Paris Ransom

by Charles Rosenberg

I translated what he had said.

  “I don’t want to give up my passport.”

  “This is only going to get worse if you don’t,” I said.

  “Alright. I will go and get it. It’s in my purse.”

  I explained to the chief where it was. He told me that the other officer would need to go with Jenna into the room. I translated that for her, too.

  When she emerged with the passport and handed it to the chief, I looked at Tess and said, in French, “What, exactly, is this all about?”

  “Jenna is charged with theft for when she went into Oscar’s room at the hotel in Paris.”

  “That charge was dismissed.”

  “Yes, it was. But the charge, it has been put back by the partie civile.”

  “The what?” I said.

  “In France, Robert, if the public prosecutor dismisses a charge, the civil party who claims to have been injured can start the process all over again. And the public prosecutor, he cannot stop it. It is given to a juge d’instruction—what you would call an ‘investigating judge’—to look into the allegation in detail and to tell the trial court if the allegation is good or bad, worth pursuing or not.”

  “Who is the civil party here?” I asked.

  “The owner of the hotel. He claims something was stolen by Jenna from the room of Oscar.”

  “What does it say she stole?” I asked.

  “An antique pen of great value, and she also damaged a lock by picking it. Beyond that, it says nothing. It does not need to say in great detail right now.”

  “A pen? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “That is what it says.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Why would Jenna steal a pen?”

  She shrugged. “Again, this is what it says.”

  “So this is like a summons to appear?” I asked.

  “Yes. But because Jenna is a foreigner, they have ordered her arrest to be sure she does not flee. I pledged on my personal word that she would appear at the chambers of the judge within forty-eight hours and they have, as a result, released her to my custody.”

  “Tess, are you some kind of high-level spy with superpowers?”

  “No. Like I have told you before, I am just a citizen of France who sometimes helps my government.”

  She turned and said something more to the police chief in a voice so low I couldn’t make it out. He handed the summons to Jenna, and he and the other policeman left, apparently satisfied.

  “I am going back to bed, Robert,” Tess said. “You should, too. Do you want to come to my room?”

  “I don’t think so right now. I need to sit up and think about this whole development.”

  “Alright. At nine we will all three meet for breakfast downstairs, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Tess went back into her room. Jenna just stood there, hugging herself as if she needed to keep warm, waiting for me to explain to her everything that had just gone on. I realized, to my embarrassment, that Tess and I had been speaking French the whole time, leaving Jenna out in the linguistic cold. I switched to English and explained it all to her.

  “Fuck!” she said, and went back in her room, slamming the door so hard the entire corridor shook.

  CHAPTER 27

  We ate breakfast the next morning in the semi-rustic hotel café, which was furnished with ladder-back wooden chairs with cane seats on wood-plank floors. The meal was tense. Jenna was sullen and said hardly anything except to complain about the unavailability of American breakfast food. Tess was in lecture mode.

  “I think the two of you must return to Paris,” she said. “It is for you dangerous here. And for you, Jenna, you must prepare for this reunion—I mean this meeting—with the juge d’instruction.”

  “Don’t you think that to prepare I will need a lawyer?” Jenna asked.

  “Yes, and I will arrange this for you. I know several who work in this area of money washing and terrorism.”

  “Now they think I’m a terrorist?”

  “Pas du tout. Not at all.”

  I had noticed that of late Tess had begun to say something in French and then repeat it in English. Which would have been annoying, except that I often did the same thing. Mixing the two languages in that way was not unusual among long-time expats.

  “Well, if this is pas du tout about terrorism”—Jenna’s mimicry of the French words flattened the vowels in a way that was jarring even to my ears—“then why are you thinking of getting me a lawyer who is expert in that? Don’t I need someone expert in the law of theft, since that is apparently the stupid charge against me?”

  “It is stupid. I agree with this,” Tess said. “But it is for some reason on terrorism that the police wish to concentrate themselves here. They want to think somehow this concerns the washing of money. But a lawyer who knows about this will also know about the law of vol, of theft.”

  “Do you know the name of this judge?” I asked.

  “Yes. The chef de police told me his name,” Tess said.

  “Which is?”

  “Roland de Fournis.”

  “Tess, that name is very familiar to me, but I can’t quite place it. Do you by any chance know him?” I asked.

  “Yes. He is well known for pursuing corrupt officials and terrorists.”

  “Oh, now I remember. I read about him in Le Monde. What have you heard about him beyond that?”

  “That he is very strict, but very fair. Which should be good for Jenna. Because the charge to be investigated for Jenna is not a crime, which here in France means what you call a ‘felony.’ Her alleged infraction is a mere délit, which I think you call only a ‘misdemeanor.’ In fact, it is strange that he is to investigate such a minor thing.”

  “Oh, so the maximum is only a year in jail and/or a fine?” Jenna said. “How comforting.”

  “Ah, non. A délit, this can be ten years in jail and a fine that is very big,” Tess said. “I have not looked to see exactly the penalty for un vol.”

  “I’m so heartened that this is only a misdemeanor,” Jenna said. “Where I can spend only ten years behind bars.”

  Tess pursed her lips. “I think that the most that will happen to you, Jenna, if this judge’s reputation for fairness is a true one, is that you will have a fine and expulsion from France.”

  “After a long investigation in which my name is dragged through the mud and probably ends up on Page One of the Los Angeles Times—“Prominent Law Professor Jailed in France for Money Laundering.” Do you know what that will do to my career?”

  “I am sorry for all this, Jenna. I will try to make it okay. But this is why I think you should go home to Paris and stay in my apartment and not go outside.”

  “Tess, we don’t know each other very well, but that is not me, and that’s not what I’m going to do. The way I figure it, I can spend all day here trying to figure out where Oscar is, or at least where the book is, and still make it back to Paris in time to meet with this judge tomorrow.”

  Jenna’s mind was clearly made up, so there was no point, I had long ago learned, in discussing it further, and I was hungry. “Let’s order,” I said.

  After we ate, Tess announced that she was sorry, but she had to get back to Paris because someone from her “other life” had called an emergency meeting. She declined to say what the meeting was about. She again urged Jenna to come back with her, which Jenna again declined. She got Jenna to pledge once again that she would be in Paris in time to meet with the judge, after reminding her that she had given her personal word of honor that Jenna would show up. Then she got up and left.

  “Well,” Jenna said. “What now?”

  “I guess we see if we can find the cab driver who gave Oscar the receipt when he was here.”

  “Let’s go do it.”

  It proved not to be difficult. Digne-les-Bains is a small
town, and there are not very many cabs. We did not have the cabbie’s name, but we had the cab number, and after about an hour’s search, we found a cab matching the number on Oscar’s receipt idling not far from the railroad station.

  I opened the back door and we got in. The cabbie was somewhat disheveled looking, and he had a black pipe clenched in his teeth, apparently unlit. He took the pipe out of his mouth and asked, in unaccented English, “Where to, my friends?”

  “How did you know we speak English?” I said.

  “Your shoes, man.”

  “I see. Well, you speak quite good English, apparently.”

  “Yah. Lots of tourists come here from the UK, and a lot of Germans and Swiss come here, après ski, as they say, and a lot of them speak English, but I don’t speak German or whatever they speak in the non-French parts of Switzerland. So I focus on getting my English right. Gets me bigger tips.” He grinned.

  “You studied English on your own?”

  “Not much. But it helped that I was born in and grew up in Manhattan and went to NYU.”

  “Oh,” I said. “How did you end up here?”

  “It’s a long story, too long for now. I just need to know where you want to go so I can turn the meter on.”

  “Well,” I said, “we’re not going anywhere in particular. We’re looking for the cab driver who picked up this fare and took him somewhere about ten days ago.” I handed him the receipt, and he studied it.

  “Ah,” he said. “I see that this receipt has the same number as this cab, but I don’t always drive this cab, and I think I was off duty that day.”

  “Would you be able to find out who was driving that day?” Jenna asked.

  “Madame, I think that would be very hard.”

  “Why?”

  “The cab company doesn’t like one driver to know the affairs of another—or how much money he makes on a particular shift—so they keep the records under lock and key. I can’t think of a good excuse to ask to look at them.”

  “If we give you a description of the fare who took the cab and give you his picture, too, could you ask around?” she asked.

  “Maybe, although this time of year there are lots of fares—people coming to ski up in the mountains and all that.”

  “Let me give it a try with the photos,” she said. “Maybe they will jog your memory.” She found some pictures of Oscar from our Christmas Eve dinner and held her cell phone up where the cabbie could see them.

  “Here are some of him that I took at a recent dinner party,” she said.

  The guy looked at the pictures, pursed his lips, shook his head in the negative and said, “Sorry, they don’t ring a bell.”

  As he and Jenna were conversing, I was looking around the cab. I noticed that there was a pipe rack bolted to the dashboard in front of the passenger seat, and a picture of a woman and child—presumably his wife and kid—taped to the dashboard. It seemed unlikely to me that anyone else drove that cab. In my long career as a lawyer, I had met witnesses like the driver before. I thought I smelled what this was really all about.

  “You know, sir, I realize that asking around among the other drivers could end up taking a lot of your time and divert you from making money as a cabbie,” I said. “We’re more than willing to compensate you for your time.” I reached across and dropped a five-hundred-euro note on the front passenger seat.

  He looked over at it as I continued: “And if there’s money left over after you conduct your search—charging us a reasonable hourly rate of course—you can just drop it off at our hotel. We’re staying at the Hôtel Central.”

  After a minute or two, as we all sat in silence, he picked up the five-hundred-euro note and said, “You know, now that I think about it, I do remember the dude you’re talking about.”

  “Do you have a record of where you took him?”

  “I don’t need a record, man, because he wanted to go somewhere from the railroad station that no one else ever requested to go, at least directly from the station.”

  “Where was that?”

  “It’s only a few blocks from here. Why don’t I just take you there?”

  “Sure.”

  Jenna gave me a look, as if to say, Are you crazy? This guy could be taking us off to be killed.

  I just shrugged.

  A few minutes later, after turning a corner or two, but still in the heart of town, the cab came to a stop in front of a store with a big plate glass window. The sign overhead said “Chapeaux et Foulards.”

  I gaped at it. “You took him to a hat and scarf store?”

  “Yes. He even had the exact address with him.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t take him to Bibelots et Livres?”

  “Yes, I’m absolutely sure. I brought him here.”

  “Did you actually watch him go in?”

  “No, why would I? I mean, if he wanted to go to a hat store, that was his business. Maybe the owner was a friend. Who knows?”

  “I just thought maybe it was unusual enough that . . .”

  “Listen, I pick fares up and I drop ’em off. Unless it’s a child or a little old lady, I don’t pay close attention to what happens after they pay me and close the door behind them. I’m just going to be looking for my next fare.”

  “Well, that makes sense, I suppose. Did you ever see him again?”

  “No. Now do you want to be dropped here, or did you just want to learn where he went and then have me take you somewhere else today?”

  Jenna was already starting to get out of the cab. “I guess we’re getting out,” I said.

  “Do you want anything back from that five hundred?”

  “No, you keep it.”

  “Thanks, man. I’m gonna take the rest of the day off and take my wife and kid out to dinner.” He leaned back and handed me a business card. “If you need to go anywhere else in town while you’re here, call me. It will be on me.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” I got out and watched as he drove away, thinking that I would one day get the money back from Oscar.

  “Wasn’t five hundred at least five times too much?” Jenna asked.

  “Well, you know, it was a bribe. And you have to remember what an old mafioso once said about that.”

  “Which was?”

  “If you’re going to bribe someone, you can never pay too much. If you offer too little, the guy may just be insulted and turn you in. Make it large enough to change his life. He’s more likely to take it, and will ever after be in your debt because you can turn him in.”

  “Well, okay, but I think two hundred, or even one hundred, would easily have changed his life.” With that, she opened the door to the store and stepped inside. A bell made a little jingling sound. I followed.

  CHAPTER 28

  The store was filled with men’s and women’s hats of all kinds, including fedoras, berets, broad-brimmed women’s hats and a single pith helmet. Some were black, others colorful, some unadorned, some with feathers, all displayed on plastic heads supported by thin metal poles set into holes in the floor. A few heads grew out of beige plastic shoulders with scarves wrapped around them. The heads were all eerily faceless and swayed slightly from the breeze that came in through the open door.

  As we entered, an impeccably dressed man who looked to be in his early fifties was coming from the back to greet us, presumably alerted by the tingling of the bell. He was wearing a long winter overcoat, a black homburg and kid gloves, as if he was about to leave.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur,” I said. And in the microsecond between that greeting and trying to decide what, if anything, I wanted to say next, I decided to just go for it. “Nous sommes venus pour vous parler d’un ami qui a visité ici il y a une semaine ou deux.”

  “Bonjour, Madame et Monsieur,” he said, and then, in English, “So you have come to inquire about a friend who vi
sited here in the last week or two?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. But how did you know we are English speakers?”

  “Your accent, Monsieur. If you will pardon me, you are obviously an American. Your French is quite good, but your accent is not, shall we say, perfect. And I speak English well, as my mother was British. But if you would prefer to speak in French, that is fine, too.”

  “No, my friend here does not speak French, so using English is great.”

  “Wow,” Jenna said, “two in a row.”

  “Two what in a row, Madame?”

  “Two French people in a row who speak English.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Madame, this town may be small, but it is not a village in the Massif Central. It is a sophisticated place for tourists from around the world.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jenna said, “I did not mean to insult your town.”

  “Eh, no offense taken. I am Tomas Condelet, the owner of this shop. And who might you two be?”

  “I’m Robert Tarza and this is my colleague Professor Jenna James.”

  “I am pleased to meet you. As you can see, I was about to go out, but I am certainly happy to delay if I might be of service to you. Who is this friend you are seeking to know about?”

  “We are looking for a friend named Oscar Quesana,” I said. “We think he came here a couple of weeks ago, perhaps to buy a book.”

  “What kind of book?”

  “A first edition in English of Les Misérables.”

  His eyes twinkled. “Why would someone come to a hat store to buy a book?”

  “I don’t know that he did buy it here. All I know is that he came here and sometime after that, bought the book.”

  “Did you inquire at our local antiquarian bookstore, Bibelots et Livres?”

  “Not yet.”

  “That might be a better place to ask about this.”

  Jenna interrupted and said, “Well, before we do that, do you recall such a gentleman?”

  “Yes, actually, I do.”

  “Did he buy a book here?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  Clearly, Jenna had remembered what I had taught her as a lawyer years before, but had forgotten: Make the witness answer your question, not the question the witness wants to answer. I probably would have taken his suggestion that we start at the bookstore to mean that Monsieur Condelet, by his sneaky answer, was denying that Oscar had been to his store or bought a book there.