Isadora Duncan, Modigliani, Gertrude Stein, and some other
names they recognized, but no Jim Morrison. When they tried their fractured French on the custodian and repeated the rock
singer’s name several times inwhat they thought sounded like the French pronunciation, he gesticulated angrily at them and pointed to a part of the map.
“Fucking Frogs,” Larson said as they walked away, “you don’t speak their lingo, they’re mean to you.”
“When we’re not around,” Fogarty said, “when there’s no outsiders listening to them, they talk English among themselves, like
you and me.”
Larson stared in amazement at him for a moment. It often took Larson a little while to catch on. Then he laughed and said,
“Shit, you’re just joking, but maybe they really do.”
After a while they turned right, in the general direction the custodian of the gate had pointed. They began to see signs spray-painted
in Day-Glo colors on the huge tombs: an arrow and the word
Jim.
No matter where they went, these marks directed them. When they came to Jim Morrison’s stone, they found that it was only
about four feet high, a head and shoulders of the singer in his sixties-style long hair. The stone was Technicolor from multiple
treatments with a rainbow of colors. Incense burned in the trees all around as silent teenagers stood about with lost or stoned
looks. A lot of them seemed to be German and Dutch.
“This is sick, Fogarty.”
“It’s no sicker than the statues of those dead saints you want to see in Notre Dame and the Louvre.”
“I mean, this makes my flesh crawl.”
“Morrison would have liked that.”
They looked up in surprise when they heard a motorcycle tearing along the winding paths among the statues and monuments.
Hasan and Naim had only gone a little way when they were flagged down by a policeman on the quais. Hasan pretended not to
see him and threaded his way through traffic in order to cross the next bridge to the Right Bank. They had no set plan in
mind. Hasan’s instincts told him to head away from the center of the city. There were not so many targets, but there were
not so many police either. He followed the Avenue de la Republique east, turned right into Boulevard de Menilmontant and,
on a whim, roared through the gateway of a big cemetery on his left.
To their surprise they saw almost immediately what they were looking for—tourists. Three of them were watching a fourth photograph
some statues on a tomb. Naim pulled out the M63 machine pistol from underneath his coat and pulled down the front grip. He
held the gun so Hasan could see it.
Hasan yelled over his shoulder, “You want to go back and nail those four?”
“There will be others. Slow when you see them.”
Riding at random along the narrow paths bordered with yew and monstrous plinths, they kept watch. About fifteen people stood
in the trees just to the left of the path ahead. Two were moving away and these looked like Americans! Naim fired at the lot
of them, keeping his finger on the trigger until all twenty-fivecartridges in the magazine were spent. He then tossed the weapon from his gloved hands while Hasan sped away.
The shooting from the moving bike was below standard. Naim was unfamiliar with the gun, and it was clumsy to handle. He only
hit five of the people among the trees, but three of them were fatally wounded.
Fogarty knelt beside Larson, who had taken two slugs in the lower chest. The blood was streaming out of the wounds onto his
T-shirt, as he lay on his back. Fogarty was shouting to him to hang on, that it was all his fault for having brought him there,
to keep his eyes open and to keep breathing. Larson’s eyes were open all right, but the only breathing he was doing was in
Fogarty’s imagination.
CHAPTER
8
Richard Dartley saw the news on television at Morton Schiff’s castle in County Waterford. Until that point he had received
no indication that the Palestinians had
Serenity King, Pepper Pace, Aliyah Burke, Erosa Knowles, Latrivia Nelson, Tianna Laveen, Bridget Midway, Yvette Hines
Christine d'Abo
Willa Sibert Cather
Rue Allyn
Viola Grace
Kathleen Ernst
Annabel Joseph
Alfy Dade
CJ Whrite
Samantha-Ellen Bound