Crime Fraiche

by Alexander Campion

  “So what does that tell us?” Capucine had asked.

  “That artsy-craftsy types are more caring people?” David had asked with mock ingenuousness.

  “You idiot,” Isabelle had said, “that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s obvious that painters and poets are going to be nicer than bankers.” She gritted her teeth in an effort to extract the correct answer from the room’s ether.

  “Think more about the Belle,” Capucine said. “How is it that she always winds up with such arty victims?”

  Isabelle got it. “Because she intrigues them with her knowledge of art. Is that it?”

  “Yes, I think it must be something like that. She has to get the mark beyond the stage of calling the fire department’s emergency medics and to the level that they want to take her home.”

  “You mean the mark feels he’s come across a kindred spirit, someone who only they can understand,” Isabelle said.

  “So you think that she turns most of her Samaritans away, is that it?” David asked.

  “Almost certainly. We haven’t heard of any thefts from nonartistic people, have we?”

  “A bunch of people come up to her when she’s lying on the ground, and she gets rid of the losers and waits for someone she thinks she can boost a hefty score from. Is that what she does?” Isabelle asked.

  “It wouldn’t be all that difficult for her to stand up, dust herself off, and tell the person she wasn’t interested in that she was fine and ‘thank you very much’ or remain lying on the ground, moaning charmingly, if she thought the Samaritan was a winner,” Capucine said.

  “And what about the art part?” Isabelle asked.

  “Nothing bonds people more than being from the same world, doctors, painters, even flics. But, of course, for that to work, you have to know what you’re talking about.”

  “So,” Isabelle asked, “you think she’s a painter or something like that?”

  “Actually, I have a feeling, given her age, that she might just be an art student.”

  “So why don’t we stake out the Beaux-Arts?” Isabelle asked with enthusiasm. And the idea was born.

  For three days Isabelle and David sat side by side uncomfortably in front of the art school, on cheap white plastic seats at a tiny white plastic table on the terrace of the Café La Charrette. It was hardly a terrace, just eight limp supermarket tables on the sidewalk, pushed up against the café’s windows, forcing pedestrians into awkward little pirouettes as they squeezed between the chairs and a rack of the now ubiquitous Vélib’s rent-a-bicycles.

  In an attempt to look the part, Isabelle wore a man’s thick wool sweater several sizes too large and torn jeans that allowed one of her knees to peep out at the world. It was clear that she thought the contemporary art world still dressed like characters in a seventies cinéma vérité film. Isabelle had completed her look with a thick pile of sketchbooks and art show catalogs on her lap. Of course, the essential prop was a Xerox of the exquisite pencil sketch of the Belle negligently placed on top of the heap.

  For the first hour or so, the two brigadiers had thought the stakeout would lead nowhere, but by the end of the morning they had seen six different girls who could possibly be the Belle, three of whom were dead ringers for the sketch.

  The next two days produced another half dozen possible candidates. David and Isabelle could not decide if they were seeing different people or the same women over and over again with different hairdos and outfits. On the third day Isabelle sent David to follow one girl who looked like the best of all the matches they had seen so far. David latched on to her after she left her morning courses at the Beaux-Arts and disappeared for seven hours, until he returned to the commissariat to report to Isabelle that she had spent the day shopping, having lunch with friends, leisurely looking at books in the bouquiniste stands on the quais of the Seine, and then returning to an apartment in a chic street not too far from the Beaux-Arts. Forty-three seconds on the computer produced her name and phone number. Another eight minutes on the computer yielded the information that she had a sizable bank account and was accustomed to spending over five thousand euros on her Carte Bleue each month, mainly on expensive clothing.

  It was clear to Isabelle that she wasn’t going to get the job done with just David for support. Capucine was going to have to produce more troops. To this end she whined and complained until Capucine joined her at the stakeout on the fourth day.

  The balmy days that made surveillance a joy, sitting in the sun, pretending to read a book at a café table, were long over, and the two detectives had the soi-disant terrace to themselves.

  Capucine had always found the Ecole des Beaux-Arts the least captivating of Paris’s monuments, probably because the structures were so far removed from public view. From where they sat, the open gateway in the graffiti-covered wall allowed only a glimpse of the magnificent sixteenth- and seventeenth-century buildings topped by elegant studio skylights. In fact, from their vantage point the most appealing feature was an enormous and cleverly drawn graffito of a happy cat bursting out of his picture frame, grinning down on the courtyard from his three-story-high perch. Capucine was always amazed that not only did the school’s administration allow the graffito to remain over the years, but they actually painted around it when the wall was whitewashed.

  Capucine sipped her green tea that tasted like bitter carpet sweepings while Isabelle excitedly stirred her electric-green menthe à l’eau.

  “See!” said Isabelle. “Here’s another one. That could be her, don’t you think?”

  “No, the shape of the nose is all wrong. But the look is the same. I grant you that.”

  David had already been sent out to tail a girl that Capucine had agreed could well be La Belle. Right after he had left, they had seen two even more likely candidates. The problem seemed to be the rigid conformity of the art students. There were two basic looks: wacky neo-hippie—horizontally striped rainbow stockings, skirt so short it was no more than a token to propriety, impossibly dyed hair in primary colored stripes—and the more prevalent Dame aux Camélias: flowing black dress, thick long hair, brooding, moody introspection. When dressed as either persona, the students seemed to be clones, as indistinguishable from one another as the army of Chinese terra-cotta soldiers whose faces take close scrutiny to be seen to be unique.

  Capucine had a hunch that since the victims’ descriptions of the Belle all fit into the latter stereotype, she might adopt the alternative look when at school, which made linking her to the portrait all the more difficult. One thing was abundantly clear. Isabelle was absolutely right, it was going to take a bigger team than the one she currently had to produce a suspect.

  “All right, Isabelle, I’m going to assign you three more officers. They’ll report to you here right after lunch.”

  “Me? I thought you’d be taking charge directly. You want me to handle a team of four all by myself?” Isabelle’s eyebrows lifted a good half an inch.

  “Isabelle, you can do this les doigts dans le néz—with your fingers in your nose—as the guys like to say. You’ve already got David wrapped around your finger, and he’s a handful. Just boot them out tailing people and have them report back to you.”

  “Does this mean you’re going back to the country?”

  “Not just yet. But I need you to take charge of this. Trust me, I wouldn’t give you an assignment if I didn’t know you could handle it.”

  For once Isabelle was at a loss for a snappy retort. She just looked at Capucine wide-eyed, opening and shutting her lips, hoping something tough and cynical would pop out, doing a perfectly creditable imitation of a cartoon goldfish in a baggy sweater.

  CHAPTER 41

  It wasn’t even a real café, just a little house in a back street where some frère from the bled and his wife cooked meals and served them with glasses of mint tea.

  When it was warm, you sat in the tiny courtyard of earth and gravel that had been mostly pushed into the ground years before. When it got cold, you sat
at the same tables, which had been moved into the two back rooms that had been knocked into one.

  The food was definitely not a draw. Sure, there was always a harira or a kefta on the boil in the kitchen and you could get a dish of that, but it wasn’t any better than the food at the élevage canteen. Of course, ordering it and paying for it, instead of just having it slopped on your plate, made it a lot more appetizing. If you didn’t want food, you sat and drank mint tea, which was pretty good, made with sprigs of real mint—Lord knew where that came from—or coffee from the dented espresso machine that had already seen better days when it had been bought secondhand years ago.

  There was also what was supposed to be a tiny bar, really just a two-foot plank and a bunch of bottles of radiant Day-Glo syrups on a shelf in front of a cracked mirror. Next to the mirror was a Licence II plaque, the old kind with chipped enamel and funny script writing, which looked like it had been picked up at a local flea market. If it was real, which no one believed, it gave the place the right to sell wine and beer but nothing hard. There was a refrigerator full of Kronenbourg 1664 in the kitchen, but Momo didn’t even hope for one of those. If he was dumb enough to ask for one, the other North Africans in the room would start muttering, “Shame, shame,” under their breaths, knocking quietly on the table with their knuckles, until he was forced to leave.

  The beer was for the French hands, who came occasionally because the place was so close to the back gate of the élevage. They’d usually go to the café in town, because you could smoke there with no one complaining, and there was a billiard table and a TV, and there were no Arabs, but when it was raining hard, sometimes they came to the café.

  Still, the place wasn’t all that bad. It had that clean smell to it—no sweat or tobacco smoke—a little pungent from spices that reminded him of home. He had taken to coming almost every night. At first he did it because it was good for his cover, but he had to admit it had become an important part of his day. Skulking in his room all evening wasn’t doing him any good, particularly since he had no booze and had decided he had to take it easy going to the supermarket to buy that no-name “Scotch” they sold. He’d just get good and drunk when it was all over and the hell with it.

  He sipped his coffee quietly. He was going to go home pretty soon. True, he still didn’t have anything worth giving Commissaire Le Tellier, but that was just a question of days. Now that he knew his way around the accounting office, he was sure to find something. If she said there was going to be something there, there would be.

  Two Maghrebian workers from the élevage came in and sat at his table. Momo listened to them, adding a monosyllabic grunt every now and then. Tripping up was always his big fear. It turned out he knew a lot less about the way guys from the bled really lived than he had thought.

  Six French hands came in and stood around the bar, drinking beer and smoking and talking too loud. The smoking was a calculated affront. They could do what they wanted because the slightest argument would bring the gendarmes, who would close the place down. The place filled up with the smell of the blanc: sweet tobacco and yeasty hops and musky sweat about to turn fetid. The café was no longer peaceful and restful and clean. The men banged their beer glasses on the minuscule bar as loudly as they could without breaking them and stomped out, bumping into the seated patrons without apology. When the door closed behind them, there was a collective silent sigh of relief.

  The problem was that watching them down beers had made Momo ache for a drink himself. He had a quarter of a liter bottle of supermarket Scotch in his bag under his bed. If he left now, he’d probably get back to his room before his roommate came in and have a chance at doing some serious damage to the bottle. And even if his roommate walked in on him, that wasn’t going to be the end of the world, was it?

  What would be the end of the world would be getting caught going through the accounting office. That would be bad. He’d get fired from the élevage and Commissaire Le Tellier wouldn’t have a case. But that wasn’t going to happen. He’d already been in there three times and knew how to get in and out and not get caught. It wasn’t that difficult. No one wandered around that part of the élevage at night, so there was almost no chance of being discovered. Getting back to his room was where he had to be careful. He’d run into that guy Martel when he was returning to the Cité from the wrong direction and had to do his number with the cigarette. Praise be to Allah the Merciful that Martel had bought it. Next time he’d take the long route around behind the dorms so he’d be coming back from the right direction.

  No sweat if you planned it right. But he really did need a drink. Time to get going.

  He crossed the empty courtyard, eased the rickety wooden gate open, and stepped out into the street. Like all the back streets in Saint-Nicolas, this one was unlighted. The walk back to the élevage was always satisfying, often under a canopy of stars. He was amazed how many shooting stars there were. Something you never saw in Paris. As he turned to pull the gate shut, he heard, rather than felt, an extremely loud thunk that resonated in his head, like a computer sound telling you that something you had done was very wrong, only much, much louder. He felt no pain but was surprised to find he was on his knees. It was the second blow that hurt and knocked him on his side. He was completely conscious but couldn’t make his arms or legs work.

  “Look at the fucking Beur,” someone said with a slap of raucous, sneering laughter. “He’s not looking so big and tough now, is he?” He was kicked hard in the stomach. The air exploded from his lungs. His upper body felt like it was clamped in a vice. He panicked, fighting desperately to inhale. And it kept on, every kick a rock thrown into the tide of pain. Each blow was punctuated by a line of invective. “Why do you filthy Arabs think you can get away with stealing our jobs?” Thump. “When are you fuckers going to wise up and get the hell back to your fucking desert?” Thump.

  Instinctively, his body convulsed into a tight fetal position. All that seemed to matter was protecting his stomach and fighting for air. He was dimly aware that there were three of them. Two kicking and Pierre Martel leaning down, sneering and doing the talking.

  Even though it went on and on, his breath came back partially, intensifying the pain, making it almost unbearable. It would be so easy to make it stop. His right hand was no more than six inches from his gun. All he had to do was reach down and it would jump into his fist and the shot would happen by itself. Right into Martel’s fat gut. One shot would end it. The other two would run, but Martel would live long enough to give up their names. He’d make sure of that. And then Martel would die.

  But he couldn’t use his gun. If he did, Commissaire Le Tellier would have no case, and that was what he was here for, wasn’t it?

  He couldn’t stop thinking of the gun, so right there, so tempting, so small he could almost hide it in his hand. He could almost feel the grip tight in his palm, with the end of his thumb and forefinger against the smoothness of the scandium frame, whatever the fuck scandium was. He almost laughed, but the reflex made his stomach muscles convulse, cutting off his breath. He went into a choking spasm. The last thing he remembered was the searing pain of trying to force out a cough.

  CHAPTER 42

  Emotional disarray worked for Marie-Christine. Before the drama she had been merely a “handsome woman,” a damnation with faint praise that gave Capucine the shivers. But today Marie-Christine had the tragic sensuality of a Racine heroine, Phèdre perhaps, eyes liquid and deep set, wandering off into space each time there was a lull in the conversation, lips slack and full and moist, hair perfectly coiffed yet somehow conveying a strong hint of turbulence. In a word, she was beautiful.

  Marie-Christine had called her the day before, sounding desperate. “You’re really the only person I can talk to and I’m so confused and I just have to talk to someone.” Capucine relented reluctantly but hung on to the closed-end slot of lunch instead of the open-ended dinner that Marie-Christine was after.

  As she sat down, Capucine wondered
if even a quick lunch had been a mistake. Marie-Christine was as keyed up as if she was on drugs.

  L’Ecluse on the quai des Grands-Augustins was the only restaurant in Paris that Capucine genuinely loved and Alexandre refused to set foot in. It had opened way back when, when nitrogen wine dispensers had just become popular and grands crus by the glass were a novelty. Alexandre hated it because there were six of them and that made it a chain. Even worse, the food, tasty and simple, came from a central kitchen somewhere or other, and the hot dishes were warmed in a microwave. “Restaurants serve meals, not packaged snacks,” Alexandre would say with an exaggerated shudder.

  Both Capucine and Marie-Christine ordered the same things: chunky blocs of foie gras, which came with a basket of thick, toasted country bread, to be followed by slabs of puddinglike chocolate cake, the recipe for which was the house’s most closely guarded secret. Both were well worth the vast number of calories. They also ordered glasses of Loupiac, whose unctuous sweetness would see them through both the foie gras and the cake.

  Halfway through the foie gras they ran out of platitudes and gossip.

  “I’ve broken up with him,” Marie-Christine announced with drama.

  “Who?”

  “With Jean-Charles, my boyfriend.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love him. Well, I love being with him. And it wasn’t fair to Loïc.”

  “Fair?”

  “I know I’m not making any sense. It’s just that I’ve decided I have to leave Loïc, and I don’t want it to be because of Jean-Charles, since he means too much to me. Anyone would do the same, don’t you think?”

  Capucine put another forkful of the foie gras on a piece of toast and ate it carefully. It was delightful: creamy, and livery, and with just a hint of bitterness. The unctuousness of the Loupiac was perfect with it. This was so definitely the wrong restaurant for Marie-Christine’s revelations.