Death of a Chef

by Alexander Campion

  Capucine continued to say nothing.

  “Don’t you see? Mistresses never give men back, but all kidnappers want is money.” She bubbled a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob.

  “How many times have they called you?”

  “Once, just that once. On Saturday. The call lasted only a few seconds. They had him. They would notify me later how much I had to pay. But I had to promise I would tell absolutely no one. Especially not the police. If I did, I would never see him again. I’m sure they’re spying on me to see if I’m keeping my word. At least you don’t look at all like you work for the police.”

  “And you’ve had no further communication? No notes? No letters?”

  “Nothing. Just that one call.” Yolande squeezed Capucine’s arm. “Kidnappers always return the victim when they are paid, don’t they? Tell me that is true.”

  “Actually, it is.”

  Yolande’s sigh was so loud, the mare raised her head in alarm.

  “But you’ve got to stay away from me. I don’t care about the money or catching the kidnappers. All I want is Thierry back. You’ve got to promise me you won’t interfere. Please!”

  CHAPTER 32

  In her years at the Crim’, Capucine knew Commissaire Jérôme Lacroix only by sight. Still, she had always been slightly in awe of him, a seasoned veteran of the old school, a cop’s cop. Lacroix looked like flics used to look: baggy tweed jacket, nondescript necktie, unpressed gray flannel pants, bulky Manurhin MR 73 revolver in a sweat-darkened leather holster under his armpit.

  “There aren’t enough kidnapping cases in France for the PJ to have a dedicated squad. But I’m the official expert, so all kidnappings come to me, even if I’m already so deep in the crap, I need a snorkel.” The crow’s-feet at the edges of Lacroix’s eyes deepened, and he emitted a smoker’s gurgling laugh. His laugh involved his eyes but not his lips.

  “Kidnappings are the shittiest job in the police. Both sides hate us. The kidnappers and, most of all, the families. They’re almost always well-to-do, so they start out looking down their noses at the police. And then they believe, they desperately want to believe, that all they have to do is pay the kidnappers’ ransom and—bingo!—they’ll get their loved one back safe and sound. We’re only there to fuck it up for them. The kidnappers have explained that to them, but they knew it, anyway.”

  Lacroix tapped a filter-tipped Gitanes out of a soft pack, lit it, and inhaled deeply without breaking the lock his eyes held on Capucine’s.

  “When you work in kidnapping, you wind up wanting to join the Italian force. Down there the police are able to freeze the family assets so they can’t pay a ransom. They don’t give a shit if the victim doesn’t make it back home. They want to get their message out on the street loud and clear that kidnapping is not a commercially viable proposition.”

  Ruminatively, Lacroix shaped the tip of his cigarette in his ashtray until it formed a perfect point.

  “So let’s see if I have the story straight. Thierry Brissac-Vanté is married to a wealthy woman. His main occupation is as a marketing entrepreneur who represents businesses to hire celebrities to endorse their products. He also invests his wife’s money in projects, which are usually very visible and often involve restaurants. That makes him sound like a very good guy to kidnap. His family has plenty of ready cash, and they’re used to doling it out in large clumps.” Lacroix raised his eyebrows fractionally to elicit Capucine’s approval. She nodded.

  “The pickup sounds professional enough, somewhere between his office on the Champs-Élysées and a restaurant in the Palais Royal. Most likely it would have been as he walked out the door of his office. All you’d have to do is have a couple of guys hang around in front of his building—easy enough to do on the Champs and not attract attention—and hustle him into a waiting car. No one on the sidewalk would notice a thing. And the wife has only had one phone call, which lasted a few seconds and provided no details other than that ‘they had him.’ ”

  Capucine nodded.

  “What you’ve got here is a plain-vanilla kidnapping with two wrinkles—the heads of two of the victim’s investments have been murdered, and his wife is good pals with the president’s ex-wife. Interesting, but for the time being, we’re going to forget about that.”

  “You are?”

  “It’s highly improbable that the kidnappers have left any traces, or at least not enough for us to get a bead on them. And kicking up a lot of dust with an investigation is very dangerous for the victim. The last thing we want to do is spook the kidnappers. What we need to know is how and when the transfer happens. That’s when we have a crack at nabbing them, or at least picking up enough leads to get a decent investigation going. Of course, the family’s going to try as hard as they can to keep us out of it.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “The usual. The way kidnappers work is that they let the tension build up in the family until they’re ready to cough up serious money. My guess is that the next thing that’s going to happen is a phone call where the victim is put on the phone and is made to plead. The call will be cut off before we can get a trace on it. We’ll get the number, but it’s going to be a stolen prepaid phone, and they won’t stay on the line long enough for us to locate where the call came from. The call with the amount and the instructions for the handover won’t happen until the family has been left to stew, thinking about how much the poor victim is suffering.

  “So all the phones—office, house, wife’s cell, and servants’ cells—will go on a level-one tap upstairs.” He pointed with his thumb to the top floor of the Quai, where the long banks of phone-tapping receivers were located.

  “Why don’t you add Chéri Lecomte to your list? She claims to be having an affair with Brissac-Vanté and was the one who tipped me off to the fact that he’d gone missing.”

  Lacroix extracted a small pad from the center drawer of his desk and made a note.

  “Then we call the fiscal brigade and get them to start monitoring the wife’s accounts. I’m hoping we’ll pick up the kidnappers’ calls, but if we don’t, I want a heads-up that the wife is withdrawing important sums of money.”

  “Call Lieutenant Firmin Bouchard. I used to work there, and he’s very good. He’s already run down the family finances for me, so he has a head start.”

  “Perfect. If he can get a handle on any offshore accounts the family has, so much the better. That’s where we always run into trouble.”

  Capucine’s forehead creased slightly in concern. “That’s it?”

  “Look, in this game you have to learn to be patient. It’s not like regular police work. You have to let them come to you.”

  “And you think the kidnapping has nothing to do with my murders.”

  “No, I never said that. I’m just telling you how we’re going to try to catch these guys.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Alexandre sat in the exact middle of his study, throned in an ancient leather armchair, holding Le Figaro at arm’s length and scowling. Clenching a three-inch cigar stub in his jaws, he snapped the newspaper to make it stand up stiffly at attention. Capucine and Jacques, sitting on the sofa opposite, waited for the detonation.

  “Risen tezis tzby zat imbefil lusen wowon!”

  Capucine got up and gently removed the cigar from his mouth and threw it into the fireplace. Alexandre glared at her malevolently.

  When she sat down, Jacques said, “I do believe that was half of a Trinidad Robusto. They’re virtually impossible to obtain if your last name isn’t Castro. You’ve committed a serious faux pas, ma cousine. My heart’s going pitter-patter, thinking about the spanking you’re going to get.”

  Alexandre glowered at him and gave the paper another shake. “Listen to this. It’s by that imbecile Lucien Folon.” Alexandre looked up at Capucine to make sure she had understood this time. She smiled sweetly at him. “He calls his piece ‘How Bright the Light Once the Bushel Removed. ’ ” Alexandre gave the paper another
angry shake. Jacques settled into the sofa, preparing to enjoy himself.

  “Now that Chef Prosper Ouvrard has been freed from the stifling yoke of the late, but hardly great Chef Jean-Louis Brault, the genius of his cuisine is blossoming. Freed to add protein to his palette, Ouvrard is creating dishes that are vibrant with life and passion, something never before seen at La Mère Denis.”

  Alexandre paused, patted the arm of his chair for the ashtray, remembered it was empty, patted again for his glass, remembered that was empty, too, and, with a frown, resumed reading.

  “It is high time for the hidebound cabal of critics, led by Le Monde’s bumptious Alexandre de Huguelet, notorious vassal of conventional wisdom, to admit that Chez La Mère Denis is now a bird of a completely different feather, a Phoenix risen from the ashes of banality.”

  Loudly, Alexandre crumpled the newspaper into a ball and threw it in the corner. He got up and poured himself a finger of Scotch from a square cut-glass decanter nestled into a bookshelf.

  Unexpectedly, Alexandre calmed. He smiled at Jacques.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s high time for. It’s time for me to retreat to my ovens and cook dinner for you two. Trust me, it’s going to be entirely vegetarian,” he said acidly. “But don’t get your hopes up. Amateur hack that I am, the recipes are from those little cards in Elle magazine.” He left, shutting the door very gently behind him.

  Capucine was torn. Alexandre didn’t seem hurt, but she knew how sensitive he could be. Of course, a healthy dash of solitude, judiciously seasoned with the herbs and spices of his kitchen, would make the most potent salve. But she still felt guilty not being at his side.

  Jacques went over to the bookcase and filled his glass with a good two fingers from Alexandre’s decanter. He sniffed appreciatively. “This Yamazaki single malt eventually becomes addictive. Whatever the right-wing press might say about your geriatric gastronome, it’s incontrovertible he has excellent taste in whiskey.”

  Capucine pouted, expecting the other shoe to drop. Jacques’s faint praise of Alexandre was invariably accompanied by a barb, usually relating to his ostensible amorous insufficiencies due to his being on the far side of forty. But Jacques said nothing. He sipped his whiskey and examined Alexandre’s books, tapping a spine every now and then, either in approval or dismay. It dawned on Capucine that he was stalling about telling her something.

  Jacques picked another glass off the tray, put an inch of whiskey in it, and handed it to Capucine, placing his foot, shod in a navy-blue Weston alligator loafer, on the arm of the sofa. He took a deep breath.

  Capucine sniffed at the single malt and wrinkled her nose. “How can you two drink this stuff?” She left the room and returned almost immediately with a glass bowl filled with ice and put a handful in her glass.

  “If Alexandre sees that, you really are going to get a spanking.” Jacques brayed his donkey laugh, and most of his confidence returned. “Your name came up again this morning in our executive meeting.”

  Capucine looked at him quizzically. It was like playing What’s Wrong with This Picture? Several things: Jacques wasn’t masking the sanctity he felt for the DGSE with levity. It was also the first time he had made this sort of pronouncement without some form of cover against bugging. But most amazingly, he seemed almost embarrassed. Yes, that was definitely it. He was really embarrassed. Would wonders never cease?

  “In a word, cousine, the powers on high are skittish—concerned is too strong a term—about this kidnapping of Brissac-Vanté.”

  “Because of the president’s ex-wife’s friendship with his wife?”

  “Pas du tout. They don’t give a toss about that. They’re in a pet that the investigation will prize open the Pandora’s box of your Roque case.”

  Capucine took a sip of the single malt. Even chilled to the freezing point, it tasted like unwashed socks soaked in rubbing alcohol, with three drops of iodine thrown in for good measure. She set the glass back on the table with a grimace.

  “They are troubled that Commissaire Jérôme Lacroix is involved,” Jacques added.

  “Why? He’s extremely competent and zealous.”

  “Two very dangerous virtues. And, in addition, he has the reputation of being as independent as a deerhound, and it is known he’ll be retired in four months. Once he has his pension in hand, he can’t be pressured. The concern is that he just might turn into a loose cannon.”

  Jacques searched Capucine’s face for a reaction. She looked back at him expressionlessly.

  “One of the ideas aired this morning was that the case be removed from the hands of the PJ and handed to the DGSE. Of course, everyone in the room was opposed. In the end it was decided that Lacroix would be kept on but you would be put in charge. That decision will be communicated to the PJ hierarchy. He’s to communicate his findings only to you. Voilà, a significant field promotion for my little cousin.”

  Capucine’s face flattened, and her eyes darkened. “Why me? Because I’m too docile to be a loose cannon? Because they think I’m going to do what you all tell me to do? Because I’m your cousin and that makes me automatically a government toady? Well, fuck you, and fuck your government! I’m resigning in the morning.” Trembling with rage, Capucine picked up her glass, drained it, and threw the thick crystal against a wall. It exploded like a mortar burst.

  The door opened, and Alexandre peered in.

  “Don’t worry. It was empty,” Jacques said with his all-knowing Cheshire cat grin.

  “Good. Dinner’s ready. We’re eating in the kitchen.”

  Capucine walked down the hall with her head on Alexandre’s shoulder.

  The dinner was delectable. It turned out that the tear-out cards in Elle had come from a piece about Alain Passard, and the recipes had been considerably simplified for the general public. Alexandre had called one of his pals in Passard’s kitchen and had recovered the missing ingredients. The first course was a carpaccio of celery root, sliced paper thin with a mandoline and then sautéed in an obscene amount of butter, a spoonful of Orléans mustard, and a good number of spices and herbs, the precise identification of which, Alexandre explained, he had sworn to take to the grave with him. All Capucine knew was that it was sublime and there was plenty of tarragon in the sauce. Her mood lifted.

  Aware that something had been discussed in the study that needed to be forgotten, Alexandre drew them into his own world.

  “Of course, Lucien Folon is not entirely wrong. Brault’s cooking was often like celestial cotton candy—light, ethereal, but evanescent. Once swallowed, it was gone, like a dream that is instantly forgotten the moment the dreamer wakes, knowing only that he has dreamed, but having no recollection of what the dream consisted of.”

  “You mean like making love to those deliciously androgynous boys in the lycée? So sweet to the touch but with absolutely no substance. You were always left hungry and unfulfilled.” She gave Alexandre a womanly look to make sure he knew how things had changed for the better.

  Jacques erupted in laughter: clear, tinkling, honest mirth, with not a trace of donkey or cynicism. Capucine couldn’t remember him ever having laughed with such abandon.

  The next course was something Alexandre called a potato “darphin,” which turned out to be a potato pancake made from long, thin needles of potato, crisp and crunchy with finely chopped sage on the outside and soft and starchy on the inside. It was served with an endive and celery salad sprinkled with shavings of parmesan and a lemony vinaigrette. It was so good, they were speechless for nearly a minute.

  As Capucine ate, all she could think of was how perfectly informed the DGSE was of the workings of the police. She looked around the kitchen. There must be miniature microphones and video cameras hiding like roaches in all the cracks of the woodwork.

  The pièce de résistance was the dessert, a delicate avocado soufflé studded with chunks of Valrhona chocolate, baked in the emptied half shells of the avocado.

  Jacques left around eleven. As she watched him ride
down in the elevator, Capucine decided she would put on a special show that night for the DGSE cams and see how many junior operatives she could corrupt in one go.

  CHAPTER 34

  “I have a Madame de Vulpillières on the line,” the uniformed front desk receptionist said. “Do you want to take the call?”

  “Oui, madame, je vous écoute. Yes, madame, I’m listening,” Capucine said.

  “We have a common friend,” a youngish female voice said with a Sixteenth Arrondissement lockjaw drawl so pronounced, Capucine thought it must be put on. For half a second she thought Jacques had put one of his pals up to playing a practical joke.

  “Our mutual friend wants to give you something. But extreme care has to be taken. Come to La Coupole tonight at eight thirty, and you will receive instructions. It would look more natural if you came with your husband.”

  With the accent and the corny 1930s thriller dialogue, this definitely had to be a joke.

  “Will you be there?” The timbre had gone up a notch. The throat was clearly dry and constricted. The woman was obviously in the grips of emotion. And there was definitely no snickering in the background.

  “D’accord. I’ll be there.” Capucine hung up.

  She pulled her keyboard over, logged in to the police database, and punched in “de Vulpillières.” Five came up, but only one in Paris. A couple, Bertrand and Sidonie, thirty-seven and thirty-two, seventeen rue de la Faisanderie in the Sixteenth. Monsieur worked for the BNP Parisbasas, and Madame with a relocation agency specializing in easing the moves of foreign senior executives to Paris. They had three outstanding parking violations and were about to be audited for their tax return three years prior. But they didn’t know about that yet.

  La Coupole had been a hot spot in the roaring twenties, when Montparnasse was the center of Paris nightlife. Nowadays the restaurant was owned by a chain and catered mainly to well-heeled tourists. But the train station–sized Art Deco room had been restored to its original grandeur, and the fillet béarnaise with frites was probably as good as any in Paris.