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

“For a few years now, this place has been known as Little Egypt or Little Morocco,” Gabriel explained.

In fact, with a little imagination, Alice could easily have believed she’d been miraculously transported to a souk in Cairo or Marrakesh. Delicious scents of honey and tajine floated through the air, and in this part of Queens, there were more hookah bars than Greek taverns. They walked past a golden-painted mosque, a halal butcher, a religious bookshop. In the conversations they overheard, Arabic and English mingled almost naturally.

“I think this is it,” Gabriel said, arriving at a brownstone with a pale façade and sash windows that rose above a barbershop.

There was no intercom and no elevator. They walked quickly upstairs and stopped on the fourth-floor landing to pick up the keys from Madame Chaouch, the building’s owner. Kenny had phoned her to let her know they were coming.

“Pretty nice here, huh?” Gabriel said as they entered the loft.

Kenny’s bachelor pad was a vast and mostly open-plan duplex, with exposed metal girders. Alice looked around at the brick walls, high ceiling, polished concrete flooring, then stood still in front of the large bay window with its view of the street.

She looked out for a good minute before tossing her satchel onto a large, solid-oak table surrounded by two mismatched armchairs and a brushed-metal bench.

“Ugh, I’m wiped out.” She groaned, collapsing into one of the chairs.

“Hey, you know what? I’m going to run you a bath!”

“What? No, don’t bother. We have better things to do than—”

But Gabriel, ignoring her protests, had already disappeared upstairs.

Alice sighed and for a long moment remained motionless, curled up in the cushions. Her tiredness was suddenly resurfacing. It took her several minutes to recover from the aftereffects of the mental stress and physical strain she had been under since that hallucinatory awakening in the middle of the park. When she felt better, she stood up and rummaged around in the kitchen cabinets in search of a teapot. She put some water on to boil and, as she waited, looked unthinkingly through the books on the shelves (Harry Crews, Hunter S. Thompson, Trevanian…), the magazines on the coffee table, the abstract and minimalist paintings on the walls.

Light-filled and spacious, the apartment was suffused with a thousand shades of gray and beige, a reasonable compromise between the industrial style and the Scandinavian all-wood look. The ascetic and stripped-down décor, the soft lighting…all this came together to create a protective, cocoon-like atmosphere.

She looked around for a computer, a router, or a landline phone.

Nothing.

In a small dish, she saw a car key attached to a key ring decorated with a galloping silver horse. A Mustang? she wondered, picking up the keys.

Back in the kitchen, she found some genmaicha, a Japanese green tea mixed with roasted brown rice. She prepared a cup. The beverage was original—the fresh notes of the green tea contrasting with the rice’s aroma of hazelnut and cereal—but undrinkable. She poured it out into the sink, then opened the glass door of a wine cabinet next to the fridge. Apparently their host was a wine buff. Apart from a few Californian pinot noirs, his collection consisted entirely of French grands crus. Thanks to her father, Alice knew quite a bit about wine. She spotted a Château Margaux 2000, a Cheval Blanc 2006, a Montrose 2005…she was about to open the Saint-Estèphe, when she changed her mind and opted for a burgundy instead, a Romanée-Conti La Tâche 1999—an extremely expensive vintage she had never tasted. She rejected every rational reason not to drink this wine, then opened the bottle and poured herself a large glass. A good garnet color, a powerful nose with notes of roses, red berries, and chocolate.

This is what I need—not a cup of tea!

She drank a mouthful of the burgundy, appreciating every nuance of red fruit and spice. The wine caressed her palate and warmed her chest. She drank the whole glass and then poured herself another right away.

“If Madame would care to come upstairs, her bath is ready,” Gabriel declared from the mezzanine above.

“Shall I pour you a glass?”

“What! You opened one of his bottles?” he said, alarmed, running down the spiral staircase. He looked at the bottle and exploded with rage. “Are you insane? Do you know how much this wine costs?”

“Oh, chill out, Keyne.”

“You have a strange way of thanking my friend for his hospitality!” he insisted.

“All right, that’s enough. I’ll pay him back for his stupid wine!”

“With what? Your cop’s wages?”

“Yes! Actually, while we’re on the subject, do you know if your friend has a car?”

“Kenny has an old beater, yeah. I think he won it in a poker game.”

“Any idea where he keeps it?”

“Nope.” Suddenly inspired, Gabriel crossed the living room and stared through one of the back windows, which overlooked a gravel courtyard. There were a dozen or so cars parked around a central concrete island. He squinted to make out the different models. “It might be that one,” he said, nodding to a white 1960s-era Mustang Shelby with blue racing stripes.

“Why don’t you go down and check?” she said, throwing him the keys.

He balked at this. “Why don’t you stop giving me orders? I’m not one of your minions!”

“Hurry up, Keyne. We really need a car.”

“And you, go take your bath, girlfriend. You really need to relax!”

“I am not your girlfriend,” she shouted, but Keyne didn’t hear her. He had already left the room, slamming the door behind him.

Upstairs, in the master bedroom, Alice sat on the bed and opened her canvas satchel. She took out the new cell phone and removed it from its plastic packet. It came with a charger, a hands-free device, and a user’s manual. She also found a plastic card containing the phone’s serial number.

She plugged in the phone. An icon appeared on the screen showing a credit of ten minutes. She pressed Call and was put through to a recorded message asking her to enter the serial number.

She did