by Gerald Jay
Reiner leaned his bicycle against the empty telephone booth. With the door closed, it was warm inside. The afternoon sun beat on the glass, where a wasp shrugged its paper-thin, pale yellow wings. Reiner turned his back to the glare and dialed the long number. As he waited for someone to pick up the phone, he recalled drizzly Zurich and the comforting solidity of the gray bank building with its thick granite walls, its marble floors. He’d been most impressed by the contrast between the noisy bustle on the bank’s main floor and the mortuary hush and kid-glove deference that greeted him upstairs. Finally someone answered.
Reiner asked for Monsieur Spada in Numbered Accounts. Identifying himself to Spada’s satisfaction, he told him precisely what he wanted. In less than five minutes, the accommodating bank officer was back on the line with the information.
Reiner smiled. He liked doing business with reliable people. But in any event, he never made a move until at least half the amount agreed upon was deposited in his account. It was one of five that he’d tucked away in different corners of the world. He thought of the money in them as Schlafmünzen, his sleeping coins. Though his bank in Monte Carlo would have been more convenient for this job, Reiner, fearing the proximity and control of France, had decided not to use it. If the French ever got lucky and discovered that account, they could squeeze Monte Carlo for information about him that they’d have a hard time getting from the tight-lipped Swiss.
He hung up the receiver. “Sehr gut.” With a lightning motion, his palm came down on the wasp, smashing it against the glass. “Tomorrow then,” he told himself.
Reiner had a good idea why the two retired French intelligence agents wanted him for the job rather than doing it themselves. He wasn’t so stupid that he allowed flattery to turn his head. Pellerin and his beefy boyfriend were clearly keeping their distance, intent on insulating themselves from him and from what very soon was about to happen. If pressured, they’d cut him adrift without a second thought. He was well prepared for that. Wiping the delicate silky wings off his hand, he picked up his bicycle. It was then he noticed the rear tire.
Reiner walked the bike over to the gas station. “Avez-vous une pompe?” he asked the old guy in the office. Without looking up from his newspaper, he pointed to the hose hanging outside on the wall and told him to help himself. The tire seemed to hold the air he put in okay. Reiner crouched down, spit on his index finger, and wet the rear valve, looking for a leak. As he watched the slow bubble form, a gray Mercedes roared into the station and pulled up to the gas pump. The car’s twelve-star EEC license plate had a D on it, but when the couple got out Reiner could tell that only the middle-aged driver was German. From Munich, he guessed by the accent. The curvy young blonde looked to him like a Natasha. While the attendant filled the tank, they went inside to use the toilet.
The newly filled tire, despite its leak, would do to ride back on. It wasn’t that far, and he’d neither the time nor desire to fix it. Reiner thanked the guy for his air and, as he climbed on his bike, admired the sleek German car. The attendant nodded. But expensive, he said, pointing to the gasoline pump, where the dials for liters and francs crazily raced each other higher and higher. The big, pricey car guzzled gas the way his son put away wine. That’s why he never showed up for work here on time. “Salaud,” he complained.
The old fool understood nothing about German engineering and the S500. Although it had a powerful 5.0 liter engine, Mercedes-Benz had developed an automatic cylinder shut-off system that reduced fuel consumption by 7 percent. As soon as the V-8 engine dropped into part-load operation, its electronic management system would deactivate cylinders 2 and 3 on the right bank and 5 and 8 on the left, effectively reducing the fuel consumption. A beautifully made machine, the S500. Reiner knew all about Mercedes-Benz cars. Could take them apart blindfolded. He’d have no need for a flashlight tonight, he thought as he pedaled merrily away on his slowly leaking tire.
The Phillipses had gone to bed late. But the restless Ann Marie couldn’t sleep and, despite plans to visit Sarlat with Judy the following day for sightseeing and shopping, she stayed up reading Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, a novel she’d found downstairs in the bookcase. Along with the English policeman, she too had been wondering what the three Indian jugglers seen in the neighborhood had to do with the disappearance of Miss Verinder’s enormous diamond, when she heard them scratching at the window, trying to break into the house. Opening her eyes wide, Ann Marie sat bolt upright. The sound had awakened her. Thankfully, the small bedside lamp was still on. She swiveled her head from side to side as she tried to pin down what it was—weird, frantic scraping sounds that resembled bony skeletal fingers clawing their way out of a sealed vault. She looked up. The noise seemed to be coming from directly overhead.
“Woodchucks,” said a sleepy Schuyler awakened by the commotion. He remembered the ferocity of the digging under the cabin they once rented in the Laurentians. “But what are they doing up there?”
“Bats.”
“Well … maybe.” He pulled up his blanket and turned over. “Could you please shut off the light, dear?”
“Taisez-vous!” Ann Marie shouted at the razor-toothed nocturnal revelers, but the racket continued. Picking up her book from the floor, she hurled it at the ceiling—all at once, silence.
“That’s better.” Rather pleased with herself, she crawled back into bed, switched off the light, and, burying her head under the blanket, was soon fast asleep.
But that night there would be no rest for Schuyler. Unable to get back to sleep, he climbed out of bed. It was warm in the room, but at a little after three, he’d no wish to go downstairs. He carefully unlocked the French doors and slipped out into the pleasantly cool air on the balcony. Glancing up, he scanned the canopy of stars. The moonlight silvered the treetops, the thin ribbon of road, and the fields beyond. The silence was magical. Schuyler was astonished at how long it had been since he last thought about anything that had to do with his work and wondered why he was doing so now. Guilt, he supposed, smiling. These days in Taziac with Ann Marie and Ben and Judy had been a wonderful change. He was thinking what a good time they were all having when he heard something moving on the dirt road below.
Though he couldn’t see through the trees, he imagined from the sound that it was a large animal. He’d seen deer in the fields while driving. Or perhaps one of the neighbor’s cows had wandered away from the herd. The footsteps, though not loud, grew increasingly clear in the stillness. They sounded almost human the closer they came to the house. He searched the shadows, straining his eyes.
The shape that emerged into the pale moonlight was unquestionably human. Schuyler pulled back from the balcony railing lest he be seen. He’d no idea who it was. No one he recognized. The dark figure moved furtively up the hill to the top and, just before disappearing behind the house, turned.
The moonlight flashed on something in the figure’s hand. Schuyler shifted his weight and felt a sudden sharp pain in his right thigh. Only a cramp, he guessed, but it was almost as if he’d been hit by a bullet. Damnit, he thought, annoyed with himself for not yelling at the poacher. Hunting was forbidden anywhere in France at night.
Of course, he might have been wrong about the gun, but it had looked like a rifle barrel to him. The poacher was probably after rabbits or some nocturnal feeder. Rabbits were all over the neighborhood. Schuyler had nothing against hunting and wasn’t a bad shot himself, but people with guns trespassing about at night gave him the creeps.
The next morning at breakfast Ann Marie was full of their previous evening’s adventure with the bats in the tower. She explained to Judy and Ben, who had a nasty hangover, how they had finally gotten to sleep after being shaken out of bed by the weird noises of the bats.
“Owls,” Ben corrected irritably.
Ann Marie didn’t think so.
Judy noted her husband’s badly bloodshot eyes and, intent on keeping the peace, recounted what Monsieur Chambouvard, the farmer across the road, had told the
m about the famous owls of Taziac.
Ann Marie looked at Schuyler. They both had to admit they could be wrong. Under the circumstances, Schuyler said nothing about the phantom poacher he’d seen. In the muted dove-gray morning light, he seemed as gossamer as dreamland.
The weatherman predicted rain and clouds for that day, and the map on the small television screen showed ominous black thunderheads and flashing bolts of lightning hovering over Périgueux, Bergerac, Agen, and Cahors. No rain yet, thought Reiner, glancing out the kitchen window, but a thunderstorm sounded promising. The ideal weather for an accident. He stirred the pot on the stove and lowered the flame.
The guy being interviewed was Dr. Claude Roehn of the Institut Pasteur. He seemed to know all about bovine spongiform encephalopathy and a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease transmitted to humans from infected cows. Roehn said it caused spongy holes in the brain and was invariably fatal. The next person to appear was a young farmer from Fougères who had been accused of selling his herd and concealing the fact that one of his animals may have died of BSE. He claimed he knew nothing about mad cows. He was no scientist. He insisted that the loss of his entire herd would have put him out of business.
The woman interviewing the farmer felt no sympathy for him. Reiner, on the other hand, recognized a soul brother. True, the guy was a selfish son of a bitch, but it was either that or the poorhouse. Enlightened self-interest. Wasn’t that what capitalism was all about? People had to survive somehow. Speaking of which … perhaps it was time for him to cut back on steak and other red meat. In pursuit of better health, he’d already eliminated such favorites from his diet as coffee, eggs, butter, heavy cream, and sauerkraut. Turning the burner off before the milk boiled, Reiner poured his cocoa into a mug, shut off the TV, and went upstairs.
The window in the upstairs hallway was the only one in the house that had an unobstructed view of the property next door. He sipped his cocoa and contemplated the red tile roof of L’Ermitage, less than fifty meters away. Putting down his mug, he picked up the Zeiss binoculars from the table and trained them on the back of the house. He had seen the blue Peugeot leave earlier that morning with the two women. So far so good. With any luck they’d be gone all day. The other two cars—Ali’s VW and the Phillipses’ big, wine red Mercedes—were exactly where they’d been when last he looked. It was merely a matter of patience now. Even though he knew how the drama would end, it was always exciting to watch a live performance. As usual, the hard part was waiting for the curtain to rise.
First came the drizzle and then the wind. Next the low, rumbling thunder, hinting at the drenching downpour to follow. The trees shook and the sky darkened. He could barely make out Ali as he ran to his VW and jumped in. Reiner quickly adjusted the binoculars and watched the little white car disappear down the road. Though he wasn’t counting on the Arab going home for lunch, as he occasionally did, it was high on Reiner’s wish list. The fewer spectators the better.
Not long afterward, the threatening sky opened and a deluge cascaded down. Reiner pulled on his rain parka. He was about to leave for the Total station to call L’Ermitage to report Madame Phillips’s accident to her husband, when he thought he heard a car door slam. He ran back to the window. The Mercedes was revving up. Phillips hadn’t moved his car since he arrived. Reiner couldn’t believe it. Most of his victims went to their deaths, kicking and screaming, but this Phillips couldn’t wait to lay his head on the block. Reiner snatched up the binoculars. It was impossible to see through the car’s tinted windows. As the Mercedes, gathering speed, splashed through the mud, and plunged down the hill, Reiner watched with a fixed intensity to see that everything worked smoothly, confident that it would. The streaking car suddenly was swallowed up behind the green hillside, dense with ferns and trees. If the Mercedes hit a linden or fir head-on at that speed, his job was done.
Reiner would have much preferred a simple fall onto a hard surface from a height of at least twenty-two meters. The police barely noticed such accidents. All that was needed was a rooftop, a balcony, an elevator shaft, an open window. But this was the country. Fortunately for Reiner, it was a German car.
The Mercedes was still going when he caught sight of it again. Speeding out of control and racing faster and faster like a toboggan down a chute. It had occurred to him that the car might get all the way down to the bottom of the hill without slamming into anything, but it seemed very unlikely. And the faster it went, the better. He could hear the horn blowing frantically as if the panic-stricken driver were pressing it with all his might. Moving his binoculars a little to the right, Reiner saw the oncoming gravel truck on the road below. There was so little traffic past their house that, despite the quarry, this sort of coincidental stroke of luck had seemed one in a million.
The truck driver slammed on his brakes. The timing of the collision would be so perfect there’d be no one left to tell the tale. Reiner held his breath as the eighteen-wheeler skidded on the rain-slick tarmac and began to jackknife, sending up an ear-piercing, jagged shriek as the Mercedes, horn still blaring, hurtled across the road in front of the truck and flew into the wheat field on the other side. Barreling into one huge wheel of hay after another, it knocked them down like tenpins until the slowing car flipped over on its side and came quietly to rest, the two upended tires spinning like roulette wheels.
The trucker jumped out of his cab and raced into the muddy field. He ran to the car and, climbing on top, pulled open the door to see if anybody was still alive. The face of the man behind the wheel was chalky white.
“Ça va?” called the trucker.
His hands shaking, the driver fumbled with his seat belt, trying unsuccessfully to unbuckle it. The trucker reached in to help him. Rattled and confused, Ben babbled that he didn’t know, that he’d no idea what the hell had happened. Maybe he did something wrong. It wasn’t his car, he said. He had borrowed his friend’s to go buy some Scotch. All he knew was the brakes didn’t work.
Struggling to free him, the trucker was amazed the damn fool was still alive. Lucky for him the car was built like a bulldozer. Even so, this guy must have been born under a lucky star. Strange, he thought, that an expensive car like this had no air bags. With the trucker’s help, Ben crawled out with barely a scratch and stood up shakily, the rain pouring down on his head. It felt wonderful.
Reiner, who’d been at the window watching everything, slammed down his binoculars in disgust. He loathed surprises. Picking up his cocoa, he saw he’d nothing left and let out a furious howl. “Verdammte Scheisse!” he shouted, hurling the mug with all his might against the wall, where it shattered.
10
CAFÉ LE RICHE, BERGERAC
Mazarelle, when the call came two days later, wasn’t expecting it, though he was not without hope. He’d notified banks throughout the region of the stolen credit card, and it had turned up right under his nose in Bergerac. The way things often do in police work. Goyard, the bank manager at the local BNP branch on the rue Neuve d’Argenson, reported that he had Monsieur Reece’s missing Visa in his hand. The inspector said, “I’ll be right over.”
Before entering the bank, Mazarelle followed the arrow around to the side of the building where the ATM was located. He peered through the locked glass door and was pleased to see a surveillance camera high on the wall.
Goyard rose from his desk to shake the inspector’s hand when he came in, clearly impressed by how quickly he’d arrived. Mazarelle took the proffered Visa card by the edges as if it were one of his cherished Fats Waller records and examined it, then, carefully turning it over, studied Benjamin Reece’s signature. The extravagant swirling loops of the American’s capital letters fit the man he’d met to a T.
In reply to the inspector’s question, Goyard said that their ATM had seized the card late the previous evening when someone had tried several times and failed to enter the correct PIN. Mazarelle placed the plastic card into a cellophane envelope he’d brought. Then he asked the manager to drop by the comm
issariat that afternoon for fingerprinting. The banker turned pale. “A formality,” Mazarelle explained. “Merely a way to eliminate your prints from any others on the card.”
Before leaving, he mentioned the surveillance camera. Goyard said, “Yes, yes, of course you can have any pictures. Take the tape.” If it contained what he needed, Mazarelle would call it a good day’s work.
On the Place Gambetta in Bergerac the sidewalk tables in front of the Café le Riche were crowded with couples drinking. PMU—short for Pari Mutuel Urbain, the French state-controlled sports betting system—on the green front door promised the excitement of live thoroughbred racing from Paris. Inside the smoke-filled café, the long communal tables were occupied largely by sullen dark-skinned men who looked Spanish or North African. They spoke softly among themselves, shifted their weight uneasily on the creaky wooden chairs, their dark eyes always returning to the raised television screens on the side walls as they waited for the next race.
Ali sat talking intently to his round-faced, unshaven, ponytailed pal Rabo, who had enough gaudy rings on his fingers to be a pimp. Suddenly Ali wheeled around. “What do you say, Grandma?” he asked the elderly woman seated behind them, scanning a racing form. “Who do you pick in the fifth?”
The old lady took her glasses off and stared at him. Tied to a cord around her neck, the glasses hung down on her large, matronly bosom.
“Métronome. At five to one, it’s a steal.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
He had seen her and her dyke friend—the tight little gray-haired package in dungarees standing over by the bar who, with the sleeves of her blue work shirt rolled to the elbows, resembled Popeye the sailor—clean up on the last three races, while all his stiffs ran out of the money. Ali hurried up to place a bet on Métronome before it was too late.
