Back in the Real World

by Marvin Albert

  “Who’s the luggage maker?” I asked Mona. She gave me the name, and I was suitably impressed. “Congratulations. Sounds like the latest chapter in the uninterrupted rise of Mona Vaillant.”

  She frowned, the way she’d been frowning while listening to August Pilon. “There have been interruptions.”

  “Recently?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Something you had to hire Pilon for?”

  This time she didn’t hesitate. She changed the subject. “You’ve been away most of the summer.”

  I nodded. “Five weeks.” Most of that time had been spent in Italy, posing as a buyer for an American drugstore chain in order to nail a pirate company turning out useless medicines on which they put faked brand labels of a top pharmaceutical firm. “But I’ve been back almost two weeks, Mona. Maybe you didn’t know. Or maybe you just don’t believe in giving your business to old friends.”

  “You’re more than a friend. You’re practically family.”

  “Oh. That explains it.”

  She smiled. But it was forced. “You’re getting that look again, Pierre-Ange.”

  Pierre-Ange was what my mother had named me: not an unusual name in France. But when I’d started living with my father’s parents they’d altered it to Peter—for which I was grateful. Pete was a lot more comfortable for a kid growing up in Chicago. Also later in the service, and when I joined the police force under the sponsorship of my grandfather, who was a captain before retirement. Pete or Peter: neither led to the kind of cracks some Americans came up with when they figured out that Pierre-Ange could be literally translated as Stone Angel—something that wouldn’t occur to anyone French.

  “I have that look,” I told Mona, “because if you’ve got trouble you should have come to me with it. August Pilon is good at his job. I’m better.”

  “But you are also a friend to every member of my family. A good friend. And it’s one of them who is causing the problem. I suspected that it had to be. What Monsieur Pilon just told me confirms that suspicion.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know yet. I think Monsieur Pilon does, but he doesn’t want to tell me until he’s absolutely certain.”

  “Whatever the problem is,” I said, “I’d handle it in a way that would give all of you the least hurt. Pilon won’t.”

  “You might also be inclined to protect the one who…has done something unpleasant.”

  “Meaning you didn’t trust me to tell you whatever I found out.”

  “I trust you as much as I’ve always trusted everyone in my family,” she said with an edgy bitterness. “And that turns out to have been a mistake.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  She nodded gravely. “Very bad.”

  Chapter 3

  Before I could pry any more out of Mona she said, quickly and quietly, “There’s Gilles. Please don’t mention this to him or to anyone else.”

  Gilles Vaillant didn’t have the good looks of his mother or sister. He was almost my height but burly, verging on fat, and he’d started going bald in his twenties. His eyes were shy and his mouth was stubborn. He treated most people with a reserved politeness. But his warmth with the few he cared for went deep. He grabbed my hand with a welcoming smile. “Pete, how long have you been back?” He liked to practice his English on me. He’d taken postgraduate business management courses in California and New York after finishing the Hautes Études Commerciales in Paris.

  “A couple weeks,” I told him, and I asked after his wife and son.

  “Alain is visiting this summer with Anne-Marie’s parents up near La Brigue. The mountain air is good for his sinus condition.” Gilles sat down and added, with apparent lack of interest, “Anne-Marie is spending the day in Antibes with some new friends she’s acquired. I believe they’re going sailing.”

  Mona said to him, “I was just about to tell Pierre-Ange what Crow has done.”

  I had introduced Frank Crowley to the Vaillant family as “Crow”, and they’d been calling him that ever since. Between Vietnam and his first visit to the Riviera Crow had built a reputation around Los Angeles as a genius at computer programming. He’d planned to spend a week’s vacation as my houseguest and then return to his job. But he fell in love with the area—and with Mona’s daughter, Nathalie. He sold out his interests in California, bought the house near La Turbie, and started a computer company in Nice with a French partner the week before he and Nathalie got married.

  “What has Crow done?” I asked.

  “He’s quit his company.” Mona’s tone was worried—a different sort of worry than when she’d spoken of whatever Pilon was doing for her. “He suddenly sold his share to his partner and decided to retire.”

  Gilles made a placating gesture in his mother’s direction. “Crow simply got tired of the daily grind. He needs some time off, that’s all. It’s not so terrible.”

  “He’s talking about taking the rest of his life off,” Mona retorted.

  Gilles looked at me. “You didn’t know about it?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t seen Crow in a couple months. How is Nathalie taking it?”

  Mona answered. “She’s stunned. What would you expect? Nathalie married an exciting man with an enormous amount of drive and ambition. And then he suddenly announces he doesn’t want to work anymore.”

  “You’re exaggerating it,” Gilles told her quietly. “There’s his photography.”

  “That’s his hobby, not his profession.” Mona turned back to me. “I’d appreciate it if you talked to him. You’ve known Crow longest.”

  “Mama,” Gilles said, “don’t interfere. Let them work it out for themselves.”

  “There has to be something wrong with Crow,” she insisted. “Nathalie thinks so, too. A man who is happy doesn’t want to change his life so abruptly and drastically.”

  “Don’t interfere,” Gilles repeated uncomfortably. “When a couple has problems, the best thing everybody else can do is to keep out of it.”

  It sounded to me as if he was talking about his own marriage.

  He looked at his watch and stood up. “We have to go now or we’ll be late.”

  Mona nodded and rose to her feet. “Please talk to Crow,” she asked me quietly. Gilles turned away and started out of the bar. Mona kissed me good-bye and said more softly, “And don’t be angry with me—about that other matter.”

  * * * *

  I left shortly after they did. Outside there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The noon heat was a dense weight that felt like a load of lead across my head and shoulders when I stepped into the sunlight. I took off my jacket and put on my sunglasses before walking toward the garage where I’d left my car.

  I went around the Place du Casino thinking about what Crow had done. And about what somebody else had done that was bad enough to make Mona hire August Pilon. Two family problems, but unrelated: Mona wanted me to talk to Crow, and she didn’t want me to poke my nose into the other matter.

  As I reached the other side of the place I suddenly stopped thinking about both problems.

  Because I spotted Arlette Alfani having herself a rich dessert on the terrace of the Café de Paris. And Arlette, doing anything at all or nothing at all, was one young woman capable of diverting a miser’s attention away from a bright new stack of gold coins.

  Chapter 4

  Alfani had been her maiden name. Now she was a contessa, and her last name was Vallaresso. The change had come with her marriage a year before to a young Italian nobleman she’d met in Paris. But I hadn’t seen Arlette in two years—since she’d gone off to Paris to finish law school.

  She had been twenty-five then, making her twenty-seven now. She’d changed her hairstyle. Two years before it had been long and flowing. Now it was cropped short and boyish. On her that was pure perversity. Nothing could make Arlette look like a boy.

  She was making fast work of a sugar crepe topped with gobs of whipped cream. The lusty appetite wasn’t new: Arlette didn
’t believe in watching her figure. She reasoned that as long as enough other people watched it she didn’t have to worry. Quite right. And still true, judging by what she did to make faded jeans and a V-necked T-shirt with deeply scooped sides look sensational.

  Most people took a long time before noticing anything else about Arlette. Like the attentive eyes. Or the fact that her IQ topped out somewhere around the genius level.

  Arlette saw me and was on her feet with her arms tight around my neck an instant later. I took hold of her supple waist and gently detached her pelvis from mine.

  “Arlette, you’ll get us arrested.”

  “Not here, darling. Only in Italy. You can get arrested for kissing your own husband in public there.”

  That seemed to remind her: she kissed me on the mouth, transferring some whipped cream from her lips to mine. She regarded that with a little smile. Then she used a fingertip to remove the cream from my mouth and sucked it between her ripe lips.

  “Speaking of Italy and husbands,” I said, “how is your Italian husband?”

  Arlette sat down, tugging me into the chair beside her. “About to become my ex-husband,” she told me matter-of-factly. “At the moment he’s down at his palazzo in Sicily, sulking about it.”

  Half the married couples I knew seemed to be suddenly coming apart. I don’t know why that aspect of modern life should have continued to surprise me. My own marriage had bitten the dust back when I was still working as a federal narc in the States.

  I said, “Short marriage.”

  Arlette made a rueful face. “Giovanni thought it was so amusing, marrying a pretty girl who was smart enough to get through law school. He boasted about it to all his friends when we went to Sicily to celebrate after I won my degree. But when he realized I actually intended to come back to France and practice law as a full-time profession he wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Anybody who tried to forbid Arlette to do something she wanted was in for a shock.

  “Turned out he expected me to settle down and become a normal, do-nothing, upper-class Italian wife. My being a lawyer was supposed to be like knowing how to knit or sew. Not to be taken seriously. We fought about it, and… Well, here I am. And there he is, sulking. I should have known better than to marry an Italian.”

  “You’re mostly Italian yourself,” I pointed out. Most Corsicans, though French citizens, are of Italian descent.

  “Maybe, but I don’t work at proving it. Giovanni does.”

  “Where are you going to practice law?”

  “Here. I already am. I’m a junior partner in the Bonnet law firm in Nice.”

  I was impressed. Henri and Joelle Bonnet were a husband-and-wife team acknowledged to be among the best attorneys on the Riviera. They represented Mona Vaillant’s company and the company of Crow and his partner, among others. I had done investigations for one of their civil cases and several of their criminal defense cases.

  “How long have you been back?” I asked Arlette.

  “A few months. I tried to phone you, but you were away.”

  “That’s fast work—only back three months and already a partner of the Bonnets.”

  “Don’t try to sound naive,” Arlette said. “My father bought me the partnership, of course. With more cash than they could possibly refuse. But I don’t think they regret it. So far I’ve helped prepare the dossiers for a number of their cases, and they’ve been quite pleased. Surprised, too, I think. They’re talking about letting me handle one of their simpler defense cases on my own soon, in court.”

  She attacked her desert again with open relish. “I have to get back to a brunch party in the penthouse of that building over there.” She pointed at a modern high-rise whose architecture reminded me of a prison. “I sneaked down here because I don’t like what they’re serving. In fact, I don’t much like the people there, either. But the host is an important client of the Bonnets, and they’re off on vacation right now. So I have to do the necessary.”

  “Are Henri and Joelle Bonnet handling your divorce?”

  “Probably, when I get around to it.” Arlette shrugged. “There’s no reason for me to hurry it. Not unless I find myself getting involved with some very interesting man.” She gave me another of her small smiles. “Speaking of which, sir, I could be available tomorrow evening. I’m staying at my father’s place until I find a good apartment. You could pick me up there and we could go for a night swim. Like old times. If you still like me.”

  “I still like you,” I assured her. “But your father might not like my reviving old times with his married daughter.”

  “You’re not afraid of my father.”

  “No more than everybody else. Everybody with enough sense not to step on a cobra.”

  “He would never hurt you. Besides, he’s retired.”

  “Retired cobras don’t forget how to bite.”

  Before his retirement Marcel Alfani had run half the rackets in Marseilles and Paris. He was the reason I’d lost my last and best steady job, as a European investigator for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They’d accused me of concealing evidence that Alfani was brokering crooked deals between French and American firms. I hadn’t explained that I’d done it to pay off an old debt; the committee members wouldn’t have been interested in that.

  During World War II most French gangsters sensibly cooperated with the Nazi occupation forces and Vichy government. But Corsicans are rebels against authority by nature and history. Alfani was one who secretly aided the Resistance. When Gestapo agents were hunting for my mother, Alfani hid her—along with me inside her womb—in the attic of his classiest brothel. And when the searchers got too close, he smuggled pregnant Babette out of the country.

  His daughter, Arlette, finished the last of her desert and stood up. “Got to get back.” She bent and kissed me again. “See you tomorrow evening. Between seven and eight.”

  She didn’t doubt that I’d show up. Neither did I.

  I watched her walk away. I wasn’t the only one. Every male head along both sides of the street turned as she went by.

  * * * *

  I drove out of the Monte Carlo section of Monaco, down through the Condamine quarter behind its little port, and past the open food market and the hill that held the palace of Monaco’s ruling family. Seconds later I was out of Monaco and back in France. There is no visible frontier between the two, no passport or custom control on either side. Only some Monegasque cops, in handsome uniforms, who occasionally stop a car they don’t know to look at the driver’s papers.

  They knew me and they knew my car. It was a Peugeot 205 with a dented hood and a gash in the right front fender, both acquired when I’d skidded off a mountain road during the last Monte Carlo rally. I had no intention of doing a cosmetic job on those exterior blemishes, though I had repaired the extensive interior damage. The Riviera abounds in car thieves, because Italy is close, and once they get a stolen vehicle across the border your chances of getting it back are nil. That’s why a lot of permanent residents prefer installing new engines inside battered hulks to buying new cars.

  I drove west with the Mediterranean below me and the Maritime Alps above. Although it was the height of the tourist season, the traffic wasn’t heavy at that time of day. By noon most of the Parisians and other vacationers were already packing the beaches with a display of flesh ranging from milky white to lobster-red. Some even had the coveted chocolate brown. But not many. Few of them ever went into the sea. Most were content to just stare at it whenever they shifted position to insure that no inch of skin went unburned. By that night a lot of newcomers wouldn’t be able to put on clothes without shrieks of agony. Some would be in the hospital. Mad dogs and tourists.

  Minutes from Monaco I turned down the private driveway that descended to my house. I had planned to devote the early afternoon to replacing a faulty valve in the water storage tank in the attic. After which I’d planned to take my daily workout: a long swim from the cove below the house. But I had chang
ed my mind.

  I stayed only long enough to get out of my neat summer business suit and into a loose-fitting T-shirt and an aging pair of tennis shorts. Shoving my bare feet into rope-soled espadrilles, I drove back up the steep slope to the Lower Corniche and continued west toward Beaulieu.

  Crow and Nathalie usually lunched there on Sundays. I agreed with Gilles about not interfering. But each of the people in this particular couple meant a great deal to me. I wanted to get my own feeling of what the climate was between them.

  Chapter 5

  The heart of Beaulieu is the most flourishing marina anywhere along the Riviera between Cannes and Menton. I found Crow sitting alone at an outdoor table under the awning of a favorite restaurant called the Key Largo, facing the first row of fancy yachts.

  Crow was wearing a Hawaiian sport shirt, tattered U.S. Army surplus pants, stylish sandals of soft Florentine leather, and a fisherman’s cap that said, “I Hate Miami.” He had recently turned forty, but he still looked much the same as when I’d first known him in his twenties. A stocky redhead with a galaxy of freckles spattered across a quizzical, blunt-featured face. He was slouched in his chair nursing a scotch on the rocks and frowning at nothing, like someone talking to himself without moving his lips.

  He brightened when he saw me. “Well, well. Pete Sawyer’s back in town.”

  I sat down beside him. “In person.”

  “About time, buddy. I tried to call you a few weeks ago. Wanted to bend a friendly but uninvolved ear with some things I had on my mind.”

  “Here I am. Friendly as ever. Uninvolved in what?”

  Crow stole a glance at his watch. “I’m not in the mood right now. Another time.”

  “Sure.”

  The Key Largo’s owner, Jean-Claude, came out and shook my hand. I ordered a Campari and Perrier. Crow finished off his scotch and asked for a refill. Jean-Claude went back inside, past the life-size, full-figure picture of Humphrey Bogart, standing there with his gun and a world-weary expression.