Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

Alice’s features were hardened by the stress of the day. “Instead of trying to be funny, why don’t you take a look in the glove compartment.”

He did and discovered the one thing he had been most in need of since waking up that morning: a pack of cigarettes.

A lighter was in there too. “Hallelujah!” he said as he lit one.

He took two long drags and handed it to Alice. Without letting go of the steering wheel, she too took a drag. The bitter taste of the tobacco went straight to her head. She desperately needed to eat something or she was going to faint.

She opened the window to get some fresh air. To her right, the Midtown skyscrapers glittered in the sunlight, while to her left, the low-rise buildings of the Lower East Side made her think of the settings of the old thrillers her husband, Paul, used to read.

Paul…

She pushed away her memories and checked her watch. It was more than an hour since they had woken up, oblivious to the previous night’s events, in the park. And so far, their investigation had gotten precisely nowhere. Not only was the original mystery still unsolved, but other questions had arisen that made their situation even murkier—and more dangerous.

Their investigation had to move up a gear, and on that point Gabriel was right: they could not accomplish very much without money.

“Give me the address of your pawnshop,” she said as they arrived in Manhattan.

6Chinatown

THE CAR PASSED the Bowery and turned onto Mott Street. Alice found a parking spot in front of a Chinese herbalist’s shop. The space was not very big, but she maneuvered the car perfectly to squeeze between a delivery van and a food truck selling dim sum.

“If I remember correctly, the pawnshop is a little farther down that way,” said Gabriel, closing the door of the Honda.

Alice locked the car, then followed him.

They walked quickly along the narrow street swarming with people and buzzing with movement. Mott Street, a corridor of dark brick buildings latticed with iron staircases, crossed Chinatown from north to south. A wide variety of stores, their windows decorated with Chinese characters, lined the street: tattoo parlors, acupuncturists, jewelers, boutiques selling knockoffs of luxury products, and groceries and delis displaying turtle shells and glazed ducks hanging from hooks.

They soon arrived at a gray façade ornamented with a gigantic neon dragon. The sign flashed the words PAWNSHOP—BUY—SELL—LOAN in the morning light.

Gabriel pushed open the door, and Alice followed him through a gloomy corridor that opened out into a large, dimly lit, windowless room filled with the lingering odor of stale sweat.

All kinds of different objects were piled up on rows of metal shelves: flat-screen televisions, designer purses, musical instruments, stuffed animals, abstract paintings.

“Give me your watch,” Gabriel said, holding out his hand.

Cornered now, Alice hesitated. When her husband died, she had—probably too quickly—gotten rid of everything that reminded her of the man she had loved so much: clothes, books, furniture. All that she had left of him was this watch, a Patek Philippe in rose gold with a perpetual calendar and moon phases. Paul had inherited it from his grandfather.

Over time, the watch had become a sort of talisman, a link that connected her to the memory of Paul. Alice wore it every day, repeating each morning the gestures her husband used to make: fastening the leather strap around her wrist, winding the watch, cleaning its face. The object calmed her and made her feel as if Paul were still with her, somewhere—an artificial feeling, admittedly, but a reassuring one.

“Please,” Gabriel insisted.

They walked up to a counter protected by bulletproof glass. Behind this partition stood a young, sleek, androgynous-looking Asian man wearing skinny jeans, geek glasses, and a fitted jacket over a fluorescent T-shirt with a Keith Haring design.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, smoothing a strand of hair behind his ear.

His affected air clashed strangely with the grimy ambience of the store. Alice regretfully took off her watch and placed it on the counter. “How much?”

The pawnbroker picked it up and examined it closely. “Do you have a document proving its authenticity? A certificate of origin, for example?”

“Not on me,” Alice murmured, giving the man a black look.

The employee handled the watch rather brusquely, changing the position of the hands, squeezing the push button.

“It’s very fragile,” she scolded him.

“I’m adjusting the time and date,” he replied without looking up.

“It shows the right time! Anyway, that’s enough now. How much will you give me for it?”

“I can offer you five hundred dollars.”

“What?” Alice exploded, grabbing the watch from him. “This is a collector’s item. It’s worth a hundred times more than that!”

She was about to leave the store, but Gabriel pulled her back. “Calm down,” he told her, taking her aside. “We’re not selling your husband’s watch, all right? We’re just leaving it here for a while. We’ll come back and pick it up as soon as we’ve solved this mystery.”

She shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. We’ll have to find another solution.”

“Like what? There is no other solution and you know it!” he shouted. “We have to eat something before we collapse and we won’t be able to get anything done without money. Go wait for me outside and let me negotiate with this guy.”

Resentfully, Alice handed him the watch and left the store.

As soon as she was outside, the mingled odor of spices, smoked fish, and fermented mushrooms hit her, a smell she had not even noticed a few minutes earlier. It made her suddenly nauseated. A convulsion twisted her guts, forcing her to bend forward and vomit a dribble of yellow bile heaved up by her empty stomach. Her head spinning slightly, she stood up and leaned against the wall.

Gabriel was right. She definitely had to eat something.

She rubbed her eyes and realized that there were tears rolling down her cheeks. She felt like she was losing control. She felt claustrophobic