The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense Read online

  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.

  “I don’t want to be a complete pest.”

  Griffin laughed.

  “And I assume when you have more, you’ll tell me.”

  “I have more.”

  “Yes?” He was up and over at Griffin’s side of the desk in seconds.

  “A new phrase. One I think you’re looking for.” Griffin read: “‘And then through all time, his soul and hers were able to find each other again and again whenever the lotus bloomed.’”

  Robbie repeated the last four words, “Whenever the lotus bloomed. The lab didn’t confirm any traces of Blue Lily but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. In all my reading that flower has been named over and over as a very popular ingredient in ancient times.”

  The more excited he was, the more pronounced Robbie’s accent became, and Griffin had to struggle to follow what he was saying.

  “Are you saying the Blue Lily?”

  “Yes,” Robbie nodded. “The Blue Lily. It’s still in use. Also called the Blue Lotus or even the Egyptian Lotus.” Robbie picked up Griffin’s magnifying glass and peered down at the mosaic of broken bits of pottery. “If this ingredient is listed here, maybe the rest are. We’re going to solve this, you see? We are.”

  Once again he was that thirteen-year-old leaping up into the air.

  “Maybe we are.” Even Griffin was starting to believe.

  Outside, the wind picked up and rattled the French doors. Robbie walked over and shut them. Then he returned to the desk and again bent over the pottery.

  “Blue Lily, hmmm . . . let’s see.” He breathed in deeply once . . . then twice. He smiled. “It might be my imagination, but I think I can smell it.”

  Griffin bent over and inhaled, then shook his head. “The only thing I’ve been able to smell since I started working on this project is clay. I guess I must not have a very sensitive nose.”

  “I don’t inherently have one. Mine is all training. Jac is the one with the magical gift.” Robbie inhaled again and this time remained hunched over the fragments for a few seconds. When he straightened up, Griffin noticed that he rubbed his forehead.

  “Something wrong?”

  “This happened the other day. If I sniff these shards for too long, I get lightheaded. Almost as if I’m going to faint.”

  “You know Blue Lily is a hallucinogen, right?” Griffin asked. “Except it couldn’t still be potent after all this time.”

  “No, it couldn’t be,” Robbie said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “Other than as an ingredient in fragrances, I don’t know much about its history. Was it a fairly common flower?”

  “Popular and plentiful, yes. You’ll find it carved on the tops of columns and in tomb paintings, and there are records of it being used in rituals and rites. But I wouldn’t call it common. It’s the Egyptians’ most sacred plant. A symbol of death and rebirth. Osiris was said to be reincarnated as a blue water lily.”

  Robbie’s eyes widened.

  “Yes, another coincidence for you,” Griffin said.

  “If you insist on calling them coincidences.”

  “What would you call them?”

  “Signs. Amazing, life-affirming signs.”

  As people grow up and age, few hold on to the delight and wonder they had as children. But Robbie had. He was unusual that way. Griffin wondered if Jac was as unchanged as her brother.

  “Tell me what else you know about the symbolism of the lotus,” Robbie asked.

  “According to ancient legends, the world was dark and chaos ruled until the morning the Blue Lily rose up from the depths of the river. When the flower opened, a young god was sitting in its golden center. The divine light he emitted illuminated the world, and the sweet scent he gave off filled the air and banished universal darkness. The Egyptians believed that when the flower opened anew each morning, it chased away the chaos that reigned during the night.”

  “Hence it being a symbol for renewal. How did they use it as a hallucinogen?” Robbie asked.

  “Mostly by drinking it. There’s an ancient recipe that called for nineteen flowers to be soaked in wine. The wine was then used in religious rituals and recreationally at parties. A lot of the time, you see lilies in tomb paintings of sexual scenes. Tutankhamen’s body was covered with them.”

  “Any idea of the effects of the hallucinogenic properties?”

  “You sort of drift into a state of euphoric tranquility. A few of us brewed some up when we were in grad school.”

  Robbie’s eyebrows arched.

  “We got curious. There were references to it everywhere. This flower is so important, it’s in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.” Griffin recited from memory: “‘I am the cosmic water lily that rose shining from Nun’s black primordial waters, and my mother is Nut, the night sky. O you who made me, I have arrived, I am the great ruler of Yesterday, the power of command is in my hand.’”

  Outside, heavy gray clouds blew across the sky. Robbie turned on the desk lamp as the early evening turned prematurely dark and cast the workshop in deep shadow.

  “How can something that ancient give me a headache and yet not be picked up by the lab?” he asked.

  “Makes no sense.”

  “You feel fine, right?”

  Griff
in nodded. “No headache. And certainly none of the feelings I remember from drinking it.”

  A sudden flash of lightning lit up the courtyard beyond. The electric zigzag mesmerized both men, who watched as a second flash hit.

  “What the hell? Did you see that?” Griffin pointed to a spot in the garden.

  “The ghost?” Robbie asked.

  “Well, I doubt it was a ghost, but there’s a man out there.”

  “No one can enter the courtyard except through these doors here or from the house. What you saw is the shadow of a very old tree to the right of that hedge. Jac and I used to call it the ghost. In certain light, it looks like a man.” Robbie opened the door to the windswept courtyard. “Come, I’ll show you.”

  Just as he stepped outside, another bolt of lightning hit, and rain started to pour down. In the odd light, it looked as if Robbie were being splashed with liquid silver. Ducking back inside, he brushed himself off, then reached for a bottle of Pessac-Léognan. “I’m going to open some wine. You’ll have some, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Robbie uncorked the Bordeaux. “Sometimes in the dark we imagine things that aren’t there. And sometimes deep concentration can bring them to life.”

  “Manifest them?”

  Robbie nodded as he handed Griffin a goblet of the supple red. “There are Tibetan monks who can create creatures—tulpas, they’re called. Have you heard of them?”

  “I have. Supposedly, highly evolved monks can give form to thought by meditating.”

  “You don’t sound as if you believe it,” Robbie said.

  “I don’t. Do you?”

  “I do.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Griffin said.

  “What do you believe in, my friend?”

  Griffin laughed. “Not much, I’m afraid. If I have a religion, I suppose it’s history.”

  “History isn’t a belief system. Are you quite serious? Despite all the religions you’ve studied, you don’t believe in anything?”

  “Joseph Campbell said—” Griffin stopped. “You know who Campbell is, right?”

  “Yes, of course, the mythologist. Jac’s been quoting him for years.”