by David Bishop
“So you are with the Paris police?” I asked.
“Not quite,” Maurice said. “The Prefecture of Police is the national police force, but we are charged with providing policing services within Paris and some surrounding areas.”
“So, what is it that I, a mere tourist, can do to aid the French National Police?”
“It has come to our attention you are here to look into, shall I say, the background of a former French citizen, Garson Talmadge, now an American citizen,” Maurice said. “Why do you have that interest, Mr. Kile?”
“Now wait just a minute. If I am to call you Maurice, you should call me Matt. And, please do sit down Maurice, and your quiet friend, of course. I’m sorry I have nothing to offer you. We could order something in, if you’d like?”
“No thank you, Monsieur. That won’t be necessary. All right, Matt, please answer my question.”
“If, as you contend, my visit involves this Mr. Talmadge, I would be here looking into the background of an American citizen. Why does that involve the French National Police?”
“As you are undoubtedly aware,” the French detective said, “it has been claimed in certain circles that Garson Talmadge had, many years ago, functioned as a broker of illegal weapons. While that was never proven, the rumor lingers. Naturally, that raises the curiosity of my country.”
I furrowed my brow before replying. “The raising of that curiosity suggests those deals did occur and that French defense industrialists and politicians were involved.”
“Why so? My former countryman could have sold weapons produced anywhere, not just in France.”
“You have stated this Mr. Talmadge is no longer a citizen and no longer a resident of France. If French merchants and politicians were not involved, you would not be here.”
“He was a citizen of France while allegedly doing these weapons deals and as the French National Police, we take such possibilities very seriously.”
“A fact confirmed by the long list of arrests you have made over the years of people in your government and industry who are engaged in such naughty behavior.”
“That was a low blow, as you Americans say.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess it was. Not that it makes it any less valid.”
“How much longer do you plan to grace us with your company, Mr. Kile?” The heretofore silent second officer asked, still offering neither his name nor rank.
“A day or two, I would imagine, although, one can never be certain. France is such a romantic and welcoming country. May I add that my primary reason for visiting your lovely country is research regarding a fiction story I am considering writing.”
The second officer spoke again, still without smiling. “Ah, yes, the American novelist, I thought your name sounded familiar. Of course, please enjoy our national hospitality. And should we be able to be of any help with regard to your fiction research, please do contact Maurice. Now, as for Garson Talmadge, the past is best left alone, Mr. Kile.”
“An interesting point, but one which carried to its full conclusion would prevent all investigations for, by their very nature, all crimes occurred in the past.”
The senior intimidator having taken the lead, kept it. “Monsieur Kile, I will ask you again. Why are you investigating Garson Talmadge?”
“My inquiries in France, whether they regard Mr. Talmadge or not, are being done in the service of an American attorney at law, Bradford Fisher, Long Beach, California. He would be the appropriate person for you to ask your question.”
“It is late,” the senior man said. “Let us leave you to rest so that you can have a full day tomorrow. That way, perhaps you can wrap up your visit in one more day rather than two.”
“I thought the French tourist industry wanted visits from Americans to be longer, not shorter.”
The unnamed man grunted before saying, “We are not with the tourist bureau.” He then looked at Maurice and nodded. They stood.
“Good night, Matt,” Maurice said.
“Good night, Maurice. Perhaps next time you could call first rather than taking the liberty of entering my room without my knowledge or consent.”
“Enjoy your day tomorrow,” the senior detective said. “Paris is a wonderful city in so many ways. We are primarily concerned with your safety, so we certainly hope you do not have any more incidents like the one that troubled you during your walk back to your room tonight.”
The inference had been clear. They knew about the shot across my bow. I doubted they had done it, because they might not have had sufficient time to get into my room before I got back to the hotel. They also knew I knew they knew. Police work is such fun. Actually, I sort of liked their style of intimidation, waiting in someone’s room when you’re not expected, and preceding your questions with a warning shot. Maybe I would have been a more successful cop in France than I had been in America where the criminal process has gradually, but persistently, tilted to the favor of the suspect.
“Thank you both for your concern. I’ll count on your protective oversight during the remainder of my stay. Good night, detectives.”
After closing the door, I walked out onto the small balcony through, as you would expect, a French door. The evening profile of Paris stood before me, crowned with flickering lights, night noises, and the wonderfully mixed fragrances of French cuisine.
A few things had become clear. The French Police could not have known about the warning shot without having been culpable on some level. I also knew their interest in my visit had nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of Clarice Talmadge.
Somewhere in France was a powerful politician or industrialist whom I was making more nervous than he was making me. Hopefully, that imbalance would remain in my favor.
Chapter 19
Pierre had a cousin with a warehouse a few miles out of our way where I could pick up a case of Seagram’s Seven Crown. It would be my thanks, well, bribe for Camille Trenet. On impulse I had Pierre stop once more so I could get a case of chocolate bars. How could any woman resist a man who came calling with whiskey and chocolate?
Camille smiled when she saw me at her door. Her smile widened when she saw the case I had under my arm. From there she went giddy upon seeing the case of chocolate bars I held in my other hand, her gladness more a product of her loneliness and unique dietary passions than my magnanimity.
She immediately opened the case of whiskey and placed all twelve bottles inside the cabinet in the base of her living room table, taking care to turn each label to the front. She then opened the box of large chocolate bars and slid them one by one into the drawer above the bottle cabinet. Each bar turned so that the label faced up and read from left to right. We all have our rituals, and this was one of hers. I decided right then I would give this colorful quirk to some character in one of my novels.
Camille unhesitatingly agreed to give a sworn statement through a Paris attorney, come to America to testify, or both, all expenses paid, of course. A belly laugh followed my saying if she came to America I would also take her to spit on Garson Talmadge’s grave.
“Whom did you tell about my visiting with you yesterday?”
“No one,” she said immediately.
I believed her. Still, when Maurice and the intimidator visited my room last night, they knew why I had come to Paris. So had the FBI agents, Smith and Jones, with whom I visited at the airport. That meant Clarice, Susan, Brad Fisher or I had told someone, who told someone, who told someone. Well, you get the idea. No one else had known. I quickly eliminated Brad and myself, leaving Clarice and Susan, and maybe her brother Charles. If it had been Charles, then Susan would have been the tattletale and Charles the first someone she had told, before he told someone else. Someone in that group was talking to the authorities, likely to the American FBI, who then passed it on to the Paris police. At this point, the why was up for grabs.
Camille understood, at least in a general sense, why her sworn statement and/or testimony would be needed, given that her siste
r, Garson’s former wife, was dead.
Then she surprised me, again. “What about my sister’s diary? Would that help?”
“Did Chantal keep a diary?” My pulse quickened. “Do you have it?”
“Who else?” Camille said. “However, I’ll need it back. It’s the only thing I have that is in my sister’s own words.” She added that she would be willing to testify that the writings in the diary were her sister’s. She also had various documents that her sister had signed which could be used by a graphologist to verify the diary had been written by Chantal.
She went on to explain her sister had kept the diary faithfully during her marriage to Garson and the anguish she had lived through waiting for the day Garson would return, a day that never came.
“And you were familiar with the diary during those years?”
“Sure I was. During their married years, Chantal kept the diary in French, but after he left and went to America, my sister convinced herself he would return for her. The first year after he left, Chantal insisted every day I help her with her English so she would be ready when that worthless man returned from America. Ever since the war, Chantal had spoken quite a bit of English, but she couldn’t write a lick of it. We agreed to only speak English in the house, and I taught her how to write it. She practiced tirelessly. When she got good enough, she bought a new diary and rewrote her old diary in English. That’s the one I gave you.”
“What happened to the one in French?”
“She threw it out after she had rewritten it in English. It was a big accomplishment, and Chantal was very proud of having done it.”
That Camille was pleased by Garson’s death was obvious each time it came up. It seemed equally clear that she would want to help Clarice whether or not she had killed “that worthless man,” as Camille had consistently referred to Garson Talmadge. Brad Fisher would need to be told he had a witness who might be induced to express her hatred for Garson and desire to reward, not punish, his killer. Such an admission by Camille during her testimony would damage her credibility as a witness.
Camille had not yet cleaned up. We agreed she would do so while I called Brad Fisher in California. Brad was in a conference, but I convinced his secretary that she should get him, now. After I told him about the diary, he wanted a sworn affidavit signed by Camille that began: that certain diary first showing—whichever date it first showed—and titled on the inside page as The Diary of Chantal Talmadge, was, in fact, Chantal’s diary in Chantal’s handwriting. And that Camille Trenet had observed her sister write in it regularly over the many years they had lived together. And that Camille Trenet remembers her sister, Chantal, freely discussing its contents and the events described therein.
Before Camille came out after getting ready, I had lined up an attorney not far from her home, and after offering double his normal fee, made an appointment for forty-five minutes later. Pierre, whom I had retained for the day, drove us.
Camille’s meeting with the attorney took nearly two hours. I paid the attorney and took Camille back home.
* * *
At four-thirty that afternoon, Pierre drove me back to the hotel, agreeing to pick me up at six the next morning and take me directly to the Charles de Gaulle airport. Pierre had been on time and fully cooperative, so I offered to again hire him for all of tomorrow at the daily rate even though I would not need him after about nine in the morning. I would be his last fare tonight and his first fare tomorrow morning. We agreed I would pay him for today and tomorrow when he dropped me at the airport.
Before getting out of Pierre’s cab in front of my hotel, my mind somehow found an idea. I’m not sure why. Since the two detectives from the French National Police stopped in last night unannounced, I decided that on some level my idea felt smart.
I went up to my room, dropped my portfolio on the bed and went back out onto the boulevard. After walking four blocks, I stopped for a bite in the same café on the Boulevard St-Germain dès-Pres where I had eaten the prior night. I considered trying a new spot, but it would be my last night in Paris and I remembered several things on their menu that looked interesting.
An hour later, not wanting to get lost, I walked the same path I had taken the night before. As I neared where the warning shot had been fired at me, I kept an eye on the building from which I thought the shot had come. I passed the area without incident, took a deep breath, and returned to the Hotel Saint Christophe.
The first thing I saw after flipping on the recessed entry light inside my room was my portfolio which remained on the bed where I had left it, but it had been moved. I had left it lying lengthwise like a person would sleep on the bed. It now lay sideways, across the bed. The bottom dresser drawer, the one that stuck each time if not jiggled while partway closed, was crooked. My suitcase was in the position I had left it, but the zipper was not. I always brought the two zippers together precisely in the middle of the left side of the case, an easy way to determine if someone had gone through it during my absence.
The next thing I knew, I dropped to my knees, stunned, my mind feeling as gooey and wet as a well digger’s handkerchief.
I had not been knocked out, but the blow to the back of my neck had been strong enough to leave my vision hunting for a way through a sky of dancing light spots. Maybe I wanted to find the identity of who had hit me, or maybe why whoever had hit me, had hit me, or maybe more basic than that, I just wanted to be sure who I was. Right now, it all seemed unclear.
It had been the kind of blow that made you forget everything beyond bladder control, but a moment later it all came rushing back. I have been similarly close to knocked out on several other occasions. I could not recall a single one being pleasant. Tonight was no exception.
I got my arms under me and tried to rise but fell back. Right then, I could have crawled under the belly of a duck, but standing up was a no-can-do. After a major effort, I got one knee pulled under me. Then a wire encircled my neck and a large foot pressed hard against the small of my back. For the third time, I went back to the floor face down a short distance from where I had a moment before, hovered on my elbows.
The foot moved up between my shoulder blades.
The wire tightened.
The strong, unloving hands of a different man patted my pockets and my sides, then the cuffs of my pants near the ankles, and finally the contour of my back. They had found no gun because I was not carrying a gun.
I had at least two visitors. The one with the wire kept it taut enough that I could feel some of my blood making good its escape across my neck. Whoever these mugs were, they did not come for a quick kill. If they had, I would already be dead. Small as it was, that element was in my favor. It was about all I had.
The one with the frisky hands stepped to one side. I heard him take out a handgun and bring one into the chamber. The man with the wire loosened it, slipped it back off my head, and took his foot from my back. I could peripherally see a pair of men’s shoes standing to each side, six feet or so from where my lips were kissing the carpet. The man to my left had the bigger feet. Although at this point I was only assuming they were men. They could have been women with the strength and feet of men.
The one with the gun barked out instructions. The ones with the guns always get to do that.
“Get your back against the footboard,” he said, punctuating his command by striking the side of my thigh with the barrel of his gun. “Legs out front, feet spread, back of the knees touching the carpet.”
Under the circumstances, I did exactly as I was told, something which I have always found distasteful. I make exceptions when the teller has a gun pointed at most any part of my body. This time the gun pointed at my groin.
“Don’t move,” said the man on the other side of me. “If you do, you won’t move again until someone else picks you up, and you won’t know it when they do.”
I looked from one to the other. They both wore stocking masks with rough cutouts for their eyes and mouth. They had to be hot in those th
ings. I liked that thought; I liked it a lot. I also liked the fact that I wasn’t already dead. I liked that a lot, too. They wanted to talk. Maybe kill me afterwards, but talk first. So I had some time, to do what I didn’t know, but right now additional time was more rewarding than hitting the lottery.
“Thanks for stopping by,” I said. “I’ve never been made to feel so welcome in a new land. Are you fellows with the Paris tourist bureau? I can’t seem to find anyone who is.”
“Always the smart mouth, aren’t ya.” The larger man snapped his head toward the one who had spoken. He knew what I knew. The talker had screwed up. Another piece of the puzzle had dropped in place, a small piece. If they were familiar with my mouth, they likely knew my name.
This was not a random burglary surprised by a returning hotel guest. His voice had reminded me of the quiet French detective who had visited me along with the more talkative detective, Maurice Reynie, but this guy spoke English without a French accent. Maybe these two weren’t Tweedledum and Tweedledee from the Prefecture of Police. Or maybe they were, and this guy had developed the skill to vary his accent. This one was in charge, and the ones in charge get to be in charge because they have more skills than the ones who are not in charge. At least that’s the way the system is supposed to work. But we all know folks who have advanced beyond their skills to remain in one position and clog things up the folks below them in the chain of command. In any event, his comment about my smart mouth, the always part, while likely true, confirmed that at least one of tonight’s visitors had talked with me before. My learning this was one of the benefits of having a unique personality, or, as he had put it, a smart mouth. It also had the drawback of increasing the possibility that they would end this talk with a bullet in my head.
It’s been said that when one is facing death that their life flashes before them. If so, those thoughts would need to be compressed like a computer zip file. I mean, no killer is going to sit around while his prey reviews his life. With this idea in mind, I thought about my ex-wife and her encouraging me to improve the behavior of my mouth. I always promised, but it was time to confess I never worked at it very hard. My poor effort on that score played a role in our divorce, although probably not a big role. There were other bigger issues, but that’s another story. Still, seeing I might soon be facing my maker, I should admit that at least half, likely much more than half were my issues, not hers. But she had some of her own as well, which, to her credit, she admitted. Well, sort of admitted. Women will say things like I realize that some of this may be my fault. You notice the words don’t say is my fault, but may be my fault. In my ex’s case, she said, “It’s possible; I may not have sufficiently catered to your desire to be visually enticed.” Again, as you undoubtedly noticed, she did not say, “I did not,” but “I may not have.” I always felt admissions without an apology tagging along with a commitment to try and change lacked any promise that things would really get better. And they never did; she probably felt the same way. As for apologies, I apologize for boring you with this review of my failed marriage, but I may not get another chance, and I needed to get it off my chest.
