“He remembers your father fondly. As you requested, he sent a list of the officers in your father’s graduating class.”
“Et …?” She turned the corner, smack into a storage cellar full of empty boxes. Dead end. She turned and hurried back the way she’d come.
“He liked your idea for some reunion party and gives their nicknames, too, like you asked for.”
Her blood ran cold. “Don’t tell me, there’s a Thomas ‘Fifi’ Dussollier.”
“Right. But isn’t that …? Wait, are you in trouble, Aimée?”
“You’ve got to …” Her mouth went dry. The dim corridor light was blocked as Thomas Dussollier swatted the phone out of her hand. It clattered to the stone and he stomped on it. He grabbed her wrists, bent her right hand back in an iron grip. The next moment he’d shoved her forward into the room where the security guard lay. Her clutch fell on the ground.
“Trouble, always trouble, Aimée.” He sighed. Shut the door. “Ever since you were small. What your father put up with when you were a teenager, zut! I know, we commiserated. I had one too, but look how she turned out.”
Pain shot up her hand. Merde. A broken finger—if she was lucky.
The man who’d come to Chloé’s christening. Whom she’d trusted. She decided to play dumb, give him a way out. “What do you mean? You said to meet here.” Distract him, figure out a way to get by him, pray a waiter came by. Start screaming. “Mon Dieu, you’ve got guests upstairs. Let me get my bag and we’ll talk in the garden—”
Dussollier shoved her down against the wall, knocking her sprawling onto a broken gilt chair. She lost Martine’s left Louboutin in the dirt. He shook his head. “All this nosing around, making problems.” Another sigh. “You’ve got everything the wrong way round. Stubborn. You just haven’t wanted to see the reality. You have to know when to let things go.”
Let things go?
“All you had to do was keep your nose out of it,” he said. “Take a hint once things got difficult. The notebook’s been burned. All the proof’s gone.”
Her eyes darted around, looking for a way out. But Dussollier was blocking the door, and there was no window in this frigid stone cell of a room. Her clutch was just out of her reach on the floor. She had to keep him talking, divert his attention until she could get her hands on the gun.
“Why did this guard appear?” she said, wincing. Get him explaining.
Dussollier glanced at the security guard. Shook his head. “I think you’ve dealt him a permanent blow.”
“But he attacked me,” she said. Think. “Alors, I don’t understand any of this. Look, if I’ve gotten things wrong, tell me.”
“We’re the good guys, remember? We take care of our own.”
Anger flared in her. “Like you took care of Papa?”
“Don’t you see? Your father was always one of us, Aimée,” he said. “Nothing changed. We’re family. I’ve always shown that, haven’t I? When others didn’t? Sent you gifts every year on Christmas? Always in my thoughts.”
Cold seeped into her bare foot from the earth. Keep this going. Grovel. “Mais bien s?r, I remember. And those Friday night poker games at our kitchen table.” Her left hand scrambled, searching in the dirt for her clutch.
He smiled. “The good times, eh?”
Her skin tingled. “What happened, Dussollier?”
“Happened?” He shrugged. “Every so often, word came down the ministerial pipe for your father and me to ignore evidence, to look the other way and back shelve reports.” He sighed. “Call us little cogs in the machine. That’s all.”
That’s how he rationalized corruption? By dragging her father into it too?
“My papa in league with you? Never.”
“Morbier may have been his first partner, but your father and I went to the police academy together. That’s a tie that binds, you know that.” A half smile on his face. Wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He looked old. “Just one more day until I retire. Then this old guy’s getting kicked out.”
She had to ignore the burning pain in her fingers. Appeal to his vanity and pride. Swallow the bile rising up in her throat.
“She’s lovely, your daughter. They make a handsome couple.”
“You know, it meant a lot to my wife that you came today. She wants to see the baby.” He adjusted his crooked tuxedo collar. “So, are you ready to hear my proposition?”
Nicu. Roland Leseur. He hadn’t given them any propositions. Or Djanka Constantin, or Pascal Leseur. She bit her lip, then had to spit out the sour taste of the guard’s dirty hand.
“Why me?”
“Pwahh.” A lopsided smile. “You’re special, Aimée.”
Like she believed that.
“I know you’ll be reasonable, Aimée. Let’s work this out, as I’ve done with half the crowd upstairs. Let things ride, like your papa did.”
He unbuttoned his tuxedo-shirt collar. The hairs on her arms rose. He’d blown her father up in the van in Place Vend?me.
“How many times do I have to prove Papa wasn’t on the take?”
“Choose your battles, Aimée. We all did.” Dussollier sighed. Rationalizing murder? But it seemed important to him that she see it his way. “With that wild mother of yours, eh? A kid to raise. He made choices. Choices you benefitted from. You kids always need something. Teenagers, well, you’ll find out. That high-school year abroad in the US, how do you think he paid for that? Eh, those Texas cowboy boots you couldn’t live without?”
Those boots. She’d begged her papa for them.
“So you’re saying it’s my fault he …?” She couldn’t say it. Non, non. “You’re twisting everything around, Dussollier.”
“Kids. Never changes. We do everything for you and it’s not enough.”
Like this lavish party for his daughter? More like to impress people, stoke his prestige, his craving for power. Hypocrite.