The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense (13 page)

“But the pottery has historical significance.”

“And nothing will interfere with your establishing it. You have almost a week left. You’ll be able to translate it by then as well as verify your work.”

“It’s not about me or my work,” Griffin argued.

Or was it? Wasn’t that what he was really worried about? What if he couldn’t finish the translation in time? Sure, he could take photographs, but working from two dimensions wasn’t the same. There was a connection when you could hold and touch and turn the object.

“It’s been in your family for centuries.” Griffin couldn’t give up that easily. “It’s one thing to be unselfish. But to the point of self-destruction?”

“Ah, but there, my friend, you’re wrong. Attempting heroism is a very selfish act. Proof of how much more enlightenment I’ve yet to achieve.”

Robbie added two drops of russet liquid and then three of amber to the vial. “Don’t you see? Even a small bit of reincarnation evidence might help the Dalai Lama keep the Tibetan culture and belief system alive in the face of Chinese atheism. Their entire way of life and their culture is at stake and in danger of becoming obsolete. There has even been talk of His Holiness appointing a successor instead of relying on the reincarnation method.” Finally, he swirled the concoction. “Come smell this.”

Griffin inhaled the glass tube.

“Name a place,” said Robbie. “The first place you think of.”

“Church.”

“Similar, yes. You’re smelling frankincense, myrrh, and the essences of several other exotic woods. These are the oldest ingredients we know of. For over six thousand years, ancient priests in India and then in Egypt and China have been using these elements to make incense. Fragrance was holy before it was cosmetic. People believed the soul traveled on smoke up to the heavens—up to the gods.”

“We haven’t found evidence of reincarnation, Robbie,” said Griffin. “We’ve discovered only a myth written on the side of a pot.”

“So far that’s all we’ve found. But we have six days before the Dalai Lama arrives. Six days for me to arrange a meeting and for you to find out what the rest of those missing ingredients are—and maybe have a past-life adventure of our own.”

Ten

PARIS, FRANCE
2:12 P.M.

François Lee stood in the building’s vestibule and waited to be buzzed up. The beauty of Valentine’s renting in this high-rise was that the traffic never ceased, even at odd hours of the day and night. No one watching the building’s entrance would pay attention to three men arriving individually within forty minutes of each other.

He tapped out a rhythm on his watch with his fingernail. The smell of onions and garlic reminded him that he was hungry. He hoped she’d have some food; he’d skipped lunch, and now his stomach was growling. Valentine was supposed to keep the kitchen stocked but rarely remembered. She tried to, but she resented her domestic duties, and he didn’t blame her. She’d been working for the Triad for almost ten years and wanted to move up, have more responsibility, be out in the field more. But she was a woman, and the organization was typically misogynistic. He’d warned her when Valentine first told him that she wanted to join, but she was stubborn and sure she’d make them change. That she’d be the exception.

“Look at what I’ve already done,” she’d say and laugh. “You never thought I’d get this far, did you?”

Not at first, no. Certainly not on that freezing cold February night twelve years before.

François had finished up his last set at Le Jazz Hot in the Quartier Chinois at two in the morning. By the time he left the club, the street was empty. Or so he thought, until he tripped over the prostrate form curled up in the shelter of the doorway.

She was a skinny Chinese girl with long, stringy black hair. Despite the winter temperature, she wasn’t wearing a coat. Just a stained red and orange sleeveless silk cocktail dress with black patent leather high-heeled boots. Her arms were bare, and the track marks told him everything else he needed to know. Bending down, getting closer, he peered into her face. Blue lips. Skin pale and lackluster. Too pale.

When he shook her, she was nonresponsive. There was nothing on the ground beside her. No bag. No jacket. There were no pockets on her dress, and he couldn’t find any identification. What to do? It was late. Cold. He was tired. But she was alone. Helpless. If he just kept walking, she might not make it.

François picked her up and carried her to his little car. She was as light as a child, and her skin was far too clammy.

At the hospital emergency room, a nurse and orderly took her from him, settled her on a gurney, asked him if he knew what was wrong with her, and when he said no, rushed her away.

A few minutes later, an administrative nurse sat down with him and shot a battery of questions at him.

What was her medical history? She appeared to be suffering from a drug overdose; was he sure he didn’t know what she had taken? What was her name? What was his name? What was their relationship?

François figured the truth wouldn’t do either of them any good. The authorities would never believe that he’d simply been unable to walk by and leave her there. They’d suspect him of being her dealer. Or, worse, her pimp.

“I’m her uncle,” he said. “My brother has been frantic. They live in Cherbourg. She ran away from home a few days ago, and I guess she came to the club looking for me, to help her . . . but she didn’t quite make it inside.”

“What is her name?” the nurse asked again.

François didn’t know, so he gave the girl a name—the first one that came to mind. Inspired by the last song he’d played that night: “My Funny Valentine.”

“Last name?” the nurse asked him.

He gave his own.

For the next eight hours, he sat in the waiting room, dozing on and off while they saved Valentine Lee’s life.

There were enough prostitutes on the street—he’d never felt the need to play the saint and rescue one. Why this one? Why did he care about what happened to her?

They finally let him see her the next afternoon. Her hair was soaking wet, and her sallow skin was slicked with perspiration. In the throes of withdrawal, her whole body shook. She was so skinny the pale blue hospital gown billowed around her. A little, lost girl.

The hopeless expression in her eyes brought tears to his.

Even though Valentine didn’t acknowledge him, the nurse encouraged François to stay. “It’s good for her to have company and know that someone cares about her,” she said.

But he was a stranger. It couldn’t possibly help the girl for him to be there for her. And yet he stayed and sat by her side while she twitched and vomited and shook and moaned. He stayed all the next day while she went through the worst of the withdrawal symptoms.

After that, he visited Valentine regularly, showing up early every morning and not leaving till he went to Le Jazz Hot. The doctor gave him a full report once a day, filling François in on the antianxiety drugs and antidepressants they were giving her and on her progress. “Don’t expect too much too quickly,” he warned.

Whenever François entered her room, she turned away. When he talked to her, she pressed her lips together and refused to speak. The nurse told him it was part of the detox process. He shouldn’t take it personally or be insulted.

When he arrived on the fifth morning of her stay, the doctor told François that Valentine was ready to be released if he was prepared to take her home.

Take her home? He hadn’t thought that far. He couldn’t take her home.

He walked into her room and found her sitting on the edge of the bed. Showered and dressed. Painfully thin. A sullen expression on her face. Dry-eyed now, but he noticed the tearstains on her cheeks.

“They won’t let you leave unless someone takes responsibility for you,” François said. “Do you have someone I can call who can come get you?”

She didn’t answer.

The dress she’d been wearing when he brought her in—the red and orange silk shift with little red bows on each shoulder strap—looked shabby in the overly bright hospital room. Her tall patent-leather boots with their worn-down high heels looked cheap.

“Do you have anyplace to go?”

No answer.

“Do you have a pimp? Were you living with him? Was he the one giving you the smack?”

She didn’t answer this time either, but he saw a pale blue vein in her forehead twitch.

“I can give you a place to stay for a while.”

She shrugged.

“Do you want a place to stay?”

Finally, she turned to face him. The fierceness in her eyes startled him. “You want me to fuck you for a place to sleep? Is that it?” she mouthed off in a raspy, raw hiss of words. “I won’t do that again. Ever. I’ll figure out some way to take care of myself, but not that.”

“I’m not asking you to fuck me.” He laughed. “Darling, I’m as gay as they come.”

Her eyebrows arched. “What’s the catch, then? What do I have to do?”

“You don’t have to do anything. Except clean up after yourself.”

Surprise replaced the suspicion. “Why do you want to help me?” Her voice suddenly sounded very young.

He didn’t have an answer. He didn’t know. For a few seconds, they just sat there. Valentine, on the edge of the hospital bed, her feet not even reaching the ground; François, in a fake leather chair that had cracks in the armrests. Outside in the hallway, the steady din of hospital personnel going about their work filled in the silence.

“I was a pretty different kid from my brothers and sisters,” François said. “No one related to me . . . except the dog. She was supposed to belong to everyone, but she was really my dog. Even slept with me. Before I went to bed, I’d let her out to do her business. She’d root around for a while, but I always waited for her, and she always came back. Until one night. I stayed out till morning looking for her. And then refused to go to school so I could keep looking. I kept thinking about how helpless she was. How vulnerable.

“When I still hadn’t found her by the end of the second night, I started to pray she’d been taken by someone. I didn’t care if she’d been stolen. As long as she wasn’t lying somewhere alone . . . hurt . . .”

Valentine’s black eyes grew even blacker.

François realized how that might have sounded. “I hope you’re not insulted. I only meant that worrying about her was—”

“I’ll come with you.”

Valentine’s mother was a prostitute and a drug addict whose pimp had seen potential in the woman’s young daughter. It hadn’t taken much to hook the kid on horse and get her out on the street hooking.

But it took a lot to get Valentine to trust François and believe that he didn’t have some deviant ulterior motive.

As much progress as he made, he didn’t really get anywhere with her those first few weeks until she discovered he wasn’t just a jazz musician. François was a martial arts expert and a high-ranking member of the Chinese mafia.

She begged him to train her, and she turned out to be an apt pupil. Her passion for the art of self-defense grew as she improved and then became devoted to the point of obsession. She had been victimized for so long, the high of independence was as addictive to her as the drugs had been.

Once she mastered the physical arts, she asked to learn about the organized crime family to which François belonged.

Being part of a triad was a noble calling, he explained. Dating back to 1000
BCE
, peasants formed secret societies to protect themselves from the evil lords and leaders. Even Chinese monks committed to fighting injustice were involved in founding the triads. Over time, the groups helped topple corrupt emperors and take down dishonest politicians.

For someone who’d had no ritual or moral training, the strict Confucian code of ethics, the mystique, and the highly symbolic ceremonies appealed to Valentine. She was determined to become a full-fledged member of the Paris Triad even though there were only a handful of other women members at that level.

Valentine had never been part of a family before. Her loyalty was absolute. During her induction ceremony, when she pledged her fealty and recited the thirty-six two-hundred-year-old initiation oaths, her voice never wavered:

“I shall not disclose the secrets of the Family, not even to my parents, brothers, sisters or husband. I shall never disclose the secrets for money. I shall die by a swarm of swords if I do so.”

An excellent student, she was soon a valued member of François’s team. But recently her frustration had grown. There were too many restrictions on what a woman could do. There were thousands of members in the Paris branch of China’s black society alone, but not one woman above her in rank.

François checked his watch again. What was Valentine doing? Had he gotten the time wrong? He pulled out his cell phone and checked the text.

“She’ll be ready for you at two fifteen this afternoon. Bring cash.”

It was always a similar message suggesting an assignation of a very different kind. If the phone ever was taken from him, if the police ever had reason to examine it, they’d think he was a man with a fairly active libido who favored prostitutes over more cumbersome relationships; he rarely made more than two appointments a week.

The front door opened, and a young woman entered the building. Blond hair, low-cut white blouse, tight black skirt. She eyed him openly, starting at his black lizard boots, gazing up the length of his jeans, taking in the worn leather jacket and staring at his hands—he had the long, nimble fingers of a pianist, which women often found attractive.

She opened the door with her key just as the buzzer rang, letting François enter. She smiled and held the door for him in invitation. They were both here for the same thing: they were going to fuck someone for money.

Eleven

4:43 P.M.

“It’s been at least ten minutes since you last asked me if I’ve translated any new phrases,” Griffin said.

It was late afternoon, and they had been working straight through since they’d stopped for lunch at one o’clock. Robbie was researching ancient Egyptian fragrances online, and Griffin was trying to fit additional shards together and complete more of the puzzle.