The Take(68)

“I’m not thinking this was a friendly visit,” said Simon as they took up positions on either side of the door.

Nikki had her pistol drawn. “Me neither.”

He rang the doorbell. Kneeling, he pressed his ear to the door. He heard nothing. No voices. No footsteps. Unlike the downstairs entry, Falconi’s door was guarded with a double bolt up top and a standard single below.

“Be careful,” he said. “Last time I did this it didn’t turn out so good.”

Simon needed ten seconds to get the single bolt and twice as long for the double. He stepped back as Nikki opened the door and entered the apartment, pistol at the ready.

“Mr. Falconi,” she called. “Luca Falconi. Police. Come out with your hands above your head.”

There was no response.

“Mr. Falconi,” she repeated. “Are you all right?”

Simon entered the apartment and closed the door behind them. He stood in a bright modern alcove, travertine floors, lacquered entry table, a crystal chandelier hanging overhead. To the right was a tastefully decorated living area. There was a corridor to the left. Simon could see two doors and at the end, the kitchen. All the lights were on.

“Stay here,” said Nikki.

Simon watched as she checked the first room, then the second. She reappeared a moment later, her gun hanging at her side. “In here,” she said, much too quietly.

When he entered the room, Nikki was standing at the foot of the bed, staring down at Falconi’s lifeless body. His torso was a latticework of gashes, blood running in great daubs across his pale flesh onto the bed and floor.

“I’ve never seen that,” she said with disgust.

“You okay?”

“Of course I’m okay,” she retorted. And as if to prove it, she stepped closer to the body and bent nearer still to study the wounds. “It took a while,” she said. “Some of the wounds had begun to coagulate before he died.”

“He was a tough guy.”

“Or your Russian friend enjoyed it.”

Simon averted his eyes from the mess on the bed and began searching the room, opening drawers, looking in the closet. He caught Nikki staring at him. “I’m looking for his phone,” he said.

A pile of Falconi’s clothing was folded neatly on the dresser. Simon rummaged through the pockets, finding a few breath mints, a lottery scratch off, and a cigar. “Well?” Nikki asked.

“No luck.”

She left the bedroom and he followed her to the front door. They made a tour of the apartment, both commenting that there was no sign of a struggle. In the living room, they found the stereo on, a vintage turntable still spinning. “Claude Fran?ois,” said Nikki, reading the record label. “Know him?”

“My stepfather loved him. I preferred Pearl Jam.”

There was a small office off the living room. Simon sat at the desk and looked through the drawers. It was apparent Falconi ran his business from here. A bound notebook held names and numbers that indicated a betting enterprise. Next, Simon turned to an agenda but was disappointed to find few notations, certainly nothing to do with Tino Coluzzi. He yanked the top drawer all the way out and dug through a hodgepodge of pens and rubber bands and boxes of staples and business cards. At the rear was an envelope from a photo developer dated March 2012. Inside were pictures from a trip Falconi had taken in the South of France. “Nikki,” he called. “Come here.”

She entered the office.

“Here’s our guy,” he said, holding up a photograph.

The picture showed two smiling men raising bottles of beer as if offering a toast and standing in front of a beach bar, the ocean visible in the background. “Falconi and Coluzzi. It was taken a few years back.”

Nikki studied the photograph. “So that’s your buddy?”

“That’s him, all right.”

Coluzzi had lost some hair and put on a few pounds but otherwise looked as Simon remembered him. The smirking mouth, the shifty gaze. He was a man who followed no code, obeyed no rules, and demonstrated loyalty only to himself. In short, a scoundrel.

“Any idea where the picture was taken?” Nikki asked.

“Les Calanques. The bar looks familiar.”

Les Calanques was an area along the coast east of Marseille composed of numerous narrow inlets with craggy vertical walls rising a thousand feet or more out of the sea.

“Your old stomping ground.”

“Something like that.”

Simon put the picture in his pocket. As he rose, he eyed a blank notepad with a pencil lying next to it. He picked up the notepad and turned it this way and that, studying the surface.

“What is it?” asked Nikki.

“Just checking something.” Simon ripped off the top sheet and set it on the desk, then activated his cellphone’s light and directed it at a low angle toward the paper.

“See anything?”

“Not sure,” said Simon, but in fact he’d spotted several indentations made by a pen and a firm hand. Opening the top drawer, he found a pencil, and placing his index finger above the lead, brushed it vigorously across the page. A number appeared. Then another. Soon the page was colored over in lead…except for six phone numbers all beginning with the Paris city code. Above them, clearest of all, were the initials “T.C.”