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

Gabriel said nothing. He tried to think of something comforting to say, but, fearful of making things worse, he decided it was better to stay silent.

Alice squinted at the yellow leaves as they flew around in the wind. The buzz of the city was very distant. They could almost hear the sound of birdsong and the murmur of the fountain that stood in the center of the little garden. It had been painful but cathartic to relive the past in front of this stranger. Like talking to a shrink. Suddenly, out of the blue, a thought startled her.

“I know how to open the briefcase!” she exclaimed to Gabriel’s surprise. She grabbed it and placed it flat on her knees. “Two locks controlled by a double code of three figures,” she muttered.

“Sure,” he agreed, raising his eyebrows. “So?”

She leaned forward and lifted up the sleeve of his shirt, revealing the series of numbers carved into his skin: 141197.

“Let’s see…”

She tested the combination by playing with the different thumb wheels, then pulled at the two locks at the same time. There was a click and the briefcase popped open.

Empty.

Or at least so it appeared. Alice spotted a detachable compartment separated by a zipper. She opened it, revealing a false bottom. Inside was a little tan alligator-skin travel bag.

Yes!

Hands trembling, she pulled it open. Inside, secured against the lining by an elastic, lay a large syringe, its needle protected by a plastic cap.

“What is that thing?” Gabriel asked.

Without removing the syringe from its holder, she examined it more closely. Inside the thick cylinder, a very pale blue liquid sparkled in the sunlight.

Some kind of medicine? A drug? Twenty milliliters of an unknown substance.

Frustrated, she zipped the travel bag shut again. If she were in Paris, she’d be able to run an analysis on the substance, but here, that was impossible.

“If you wanted to know what that stuff does, you’d have to be brave enough to inject yourself with it,” said Gabriel.

“Stupid enough to inject yourself with it, you mean,” Alice corrected him.

Grabbing his jacket, he used his hand as a visor to protect his eyes from the sun.

“There’s a pay phone at the end of the street,” he said, pointing. “I’m going to try calling my friend in Tokyo.”

“Okay. I’ll wait for you in the car.”

Alice watched Gabriel walk to the phone. Once again, she had the depressing sensation that her brain was working furiously and getting nowhere, constantly conjuring questions without answers.

Why did she and Gabriel have no memory at all of what had happened to them last night? How had they ended up in Central Park? Whose blood was all over her blouse? Where did she get this gun? Why was a bullet missing from its magazine? Who had written the hotel’s phone number on her palm? Who had carved the briefcase code into Gabriel’s arm? Why had the briefcase been electrified? What did this syringe contain?

This flood of questions made her reel.

She felt like that other Alice, the one who fell down the rabbit hole into a land where nothing made sense.

She was tempted to call Seymour to ask whether he’d found anything from the security cameras in the parking garage or the list of Parisian airports, but she knew her friend would need more time to carry out his inquiries. In the meantime, it was up to her to keep going. She needed to do what she did best: investigate.

Using only what I have on hand.

A police car appeared at the intersection and drove slowly up the street. Alice lowered her eyes, praying they would not see her. The Crown Vic passed by without stopping. It was a warning, and Alice took it seriously. More than an hour had gone by since they had stolen the Honda. Plenty of time for its owner to have reported the theft and given the cops a description of the woman who stole it. Keeping the car was too big a risk.

Having made her decision, Alice gathered her belongings—the knife from the café, the new cell phone, the packet of ibuprofen, the wet wipes, the travel bag containing the syringe, the scrap of bloodstained fabric—and shoved it all in the army bag. She put the holster she had bought on her belt and slid the Glock inside it, then got out of the car, leaving the keys on the seat.

Use only what you have on hand, Alice.

What would she do if she were in Paris? She would begin with a fingerprint analysis of the syringe. But what could she do here? As she walked toward Gabriel, an idea started forming in her head.

“I got a hold of Kenny,” Gabriel announced with a big grin. “He’s happy to lend us his apartment if we need it. It’s in Astoria, in Queens. Not exactly close by, I know, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Come on, Keyne, let’s go! We’ve wasted enough time. And I hope you like walking, because we’re leaving the car here.”

“And where are we going?”

She smiled. “A place you ought to enjoy, given what an overgrown kid you are.”

“Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

“It’s almost Christmas, Gabriel. I’m going to buy you some toys.”

10Fingerprints

ALICE AND GABRIEL weaved between the tourists in the courtyard of the General Motors Building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Ninth Street.

At FAO Schwarz, two doormen dressed as toy soldiers greeted visitors to this old New York institution with wide, welcoming smiles.

The iconic Manhattan toy store was already crowded. The first floor was like a circus tent, almost entirely devoted to life-size stuffed animals: a roaring lion, a tiger jumping through a flaming hoop, an elephant carrying three monkeys dressed as bellboys. Farther off, there was a space outfitted like a hospital nursery, with employees dressed as nurses holding chubby-cheeked dolls so realistic that they could easily be mistaken for real babies.

“Are you ever going to tell me what the hell we’re doing here?” Gabriel asked.

Ignoring the question, Alice took the escalator. As she rushed