James Patterson - Kill Me If You Can

I looked around the bar to see how many other people had caught it. A dozen, maybe more. What else do people sitting around an airport bar do but stare at the TV? Hopefully they wouldn’t look up at me.

I tucked my chin down, put one hand over my eyes, and studied the floor tiles as I walked back to the table where Katherine was sitting.

“Where’s your beer?” she said.

“I changed my mind,” I said. “You know what I really need?”

“No.”

“A hat.”

I lifted the somewhat faded, definitely broken-in Yankees cap off her head. I put it on mine. It didn’t fit.

“It’s way too small for your big head,” she said.

“Well, let’s buy one that fits,” I said.

“As soon as I finish,” she said, picking up her muffin and biting it.

So we sat and talked. And then it happened again. My picture flashed on the TV screen.

I didn’t try to read the closed captioning. I just kept my head down until Katherine polished off her cappuccino. Then we walked over to Hudson News. Katherine checked out the magazines, and I went to the gift shop.

I was about to buy a Yankees baseball cap when I saw the berets. Absolument, I thought. Très français and a much better disguise. They had two colors — brown or red. I settled on brown.

I moved over to the sunglasses rack and picked out a pair of mirror-lens wraparounds.

Then I found Katherine. “What do you think?”

She laughed out loud. “What happened to the baseball hat?”

“I’m an artist. We’re going to France. I definitely need a beret. And sunglasses,” I said, putting on my shades. “Is this perfect or what?”

“Or what,” said Katherine. But she was grinning.

DINNER WAS SERVED about an hour into the flight to Paris.

“At long last,” I said. “Fine French cooking. Maybe we should eat and critique our dinners.”

I had the beef goulash; Katherine opted for the herbed chicken.

“Bland, dry, overcooked,” she said after a few bites. “One star, and that’s only because I’m an easy marker. How about you?”

“Four stars,” I said.

Katherine threw me a look.

“I think it’s the ambience,” I said, kissing the back of her neck. “And the company, of course.”

As soon as the trays were cleared, we turned out the overhead lights and raised the armrest between our seats, and Katherine curled up against me, wrapped in a blanket and my arms.

She zonked out in minutes. I couldn’t sleep.

I loved this woman. What was I dragging her into?

If that toothpaste incident had escalated one more notch, Katherine’s behavior might have branded us as troublemakers, but my carry-on bag would absolutely have landed us both in jail.

What was I thinking? What had I gotten her involved in? Was I crazy? The questions were bouncing around in my brain like a beach ball at a rock concert.

Somewhere along the way I fell asleep, and I didn’t wake up till we were on our final approach to Orly airport. Looking out the window, we could see the lush vineyards and tiny red-roofed farmhouses that dotted the French countryside.

“I can’t believe you’re actually taking me to Paris,” Katherine said, still snuggled up against me.

“Believe it,” I said. Then I kissed her.

She pulled away fast. “Matt, no. I have horrible morning breath.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “Your breath smells Wicked Fresh.”

She punched me in the shoulder. “Matthew! You are so totally lying.” God, I loved this woman.

The plane parked on the tarmac, and one of those big mobile lounges off-loaded the passengers and drove us to the terminal. All around me people were speaking French. The signs, the sounds, even the music piping through the PA, were French.

I took off my sunglasses and my beret. I was thousands of miles away from New York, where my picture was being flashed on a TV screen every ten minutes. I felt safe. Nobody would be looking for me here.

THE ARTIST KNOWN as Leonard Karns had a nearly pathological crush on Katherine Sanborne, and that was just one of the reasons he hated that muscle-bound, no-talent Matthew Bannon. Bannon and the professor were an item. No doubt about that. But now Karns had a way to get back at both of them.

God, he despised Bannon and Sanborne. For one thing, they were into Realism, even into portraits. Karns hated portraits. “If that’s all you’re going to do,” he said one day in his Group Critique class, “you might as well work at a carnival.” One girl left the room in tears.

Karns was a Big Bang! artist. Big Bang! was the new, hip abstract painting for the twenty-first century. Big Bang! surged with energy and exploded with color. The imagery emanated from computer technology, quantum physics, genetics, and other complex contemporary issues. That, as far as Leonard Karns was concerned, was art.

Losers like Matthew Bannon were stuck in time, painting variations on pictures that had been done years ago and sucked even back then.

Karns was sitting in his pathetic apartment, thinking about Bannon, when his picture suddenly flashed on his TV, and the announcer said he was wanted for robbery.

And there was a reward.

He dialed the number on the TV screen and got a recording. A Detective Rice told him to leave his information and said that his call would be returned as soon as possible.

“I know the guy you’re looking for,” Karns said into the machine. “The robbery suspect. I saw his picture on TV. He goes to art school with me. I also know where he lives. Call me.”

Karns gave his name and phone number. He was about to hang up when he had to add a delicious afterthought. “Plus, the guy is a total fraud as an artist.”

SOONER OR LATER I figured Katherine would ask the one question I was hoping to avoid. It turned out to be sooner. We were still in the airport, and I had stopped at a currency-exchange window to trade dollars for euros. Katherine handed me some cash from her wallet.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I got it.”

She laughed. “What do you mean you got it? You’re not paying for both of us. Absolutely not. No way, Matthew.”

“Sure I am,” I said. “I invited you to join me in Paris. My treat.”

“Hey, Matt, I invited you to join me at Parsons,” she said. “I don’t remember springing for your tuition.”

“This is different. It’s a date. Happens to be in Paris. Guy pays.”

“Not if he’s a struggling artist.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, trying not to make this a macho thing, which it wasn’t. Well, maybe it was. “I recently came into some money.”

“Oh, Matt, I hope you’re not spending the money you got for your paintings,” she said.

“No,” I said, keeping it playful. “This is different. Trust me, okay?”

“You came into some money?” she said. “How come you never mentioned it before? What money is this?”

“It’s too crazy,” I said. “I figured you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me,” she said.

I shrugged. “Okay. I found a big bag of diamonds in a train station.”

“And I’m having tea with the queen of England,” she said.

“Hey, if you invite me along, I’ll pay.”

She wrapped both arms around me. “You are the most generous, lovable, adorable man I ever met,” she said. “But you’re a terrible liar. If you found a bag of diamonds, you’d give it back.”

She kissed me long and hard, and the subject of how I could afford the vacation was dropped. At least for now.

We breezed through customs — I guess the French don’t have diamond-sniffing dogs. We were both too tired to even think of hopping on a bus and saving money, so we headed for the taxi rank and got into a sleek, comfortable black Peugeot.