
“And it was Lu, you think?”
“We certainly believe he knows who it was.”
Caprisi had not touched his croissant, so Field pulled over his plate and began eating. He was suddenly ravenously hungry.
“There are no other cases . . . there has been nothing similar here?” Caprisi asked.
“Here?” The inspector shrugged, as if to say such things could not possibly happen on French territory. “No.” He thought about it some more, head tilted to one side, before shaking his head. “No.”
Twenty-five
They pulled up outside a three-story house with an open balcony on the first floor, hidden behind ornate balustrades: number 3, Rue Wagner. Caprisi leaned forward and looked up at it. His expression reflected the nervousness Field felt. “Know how many men Lu has at his beck and call?” the American asked.
“Twenty thousand.”
“Right. An army. A fucking army. What do you think, Chen? Leave our guns in the car?”
The Chinese detective turned around, his mouth tight. “Let them disarm us.”
There was no one on the veranda, but as they climbed the stone steps to the entrance, one of the big wooden doors swung back to allow them to pass into a gloomy hallway with a black-and-white-checkered stone floor. At first, Field could not see who had opened the door, but as one man in a dark suit stepped forward, he saw another in the background, leaning against a glass-fronted gun cabinet that was well enough stocked for the outbreak of a war.
Both men were Russian, and the one closest, who was bald, indicated with his hand that he wished them to give up their weapons. Caprisi reached reluctantly into his pocket and handed over his revolver. Field followed suit. Chen hesitated, but once he, too, had obliged, they were ushered toward the stairs and left to climb them on their own.
Field wanted to look back but resisted the temptation. The staircase was wide, the floor above gloomy, too. The place felt like a funeral parlor.
They walked slowly toward a pair of doors that opened into a large room with shutters closed and thick, dark red curtains half-drawn, the only light coming from a dull lamp in one corner. Lu sat facing them, his legs resting on a footstool while a Chinese girl in a silk dressing gown massaged his feet. He dismissed her and beckoned them toward him, indicating that they should sit on the two chairs that appeared to have been placed opposite him specifically for their visit. He showed no sign of recognizing Field from the altercation in the Majestic.
Chen was left to stand.
Lu sat in a low leather armchair, between a Chinese cabinet and a grand piano bedecked with framed photographs. It was a moment or two before Field realized that they were pictures of girls—his girls, Lena and Natasha Medvedev ostentatiously to the fore. They were studio photographs, similar to those one saw of film actresses like Bebe Daniels and Lillian Gish.
Field stared at them.
Lu opened and closed his right hand slowly, as if stretching his fingers.
“Tea?”
“Yes,” Caprisi said.
Lu hit a bell and within a second a houseboy appeared.
Lu coughed once. His lungs sounded heavy, and his complexion, as Field had noticed the other night, was sickly, his cheeks scarred. His expression was sour, his mouth turned down. His eyes were small but piercing, and, if his body appeared weak, his eyes revealed a quick mind and a soul consumed, Field thought again, by burning anger and barely suppressed aggression.
“You wish to speak to me?” he asked once the houseboy had gone. He raised his hands and placed them together, two sets of portly, manicured fingers resting against each other beneath his chin. He spoke English well but quietly, with an accent that clipped the ends of some words, but not others, so that “wish” was perfectly enunciated, but “speak” half-lost. His voice was cold.
“About Lena Orlov,” Caprisi said.
“Lena, yes.” He nodded.
“We’re obviously sorry to trouble you about it.”
Lu nodded again. “I spoke to your colleagues in the French police.”
“But we’re conducting the investigation. Excellent as our colleagues are, you would expect us to wish to speak to those involved.”
“How am I involved?”
The houseboy came in with a tray and placed it on a table next to Lu’s chair. Caprisi waited until he had
