toward the main table, which was round, with eight people seated at it. Marisa was listening to some crusty old gentleman on her left regale her with stories he thought were funny. She was smiling when he roared with laughter. I wondered how much champagne he had had. He was sure slurping down the wine.
Beside her Jean Petrou was working on his grub and looking sour. To Jean’s right, Isolde Petrou was engaged in conversation with a lady of the same age, one draped in pearls.
I poured some wine for the woman across the table, then glanced at Marisa. Her face wore a look of shock, even horror! She wasn’t looking at me, though. She was looking past me, toward the door to the kitchen. I glanced back … and saw Henri Stehle standing there, looking this way.
When I turned around, Marisa’s face was back to normal. Then, amazingly, Jean Petrou seemed to pale. If I hadn’t been looking right at him, I wouldn’t have seen it. He turned pale, his eyes unfocused, laid down his fork, seemed to take a deep, deep breath..
“Waiter, I’d like some more wine, please,” the man nearest me said.
I was frozen, unable to answer.
Jean Petrou grabbed at his throat, as if he were having trouble breathing. Marisa stared at him—
I set the wine bottle down and rushed around the table. I got to Marisa first, grabbed her wrist. She looked me straight in the eyes. Her face was a study in confusion.
“Don’t eat another bite,” I said. “He may have been poisoned.”
Now she recognized me. I saw it in her eyes. Beside her, her husband was getting into the dry heaves.
“Make an announcement,” I ordered. “No one here should eat another morsel. Stand up and say it.”
I released her wrist and bent down to check on her husband. He was pasty. I grabbed his wrist; his heart was going a million miles an hour. I jerked his hands from his throat, then rammed two fingers into his mouth as deep as they would go. He vomited on the table. Then I lifted him from the chair and laid him out on the floor as Marisa stood and made a loud, clear statement about possible poison in the food. Pandemonium broke loose. If Jean Petrou just had severe indigestion, I was going to be in big trouble.
A man rushed over, pushing me aside. “I’m a doctor,” he said in French.
I stood and looked toward the kitchen door. Henri Stehle was still standing there, looking our way. He made eye contact with me, then turned and disappeared into the kitchen.
The diners were all talking at once, jumping up, trying to leave. The whole crowd had panicked.
I heard the doctor say, almost to himself, “He’s been poisoned, all right.” Then I was gone, elbowing and shoving and pushing my way toward the kitchen.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I charged through the crowd to the door of the kitchen and slammed it open, knocking three people out of the way. There was a crowd there, one that had heard the hubbub from the dining room and had come to the window in the kitchen door to see what was going on.
I scanned the faces. “Where’s Henri?” I roared in English, then had to do it again in French.
Two of them pointed toward the door to the stairway that led down to the employees’ dressing room and entrance to the hotel. World Hotels Inc. didn’t want the help mingling with the paying guests.
Down the stairs I went as fast as I could go. I certainly didn’t know if it was Henri Stehle that Marisa looked at with loathing, but if he didn’t know her from Eve, he wouldn’t have rabbited for the underbrush when we locked eyes.
He wasn’t in the male employees’ dressing room. There was a man there dressing for the desk, so I asked, “Henri?”
He shook his head no.
I slammed into the women’s. Two startled females. One sucked in a chestful of air and screamed. It was a nice effort, a real ear-splitter. I asked the other, “Henri?”
She shook her head, so I split. There were two offices on the hallway. I tried the door of the first, which was the employment office. Locked.
I made a fist and punched out the glass, then opened the door and looked around the space. No people.
The second office, payroll, I think, was also locked. If Henri wasn’t in there, he was quickly getting away. I ran down the hallway and out the door to the street.
He was running, maybe a hundred feet away, really booking it. Obviously he hadn’t planned on a fast getaway.
I sprinted after him.
Now, I wasn’t stupid enough to think, just because Abu Qasim’s natural daughter made a face at this guy, that he had poisoned her husband. Oh, no! For all I knew, this guy was a Mossad agent, and the daughter of the worst al-Qaeda scumbag west of Baghdad recognized his nasty, infidel face.
There were a few people on the street, light traffic, and the people turned to stare at Stehle, then me, pounding along.
Honestly, when I saw ol’ Jean Petrou going down, I thought that his lovely wife had probably poisoned him. After all, she was going to be a seriously rich widow if they buried Jean in a few days, and they were recently separated because they didn’t like living together. She might be able to work up a tear for Jean’s funeral; then again, maybe not.
These thoughts went through my empty head as I thundered down the street after the fleeing Henri Stehle. No doubt he was cussing me as an ungrateful wretch — and he’d be right.
I was gaining on him. I’m no sprinter, but I have long legs and I work out, and I was closing on the guy.
Behind me I heard the shrill tweet of a police whistle. Stehle didn’t stop, so I didn’t.
I wondered if he was armed. I wasn’t, and I’m not bulletproof.
I had closed the distance to maybe twenty-five feet when he went around a corner. I took it wide, just in case he wanted to stop and take a wild punch as I came pounding along.
He didn’t swing. He was jumping in the back seat of a sedan. He didn’t have the door closed, but the car was already in motion. I leaped, caught at the door to prevent it from closing.
He looked at me, kicked at my hand, and the car accelerated away as somebody in another vehicle slammed on his brakes. Stehle’s driver had almost caused a collision.
I vaulted over the stopped car’s hood, grabbed the driver’s door and jerked it open. A woman driver, buckled in. “Police,” I roared.
I reached across, popped the buckle and pulled her out. The car began to roll. I confess, I wasn’t gentle. I dropped her and jumped behind the wheel and slammed the door shut. The sedan with Stehle in it was a half block ahead, accelerating quickly. I floored the gas pedal.
Stehle’s car — a Peugeot, it looked like — took the next left. Of course the light was changing, and I had to slow, but there was just enough room so I poured the coal on and away we went, him still a half block ahead. I had the pedal to the metal, but the three squirrels under the hood could give me no more.
Three more turns and we were accelerating down the boulevard in front of the hotel. The clown ahead went screaming by the two police cars with flashing blue lights parked near the entrance and an ambulance easing up with flashing lights and siren moaning. As I roared by I got a glimpse of a nice little crowd gathered on the sidewalk.
Henri Stehle was in no mood for quiet conversation — that was obvious. The guy driving the Peugeot wasn’t, either.
Soon we were out on the boulevard by the Seine, weaving through traffic and blowing through stoplights. Pedestrians were dodging and jumping every which way. I used my horn freely, but still… We were going to kill someone if this kept on.
I got a glimpse of his license plate — I was that close. An A and an F. Couldn’t get the numbers.
I could hear a police siren, one of those French whee-hoo, whee-ooh jobs. Glanced in the rearview mirror and, you guessed it, he was behind me.
The Peugeot ran a red light and managed to miss a truck pulling out from the left. I wasn’t so lucky. It was the truck fender or the pedestrians streaming across the street on my right. I took the fender. Whump!
