He watched me over my shoulder as I made the reservations online.

“You understand,” he said, “I will come after you. INTERPOL will come after you, if you’re not back tomorrow.”

65

Smith paced. He hadn’t been able to get back to sleep or relax since Perrone had left for the airport at dawn. Had it been a mistake to let him go, to follow his heart of all things? Jesus, he was getting soft. But he needed to trust the guy, and if Perrone failed to return, he would go after him.

He drummed his nails along the bottom of his laptop, felt like he was on the edge of a cliff about to jump. But he’d already jumped. The question was, would he fly or fall? A deep breath. Too late to worry about falling. Go back a hero or don’t go back at all. And not to Bahrain!

In the bathroom, he washed his face, looked in the mirror, saw himself on the pitted concrete court of the Baruch housing project, smallest kid on the ad hoc basketball team, though he knew what to do when he got the ball: head down and move toward the goal. Like now.

A minute to sign into his INTERPOL email, several messages in regard to pending art investigations, nothing new or conclusive, none that needed his immediate attention. He sat back, lit a cigarette, took a drag that burned his throat, and squashed the cigarette out. One thing Perrone was right about—he smoked too much.

Enough. He closed the laptop, needed to go out, get some fresh air, see some life.

The streets around the hotel were bustling, the rue du Faubourg-Montmartre twisty and crooked. For a man who’d spent half his life in France, Smith hardly knew Paris, and he felt like a rube. He guessed he’d feel the same way if went back to Manhattan’s Lower East Side where he’d grown up. From what he heard, the neighborhood was gentrified now, boutiques and hip restaurants, nothing like he’d ever known. He pictured his mom in their cramped kitchen, heating up dinner, a bowl of Campbell’s soup, and worrying, always worrying, about bills, about her boy. Get out of here and do better. Her mantra.

He passed half a dozen cheap hotels and even more snack bars, then a handful of costume shops, one with a garish neon clown over the entrance, red nose blinking. Was that what he was, a clown, a fool for giving up his secure job? Get out of here and do better. What he had done and was doing again, only this time, it was getting out of a secure job for a fantasy of glory. What would his mom think about that? A decade now since her premature death, too late to ask and probably for the best.

The flashing sign of the Restaurant Chartier reminded him that he was hungry. He checked the menu, then made his way past the entrance into a back courtyard where he was shown to a table by a bored-looking waiter. He took his time eating an uninspired terrine de campagne smeared onto crusty or possibly stale bread, washed it down with an acidic white wine, the whole time thinking about what he was doing—the risks, the stakes, the possible rewards of success, the humiliation if he failed. The waiter stood over him while he drank his coffee, impatient to have the bill paid and the table filled with the next customer.