“Let’s go back down, Tim,” I said. “We can call the police from the lobby. I noticed a phone booth.”

“What’s the French for 911?” Tim asked.

“Seventeen,” I replied. I’d seen it written next to the phone.

But the phone in the hotel was out of order. There was a sign on the window reading “Hors de service.” I translated for Tim and he went over to the receptionist. “We want to call the police,” he said.

“Please?” The receptionist narrowed his eye. I think he would have liked to have narrowed both his eyes, but the one on the left wasn’t working.

“No,” Tim explained. “Police.” He saluted and bent his knees, doing an imitation of a policeman. The receptionist stared at him as if he had gone mad.

“Les flics,” I said.

“Ah!” The receptionist nodded. Then he leaned forward and pointed. “You go out the door. You turn left. Then you take the first turning left again,” he growled. He actually spoke pretty good English even if the words had trouble getting past his throat. “There’s a police station just at the next corner.”

We left the hotel, turned left, and then immediately left again. We found ourselves in a narrow alleyway that twisted its way through the shadows before coming to a brick wall.

“This is wrong,” I said.

“You don’t want to go to the police anymore?” Tim asked.

“No, Tim. I still want to go to the police but this is the wrong way. It’s a dead end.”

“Maybe we have to climb over the wall.”

“I don’t think so . . .”

I was getting worried. After everything that had happened to us so far, the last place I wanted to be was a dead end . . . or anywhere else with the word dead in it. And I was right. There was a sudden squeal as a van appeared racing toward us. The squeal, incidentally, came from Tim. The van was reversing. For a moment I thought it was going to crush us, but it stopped, just inches away. The back doors flew open. Two men got out.

Everything was happening too quickly. I couldn’t even tell who the men were or if I had seen them before. I saw one of them lash out and Tim spun around, crumpling to the ground. Then it was my turn. Something hard hit me on the back of the head. My legs buckled. I fell forward and one of the men must have caught me as I felt myself being half-pushed, half-carried into the back of the van.

Tim was next to me. “Some vacation!” he said.

Then either they hit me again or they hit him. Or maybe they hit both of us. Either way, I was out cold.

PARIS BY NIGHT