The Woman in the Fifth by Douglas Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

vegetables was omnipresent. So too was a sign that dominated the far side of the courtyard: Sezer Confection (Sezer Ready-to-Wear). There was a separate stairway below this sign. I had to ring a bell to gain admittance. No one answered, so I rang it again. When there was still no answer, I leaned on the bell for a good fifteen seconds. Finally I heard footsteps on the stairs. The door opened and a young tough – dressed in a faded denim jacket with an imitation fur collar – opened the door. His upper lip boasted a meager mustache and he had a cigarette plugged between his teeth. His face radiated annoyance.
     
'What you want?' he asked in bad French.
     
'I'm here to see Sezer.'
     
'He knows you?'
     
'Adnan told me—'
     
'Where is Adnan?' he asked, cutting me off.
     
'I'll explain that to Sezer.'
     
'You tell me.'
     
'I'd rather tell—'
     
'You tell me,' he said, his tone demonstrative.
     
'He was controlled by the flics ,' I said.
     
He tensed.
     
'When was this?'
     
'Less than an hour ago.'
     
Silence. He looked over my shoulder, scanning the distant corridor. Did he think this was a set-up – and that I had brought 'company' with me?
     
'You wait here,' he said and slammed the door in my face.
     
I stood in the courtyard for the next five minutes, wondering if I should do the sensible thing and make a break for the street before he came back. But what kept me rooted to the spot was the realization that I owed it to Adnan to explain what happened – and to see if Sezer was the sort of connected guy who could pull strings and—
     
Oh sure. Just look at this back-street set-up. Do you really think the boss here is chummy with the sort of high-up people who will spring an illegal immigrant for him?
     
All right, what really kept me rooted to the spot was the realization, Right now, I have nowhere else to go . . . and I needed a cheap place to live.
     
The door was reopened by Mr Tough Guy. Again, he glanced over my shoulder to make certain the coast was clear before saying, 'OK, you come upstairs to the office.'
     
We mounted a narrow staircase. I pulled my suitcase behind me, its wheels landing with an ominous thud on each stair. I'd seen enough film noir to imagine what I was walking into – a dirty smoke-filled office, with a fat slob in a dirty T-shirt behind a cheap metal desk, a drool-sodden cigar in a corner of his mouth, a half-eaten sandwich (with visible teeth marks) in front of him, girlie calendars on the walls, and three lugs in cheap pinstripe suits propping up the background.
     
But the office that I entered bore no relation to any office I'd ever seen before. It was just a room with dirty white walls, scuffed linoleum, a table and chair. There was no other adornment, not even a telephone – bar the little Nokia positioned on the table at which a man sat. He wasn't the Mr Big that this clandestine build-up led me to expect. Rather, he was a rail-thin man in his fifties, wearing a plain black suit, a white shirt (buttoned at the collar), and small wire-rimmed glasses. His skin was Mediterranean olive and his head was virtually shaved. He looked like one of those secular Iranians who worked as a right-hand man to the Ayatollah, acted as the enforcing brain of the theocracy, and knew where all the infidel body parts had been buried.
     
As I was studying him, he was also assessing me – with a long cool stare that he held for a very long time. Finally: 'So you are the American?' he asked in French.
     
'Are you Sezer?'
     
' Monsieur Sezer,' he said, correcting me.
     
' Mes excuses, Monsieur Sezer .'
     
My tone was polite, deferential. He noted this with a small nod, then said, 'Adnan left his job to rescue you today.'
     
'I am aware of that. But I didn't ask him to come to the hotel. It was the desk clerk, a total creep, who—'
     
Monsieur Sezer put up his hand, signaling me to stop this guilty-conscience rant.
     
'I am just attempting to assemble the facts,' he said. 'Adnan