by Gerald Jay
“Apparently some do,” the doctor insisted. “Strange would be if they were both killed by lightning. Or killed by a shark while swimming in the Seine. But toxic mushrooms can make a person quite sick, and there are some phalloides that kill people. I understand even experienced mushroom hunters—gourmets, as well—may mistake deadly members of that family for edible ones.”
“Did you send blood samples to the central laboratory of the Paris police?”
“Why should we?” he bristled. “There was no official request. Nothing irregular. Let me assure you, Inspector, this was an accident.”
As soon as the doctor had gotten off the phone, Mazarelle spoke to the head nurse and obtained the rue de Berri address of the two men. He left at once, hoping to arrive at their apartment before anything had been touched. It was not far from the Champs Élysée, a well-tended, late-nineteenth-century art nouveau building with narrow curving balconies. He pushed open the heavy wrought iron and glass front door.
The concierge’s loge appeared to be empty, but he knocked anyway.
“Yes?” A gray head popped out from behind a screen. An alert woman in a blue cardigan looked him up and down. It was plain she didn’t approve of anyone quite so large. “How can I help you?”
A typical cranky Parisian concierge. What she really meant was I’m busy. So make it snappy. Mazarelle showed her his police ID, explaining that he wanted the key to the Pellerin and Blond apartment.
“You too?” She told him they were upstairs now cleaning it out.
The inspector didn’t care for the news. “Who?”
“Government agents. From the Quai d’Orsay with a court order. They’ve been taking out boxes of stuff for the past hour. Said they were almost finished. I told them I wanted a receipt for every single thing they take.”
“Okay, okay! What apartment?”
“Fourth floor.”
Mazarelle ran into the lobby and repeatedly jabbed the elevator button. The dangling cables remained motionless, the elevator stalled somewhere in the building’s upper regions. Tired of waiting, he thundered up the crimson-carpeted staircase that circled the open elevator shaft, and by the time he reached the third floor his legs were as tight as banjo strings. Slowing to catch his breath, he thought he heard the elevator going down and, turning, saw the top of the descending car. He hurried to the fourth floor and rang the bell, pounded on the door. It was unlocked.
Mazarelle called but no one answered. He rushed into the apartment and out onto the balcony. Leaning over the wrought-iron railing, he spotted three men in raincoats running to the black Citroën parked not far from the front door. All three carried boxes. Mazarelle’s booming voice filled the narrow street, but they didn’t even glance up out of curiosity, unwilling to show their faces. The inspector went back inside to see what they’d left behind.
It was a large, fancy, bourgeois apartment with marble-topped tables and gilt-framed mirrors. Pellerin and Blond seemed to have been doing well for themselves. Whatever those three guys had taken it wasn’t the furniture. Mazarelle found what was probably missing behind the door marked P&B CONSULTING. Except for a few meaningless scraps of paper left on the floor and some unattached wires, the room was empty. The trio had descended like driver ants and cleaned out everything in their path. Mazarelle imagined the room had once been full of computers, printers, disks, copiers, correspondence, file cabinets, travel records, appointment calendars, checkbooks, address books, reference books, maps. Who knew what else?
He walked into the kitchen. It was a mess. The stink of soured milk turned his stomach. Dirty dishes and pots in the sink; piles of old newspapers, magazines, and advertisements on the floor. He went through the bags and boxes in the corner, but they were empty. He picked up a large but otherwise ordinary shipping box beneath the others. The colorful gift box inside was what interested him. Though he’d seen many just like it in gift shops all over the Dordogne promising irresistible Trésors de Périgord with pictures of the local gourmet delicacies they contained, this one was empty. But what it did have was an unsigned white card on which was written “Félicitations et bon appétit.”
Unable to bear the smell any longer, Mazarelle grabbed the two boxes and carried them into the living room, his backside sinking like a medicine ball into the white pneumatic pillow on the brocade couch. He searched for his pipe, which still had some tobacco in it, and lit up. A small welcome-back gift of Philosophe from his friend Monsieur Small.
Mazarelle picked up the white card and studied it. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his wallet. Ever since his long-haired drinking buddy at the Café Valon had made his sketch of the Munich team’s goal, Mazarelle had been carrying the folded paper napkin around with him like a lucky charm. Which it might yet prove to be. There were striking similarities in the handwriting. The letters on both the card and the napkin bending italically as if in a high wind, the c in “Félicitations” as glum and closed mouth as in the name Schmeichel, the a in appétit crookback like that in Basler.
Mazarelle felt a shock of recognition. He was certain that this message had been written by the Taziac murderer. If the card in fact accompanied a gift of deadly mushrooms, then its ironic good wishes reeked of the German’s sense of humor. The inspector needed no further evidence. He knew without a doubt that the food poisoning of Pellerin and Blond was no accident. It was murder. Even more extraordinary, the two former French agents would seem to have been killed by a dead man. Was it une flèche du Parthe, a final stab at payback? And from beyond the grave? If so, add two more bodies to the German’s hit list.
Pulling himself up, the inspector went over to the window, sat down by the telephone at the small desk. He knew he’d made a remarkable discovery. He had to tell someone about what really happened to Pellerin and Blond. Perhaps their former boss at the DGSE. But the three men hadn’t come from the DGSE. The concierge said the Quai d’Orsay had sent them, the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. What did they want here? If he called the ministry now, he knew they’d tell him nothing. And, besides, how could he claim murder when even the head doctor at the emergency center of the Hôtel-Dieu called their deaths accidental? Though he doubted there was anything to be done, perhaps his commissaire would have some advice.
Picking up the receiver, he began to dial the commissariat, when he realized he was holding a dead phone. He slammed it down. Someone had already disconnected the telephone line. Possibly the same someone who was interested enough to clean out their office.
Mazarelle dropped the gift card into the breast pocket of his jacket, scanned the apartment, and opened the door. As he waited for the elevator, he thought back to his talk with Molly at the bakery. Recalling her telling him that Barmeyer had promised her a meal she would never forget—a mushroom omelet. She was lucky to get out of that house alive.
Downstairs the concierge stopped him at the front door.
“Where’s my key?”
“You never gave it to me. The apartment was open,” he said, and let the door slam behind him.
Outside in the street, the sky had clouded over and it was beginning to drizzle. In a few long strides he crossed the narrow rue de Ponthieu and ducked into the arcade, taking a shortcut to the Champs Élysée. At the end closest to Ponthieu—a shoe store, a bookshop, a bureau de change—it was a little worn with age, having seen better days. At the far end, the one closer to the great boulevard, were the fashionable boutiques. Mazarelle paused in front of the bookshop to glance at the tall racks of postcards. The popular Paris tourist attractions on one rack, on the other the leading stars of French cinema with a sprinkling of such international icons as Charlot, Garbo, Bogart, and Shirley Temple.
He’d just picked out a card—one of Louise’s favorites, Jean Gabin—to send her a few words, when he caught a head-spinning whiff of cheap exotic perfume. Staring up at him, a short, bony young woman wearing spike-heeled boots and a denim skirt the size of a doily. She pointed to the top of the rack, her lashes flutter
ing, and said, “I need help.”
Mazarelle held up the picture of Alain Delon. “This one?”
She pointed to the card next to it.
“This?” He held up Depardieu and she smiled. It was then that he felt a hand sliding across his bottom and stealthily slipping into his back pocket. His wallet twitched, came alive, gliding up and away as if it had wings. Snatching it out of the air, Mazarelle noted the hand attached to the wallet was hers.
“Let me go, you bastard! You’re crushing my fingers.” She had a voice like a foghorn, stopping people in their tracks.
The inspector glanced around to see if she was part of a team. Fabriani had warned them about gangs of pickpockets roving like bedbugs all over the city. Attacking tourists, especially Japanese tourists, whom they considered easy marks. Did she think he was a Japanese tourist? Mazarelle found that hilarious.
“You’d better try another line of work,” he advised her. “I’m a cop.”
Irate, she shouted, “Are you some sort of plainclothes flic faggot?” The bystanders were having a good time.
“Don’t push me, chérie. Just beat it before I decide to take you in. Now fuck off! With your luck you’d do better selling crutches.”
She fled, scurrying away while she still had the chance.
When the inspector came out the other side of the arcade, the lights were on up and down the Champs Élysée. Despite the drizzle and open umbrellas, the boulevard was crowded with window-shoppers. Traffic was a nightmare. Though he suspected that back in the apartment Michou was already sitting on her favorite windowsill, her nose pressed up against the cool glass, watching for him, she was going to have to wait a little longer for dinner. Caught in the current of the crowd, he passed Franklin Roosevelt and walked on toward Clemenceau. Enjoying the fresh air, the smell of the drizzle. He wanted to stay outside just a little longer before going down into the Métro.
As he walked, Mazarelle mulled over the case of the late Pellerin and Blond, their shadowy doings. Their official visitors today seemed to confirm that the two of them were engaged in some illicit political scheme. Probably freelancing for a client who needed deniability. As a form of risk management, Pellerin and Blond would necessarily have kept their distance from anything French. He supposed that was why they went to Germany for their killer. But who was their client? And why did that client want Phillips dead? These were the questions that haunted him. The unfinished business he’d brought with him from Taziac. Murders outsourced to private contractors could be shrouded in multiple layers of obscurity. Impenetrable by normal police work. Difficult, maybe impossible to resolve. But Mazarelle was an optimist. Eventually drowned corpses rose to the surface. The inspector hoped he’d be there to get the answers, that one day he’d discover who green-lighted the Taziac murders. The real name of Klaus Reiner.
Coincidentally it was then he heard it, the loud, hysterical laughter that he’d never forget. Like the wild, thrilling soprano saxophone of Sidney Bechet. Amid the blaring horns, the barking dogs, the piercing sound seemed to come from a rowdy group of young people on the other side of the avenue. A sudden knife-edged gust of wind swirled around and through him, chilling his bones, and the rain began to come down in sheets. Mazarelle turned up the collar on his jacket. What he needed was a raincoat, a glass of whiskey, a dry pair of socks. He wasn’t very far now from the Clemenceau station. Clenching his empty pipe in his teeth and stuffing his hands in his pockets, the inspector—head down and buffeted by the rain—limped hurriedly along the boulevard. Pulse normal, lungs clear, heartbeat a steady clip-clop.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is a work of fiction, and all of the characters in it are fictions or, if in any way similar to actual individuals with familiar names, are treated as fictions. Though the picturesque village of Taziac is imaginary, it resembles many found in southwestern France in the vicinity of the Dordogne River. Several events, such as the U.N. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, actually did occur, as did the memorable UEFA Champions League Final soccer game in Barcelona between Manchester United and Bayern Münich—the bombing in early May 1999 and the game later that month. I’ve taken the liberty of setting the game in July of the same year. Unhappily for my ardent German fan, Klaus Reiner, the score remained exactly the same in art as in life—Manchester United 2, Bayern Münich 1. Georges Braque’s small cubist portrait of Gertrude Stein exists, as far as I know, exclusively in this novel.
My thanks to all of the following for their help with the manuscript, which I greatly appreciate: Cal Bedient, Georges and Anne Borchardt, Jerome Charyn, Arnaud Desjardins, Ronit Feldman, Rob Goldberg, Michael Lopez, Nancy Marmer, members of the Gendarmerie d’Issigeac, Jörg-Michael Schwarz, Cork Smith, and Nan Talese.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gerald Jay is a nom de plume. He lives in New York City, and is at work on a second Mazarelle novel.
