I had a needle to kill the saboteur with.
It was sharp and needed to be oiled but after Siobhan had broken it, it was replaced by a thicker Cleopatra style needle which had a base that was inserted into a thin plastic case which acted as a sheath. The case contained the oil but I kept the new needle and sheath apart for closer to the time.
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We were located in a restaurant on the Upper East Side. Siobhan, Lizzie and I sat at the end of a long table, Lizzie on the banquette. Behind her was a gold framed mirror with smoky glass and the décor was Parisian bistro, with curved wooden seats, dark stained, mahogany style.
Lizzie leaned forward.
“Why don’t you throw it away?” She was talking about the sheath.
“I need it for the needle,” I replied. “I wasn’t going to combine them but I’ll do it now to show you.”
“But it will spill,” she continued.
Then I inserted the needle and watched the oil rise through the translucent case.
I pushed the needle entirely into the case and twisted the base to lock it into place. Then I turned it over to sit it upright.
“See,” I said, once I had showed her the mechanism, but the thick oil started to leak out from the base and form a thick puddle on the table.
“We need to get the saboteur. He is here,” I continued.
And we got up to look around.
The restaurant was on the corner of a street but was split by a shop that occupied the tip of the corner, so that the restaurant actually wrapped around the shop and had an entrance both on the main street and on the cross street.
We walked through the restaurant from the main street side towards the cross street entrance. The other side was a step down and was darker, as if it had been closed off, but it was clear people had been eating. Their leftovers were still on to the tables and the chairs were in a state of disarray.
It was also empty.
Some chairs had been upturned so I knew that the saboteur had been there. And just then I realized that he had escaped through the back door.
Photo of Le Terminus Brasserie, Paris via RawPixel
