Long Lost (Myron Bolitar) by Harlan Coben Read Free Book Online Page A

about.”
    Berleand smiled. He looked at Lefebvre. Lefebvre smiled through the toothpick. I said, “What?”
    “Do you think this is America, Mr. Bolitar?”
    “No, but I think this is a modern democracy with certain inalienable rights. Or am I wrong?”
    “We don’t have Miranda rights in France. We don’t have to charge you to take you in. In fact, I can hold you both for forty-eight hours on little more than a whim.”
    Berleand got closer to me, pushed up the glasses again, wiped his hands on the sides of his pants. “Now again I ask: Will you please come with us?”
    “Love to,” I said.

6

     
     
     
    THEY separated Terese and me right there on the street.
    Lefebvre escorted her to the van. I started to protest, but Berleand gave me a bored look that indicated my words would be superfluous at best. He led me to a squad car. A uniformed officer drove. Berleand slipped into the backseat with me.
    “How long’s the ride?” I asked.
    Berleand looked at his wristwatch. “About thirty seconds.”
    He may have overestimated. I had, in fact, seen the building before—the “bold and stark” sandstone fortress sitting across the river. The mansard roofs were gray slate, as were the cone-capped towers scattered through the sprawl. We could have easily walked. I squinted as we approached.
    “You recognize it?” Berleand said.
    No wonder it had grabbed my eye before. Two armed guards moved to the side as our squad car pulled through the imposing archway. The portal looked like a mouth swallowing us whole. On the other side was a large courtyard. We were surrounded now on all sides by the imposing edifice. Fortress, yeah, that did fit. You felt a bit like a prisoner of war in the eighteenth century.
    “Well?”
    I did recognize it, mostly from books by Georges Simenon and because, well, I just knew it because in law-enforcement circles it was legendary.
    I had entered the courtyard of 36 quai des Orfèvres—the renowned French police headquarters. Think Scotland Yard. Think Quantico.
    “Soooo,” I said, stretching the word out, gazing through the window, “whatever this is, it’s big.”
    Berleand turned both palms up. “We don’t process traffic violations here.”
    Count on the French. The police headquarters was fortress solid and intimidating and gigantic and absolutely gorgeous.
    “Impressive, no?”
    “Even your police stations are architectural wonders,” I said.
    “Wait until you see the inside.”
    Berleand, I quickly learned, was being sarcastic again. The contrast between the façade and what lay inside was whiplash stark. The outside had been created for the ages; the interior held all the charm and personality of a public toilet along the New Jersey Turnpike. The walls were off-white, or maybe they’d been white but had yellowed over the years. They had no paintings, no wall hangings of any kind, but enough scuff marks to make me wonder if someone had maybe run across them with dress shoes. The floors were made up of linoleum that would have been deemed too dated for tract housing in 1957.
    There was no elevator as far as I could tell. We trudged up a wide staircase, the French version of a perp walk. The climb seemed to take a long time.
    “This way.”
    Exposed wires crisscrossed the ceiling, looking like central casting for a fire hazard. I followed Berleand down a corridor. We passed a microwave oven sitting on the floor. There were printers and monitors and computers lining the walls.
    “You guys moving?”
    “No.”
    He led me to a holding cell, maybe six by six. Just one. It had glass where there might normally be bars. Two benches attached to the walls formed a Vin the corner. The mattresses were thin and blue and looked suspiciously like the wrestling mats I remembered from junior high school gym class. A threadbare blanket of burnt orange, like something a bad airline had used for too long, lay folded on the bench.
    Berleand spread his arm like a maître d’ welcoming me to