“Are you searching for it?” I demanded.
“So far we have quite enough to do, just looking at what is there. And everything we’ve found indicates the murders are exactly what they look like.” He glanced at his watch. It was after three. “I have other people to talk to,” he said tiredly. “You’re lucky. You can get some sleep now.”
“Does that mean I can go?”
“Not yet. We have to hold you until we learn more.”
“I hope your cells are at least clean.”
It wasn’t quite a cell he took me to. An ordinary little room. With a table, two chairs, and a camp bed. And a uniformed night-duty cop on guard behind a desk outside the door. What the room didn’t have was a window, or any other means of escape.
After Soumagnac left I stripped to my underwear and stretched out on the camp bed. I lay on my back with my hands linked under my head, staring at the ceiling. Going over all the questions and possible answers.
I made myself stop that. The answers weren’t in my head. They were somewhere outside, waiting to be tracked down after they let me go. I would need a clear mind for that, not an exhausted one.
I shut my eyes and worked at falling asleep. After a while I did, for some hours.
* * * *
When I came to my watch had twenty minutes to go before nine A.M. Laurent Soumagnac sat at the table thumbing the lids off two plastic containers of coffee.
His voice was hoarse from fatigue. “I hope you take it black and strong.”
The coffee smell helped get me off the camp bed and into the other chair. He slid one container across the table to me. I took a swallow and winced. It was more than strong: thick and bitter. But it did the job, jarring my brain fully awake.
Soumagnac attacked his own coffee with quick little sips, as if it was nasty medicine on which his life depended. His face was pinched and pale, the Asian cast of his eyes more pronounced. They were down to slits.
“I hate pulling night duty,” he rasped between sips. “Now I get to go home, but I can never get a deep sleep in the daytime. You can go now, too,” he told me, and he added, in an attempt at humor too heavy for his weariness to carry, “But I’d advise you to get dressed first. Though I admit you’re a fine figure of a man. Except for those scars. Vietnam?”
“What’s happened?” I asked him.
“You are no longer even a potential suspect. Merely a witness. Though you must make yourself available whenever the juge d’instruction wishes to question you further.”
“Are you letting Frank Crowley go, too?”
“No.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“No. Xavier Escorel has ordered him kept under garde à vue.”
That meant keeping Crow under “close watch”: locked up somewhere inside the commissariat whenever he wasn’t being questioned. They could keep that up for forty-eight hours without formally accusing him of anything. During that time nobody got to see him except the police and juge d’instruction.
If Escorel decided not to let Crow go after that, he could officially charge him and put him under provisional detention—in the main prison of Nice—while the case against him was assembled. But at that point Crow’s lawyer would have to be notified, be present when his status was changed, and thereafter have access to him in a prison room known as the parlour.
I said, “You’ve gotten more evidence against him.”
“I’ll be leaving in about fifteen minutes,” Soumagnac said. “I hope the traffic on Boulevard Carabacel isn’t jammed up by then.”
I nodded that I understood. He was telling me where he would pick me up. At this point the dossier on Crow was privileged information, for the eyes of the juge d’instruction only. Inspector Soumagnac wasn’t going to divulge any part of it to me—not while he was still on duty inside the commissariat.
I got up and dressed. He sipped more of the lousy coffee and said, “You left your car keys on my desk.”
I reached into my pocket and brought my hand out, closed around my car keys. “I wondered where I lost them,” I said. He stayed there sipping as I went out and down the corridor to the office he shared with his partner, Yves Ricard.
The door to the office was shut but not locked. I opened it and stepped in. The air was thick with pungent cigarette smoke in spite of the open window. Ricard was behind his desk lighting another Gitane. He was a hefty, sandy-haired detective about the same age as Laurent Soumagnac, and he looked just as weary.
Crow was seated across the desk from him, seeming relaxed and in better condition than any of us.
Ricard told me, without surprise or excitement, “You’re not supposed to be in here.”
“Laurent told me I forgot my keys.” I went to Soumagnac’s desk, put my fist on it and raised it again with the keys dangling from my fingers.
Crow had turned in his chair to regard me with a tight smile. “I didn’t have anything going with Anne-Marie,” he told me, quickly but without panic. “And I didn’t kill anybody.”
“That makes my job easier,” I said. “Who has any reason to frame you? Business, old grudge—anything.”
“Nobody.” He sounded sure of that, and he was smart enough to know whether it was true or not. “There has to be some other angle behind it.”
I said, “Be careful what you tell the juge d’instruction when he questions you this afternoon. He’s brainy and nasty.”
I didn’t tell him not to answer any questions without his lawyer present. In France you have to answer any questions put to you by the law, under any conditions. Refusal to answer gets marked in your dossier as evidence of guilt.
“I don’t fluster too easy,” Crow reminded me. “But thanks for the warning.”
Yves Ricard pointed to the door. He still wasn’t excited, but my unofficial visit time was up. I put a hand on Crow’s shoulder and squeezed it and walked out.
Soumagnac was waiting in the corridor to escort me to the commissariat entrance.
* * * *
Outside, the garden supplies shop across the street was opening for business. In daylight you could see the statues of Disney’s dwarfs needed a new paint job. Dopey’s smile had faded to a sinister smirk.
I walked away quickly, to make sure I’d be waiting on Boulevard Carabacel when Inspector Soumagnac got there. But I came to a halt less than thirty feet from the commissariat building.
Arlette Alfani Vallaresso was sitting outside a bistro on the corner.
She was having coffee and the last croissant from one of the little serving baskets that usually contained three or four. There was a black briefcase on the table beside her cup. She wore an open black vest over a simple tan dress.
The pockets of the vest bulged with a note pad, two pens, and a miniature cassette recorder. The dress was loose-fitting except where a slim belt cinched it at her waist, and its hem was well below her knees, even sitting down. None of it managed to make her less devastating.
She was probably brilliant at preparing cases for trial, but I doubted that she’d make an effective courtroom lawyer. No jury would take her seriously. Not until she grew older, anyway, and her metabolism stopped burning off all the food she ate.
Arlette stood up as I neared her. “I’ve been waiting almost an hour for you and Crowley to come out.” There was no trace of the careless temptress in her voice or manner now. That was something she could switch on and off.
“How did you find out about it?” I asked her.
“Mona Vaillant called me late last night, after the police came to talk to her. She was trying to get in touch with Henri and Joelle Bonnet. But they’re still off in Japan, so… Arlette finished by placing a hand to her heart. She didn’t look happy to have this heavy a responsibility dropped on her alone. But neither did she look frightened by it.
“I have to talk to Mona,” I told her. “Soon. Where will she be this morning?”
“I can phone and find out.”
“Get me an appointment with her. No later
than noon.”
Arlette nodded and gestured toward the commissariat. “What about Frank Crowley? The Bonnets represent him, too.”
“He’s been put under garde à vue.”
She took it without flinching. “On what kind of evidence? Hard or circumstantial?”
“I’m about to find out. Meet me at my place in half an hour and I’ll tell you.” I started past her.
She snatched up her briefcase: “I’ll come with you.”
That stopped me and spun me around. Soumagnac wouldn’t open up with an attorney present. I stabbed a finger at her: “No. I’ll see you in half an hour.”
Arlette registered the expression on my face. “I’ll be there.”
This time she stayed put when I strode away.
Chapter 9
Soumagnac picked me up at the corner of Carabacel and Rue Devoluy. He drove across the Paillon River and turned up the Avenue of the Blue Devils, climbing toward the start of the Grande Corniche. “Your car’s still up there at La Turbie,” he said in that tired, draggy voice. “I’ll drop you off by it.”
I said, “Thanks,” and I wondered if he’d get to the subject himself or if I would have to prompt him. I waited while he concentrated on maneuvering over a mountain shoulder via a narrow road that kept curling back on itself like a long strand of dropped spaghetti. That shoulder was one of the relatively uninhabited spots left around the edges of Nice. The police called it “No Man’s Land” because at least one morning every year they’d find some victim of a gangland execution tossed out there—a result of sporadic warfare among Arab, Corsican, and Italian mobs for control of the area.
From up on that shoulder there was a view of all of Nice, spreading out around the Bay of Angels to the airport at the far end. The view confirmed the statistics: Nice is the fastest-growing city in France. For much the same reason as the population explosion in Florida: a warm sun luring permanent residents down from colder places up north. New construction rose over the hills behind the city and continued into the interior, like the work of hundreds of termite colonies. One moment I saw all of it, and the next moment it was gone, hidden by a hill behind the car. Then we were onto the divided highway of the Grande Corniche, with the mountains of Italy rising ahead of us beyond Menton.
I was about to prompt him when he finally spoke. What came out of him surprised me. “What do you feel like most,” he asked, “American or French?”
I stared at him, trying to adjust to the unexpected question.
“I always wondered,” he said. “Now that I know you’re not even a citizen of France I wonder more.”
He looked embarrassed. It was an intimate sort of question. We’d known each other a while, but we hadn’t gotten into intimate feelings before. It might help. I told him, “American.”
“Why? You live here.”
“But I got all my schooling in America. They taught me about George Washington and the cherry tree in kindergarten. By college I knew America is the greatest nation on earth: God’s country. I think it’s where you go to school that matters, more than your parents’ nationality.”
Inspector Soumagnac thought about it and nodded to himself. “That’s probably true. I was born in Saigon, and my mother’s not French, but most of my schooling was here in France. Learning that France is the only truly civilized country. With the greatest philosophers, most important art, best food.”
“So you feel French.”
“Yes, but I live here. You do, too, but you feel American.”
“America is my country,” I tried to explain, “but that house below Cap d’Ail is my home. That’s confusing, but there it is. I grew up spending every summer vacation there with my mother. It’s in my bones.”
“I never see your mother around Cap d’Ail.”
“She prefers Paris. If it wasn’t for me she’d probably sell the house. She’s not as sentimental about it as I am.”
Soumagnac nodded understanding. “Men are the sentimental ones. Women are not. They’re romantic—and not troubled by undue sentiment when one romance is over and they wish to begin another.”
“Are you stating that as a fact,” I asked him with some skepticism, “or just a stray notion?”
He grinned. “It is something my father always says. But he is not known in the family for exceptional brainpower. Definitely not one of the great philosophers of France.”
I figured we were intimate enough by then. “What’s keeping Frank Crowley under garde à vue?”
Soumagnac hesitated. “I’m not supposed to divulge anything about that. It’s strictly classified until the juge d’instruction questions Crowley himself—and decides what information he wishes released to the public.”
I said, “You know I’m not going to tell anybody you talked to me. And I know you don’t like this juge.”
Soumagnac made a sour face. “Xavier Escorel is too excited about this case. He’s pushing us too hard—and much too fast. Grabbing at everything we give him, not allowing us enough time to sift around for other indications that might contradict what he already thinks he has. I told you—he’s a big head, and an even bigger cunt.”
“What do you have on Crow?”
“His pistol was found a few minutes before six this morning. Four bullets fired from it. Recently.”
* * * *
That news did not surprise me. “Where was it found?”
“Inside the water tank behind the toilet in the Crowley’s guest bathroom.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that Crow was an intelligent man. And that he would have had to be very dumb, if he was the one who fired the four shots, to hide the pistol where a thorough search was certain to find it. Soumagnac knew that. But he also knew that people confused by panic after such an act sometimes committed atypical stupidities.
“Ballistics will get to work with the gun this morning,” he told me. “To see if bullets they fire from it match the ones found in the bodies of the two victims.”
That was one thing I was sure of: They would match. Soumagnac said, “Escorel has scheduled his session with your friend Crowley for two-thirty this afternoon. By then he’ll have the ballistics report. Along with our dossiers.”
“What else will he have?” I asked him.
“Three Polaroid photographs of Anne-Marie Vaillant that have been discovered in Frank Crowley’s studio. Nudes. Extremely erotic. Your friend swore to Ricard that he never took any kind of photographs of her, but—”
“But somebody’s done a neat job of framing him.”
“There is no sign that anyone forced their way into his studio to leave those pictures there.”
“Anybody who knows how to use the right tools could do it without leaving a trace. I could.”
“It’s a possibility,” Soumagnac granted. “But without any evidence at all to support it, it’s one that our juge d’instruction can safely ignore.”
I asked him, “What’s the rest of the statement your partner took from Frank Crowley?”
He recited Crow’s story in a weary monotone: “He never had sexual relations with Anne-Marie Vaillant and wasn’t in love with her. They never even flirted with each other. He didn’t take the pictures of her that were found in his studio.”
“Why were they having lunch together yesterday in Beaulieu?”
“He says she phoned him early yesterday morning and asked him to meet her. Said it was urgent. After you left them she said she knew his wife was away and asked if she could use his house that night. She wouldn’t explain why, only that it was important to her. He says he figured it was for a rendezvous with some lover, and he didn’t like her using his place for that. But she acted so desperate that he finally gave in and agreed. He figured he’d sleep on the couch in his studio, and it was only for one night. He didn’t have to give her a key to his house. She knew where the emergency key was hidden.
“He says he was at his studio around ten o’clock last night when he got a surprise phone call from her. She told him
she was up in the hills near Lucéram. Her car had conked out there, and she begged him to come up and get her. So he went.”
“Making absolutely sure,” I said, “that he wouldn’t be able to prove where he was when she and Pilon were killed.”
Soumagnac didn’t respond to that one. “He says he couldn’t find her near Lucéram, and he spent time driving around the area, figuring she might have given him the wrong location. But he couldn’t find her, and finally he gave up. Thought maybe somebody else came along and got her car started for her. He drove back down to Nice and into the hands of a couple of cops at his studio. And that’s it.”
“What does he say about August Pilon?”
“That he never met him. Never even heard of him.”
“Your people must have had a look in Pilon’s office by now.”
“There, and his apartment. He was a neat type. Detailed files on all his jobs. But nothing over the past couple of weeks.”
That figured. “No messages on his answering machine?”
“None.”
“Or they were erased.”
“Or that,” Soumagnac agreed blandly.
“What do his friends say he’s been doing?”
“Pilon was between girlfriends. He didn’t have any men friends. Not even from his time as a cop.”
“How come?”
“He liked to play with other men’s wives. Then he’d joke about it and drop them.”
“A credit to the human race.”
“Truly.” Soumagnac didn’t bother to mention that Pilon’s way with other men’s wives fitted his being found with Anne-Marie.
“No signs of forced entry into Pilon’s office or apartment, I suppose. Same as with Crowley’s studio.”
“That’s right,” he said, without expression.
“But nothing left to show what he’s done for two weeks. Peculiar, wouldn’t you say?”
Back in the Real World Page 5
