by John Pearce
TREASURE of
SAINT-LAZARE
Treasure of Saint-Lazare
Copyright © 2012 by John Pearce.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher with the exception of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Other than easily recognizable historical figures, no character is intended to represent any person, living or dead.
Published by:
Alesia Press
PO Box 51004
Sarasota, FL 34232
(941) 315-8304
[email protected]
www.alesiapress.com
eISBN: 978-0-9859626-0-9
1
Sarasota, June 2008
Roy Castor stepped reluctantly from the dark comfort of the restaurant into the blinding afternoon sun of Florida summer. His hands groped fruitlessly through his pockets in search of his sunglasses until, with a curse, he turned back to retrieve them.
In twenty years of afternoon coffee and conversation with friends it was not the first time he’d left something behind — most often the sunglasses, but sometimes his ancient porkpie hat. The friends talked mostly about foreign affairs with frequent detours into politics or their love lives, a topic shorter than any of them liked because their average age was close to 80.
The sunglasses waited on the shelf above the cash register. He turned to confront the heat once again and spotted his old commander Al Sommers waiting in his wheelchair. Al looked up, surprised, as he snapped his black phone shut. Roy waved the glasses in Al’s direction, pushed his way back through the door and set off up Main Street, scuttling from building to building in search of their patchy shade. The heavily tinted sunglasses made the walk easier, but not comfortable.
He stopped at a busy intersection to peer hopefully across at a tunnel of welcoming green shade. A young man sidled past, mumbling an apology. The crossing sign winked its invitation and Roy followed, then paused to wipe his forehead with a large white handkerchief, grateful to be out of the blazing sun.
About five more minutes, he told himself, and he could sit down with a cold Amstel. He could already taste the smooth beer, its sharp bubbles dancing on his tongue. He closed his eyes for an instant as he savored the thought.
There was only one witness, and he was not a good one. Arturo Ruiz, busboy at a new restaurant in the nearby arts colony, told the police he was walking back from the bank when he heard a sudden shout and wheeled just in time to see a large black car accelerate around the corner — “kind of a big SUV, but not as big as a Hummer, maybe a Lincoln” was what he told the patrol cop who first responded to his 911 call. “It hit the old man right in the center of the front end and sent him flying.” Roy had not been thrown far. His hat flew to the street’s grassy median and with luck he might have survived, but when he landed on the right side of the street his head struck the curb.
“Man, I dropped a melon on the kitchen floor last week and it sounded just like that,” Arturo said, adding his view that the old man was dead when he hit the curb. In fact Roy didn’t draw his final breath for another hour, in the cold and remarkably empty emergency room of Sarasota Memorial Hospital. His daughter Jen, weeping, arrived at his bedside fifteen minutes before. He never knew she was there.
“The dude went by real slow and looked at me, ” Arturo told the detective who arrived later. “I don’t think he saw me until after he hit the old man, then he just floored it and screamed around the corner to the right and he was gone. That’s when I ran down to the old man and called you guys.”
Thom Anderson, the Sarasota police detective who had drawn the case, thought it a straightforward hit-and-run. An overpaid and overeducated punk kid, Thom figured, with a job selling insurance or houses or stocks, had run over an old man crossing in the middle of the block, panicked, and fled. He would probably turn himself in the next morning, ashamed and completely lawyered up, maybe with his equally overpaid father beside him. His moment of panic would cost him a fine and a few months of probation and might cost him the fancy job. Thom had seen it more and more often as Sarasota had gentrified, and he didn’t like it any better this time than the last.
2
Paris, Ten Days Later
From Eddie Grant’s window seat the broad landscape of brilliant yellow flowers looked like an impressionist painting. The train’s great speed turned the near fields into a shimmering yellow mass, but at the crests of the hills rising in the background, his sharp eye could pick out small patches with their own personalities. A little more or less water, a subtle difference in direct sun, and the farmer’s colza crop outside of Paris became art. Eddie wished he could somehow hang it on his living room wall.
The monthly trip to Rennes was a family business duty he performed without enthusiasm, but June was his favorite. It was just before the yellow flowers began to dry, first step toward the mills that would press their seeds into uncounted gallons of rapeseed oil.
Eddie turned away from the window and put down the glass of Bordeaux he’d been nursing since Le Mans. The train curved around an old concrete water tower that disappeared as quickly as it had come into view, his signal that Gare Montparnasse was only a few minutes away. With luck, he’d be in his office near the old opera house in an hour, which would allow more than enough time to catch up on the day’s business and get ready for dinner with his mother. His seventy-five-year-old mother, he reminded himself. His seventy-five-year-old mother and her lover.
He stood to take his blue blazer from the hook behind him just as the conductor announced the train’s arrival at Gare Montparnasse in ten minutes. As she clicked off the microphone the iPhone chimed in his shirt pocket.
“Margaux. Nice to hear from you. Are we still on for dinner?” They spoke French, as always.
“Of course, Charles Edward. But that’s not why I called. I need your help.”
“Anything. Well, anything reasonable.”
“I — we — have a surprise visitor. Does the name Jennifer Wetzmuller ring a bell?”
His smile faded. He sat in silence for a moment. “I haven’t seen her for twenty years. Exactly twenty years, I think, when I got out of college. Artie wanted to see her father and I went to Florida with him.”
“Hmmm. Sadly, Jennifer’s father is dead. He was killed in an auto accident ten days ago, and in going through his things she found a letter from him to your father, with instructions to deliver it personally and immediately. She got on an airplane and arrived at my front door less than an hour ago.”
“Margaux, can you give me some idea of what the hell this is all about?”
“The work Artie and Roy Castor did just after the war, when they were hunting down looted artwork, but I don’t know any more than that. You must handle this, not me. I can’t go through that door again.”
Margaux had spent the war living on the run with her father, a Resistance leader, and as a result she feared nothing. But she did not want to reopen the story of her much-loved husband’s life. “What would you like me to do?”
“I’m giving a fund-raising reception for Senator Obama here in an hour and a half, and I have to get ready. Can you pick up Jennifer and talk to her at your place? You can bring her to dinner tonight. Paul can pick you up. He’s already on the way to Gare Montparnasse.”
“Confident, weren’t you? And why is it you’re raising money for American politicians? You can’t even vote.”
“I can’t even donate, but I give any help I can, and it seems my American friends like coming here for the view. Things aren’t in good shape over there. I hope you’re watching our money close
ly.”
Eddie thought for a few seconds as the train started to slow. “OK. I’ll come up to get her then we’ll go to my place while you politick. And yes, I’m watching out for us. We have almost no positions left in the American market, and zero in the housing or banking industries. We should be fine unless the entire world goes to hell.”
The best-known face of Gare Montparnasse is the north end, which opens onto the hulking brown Montparnasse Tower — one of the best vantage points for an inspiring city view despite the Parisians’ distaste for its dissonant presence in the harmonious skyline.
Most TGV passengers exit the other end of the station, near the striking Place de Catalogne and its modern fountain, an immense stone disk precisely engineered to allow an unbroken sheet of water to flow smoothly over it.
Eddie looked briefly at the fountain as he emerged blinking into the strong afternoon sunlight. Then he spotted his mother’s prized black Peugeot 607, the same model sometimes used by the French president, with his army buddy Paul Fitzhugh standing at the open driver’s door.
“Ça va?” Paul asked as Eddie settled into the passenger seat.
“Ça va,” Eddie responded, ending the only French exchange they would have. Paul was sensitive about his pronounced accent — he said if he was going to be taken for an American anyway he’d rather do it in English and be understood. He refused to speak French with anyone who spoke good English, which included just about everybody Margaux and Eddie knew.
“What do you know about the visitor?” Eddie asked as Paul took advantage of the Peugeot’s power to merge smoothly between a bus and a small delivery van. He was surprised to realize he was reluctant to use her name. Damned big mistake, he told himself. I’m sure Margaux knows all about the trip to Sarasota but I’d like it better if it doesn’t go much farther than that, so I’ll have to act normal.
“Only saw her for a minute,” Paul responded. “She’s about your age, blonde, nice looking, I can see she’s your type. A little taller than Margaux, long legs, good figure. A stunner.
“Margaux stepped right up and said her capable son Charles Edward would take care of the matter. That was the only time I saw her smile.”
I hope she did, Eddie said to himself. They had spent three luxurious days in bed together and then he left without another word and married his fiancée. It wasn’t his proudest memory.
“Well, let’s pick her up, then you can take us to my place. She can rest before dinner, then we’ll walk to the restaurant and I can show her a few of the sights around the opera. Will you and Margaux pick up Philippe?”
“Margaux says he’ll drive himself. He’s invited his daughter the history professor. You’ll be surrounded by your past.”
“Never mind that. Looks like you’ll be eating alone again.”
“Not a problem. I can keep a closer watch on the room, and Philippe sometimes brings a young officer along. Helps me practice my French, except these days they always want to practice their English.”
Paul’s role in the Grants’ world was murky by design. His business card said he was in charge of buildings and facilities for Eddie’s business, a chain of schools devoted mainly to teaching commercial English. Unofficially he was the family’s chief of security and trusted bodyguard, driver and confidential friend, a role that had assumed more importance after the mysterious deaths of Eddie’s father, and then his wife and son, seven years before. The police were never able to assemble enough evidence to file charges, and Paul had volunteered to spend more time on personal security.
Eddie had known Paul since 1991, when they served together in an infantry company during the first Gulf war. Eddie was a green company commander and Paul, the company’s senior sergeant, had proved to be a valuable source of fatherly advice. After Paul was badly wounded, Eddie followed his recovery and offered him the job in Paris after his wife divorced him. Within two years he had married the concierge in Margaux’s apartment building, a widow Eddie’s age, and settled comfortably into daily Parisian life. He’d even become a fair pétanque player, and met a group of men every Sunday afternoon to roll the boules and drink pastis. There he had no choice but to speak French.
“How does it feel to come from West Virginia to Paris?” Eddie had asked him one Saturday afternoon as they shared a drink down the street from Margaux’s home.
“I come from generations of Appalachian men, most of them farmers and almost all of them soldiers. But if my Scots ancestors had come here instead of to West Virginia, I guarantee every one of us would have been happy. I’m completely at home here, and here’s where I intend to stay.”
3
Paris
For more than a hundred years, the Hôtel Luxor had stood imperiously on the narrow sidewalk of Rue Saint-Roch. Its cut-stone façade and wrought-iron balconies reflected to perfection the austere design dictated by Baron Haussmann when he razed and then rebuilt whole sections of the city for his patron, Emperor Napoleon III. Its sole distinguishing feature, other than a discreet brass plaque bearing the hotel’s name over four stars, was an immense revolving door made of dark-stained oak and brass, which the hotel staff polished every day to a mirror finish. The single doors on either side of it stood open in the glorious late-spring weather that often settles over the city in mid June. Spring turning to summer is the time all the other Parisian seasons envy, and this June day was one of the best.
Late afternoon was a slow time for the reception manager — he was born to the hotel world and would stay at the Luxor until he died. His name was Monsieur Duval, and he believed he was at least partly responsible when the hotel received its coveted fourth star the year before. M Duval arrived at work each morning in casual dress — that is, he wore no tie with his starched white shirt, which his wife had carefully ironed that morning. In the small cloakroom behind the reception desk he changed to a dove-gray suit, adding a silk tie a few shades darker. Only Eddie and the payroll clerk knew his first name, so complete was his devotion to both his privacy and his guests’.
He was peering suspiciously at a slightly loose button on the left sleeve of his jacket just as Eddie’s tall silhouette filled the open door, then stood aside to let Jen Wetzmuller enter the lobby. He followed, pulling her wheeled suitcase.
“Bonjour, Madame, bonjour, M Grant. Welcome back.” M Duval said seriously, no smile. His hand came from beneath the counter holding two envelopes, which he handed to Eddie. “You have a little mail today. Not much.”
“Thank you. M Duval, allow me to present Madame Wetzmuller, who is visiting me and my mother for a few days. Her father and mine were close associates during the war.”
“The Luxor is very pleased to have you as its guest, Madame,” M Duval said gravely. “Please ask for anything you need.” Surprised by his formality, she muttered a barely audible “merci,” then managed a tight smile and a dip of her head.
Eddie bypassed the large winding staircase he normally took to his apartment on the top floor, instead leading Jen toward the elevators to its left. He pressed the button marked 7 but the elevator did not move until he entered a code into the keypad above. “Remember the code, 6161,” he told her.
As they rose, he reflected that Jen had retained the fresh air of youth he’d admired in 1988. She wore a traveler’s outfit of white blouse and pleated blue skirt, and had coaxed her hair into a shape he had not seen in Paris for several years. With difficulty, he brought it back from his very small store of fashion knowledge — coupe à la Jeanne d’Arc — pageboy cut, that had been its name, and it had been popular in the U.S. twenty years before. Despite the June warmth she had a sweater over her shoulders. The skirt fell precisely to the top of her knees, and her legs were as attractive as he remembered. She wore a delicate perfume he couldn’t identify, except to remember that it was different from the one she’d worn in 1988. Under the perfume there was the delicious woman smell he’d immersed himself in during their three days together.
She looked up at him and said gently, “It�
��s been a very long time. I never expected to see you again.”
“Nor did I. But I could never forget those three days in Sarasota.”
“They were memorable, weren’t they?” She smiled at him for the first time, a generous open smile that lighted her deep blue eyes and told him his disappearance was forgiven, if not forgotten. The weight of mortal sin lifted from him.
She broke the silence as they passed the fifth floor. “What happened after?”
“Pretty much as planned. I went into the Army, served in Desert Storm, then came home to Paris.”
“Did you ever marry?”
“Yes, once. You? My wife died.”
“That is sad. I married once, for three years. A big-time cardiologist who wanted a younger wife. It lasted until he found another blonde trophy.”
“Then you’ve stayed in Sarasota?”
“God knows why. It’s a beautiful town but no place for a single woman my age. It’s a huge, deep pool of blue-collar men looking for college-educated women and, surprisingly, finding them. I’m almost too old for that group now. I suppose I’ll sign up for the club of unhappy middle-aged divorcées and widows who understand deep down they’ll spend nights alone for the rest of their lives.
“You’re selling yourself short. We’re only forty and you still look like the girl I knew back then. It’s far too early to start wearing black and sitting in a rocker on your front porch.”
“Thanks for that. You haven’t done badly yourself. You still have all that black black hair I admired. And you still carry yourself like a West Pointer.” She smiled again.
They stood in silence until the elevator stopped. The door opened and she stepped out into a small lobby decorated in Second Empire style. A marble table held a large bouquet of yellow flowers, which complemented the blue walls.
