Mazot had stopped talking and was giving her the evil eye. She gave him a weak smile and mouthed, “Coffee? Please.” He considered this, then approached, grabbing the phone out of her hands.
“Hello, Dumont? Frank Mazot. Your girl’s gotten herself into a heap of trouble. I’m looking out for her the best I can, but there’s only so much I can do.”
Nikki couldn’t hear what Simon was saying. Mazot’s features grew darker. His eyes studied Nikki more closely. He nodded, then shook his head, then laughed, then looked back at Nikki, as if he knew something really bad that she didn’t. Finally, he said, “Will do. Thanks.” He handed the phone back to Nikki. “Coffee, right?”
“No sugar.” Nikki put the phone to her ear as Mazot headed to the break room. “What was that about?”
“Tell you later. Is he gone?”
“Getting me coffee.”
“Okay, then. There’s another way out of the squad room. There’s a door at the opposite corner from the cracked window. It looks like a closet. It’s not. It connects to a back stairway that was used by workers to deliver coal way back when.”
“What if it’s locked?”
“There’s no lock on the door. Just give it a good pull.”
Nikki looked over her shoulder at the door. Two desks were placed in front of it, but there was plenty of room to scoot through. One of the desks was manned, the other empty.
“I’ll be waiting by the exit,” said Simon. “What do you think?”
Frank Mazot returned and set her coffee on the table. He smiled to show they were still buddies, then sat down. Duvivier and his two colleagues were still at the main door, looking none too pleased she was using the phone.
“I think I don’t have much of a choice.”
As she was speaking, Frank Mazot’s cellphone rang. The detective answered, his eyes immediately turning to Nikki. “Put down the phone,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Put…it…down.”
“I’m still talking to Dumont.”
“No, you’re not,” said Mazot. “Now, do as I say, Nikki.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t be talking to Marc Dumont,” continued Mazot. “Because I am.”
Nikki glanced over her shoulder. A clutch of detectives were blocking the door Simon had mentioned. She looked back to the main entrance. Duvivier and his crew had his eyes on her, but there were only three of them. Once past them, it was a straight shot into the hall, then down the stairs.
“Keep the engine running,” she said to Simon. “I’m coming out the front. Screw it.”
She dropped the phone, picked up Mazot’s coffee off the desk, and flung it at his chest.
“What the—?” Mazot cried out in pain and alarm, recoiling from her, wiping the hot liquid from his shirt.
The other cops in the room were either busy on their own calls or hadn’t put together what exactly was going on. Only Martin Duvivier took action, moving quickly and decisively in her direction.
Nikki took off toward the door, making straight for the gray-haired man, dropping her shoulder and striking him squarely in the chest. Duvivier flailed at her with open arms as he fell backward onto his rear. His two colleagues were too stunned to do anything.
Nikki jumped over him, then bolted into the hall, running to her left toward the stairs. A glance over her shoulder confirmed that Mazot was in pursuit. She bounded down the stairs two at a time as Mazot hollered for her to stop. “Dammit, Nikki, are you out of your mind?,” his raspy voice echoing in the stairwell.
The ground floor was an oasis of calm. Nikki landed on the polished stone floor, her feet slipping from under her. She threw out her hand and wrenched her wrist to keep from falling. Suddenly Mazot was on her, hands taking her by the shoulders. She knocked them off, bristling with violence.
“Give me ten seconds,” she said. “Please.”
Mazot lifted his hands to grab her, then dropped them. He glanced over his shoulder toward the stairwell. No one was following. He looked back at her. She said nothing. “Okay,” he said. “But only ten. Go.”
“I owe you.”
Nikki ran through the grand doors and down the broad stairs to the street. The afternoon sun was punishing and she threw a hand to her eyes, shielding them, looking everywhere for Simon.
Across the street stood the Cathédrale la Major. Its bells began to toll the four o’clock hour. The pavement was crowded with tourists and cops, cars whipping past in both directions. She hurried to the curb. She looked left and spotted a flash of red. An arm was thrust out of the driver’s window and held high. Simon’s head appeared. He waved, shouting something she couldn’t quite hear.
Nikki ran to the car. The passenger door was open. Simon accelerated as she hit the seat. She pulled the door closed and spun to look out the rear window.
“Anyone?” he asked.
“Clear,” she said.
It was then that Nikki looked around her and took in the dashboard and the steering wheel and the bucket leather seats. “Really?” she said. “What happened to hiding out?”
“That part of the story is over.”
Simon slammed the car into third and drove down the hill.
Behind them, not fifty meters away, a silver Audi sedan was stopped in traffic opposite the entrance to the police headquarters.
“Still want to go in?” asked the driver, a compact, muscled man with a pockmarked face and sandy hair. His name was Makepeace.
Seated next to him, Barnaby Neill had witnessed Nikki Perez’s flight down the stairs and into a red sports car idling just ahead. Sometimes the gods sent you messages that you were following the proper course, thought Neill. The messages could be subtle or they could be obvious. Coming upon Simon Riske, the very man he was looking for, at the very time he needed to find him, qualified as the latter.
“No,” said Neill. “I want you to follow that red car.”
“The Dino?”
“That’s the one.”
Makepeace put the car into gear. “No problemo.”
Chapter 61
Tino Coluzzi had no illusions. He was distrustful by nature, suspicious by profession, and one backward glance from being paranoid. When shaking a man’s hand, he made a practice of checking afterward that he still had all five fingers. And so it was that he dismissed as preposterous the notion that Vassily Borodin would politely hand over ten million euros in exchange for the letter and go on his merry way. Coluzzi had only to remember the first thought that had crossed his mind when he’d grasped the letter’s import.
No man should be in possession of this letter.
He was in a precarious position.
Equally troubling was the involvement of Alexei Ren. Though Coluzzi knew next to nothing about Ren’s past, there was no mistaking the fire in his eye whenever Borodin’s name was mentioned, the tactile enmity that juiced him up like a live current. Then, of course, there was the matter of Ren’s tattoos. Coluzzi was no expert on Russian prison art, but he’d been in the company of enough vory v zakone to know that each symbol represented a past act and that most of them had to do with robbery, murder, and other accomplishments even he didn’t want to imagine.
For a man like Ren, revenge wasn’t a question of choice. It was a moral imperative. When he’d casually asked where and when Coluzzi would hand over the letter to Vassily Borodin, it was more than idle curiosity.
If that weren’t enough, there was the lurking and unexplained presence of Simon Ledoux to consider. No question, Coluzzi had his hands fuller than he might have liked.
All of which explained why at 4:30 in the afternoon he was driving through an industrial district in the hills west of the city searching for a dented blue iron gate. Behind the gate was a parking depot used to house broken-down municipal buses, dump trucks and cement mixers idled by a stagnant economy, discarded postal vans, and lastly—and of primary interest to him—a host of armored cars either out of service or in need of repair.