The Paris Widow, page 16
I flip open the book cover, read the words slashed in black ink on the front page. Stella pivots, and I snap it closed, handing it back to Kat. “A signed Dali, huh? I’m impressed.”
She gives me a meaningful nod and gestures to the end of the bench we just came off of. “I need to reorganize. Do you mind?”
“Go for it,” Stella says with a wave of her arm. “I hope you don’t have far to go. These are heavy.”
“Only to my bike, parked around the corner. I thought I was being smart by taking the shortcut through the hof, but I probably should have put the heaviest ones in my backpack.” Kat shrugs it off and drops it to the bench, working the zipper open. “I’m just so unsettled by the news that I wasn’t thinking. All of Amsterdam is unsettled by it, actually.”
And here it comes, I think. The danger Kat came here to warn me of.
Stella looks at me, and I can tell her mind is going big. Plane crashes, bridge collapses, shootings. The kinds of tragedies that would warrant an entire city being disturbed.
I shove my hands in my pockets as she turns back to Kat. “What did we miss?”
“A famous Dutch journalist was assassinated, just this morning. Right around the corner from here, on a very busy street in the middle of the day. A man drove up on a scooter, shot him in the head three times, then sped away. The assassin is probably halfway to Eastern Europe by now.”
Stella presses a hand to her chest. “Oh, my God.”
“I know.” Kat bends down, stuffing as many books as will fit into her backpack, stacking them in like Jenga blocks. “A few years ago, I would have said this is not the kind of thing that happens in my country, but unfortunately, this is the kind of thing that happens in my country now. Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, Peter R. de Vries. They were all murdered in public, too.”
“But why? Murdered by who?”
“It used to be because of politics or religious beliefs, but now...” Kat doesn’t look at me as she says it. She keeps her gaze locked on Stella, who waits for her to continue with a frown. “Now it’s the underworld.”
In other words, the mob.
Stella gives a slow shake of her head. “I guess I didn’t realize the mob operated in Holland. It just seems like such a peaceful country.”
“The mob is everywhere, and Holland has one of the biggest airports plus the major sea harbor for all of Europe. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the EU, which means we attract many criminals.” Kat zips up the backpack, then begins distributing the lighter books into the remaining bags. “Like the Moroccan man who assassinated this journalist. They call him Aljazaar, Arabic for The Butcher, because he tortures his victims in shipping containers. That’s one of the crimes this journalist exposed, that these containers were basically murder chambers.”
“Jesus,” Stella says, and I have to sit. I sink onto the bench with a thump hard enough to shake my bones, because first Capri, now Holland. The land of tulips and cheese wheels, of windmills and wooden shoes. Aljazaar is here, too. He’s following us.
Kat’s gaze flits between us, sticking when it lands on mine. “I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to scare your wife, but this mobster, Aljazaar, he is very, very dangerous. His enemies all either disappear or are killed in the most gruesome way. Every single one.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing we’re not Aljazaar’s enemies, huh?” Stella laughs, but she’s the only one.
Kat’s expression doesn’t change. The pinched lines of warning in her forehead don’t smooth out, and I’m pretty sure my face matches hers. She hoists the backpack onto her shoulders with a grunt, then bends to pick up the rest of her bags. “Anyway, thanks for your help. Enjoy the rest of your vacation.”
She leaves, and Stella turns to me with a frown. “Okay, that was weird.”
I don’t contradict her. Aljazaar, the torture chambers, the assassination in the middle of a busy Amsterdam street. It wasn’t a random anecdote. Kat told us this story for a reason.
It was a warning, as was the message Kat wrote in the book.
Leave Amsterdam. You are in danger here—both of you.
Twenty-Two
Stella
Paris
I recognize her the second she steps through the doorway of the Galerie d’Anatomie Comparée. A woman, blonde and tall, with light eyes and a face that has never seen a Botox needle. Pretty, but in that natural, windblown way that Dutch women have down to a science. She stands on the other side of a swarm of kids gawking at the skeletons and lifts a hand in a wave.
It’s the same woman Adam and I met in Amsterdam, the one with the bags full of books. A Dutch woman with an unpronounceable name. The one Adam told me to call Kat.
She’s prettier than I remember, though that could be the jealousy talking. When she wandered through the courtyard that day, Adam knew her but pretended she was a stranger. Unbeknownst to me, the two of them had some sort of relationship, even if it was only a working one. I take in her blond curls and fat lips, her floral silk blouse over faded jeans and ankle boots, the brown leather bag slung over a shoulder, and I feel it then, a cold, slippery spite for this woman, for her secret history with my husband.
She steps up beside me, and I catch a whiff of expensive perfume.
“I’m very sorry for the subterfuge the first time we met. It was the only way I knew to get the message to your husband,” she says, staring out into the crowd.
The place is packed with what seems like every elementary school in Paris, and the excited shrieks and squeals in what’s essentially a giant greenhouse are deafening. It’s why I asked Kat to meet me here, at the tail end of a rhinoceros skeleton that once belonged to Louis XV, because Adam told me to make sure no one was listening, and no one will ever be able to hear us over the racket.
I think back to that day in Amsterdam, our interaction that I found weird. That story about the Moroccan mobster who’d had a journalist executed in broad daylight. How all his enemies either disappeared or died, but only after being tortured in a shipping container, gaining the mobster his moniker, The Butcher. Is that what’s happening now? Adam is running from the mobster?
“The books were a neat little trick. How did you make the bag rip at the exact right time?”
She puffs a laugh. “The bag was a lucky coincidence, as was finding the two of you in the Begijnhof. He said ‘hidden courtyard’ and that’s the most famous one. I was planning to trip or maybe stop to tie a shoe, but then the bag fell apart and I didn’t have to.”
I hear her explanation and I think I even believe her—who could even plan such a thing?—but my mind is snagged on one thing she said. Lucky. The word doesn’t sit right.
A little boy races by shouting a steady stream of animated French, his cheeks cherry pink with excitement, and I wait for him to pass. “Nothing about this situation feels lucky.”
“I imagine it doesn’t, but it would feel even worse if that bomb had hit its intended target. Adam and I were supposed to die in that square.”
I fall silent for a long moment, latching on to everything she didn’t say. This woman not only knows Adam, she seems to know that he wasn’t killed, and my heart gives a little flutter, because that phone call was real. Adam is alive. No one can take that away from me. No one can tell me otherwise.
But the relief is short-lived, followed by a sharp whiplash of resentment. If Kat knows about Adam, it means she’s important enough that he reached out to her, too.
Another kid goes whizzing by, trailed by what looks to be his entire class, and already this place is getting to me. The heat from the sun blaring down on the glass above our heads, the hundreds of overactive bodies and their high-pitched shrieks, all the commotion and clamor. How little humans can make this much noise is beyond me.
“How do you know my husband?”
I don’t look at her as I say it, and the my husband is intentional. A proverbial lifted leg on the man I married, because I can and I don’t like how this woman makes me feel.
She lets a couple of beats pass. “Honestly, I’d rather not say.”
My gaze whips to hers, and she winces. “For the record, there’s nothing inappropriate going on between Adam and me, and there never has been. Our relationship is and has only ever been professional. In fact, I’m not sure I even like your husband all that much. At the very least, I really, really hate his business.”
“Which business are we talking about?”
She sighs. “Come on, Stella. You seem smarter than that. Surely by now you must know that Adam’s hands are far from clean.”
“And yours are?”
“I’m not the one selling stolen pieces, pieces that belong to a culture and its people, not on a wealthy client’s wall. Do you know how many people died smuggling those artifacts over international borders? They call them ‘blood antiquities’ for a reason. This is how your husband makes his money. You know this, right? He’s been doing it for years.”
I fall silent because Kat’s right. By now I do know, and I don’t need any more convincing that the man I married is a liar. A smuggler with blood on his hands. I stand here and wait for the familiar flash of heat, the fury at his betrayal, but it doesn’t come. The only thing I feel is a heavy cloud of disappointment and regret.
In Adam.
In myself.
Because how could I sleep next to this man for four whole years and have no idea? How could he keep this from me? Does he not trust me enough to tell me the truth?
Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe I played a hand in this. After all, my own history is why I chose Adam, because he didn’t have any interest in peering into the dark corners of my past, didn’t want to know who else I’d been with, what other versions of me existed. He doesn’t know about the part of me that is more like him than I care to admit, because I never told him, just like he never told me about the other versions of him. We both simply projected what we thought the other wanted to see: that we’re normal, respectable, unassuming and mainstream. It’s so much easier to blame Adam for his lies of omission than to take a hard look at my own.
I turn to Kat. “So if you and Adam are on opposite sides of the law, then why are we here? Does it have something to do with the Moroccan man you told us about? The Butcher who’s part of the underworld.”
It’s the word she used that day in the courtyard, even though I could have said any other to her now. The mob, organized crime, le marché noir. Tomato, tomahto. But it feels like the crux of all of this. Adam is running from something bigger than all of us.
Kat confirms it with a brisk nod. “They call him Aljazaar, but that’s all I am willing to say. Defining the danger would put your life at risk, too.”
Too. Which means she’s not just referring to Adam. “What about you? Is your life at risk?”
“I told you that day in the Begijnhof. Aljazaar’s enemies all either disappear or are killed.”
“And you’re one of them.” She doesn’t nod, but fear flashes in her expression. She is this man’s enemy, too. “Adam said I could trust you.”
“Then he’s wrong. You cannot trust anyone, Stella. Not even me. Especially not me. Adam’s client is out for vengeance, and you are their next target. If you want to stay alive, then you must leave Paris—now.”
“Who’s his client? If it’s not Aljazaar, who else is after me?”
She puffs an ironic laugh through her nose, rolls her eyes. “I cannot tell you. I promised Adam I wouldn’t. And believe me, it’s safer if you don’t know.”
I believe her. I believe the way her face went three shades paler at the mention of Aljazaar’s name, believe the tremble in her voice that says she’s terrified. I line up the puzzle pieces in my mind: Aljazaar, the police investigation, the fight Zoé overheard, yesterday’s phone call with Adam. All these people coming to me with vague warnings to watch my back for surprise attacks from a nameless, faceless man. I’m getting really tired of all the ambiguity.
“If you’re not going to tell me, then why are we here?”
“Because of that.” Without looking over, she gestures to the ring on my thumb. “There are many people looking for this ring, who will not hesitate to kill you just for having it on your finger. It’s very valuable.”
I stuff my hand into my jeans pocket. “And I’m just supposed to hand it over to you.”
“Yes. Adam was going to give it to me before the two of you left Paris.” She glances over with a small smile. “You didn’t see me at the café, did you? I was sitting in the square.”
I think of how Adam was on his phone when I returned from ordering the food, the pictures he showed me without missing a beat, his calm reaction. He was completely unfazed by this woman watching from a bench nearby, by the danger. Could he have faked that so well? And what does it say about him if he did? It makes me wonder what else I might have missed.
“So that day at the café, our last day in Paris, why didn’t he give you the ring then?”
It’s a question and a test in one. Adam didn’t have the ring with him that day. I found it much later tucked in a pocket of his jeans, already packed in his suitcase for the trip home. If Kat lies to me now, if she tells me the plan was for Adam to hand over the ring at the café, I’ll leave. Walk out of this place with this thing still on my thumb.
“Adam didn’t bring the ring to the square. He said it was too dangerous. By then Aljazaar was already following me.”
“But why? What did you do to make Aljazaar your enemy?”
“Aljazaar works for Adam’s client, a woman who wanted us dead and didn’t care about all the innocent people who would die in the crosshairs. But Adam knew that something was coming. That’s why he returned to the square, to tell me to run. The explosion happened a few seconds later.” Kat shakes her head, but it’s half-hearted at best. “I already said too much. It’s better you don’t know the details.”
“Isn’t it better if I know who’s coming after me?”
“No. It’s better if you give me the ring and then forget you knew anything about it. Get on a plane, Stella. Go home before you’re killed.”
Now she sounds just like Adam. For a second or two, I consider telling her what I told Adam, that I’m not leaving this city without him, but I already know what she’ll say and I’m tired of arguing this point. Instead, I decide to change gears.
“Adam said you are going to return the ring to its rightful owner.” Behind the denim of my pocket, the metal zings on my hand. “Who does it belong to? Not Antoine. Do you know him?” I glance over as she nods, her mouth curling down at the corners. She knows Antoine, and she doesn’t like him. “He didn’t like that I was wearing it.”
She smiles, though it’s one without the slightest trace of humor. “That’s because Adam stole it from him.”
“Answer my question, Kat. Who does this ring belong to?” She shakes her head, clamping down on her perfectly lush lips, and I turn back to the slew of screaming kids with a sigh. “Suit yourself. But for the record, if you can’t be bothered to tell me whose ring this is, then I can’t be bothered to give it to you.”
“It’s not that I can’t tell you, Stella. It’s that I don’t want to, and you shouldn’t want that, either. You should also know that wearing it is a sign that you were involved in the theft. With that thing on your finger, you might as well be wearing a bull’s-eye.”
“Fine. Then I’ll stop wearing it. I’ll hide it somewhere no one will ever find it, like the bottom of the Seine. The ring means nothing to me.”
It’s a lie. It means something to Adam, obviously, and thus it means something to me. Wherever I hide it, it won’t be on the garbage-strewn bed of a city river.
But Kat doesn’t know this, and I didn’t miss the flash of panic when I mentioned the Seine, the way she’s chewing on the inside of her bottom lip. This ring is worth more to her than the gold it’s made of—that much is obvious. I wriggle my hand out of my pocket, the buckle glinting in the overhead lights.
“Fine.” It comes out on the tail end of a sigh, and she lifts her gaze to mine.
“Once upon a time, that ring belonged to Oscar Wilde. You know, the Irish playwright.”
“I know who Oscar Wilde is.” I roll my eyes, even though, apparently, I don’t know—or at least my memory has fudged on some of the details. I thought he was British, and wasn’t Oscar Wilde a poet? Not that it matters for the purposes of this conversation, and not that I’d ever dream of giving Kat an edge. For all she knows, I could tick off every play he ever wrote, and maybe even quote some of the best lines.
“He and a friend named Reginald Harding gifted the ring to William Ward in 1876,” she says. “That’s what the initials engraved inside the ring mean. OFOFWW + RRH to WWW. Oscar’s full name was Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde. The inscription on the outside is Greek, loosely translated to gift of love, to one who wishes love.”
She got the inscription right, at least. I nod. “Go on.”
“The ring was on display at Oxford University when it was stolen in 2002, along with a couple of Wilde’s other belongings. The thief sold them to a gold scrap dealer, so everybody just assumed it had been melted down for the value of the gold, which wouldn’t be all that much and the world would have lost a precious piece of our history. We all thought the ring was lost until, suddenly, there was chatter in London’s underground market. Adam and I went after it, but Antoine got there first.”
“So Adam took it from him?”
