by Thomas Swan
Aukrust put down the receiver.
He came back to the young man who was using his shirt to wipe the blood from his face. Aukrust waved the paper.
“Are you André, or was that your cowardly friend who ran away?”
The young man spit at Aukrust, a feeble spray of blood and saliva that fell short on the floor.
“Get on your feet,” he commanded.
André, if indeed that was his name, stared blankly at Aukrust.
Aukrust snarled the command again. “On your feet, I said.”
“Take a shit,” André muttered.
Aukrust aimed a vicious kick at André’s shoulder, and as he did, André turned aside, rolled over and came up into a crouch, his right hand holding a double-edged, six-inch knife. Aukrust froze for an instant, sizing up the unexpected reversal. He took a step toward the length of pipe that lay between the two but nearer to André’s feet. André knew how to handle a knife and with the agility of a fencer stepped to his right and in the same motion sliced the knife across Aukrust’s arm. The blade cut through his shirt then across his arm. It happened so quickly Aukrust thought the knife had missed, then he felt a sting where the razor-sharp edge had cut his skin.
“Damn you!” Aukrust roared, and lunged forward. André tried stepping aside but too late, as one of Aukrust’s powerful hands hit him high in the chest and spun him a half turn. Aukrust grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the knife and twisted it until there was a cracking sound, and André shouted in horrible pain.
“I’ll break your other hand and both feet, you little bastard!”
Aukrust struck him on the side of the face, then hit him again causing André to moan and collapse to the floor, where he writhed in the pain that Aukrust had inflicted so skillfully.
“It would be my pleasure to continue,” Aukrust said, “but I have another purpose for you.” He picked up the knife, folded it, and slid it into his pocket. Then he unlocked the door into his workroom and went to his pharmacy, where he cleaned and bandaged the cut on his arm and applied a salve to the abrasions on the back of his head and on the painful split in his ear.
“It was foolish of Weisbord to send you here. How much did he pay?”
The young tough squeezed the hand with the broken finger in a vain attempt to stop the sharp pain that had traveled up his arm into his shoulder. André’s defiance gave way to fearful respect. “My finger,” he said pitifully; “can you help?”
“I’ll break another,” Aukrust said, as if he meant to do just that. “Answer my question, André, what did Weisbord pay you?”
“I’m not André, I am Pioli.” Uncontrollably, he began to cry.
Aukrust leaned down and carefully examined Pioli’s arm, then the hand. The phalange bone in the middle finger was torn clean and had pierced the skin. Aukrust stared at it with a certain fascination, holding on to Pioli’s shaking hand with what seemed to be genuine concern.
“Tell me how much Weisbord paid you.”
The youth sniffed back his tears but said nothing.
Aukrust’s grip tightened, and with no more effort than he would exert to remove a piece of lint from his sweater, he flicked a finger against the exposed bone. The pain was excruciating, and as Pioli tried to pull free, Aukrust’s hand tightened around his arm like giant pincers.
“Tell me!”
“A thousand francs,” Pioli gasped.
“Each?”
“For both.”
Aukrust let the arm go free. “You risk an arrest, maybe your life, for five hundred francs? You are very stupid, Pioli, or very desperate.”
Pioli pointed to the bandages Aukrust had put on the counter. He held up his hand.
“Get up,” Aukrust commanded.
Pioli had difficulty standing. He steadied himself against the display case and looked at Aukrust. “Please?”
Aukrust glowered and nodded toward the door. “Out!”
Pioli reached the door then turned back. “I know something you want to know.”
“Then tell me... and quickly.”
Pioli held up his hand again. “You’ll help me?”
Aukrust stared at Pioli, now looking very young and vulnerable. “If what you tell me is important.”
Pioli stepped toward him. “When you go to your home tonight there will be someone waiting for you. He is called LeToque, and he will do anything when he is paid enough money. Even kill.”
Chapter 25
Aukrust knew precisely where to insert the needle. He injected thirty mg of chloroprocaine, and when Pioli’s pain subsided, he sterilized the wound then deftly extended the finger, repositioning the bones in their original alignment, then splinted the broken finger and the adjacent index finger together. Aukrust gave Pioli a bottle of peroxide and a towel to rub over his cuts, where the blood was beginning to turn dark and harden. When he was reassembled into a more reasonable and less painful condition, Pioli said, with growing respect, “Merci.”
“I don’t want your thanks,” Aukrust said, “but you’ll stay with me until we find what kind of surprise LeToque has planned.” He instructed Pioli to remain on the floor while he inventoried his medicine case, removing some items and adding others from his pharmacy. One of the items he picked out was an aerosol can that was an inch in diameter and fit into the palm of his hand. After testing the spray, he replaced the cap and put the can in his shirt pocket. He also filled two small plastic bottles with a milky fluid and put them into the pockets of his sweater. He handed the medicine case to Pioli, relocked the door into his workroom, and secured the front of his shop. It was fifteen minutes past midnight when the station wagon pulled away from the curb and headed toward the suburban apartment Aukrust had rented in the town of Vallauris, a suburb to the east of Cannes. Vallauris was an ordinary community, where he would be unnoticed and where neighbors would be likely to confine their questions to the weather and the latest soccer scores. He had located an old building which had opened a hundred years earlier as a school, was made into a ceramics factory, then, in its final metamorphosis, it was gutted and rebuilt into cheap apartments.
Apparently Weisbord had gone to extraordinary lengths to find him, or as Margueritte predicted, the old lawyer had called in a few chips he was owed by the local police. Aukrust was now angry that he had signed a month-to-month lease under his own name instead of the name Metzger that had served him so well.
The buildings along the street were a mix of small houses, factories, and an old structure in the process of being converted into still more apartments. They walked close to these buildings, avoiding the small pool of light created by a single streetlamp and an occasional spotlight shining on the gates in the chainlink fences surrounding the factories. The local residents parked their Peugeots and Toyotas on the street or in the one small parking area, which adjoined a warehouse. He inspected each car, searching for an unfamiliar one that didn’t belong in the neighborhood. Then he spotted a silver Porsche 911.
Aukrust pointed at the car and whispered to Pioli, “Is that LeToque’s car?”
Apparently the anesthetic was wearing off, because Pioli’s concentration was on rubbing his sore hand. He nodded, “I think so.”
“I don’t want an opinion. Is that LeToque’s car?”
Pioli sized it up more carefully and said that it was.
“Go see if anyone’s in it, but do it carefully.”
Pioli crossed the street and worked his way to the rear of the Porsche. When he disappeared in the darkness, a distressing thought swept over Aukrust: The little bastard’s run off to warn LeToque. Seconds later and from behind him came Pioli’s voice. “For sure that’s his car; his girlfriend’s behind the wheel listening to the radio.”
He was relieved that Pioli had returned, but LeToque’s girlfriend was a problem because she had a clear view of the apartment’s front entrance. He went back to his car and took a flat box from his medicine case, and as he gave instructions to Pioli, he took a hypodermic from the case, plunged the
needle into a vial, and loaded the syringe, then pointed the needle straight up and squeezed a few drops from its tip. They approached the low-slung car from the rear. When Aukrust signaled, Pioli tapped a coin lightly on the rear window, then Aukrust rapped loudly against the driver’s door.
“Police,” he said firmly.
The window opened several inches.
“What have I done?” said a high-pitched, worried voice.
“Identification,” Aukrust demanded.
“I’m waiting for a friend. Is that illegal?”
“Get out of the car,” he said harshly.
After a few seconds the car door slowly opened and long slim legs in black stockings swung out, followed by the rest of a girl who was perhaps twenty, tall, and with large eyes surrounded by too much blue and purple makeup.
Aukrust took hold of her bare arm and expertly inserted the needle into the flesh near her shoulder. Her eyes widened instantly and stared helplessly as the needle was withdrawn. Her mouth opened as if to speak, and she collapsed. Aukrust caught her and pushed her sagging body into the car, pulled the seat belt around her, and turned off the radio. It all happened in less than a minute.
Pioli looked at the girl then at Aukrust and said with fright in his voice, “Is she dead?”
Aukrust shook his head. “It was past her bedtime, she’s asleep.”
There were six small apartments in the building where Aukrust lived, two on each floor, with no elevator and a single front entrance; fire-escape ladders were suspended from a window in each apartment in the rear. Aukrust’s apartment was on the first floor, to the left upon entering, and consisted of a bedroom, a combination living room/kitchen, and a bathroom. Several steps led up to a small porchlike slab of concrete and to the front entrance, which was a steel door painted brown to look like wood. Inside the entrance was a long, narrow hall with stairs to the upper floors at the back of the hall. The doors into the first-floor apartments were immediately inside the entrance, and under the staircase was another door that opened into a tiny room inside Aukrust’s apartment that at one time had been intended as a kitchen but now served as a bedroom closet. It had occurred to Aukrust that the door connecting the closet with the hall might some day be a necessary way to leave the apartment, but he had never considered it as a means by which he might enter it.
They took off their shoes, then Aukrust quietly unlocked the front door and guided Pioli to a cramped recess under the stairs in the back of the hall. Aukrust wished the quarrelsome couple who lived above him would come home at that moment, arguing as always after an evening of drinking, causing a perfect diversion. Speaking softly and slowly, Aukrust told Pioli what he wanted him to do, repeated the instructions, and put five hundred francs into his good hand.
“Do exactly as I told you,” he whispered, “and when you have finished, go immediately to the bus terminal and back to Nice. You will call me at my shop next week.” He put a hand over the sore bruises on Pioli’s neck, not to show compassion but to convey a clear message. “And tell no one about tonight. No one.”
Pioli went to the front door and let himself out with no more noise than the flapping of a sparrow’s wings. He put on his shoes and began to half-hum and half-sing a tuneless song as if he were coming home from a long, liquid evening with friends. He returned to the front door, rapped against it as he opened it, and when inside, closed the door firmly, and to be certain it was securely shut, opened and closed it again. He climbed the stairs, still singing, dropping his feet heavily on the wooden treads until he reached the top floor, where he pulled off his shoes and, with the same silence as before, retreated down the stairs and out into the night.
While Pioli was performing, Aukrust had worked his way into the closet, then into the bedroom, and when Pioli’s outrageous singing stopped, he stood at the door connecting the bedroom to the room in front where he imagined LeToque was waiting. Ten feet in front of him was a bed and a night table on which were a lamp, a telephone, and a clock radio with luminous green numbers. He took the receiver off the hook and placed it so the earpiece faced the door, the faint steady hum of a dial tone coming now from some place in the dark. In a minute, possibly half again that much time, the dial tone would change to another signal announcing that the phone was not set properly in its cradle. He took the aerosol can from his pocket and removed the cap.
The noise from the phone grew louder, now an annoying sound, purposely so, and perfectly pitched to penetrate into the next room.
“What’s that?” a voice said in a hoarse whisper.
Aukrust positioned himself just inside the door; a small amount of light from the faraway streetlamp found its way through the window. The only other light came from the green numerals that said the time was 1:04.
The pulsing noise from the telephone grew louder.
“Merde!” LeToque shouted. He was now in the doorway.
Aukrust guessed that if LeToque identified the noise as coming from the phone he would blame himself for not putting the receiver back properly. But it was just as likely that LeToque would wonder how the two parts of the phone had become separated, since he had not used the phone.
Based solely on Pioli’s inadequate description of LeToque as being thin, tough, and not very tall, it was not possible for Aukrust to assess his adversary. For certain, he was armed. But how? Weisbord had sent the young toughs to rough him up, and now he pondered if LeToque had been sent to search the apartment for the portrait and, if he didn’t find it, to deliver an even stronger message to Aukrust.
LeToque moved cautiously into the bedroom. “Damned telephone!” he muttered and searched for the source of the troubling sound, swearing in frustration. When he located the receiver he slammed it onto the base.
“Who did this?” LeToque demanded. “Who?”
Aukrust knew that LeToque was standing next to the bed, two or three feet from the green numerals in the clock. He aimed the nozzle of the aerosol can at that spot, and to assure that LeToque faced him, he made a soft, scratching sound, like a small animal. Then he pressed his thumb against a metal slide, releasing a whoosh of air. A wide spray shot out, enveloping LeToque in a yellow mist that made his eyes burn with the pain of a live fire. LeToque raised his gun and squeezed off two rounds before he dropped his arm and began frantically to rub his eyes. One of the bullets tore across the top of Aukrust’s left shoulder, and he fell to the floor before another shot might hit a more vulnerable spot. The shots had been muffled by a silencer, the sound like the clapping of hands.
The burning mist seeped into LeToque’s mouth and nose, and the agony increased as he thrashed on the bed, then rolled onto the floor, clutching at his throat and shouting for water. He got to his knees, then doubled over, groaning as the fire went into his chest. Aukrust put on a light and examined his own wound before finishing the job of putting LeToque under his control. The bullet had grazed a bone on the top of his shoulder, seven inches from the middle of his throat; the wound was more painful than serious.
Aukrust pulled LeToque to his feet and forced him onto the bed.“Quiet!” he commanded. When LeToque tried to wrench himself free, Aukrust forced him back onto the bed. The powerful acids had reached LeToque’s stomach, causing him to gag, then vomit. His body stiffened, and his breath came in short, painful bursts. “Water,” he pleaded in a barely audible whisper.
Aukrust took a small plastic bottle from his pocket and soaked the end of a towel he took from the bathroom. He patted LeToque’s face with it and squeezed drops onto his eyes.
Eagerly, LeToque tore the bottle from Aukrust’s hands and drank the contents.
“You will be surprised to learn that you were sprayed with nothing more than the oils extracted from plants and vegetables. Some very rare, of course, but others you will know as mustard. Also piperine, one of the exotic pepper plants.” Aukrust spoke dispassionately, in the tone of a scientist pleased by the results of a successful experiment. He found the gun under the bed, a small-caliber revolver t
hat could have done nasty damage from short range. He emptied it and slipped it into the drawer of his night table. Then he went into the bathroom to clean and bandage his own wound. When he returned, LeToque was still lying on the bed, moaning feebly and swearing viciously.
Aukrust said, “I was careless. But you were stupid.”
LeToque tried to reply, but could manage no more than an incoherent wheeze as his throat was all but paralyzed. The sound reminded Aukrust of Frédéric Weisbord after a severe coughing attack.
“The antidote will clear up your lungs and stomach.” He put another bottle containing the soothing milky fluid on the bed beside LeToque.
Aukrust put on his shirt. The clock now read 1:20. It had been a mere thirty minutes since he had put LeToque’s girlfriend to sleep. She would be awake but drowsy, and she and LeToque together would not add up to an intimidating partnership. But helping each other, they could manage to drive away in the silver Porsche.
Chapter 26
“It ’s a goddamned good thing the Paley collection went to the Modern,” Curt Berrien said, looking up from a generous splash of Wild Turkey he had just poured into a bucket-sized old-fashioned glass. “Otherwise we’d be wet-nursing a portrait of Paul Cézanne at a cost of about ten grand a week.”
It was nearing 5:30. The late afternoon sunlight was orange and warm and angled through the windows of Llewellyn’s third-floor study and spilled over a thick red and gold Persian rug. As the sun moved, Clyde uncurled, stretched, and moved with it.
“I talked with my old friend Chauncey Eaton at the Fine Arts in Boston,” Llewellyn said. “The poor guy needs some heavy consolation. It’s as if he’s lost his own brother.”
“Chauncey’s a sentimentalist, but I agree,” Berrien said. “There’s a crazy mentality out there that says it only happens to the other guy, but guess what? Sooner or later you’re the other guy!” Berrien waggled a finger at the portrait. “Lew, you can’t protect that painting with a dog, Fraser, and whatever goddamned kind of alarm system you’ve installed. The crazy SOBs that are burning up the portraits are too clever, and someone, namely, you, could get hurt pretty badly.”
