Thomas Trang, author of “Midnight In Paris”, is a French/Vietnamese writer currently living in the UK after stints in Australia, New York, and Singapore. His writing has previously appeared in FutureQuake and Full House Literary, among others.
*****
Paris on a warm night in August—the air thick as if pressed into layers. Wrought-iron lamps throw patches of light across the limestone buildings of Rue De Rivoli. Ray Harper is inside one of them emptying out a wall-mounted Diebold safe.
He’s already clocked the Matisse on the wall but knows to ignore it.
Kessler broke it down when he laid out the score. “Don’t bother.” Then that trademark Kessler grin. “It’s a fake. Rumor is he gets copies made of all the best pieces in his collection. The real one is on loan to the Guggenheim. Texas Fine Arts maybe. Point is, Sullivan definitely ain’t leaving it in Paris where his dipshit cokehead son might put an elbow through ninety million dollars.”
Harper’s tools are sitting on the desk in a small leather pouch, but he didn’t have to use them in the end. The safe had been left on day lock, so all he had to do was turn the dial left until it reached the drive pin on the next wheel. Four turns until the door clicked open.
He can break older boxes like this one in his sleep, but sometimes the Gods stepped in and made things easy. Harper was half expecting this anyway. All that disco dandruff going up the kid’s nose, it would’ve surprised him if the guy could remember to wipe his own ass.
Halfway done cleaning out the safe, Harper hears the jangling of keys. A thin wedge of light from the hallway appears on the wall, widening now, fanning out across the room as the door creaks open and two bodies stumble in.
He can break older boxes like this one in his sleep, but sometimes the Gods stepped in and made things easy.
At this point Harper’s running on instinct. He ducks down to his left and rolls behind an oversized leather sofa, his heart beating thickly. The door slams shut and the office is dark again—the music from the party downstairs stripped to a faint and low-slung rumble.
They collapse onto the sofa, a man and a woman. He recognizes the Sullivan kid by ear: a booming fat guy voice you could rest a tray of shots on.
Woman? She sounds barely out of high school giggling like that.
Harper can hear her struggling beneath the weight of him as Sullivan pins her to the sofa, knees and elbows squeaking against the shiny leather. She starts thrashing around looking to get out from underneath him, her voice getting louder until he cups a hand over her mouth, muffling her cries, telling her shut the fuck up.
Harper sees her arm jolt out, fingers splayed, looking for something to grab.
Finally she gets a grip around the wooden base of a table lamp.
It comes crashing down on the back of his head with the heavy crunch of solid wood.
The guy lets out a sickening groan, getting up from the sofa and clutching at his head, his footing uneven, swaying to one side before he tumbles backward, hitting the floor with a deadweight thump.
Harper hears her crawl off the sofa. She takes a wild urgent swing with the lamp.
Then another and another—soundtracked by a primal howl of rage.
The last one does real damage, smashing cartilage like a hammer through old fruit.
After that, the room falls into a deep silence.
Downstairs—the band keeps playing. I Put A Spell On You.
A few moments pass before she climbs off his body and drops the lamp.
Her nervous breathing cuts through the quiet of the room.
She sniffs, wiping tears off her face. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Pacing the office in measured steps now, trying to make sense of what just happened. Streetlamps filtered through the tall windows slice the room into a jigsaw puzzle of dim light and shadow.
She sees the black tool pouch on the mahogany desk.
Then she moves closer to look. Her eyes trail over to the open Diebold safe.
Harper is quick—up and across the room before she can react.
For the second time that night she has a hand around her mouth.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Harper says. It comes out wrong. Like he’s apologizing.
He frogmarches her to the corner of the room by the safe. “Stay right here and don’t turn around. All I want is what I came for. If I take my hand away and you start to scream …”
She nods slowly. I understand.
See also
Harper lets go of her and she starts to gulp down air, the adrenaline shifting into a lower gear. Half sobbing still but mostly just trying to catch her breath. He reaches into the safe for the last velvet drawstring bag filled with uncut diamonds.
“You were watching the whole time?” she says in an unhurried tone which surprises him a little. Shook up but adapting to the situation. It’s better than the one she was in just moments before. “You asshole. Why didn’t you stop him?”
Harper moves toward Sullivan’s body. He leans down and checks for a pulse.
“You did a pretty good job of that on your own,” he says.
She steals a quick over-the-shoulder glance. “Is he dead?”
“He needs a hospital, or he’s gonna bleed out real soon.”
“Fucking bastard deserves it.”
“What’re you doing with a creep like Sullivan anyway?”
“Jesus Christ, I’m being held hostage by Dr. Phil.”
“You’re not a hostage.”
“Does that mean I’m free to leave then?” she says, and when Harper doesn’t respond she makes a short dismissive noise. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
He tells her, “Don’t run. You won’t make it. I can see you thinking about the door.”
She grins then—almost bursts into laughter. “You want to know what I’m really thinking about, hotshot? I’m thinking about why Kessler has two of us on this job. I guess we’ll have to ask him that. I’m also thinking what a 50/50 split on those diamonds looks like, and how we’re gonna get rid of the goddamn body.”
*****
If you’ve enjoyed Midnight In Paris, you can visit our free digital archive of flash fiction here. Additionally, premium short fiction published by Mystery Tribune on a quarterly basis is available digitally here.
For online archive of short fiction (longer pieces) on Mystery Tribune website, you can visit here.
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