“Do you speak from experience?” Alexandre asked.
“Hardly. She’s here merely to illustrate the virtue of knowing when to stop. The domain of unrequited experience is embodied by another guest. A Greek goddess with the body of a nymph. Sadly, a mere acquaintance. It was a coup to get her to come to dinner. Careful, cousine. Portly Partner may well lose his head tonight.”
“Lose my head, indeed!” Alexandre said. “I’m sure this woman will be one of the androgynously muscular creatures you dig out of the DGSE operative pool. She’ll be decked out in the standard ministry-issue little black dress, with the silencer of her long phallic pistol tucked in between the cheeks of her over-muscular fesses. Another harried junior civil servant pressed into dinner service.”
“Cousin, you’re making progress. The concept of the silenced pistol as a sex toy is fraught with potential.”
The guests were ushered into the darkened living room by a black-clad valet, one of Madame de Sansavour’s extras. Each was handed a jet-black Blavod vodka martini with a black kalamata olive sunk into the turgid depths, and then plied with canapés of beluga caviar on black Russian bread.
The first to arrive was the ministerial éminence grise, who proved to be toad-like in appearance and utterance. Then came a young woman in her early twenties who looked like she rose every morning at four thirty to swim fifty laps in a pool. Her knee-length, tightly clinging silk shift made it abundantly clear there was no holster at her back.
Capucine’s eyes widened perceptibly at the next arrival: Chéri Lecomte. She wore Yves Saint Laurent’s famous Le Smoking from the sixties: a man’s tuxedo cut high-waisted with trousers outrageously flared. As she made her entrance, the bloodred soles of Louboutins pumped arterial jets from under the flapping pant legs. She had completed her look with jet-black lipstick and nail polish and an unlit cigarette in a two-foot black holder. Even though the ensemble smacked of mothballs from various eras, there was a perceptible hush in the room as she entered.
The publishing magnate arrived, surfing into the room on a breaker of epigrams and bons mots. Introductions completed, he made a beeline for Capucine and Chéri’s settee.
“Madame,” he said to Capucine, executing an elegant baisemain, “I am a great admirer of your husband’s.” He wagged his finger at her. “Warn him that I intend to steal him away from Le Monde and get him for one of my magazines.” Duty done, he turned to Chéri and took possession.
“Gérald de Boysson,” he announced.
“Chéri Lecomte,” Chéri said. The brilliance of her toothy smile in the frame of her black lipstick created a pool of light between them in the somber room.
“What a charming name.”
“My mother was very fond of Colette.”
“But wasn’t Chéri a beautiful young man?”
“Was he? My mother was American, and I’m sure she never actually read Colette. And you have to admit it really does sound like a girl’s name.”
Boysson bent over Chéri, entranced.
Manifestly excluded from the conversation, Capucine rose to wander around the room. Chéri’s recitative of her biography pealed on loudly behind her.
“But I am French. Entirely French in spirit. I love it so much here, I never went back from my junior year abroad, when I was at Vassar. . . .”
Capucine turned to look.
“Of course, there was a man involved, Géri. Can I call you that?” Chéri gave Boysson a playful punch on the shoulder. “But the silly boy left to make movies in Rome, and Mama bought me his stand at the Puces. And then . . .”
Alexandre sat next to the nymphet at one end of the long black sofa. Every time she turned to glance anxiously at Jacques, Alexandre scoured her lower body with his eyes. Capucine beckoned him with a crooked index.
“Got it figured out yet?” she asked.
“No, but she’s clearly nervous about something.”
“She’s got a small holster taped to her inner thigh. You can see the outline through the dress when she stands in front of the light. She’s probably worried the gun will fall on the floor. Or she might just be put out that Jacques is ignoring her.”
“Don’t be silly. Who on earth would care if Jacques wasn’t paying attention to them?”
Madame de Sansavour opened the door to the dining room and announced dinner in a loud voice.
The once-large dining room had been transformed into a theatrical version of a dessert tent with hangings of shimmering black satin. The oppressively claustrophobic gloom was relieved only by the purple flames of black candles set in ornate silver candelabra placed among black-rimmed plates and black napkins on a black linen tablecloth. The tent blocked out all street sounds, leaving a humid, unnatural silence.
Black cards inscribed with silver flourishes placed the guests. Capucine found herself between Jacques and the toad-like ministerial official, catty-corner from Alexandre, who sat next to the putative DGSE operative. At least he would be amused. Directly opposite, Chéri had been placed between Théo and Boysson. Théo peered around the table, blinking, apparently wondering what he was doing there. Boysson concentrated on Chéri, his eyes saccading rapidly back and forth between her face and her ruffled silk bosom.
Chéri’s voice was a quantum louder than the other guests’.
“You’re so right, Géri. It was a challenge to become an expert in faïence. But I had a head start. I had studied a lot of art history at Vassar.”
At each emphasized word, the magnate’s eyes shot up to meet Chéri’s and then sunk south slowly, only to rise again in a few seconds.
Madame de Sansavour opened the door to admit two of her staff, bearing large oval serving dishes. Capucine caught Alexandre eying the girls, his thought process ridiculously transparent: he was imagining them naked in the much-touted stockings and backless stiletto heels. Capucine winked at him. Alexandre scowled and picked up one of the two black menu cards that had been placed in the middle of the table. The silver calligraphy announced the first dish would be a feuilleté de truffe noire—slices of truffle between thin layers of puff pastry. The dish arrived completely enrobed in a thick black truffle sauce. As the serving girls placed the dishes, a third girl poured ink-black wine from a crystal decanter.
Théo and Alexandre inhaled and sipped the wine critically.
“Cahors,” Alexandre said.
Théo swirled the wine in his glass and sniffed loudly. Heads turned. Cécile pursed her lips in disapproval. He took a deep drought and swished it in his mouth as if rinsing after brushing his teeth. Cécile’s pursed lips became an exaggerated moue.
“Château Lagrézette Malbec Le Pigeonnier. No doubt about it,” Théo said. Alexandre nodded in agreement.
The next dish was to be the risotto interdit—the forbidden risotto. The serving girls, their uniforms no longer crisp and their hair wilting, returned with the risotto, mounds of jet-black creamy rice, the grains half the size of normal risotto.
“Jacques, why is the risotto forbidden?” Chéri asked in her ringing voice.
It was Alexandre who answered. “Centuries ago, the Chinese developed an heirloom cultivar for black rice. But it was reserved exclusively for the emperor and forbidden to everyone else. It’s still very hard to obtain.”
Ignoring Alexandre, Chéri continued to look at Jacques. “Someone told me that you just redecorated your fabulous apartment.”
Cécile said, “Jacques’s always doing it. It’s his hobby. He does it twice a year.”
“Twice a year? That must cost a fortune.”
“It’s not the fortune that’s the problem,” Cécile said. “It’s getting it done. My own redecoration has stalled. It’s exasperating. Particularly since my best friend won’t return my pièce de résistance.” She darted a half-friendly dagger at Capucine.
Jacques looked back and forth between the two women, smiling his Cheshire cat grin as if savoring a secret memory. The expression was lost neither on Alexandre nor the DGSE nymphet. Unheeding, Théo sippe
d his wine with great attention.
A little later the serving girls returned with the next dish, roasted black Chinese chicken and Brazilian black beans. The girls seemed even more limp. Their hair straggled in damp ribbons, and large sweat stains darkened the black silk of their uniforms.
The dish was one of Madame de Sansavour’s triumphs. The pieces of black-meated chicken lay on beds of creamy black beans. They had been cooked with a miraculous pepper that started out sweet in the mouth and rose to a crescendo of almost painful pungency. The joyous discovery was that the invasive blandness of the beans immediately quenched the conflagration. The creation had an interchange of passion and comedy as delicate and subtle as an Italian opera.
Alexandre decided to explain the ins and outs of the Silkie breed of chickens to an obviously bored Chéri.
“They’re not really Chinese. They’re called Chinese because only the Chinese eat them. The black meat seems to put everyone else off.”
“A chicken is just a chicken, right, Aléx? And this stuff would be a whole lot better if it didn’t have all this pepper in it.”
“So tell me, Monsieur le Conseiller, what was the government’s view on the death of Firmin Roque? Is this the demise of the nation’s last surviving Communist experiment?” Capucine asked the ministerial toad.
“Of course, operating a stand at the Puces is nowhere near as complicated as running a huge publishing business. But I do have to spend a lot of time on buying trips. That’s the best part. Last summer I went down to the Midi and came back with some fabulous pieces. You have to know exactly where to go.”
“I hardly think Faïence de Châteauneuf-sur-Loire really counts as a Communist experiment. If it were, the government wouldn’t be supporting it. It obviously has always been a perfectly viable business that would thrive under any competent management in a free-market economy.”
“The Midi. The cradle of France’s passion. I have a house in the hills behind Villefranche. Are you going back there this summer? Would you like to come and have a meal and perhaps a splash in my pool? Would that tempt you?”
“My dear, it’s not any old pepper. It’s made with malagueta chilies soaked in cachaça, Brazilian rum.”
“Of course it would tempt me, Géri. But the summer is so far away. Maybe we could do something sooner.”
“Don’t be too sure, Monsieur le Conseiller. Remember, ‘Sous les pavés, la plage. Under the paving stones, the beach.’ ”
Everyone laughed. The phrase was one of the clichés of the May 1968 revolt. When students prized up the paving stones of the Latin Quarter to throw them at the police, they had found the sand used as bedding underneath.
Perplexed, Chéri looked back and forth between Boysson and Alexandre for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. She flushed with embarrassment.
Dessert—a licorice sorbet—arrived, borne by the three girls, who were now limp, slack-jawed, and bathed in sweat, followed by an obviously mortified Madame de Sansavour.
Capucine leaned over and put her lips close to Jacques’s ear. “What have you done to those poor girls?”
“Not me, petite cousine, Madame de Sansavour. That stuffy bourgeois woman deprived me of my naked Nubians. But, humanitarian that I am, I had installed a special heater in the kitchen so that my Nubians wouldn’t catch a chill. I merely turned the apparatus up a bit in the hopes that Madame de Sansavour would let her girls serve in a more comfortable attire. Ivory is hardly as attractive as ebony, but it would have done in a pinch.” His high-pitched, braying laugh stopped all conversation at the table.
After dinner, coffee was served in the living room, accompanied by a perfectly black liqueur served in small stemmed glasses of cut crystal. It was as alcoholic as it was bitter.
Alexandre and Théo sniffed their glasses and conferred in front of the fireplace with its bizarre purple flame.
“One of these horrible Italian walnut-based liqueurs,” Alexandre said.
“No. Nocino della Christina. Not Italian at all. California. They seep Napa Valley walnuts in raw local brandy.” Théo drained half his glass, shook his head in disapproval, and spat into the fireplace, creating a satisfying burst of bright orange flame that lit up the room.
The flash of light triggered the departure of the guests. Cécile and Capucine came up to their husbands.
“What have you two been plotting?” Cécile asked.
Chéri had gone up to Jacques to thank him for the evening. As they spoke, the ministerial toad joined them. Chéri threaded her arm through his and allowed herself to be swept out the door. Alexandre and Théo raised their eyebrows.
“She has a better eye for men than for clothes,” Cécile said.
CHAPTER 23
Even though that was exactly what he was, the last thing Firmin Bouchard looked like was a flic. He came across as a dogged, hardworking middle manager in one of the four French mega banks.
He had sat in the cubicle next to Capucine’s when she was in the financial brigade. She knew for a fact that his Sig Sauer was still in its original box, wrapped in chemically treated paper, at the very back of the center drawer of his desk, from whence it emerged once a year, when, eyes squinted almost shut, Bouchard fired the required fifteen rounds into a paper target. Firearms frightened him. His weapon was the computer.
“Capucine, I don’t understand you. You were doing extremely well in the serious-fraud section of the financial brigade, which is, after all, the cutting edge of the cutting edge of the police. And you gave it up to join the hoi polloi and chase wife beaters and child molesters. It doesn’t make sense.”
They walked down rows of cubicles where well-scrubbed young people speed typed on keyboards. Three years before it had been Capucine’s home. She had hated every second of it.
The previous day, Capucine had called Bouchard and told him she wanted his advice on a case. He had invited her to lunch. For a split second she had imagined a fuggy bistrot on the rue de Tolbiac and a stew made with love and produce from the local market, but, silly her, that wasn’t at all the way it was done in the fiscal brigade.
At the end of the hall they reached the interrogation room, a conference room, really, where suspects in elegant suiting usually sat, flanked by prosperous lawyers, confronted by necktied and beskirted police officers.
Lunch had been laid out by the catering service: crinkly cellophane-wrapped sandwiches of factory Gruyère and industrial ham with a selection of Fanta Citron, fizzy Orangina, and small, squat bottles of Perrier. The cutting edge of the cutting edge, Capucine reminded herself. Still, insipid as they were, these people really did know all there was to know about the world of finance and had an uncanny ability to winkle secrets out of the ether of the cyber world.
“I need to know about someone called Thierry Brissac-Vanté. He’s popped up as an extra in two of my cases, and there may be a financial angle.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Brissac-Vanté’s day job is a small-time celebrity promotion marketing boutique. As a hobby he makes investments in companies. Needless to say, he and his wife are very well heeled. He happens to have investments in two of my murder cases, Chef Jean-Louis Brault and Firmin Roque.”
“Firmin Roque was murdered? I thought the death was accidental.”
“It was made to look like an accident, but it was deliberate. We’re not releasing that information.”
Bouchard looked at Capucine levelly. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing much. Run Brissac-Vanté and his wife through the labyrinths of your computer and tell me what comes out.” She stood up. “If you find something interesting, we’ll have lunch in my neck of the woods. That way you can see how the other half lives.”
Two days later Firmin Bouchard was given the grand tour of Capucine’s brigade. He was uncharacteristically ill at ease. As they wandered through the large staff room, shaking hands with scruffy, bestubbled detectives, Capucine realized there were two reasons for his discomfort. The first was obv
ious: the miasma of physical violence in the room. The second was more subtle. On her own turf, the fact that Capucine was now a commissaire was manifest. Even though she might be only one notch above Bouchard in the police hierarchy, Capucine had passed the impossible exam, had spent nearly a year in training, and had crossed the watershed into the world of senior officialdom. The crackle of her authority in the squad room was almost audible.
The situation was exacerbated at Benoît’s, where Capucine was treated with a respect that bordered on veneration. Unconsciously, Capucine had shrugged into the mantle of her rank.
“So, Firmin, do Brissac-Vanté’s financial secrets lie naked and gasping on your desk?”
Bouchard looked a little bewildered. “I did get a fairly decent rundown. Brissac-Vanté’s story is pretty simple. His wife has all the money. She’s the granddaughter of the owner of a large edible oil company that was bought out by Lessieur in the sixties. Her father invested well—very well, actually—and she inherited a substantial fortune. She grew up as part of the gratin of the gratin of the Sixteenth Arrondissement. Her husband comes from the same milieu, but his parents don’t have a bean. After the lycée he took a yearlong prep course for the elite business school exam. I made some calls, and it seems he worked hard, but he couldn’t get in anywhere and so wound up taking a two-year course in public relations at one of those schools for dumb rich kids. The parents had to take out a big loan to pay for it. He got married the month he graduated.”
“And the wife paid for setting up his marketing boutique.”
“Just the initial start-up money for the office and furnishings. He’s keeping his head above water. He’s not supplying the family with caviar, but he’s not losing money, either.”
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