I found something in the latter that caught my interest, though I didn’t know if it had any significance.
Six times that year Gilles had charged meals at a restaurant in Paris named Chez Solange. There were two successive dates in January, one date in March, and two more successive dates and one two days later in June. The amounts of the bills in each case indicated dinner for two.
I had spent time with Gilles in Paris. He liked to eat at either Balzar or Julien. It was easier for Gilles to relax in accustomed surroundings, where he knew the people and they knew him. Even with business meals he usually persuaded the people he was meeting to meet him at one of those two restaurants.
Checking back through his appointment book, I confirmed that the only times that year he’d been to Paris were around those dates: in January, March, and June. During each of those times Gilles had also dined at Balzar and Julien. But his having gone so often to a place other than his two favorites meant something. I didn’t know what, and I didn’t know if it was important. But at some point I’d check out Chez Solange. So far I didn’t have anything else.
I went up to the apartment library and got the most recent photo album down from the shelf. The latest pictures were all of Alain, but in some the boy was with his father or mother. I took one in which Anne-Marie’s face showed clearly and another with a good close shot of Gilles next to his son.
There were easier ways I could have gotten recent pictures of them than breaking into the apartment. The photos were the least important part of what I’d come looking for. But that, and the fact that Gilles had dined with somebody six times in a Paris restaurant I’d never heard of, were the only things the cleanup man had left me.
Perhaps the pictures and that bit of information would prove to be of no use at all. I was used to that. Pointless follow-throughs were part of almost every case I worked on. So was stubborn persistence.
The cleanup man’s job was to remove loose ends. Mine was the opposite side of the same coin. Keep plucking out any loose ends that were still left. Most of them would be short and meaningless. Wasted effort.
Then, if you got lucky, finally one of those ends wouldn’t be loose. You’d find it knotted to the end of another and longer thread. You pulled that out, and it was attached to still another. And you kept pulling—until it was all out there in the open for you to look at.
Chapter 13
On most days the Nice flower market fills the Cours Saleya with its heady mélange of strong colors and fragrances. But on Mondays that long, broad esplanade at one edge of the Old Town is given over to the weekly flea market. I stood waiting between one stand displaying vintage postcards and stamp collections and another of old clocks and watches ranging from junk to antiques. The sky remained clear, but sporadic gusts of wind flapped the pink and blue awnings over the merchants’ wares, warning of a change of weather on its way.
The hot gusts were forerunners of a sirocco, coming all the way across the Mediterranean from the Sahara, carrying fine particles of sand. In spite of my sunglasses I had to narrow my eyes against the blown grit.
That wasn’t the only discomfort caused by the wind. I had to keep at least one button of my jacket buttoned, regardless of the heat. Any gust that blew my jacket open would expose the gun I was now carrying holstered under my left armpit. And if anyone spotted that, I’d be in serious trouble.
A private detective in France has no more right to carry a concealed weapon around in public than any private citizen. Doing so could lose me my license and get me kicked out of the country. But after my encounter with the cleanup man and his gun the risk of being caught with it by the police was less scary than the risk involved in running into him again. Or another like him. It had turned into that kind of job.
I’d gotten the gun out of its hiding place inside the rear seat of my car after leaving the apartment. The one I kept in the Peugeot was a compact semiautomatic—a Heckler & Koch P7 with eight 9mm rounds in its magazine. It lacked the punch of a .45 but was smaller, lighter, and extremely accurate. Also it fitted snugly in the shoulder holster without making a telltale bulge in my loose-fitted jacket. The sense of fallback security made up for the discomfort of carrying it.
A few minutes before two P.M. the door of the elevator from the parking garage under the Cours Saleya opened, and Nathalie stepped out.
She looked anxious but with her nerves under control. Nathalie’s character had always been strong—capable of coping with situations that drove others to hysteria.
She was slender and elegant in a red and blue sailor blouse and straight blue linen skirt. A younger and taller edition of her mother. At thirty-six she even had the start of Mona’s humor and concentration wrinkles, in the same places.
She put her arms around me, and I held her while she rested her head briefly against my shoulder. “Anything new,” she asked, “since we talked on the phone?”
“Arlette is in the juge d’instruction’s office,” I told her. “When she comes out she’ll let us know.”
“I don’t know her,” Nathalie said. “I’ve met the Bonnets a few times, but I don’t know them that well, either.” She looked up into my eyes. “It’s you I’m counting on to get Crow out of this.”
It reminded me of a summer long ago—Nathalie must have been ten—when we’d gone swimming and I’d taken her further out than I usually did. Gilles was on the beach searching among the rocks for shells and unusual sea pebbles. He was a good swimmer, but his skin reacted badly to the salt if he stayed in too long. On the way back Nathalie had called to me calmly, “I can’t make it the rest of the way.” She’d floated there, bobbing up and down in the heavy swells until I reached her, utterly confident I would get her safely to shore.
She linked her arm in mine as we strolled between the crowds around the flea market stands, going toward the end of the Cours Saleya that led to the opera house and the Palais de Justice. “I’ll do my best,” I told her.
An unexpectedly heavy gust of wind bounced a corner of a porcelain-and-glassware stand beside us. A tall vase tilted and fell off. I did a fast, low sideswipe and surprised myself by catching it one-handed, inches above the pavement tiles.
Nathalie said, “Your best is still pretty good.”
The flea market vendor had tears in his eyes as he took the fragile vase from me. “It is my best piece. A genuine Galle. Anything you or Madame wish to buy, I sell you at what I paid for it. Not a sou profit.”
“We can’t stop now,” Nathalie told him. “But I may remind you of that one day.”
“I won’t forget you,” he promised.
As we walked on I asked Nathalie, “Where did you spend last night outside Paris?”
“With a couple named Larre. Casimir and Paule Larre. You don’t know them. They have a country house near Versailles.” She cocked her head to peer at me. “You’re checking on whether I have a solid alibi for last night, is that it?”
“The more I know, the better,” I said. “I guess you went to Paris to think over your relationship with Crow.”
“Yes. And decided I was being childish. I would have come back today even if this hadn’t happened. Crow is a crazy man, but I’m crazy, too. Crazy about him. If he has to work his way through some kind of premature midlife crisis, my place is here, helping him get through it.”
“Do you think he was having an affair with Anne-Marie?”
“No. Definitely not with her. Crow is too fond of Gilles for that.”
“Other women?”
“I don’t know of any, but it’s possible, certainly. That’s one of the things I had to think out. But I do know he’s in love with me. So any other woman would be temporary. Part of his crisis. Needing to reassure himself of his sexual prowess, in addition to proving to himself that he’s still young enough to start a new career from scratch. I can survive both problems.”
We reached Rue Gassin and turned right, away from the opera house, going toward the Palais de Justice. “Do you know any of the men
Anne-Marie was seeing?”
“No. That’s the one way in which she and Gilles were alike—not being very open with people.”
The Palais de Justice contains the law courts and the offices of a variety of legal functionaries, including those of the juges d’instruction. A wide, high flight of stone steps leads up to three entrance doors. Each door has one part of the three-word slogan of France over it: “Liberté…Egalité…Fraternité.” Everybody uses the middle one. I’ve never seen the Liberty and Fraternity doors opened. Nathalie and I sat down at a sidewalk table on the other side of the square, in front of the Café du Palais, to wait for Arlette. I ordered black coffee. Nathalie asked for a bébé—a very small whiskey on the rocks.
I told her, “I don’t know anybody Anne-Marie has been close to over the past few years. Male or female. Do you?”
“There’s a woman who used to be a publicist in Paris when Anne-Marie was a model.” Nathalie concentrated, trying to remember the name.
“Pascale Roca?”
“That’s the one. You know her?”
“Anne-Marie introduced me to her once in Paris. But that was long ago. I didn’t know they still saw each other.”
“They got together again when Pascale moved down here about four years ago. She runs a beach place over on Cap Ferrat in the summer seasons. Calls it the Plage d’Or. I think she does publicity jobs in Cannes the rest of the year. She’s the only one I can think of that Anne-Marie may have confided in—if that’s what you’re looking for.”
I nodded. “That is what I’m looking for.”
* * * *
Nathalie had consumed her whiskey and I was finishing my coffee when Arlette emerged from the Equality door of the Palais de Justice. She came briskly down the steps with her briefcase tucked under one arm and threaded her way toward us between the triple line of cars parked in the middle of the square.
She was simmering when she took a seat at our table. “Xavier Escorel is not my favorite juge d’instruction. He won’t let me see Frank Crowley, and he won’t let me read the dossier he’s so far assembled on this case.”
“That’s his right,” I said.
“It’s also his right to give me access to both client and dossier, if he chooses to. I know several other juges in there who would. It’s our bad luck to be stuck with Escorel.”
I introduced her to Nathalie. They shook hands politely and sized each other up quickly as belonging to the same small breed: those who are lucky enough to be sure of both their allure and their professional competence. Neither appeared envious of the other—merely normally wary, not sure at this stage whether they would become friends or just acquaintances.
“When can I get to see my husband?” Nathalie asked Arlette.
“The same time I can. By tomorrow morning Escorel has to either formally charge him as a suspect or let him go.”
I said, “He won’t let him go.” They both looked at me, and I told them, “The bullets that killed Anne-Marie and Pilon were fired by Crow’s gun.”
“How did you find that out?” Arlette demanded. “I wasn’t able to.”
“I have a friend in ballistics. He owed me a favor.”
“He took a big chance.”
“No, all I told him on the phone was that it’s been a long time since we’ve talked to each other. He went out to a public phone a few blocks away and called me back from there.”
“Don’t make it sound so easy,” Arlette said. “Good work.”
The barman came out and Arlette ordered a glass of Riesling.
“You ought to stick to local wines wherever you are,” I told her. “The preservatives in wine that travels that far—”
She cut in with: “Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.” Arlette picked things up quickly and was overeager to use them.
Nathalie shot me an annoyed look and asked Arlette, “Does this mean my husband is certain to be put in prison?”
“I’m afraid so,” Arlette told her, “with a juge like Escorel. If your husband’s gun killed them—”
“But he didn’t kill them with it.”
“That’s right,” I said. “So it’ll only be provisional detention—until we break Escorel’s hold on him. And we will.”
The barman brought out Arlette’s glass of wine. I paid for our drinks. After he went back inside she told Nathalie, “Until then you’ll be able to visit your husband every day except Sundays and Thursdays. From nine until eleven-thirty in the mornings and from noon to 5 P.M. You should pack a bag to take to him. Changes of clothing, toilet kit, any sweets he likes.”
“Make sure to include soap,” I added. “French prisons don’t supply inmates with soap.”
Nathalie looked horrified. “But—that’s barbarous.”
I decided not to tell her that French prisons also only allowed one shower a week. The rest of the time Crow would have to make do with a small basin of water brought into his cell. I’d seen him get by with less. But the thought of it would bother Nathalie more than the actuality would Crow.
For a moment I thought she was going to cry. Then the moment was gone, and she nodded and said calmly: “I’ll start getting things together for him as soon as I get home.”
Arlette drank some wine and told her, “I’d like you to come to my office first so we can have a long talk. You may come up with something that will help me do my job. By the way, do you know when your brother is due back?”
“He’s on a plane now. He’ll arrive in the morning.”
“After two flights that long, back to back, he’ll have awful jetlag.”
“Jet travel doesn’t faze Gilles,” I said. “It’s jet society he can’t stand.”
Nathalie looked at me and nodded. That had been one of the problems between him and Anne-Marie. Probably the smallest one.
I asked Arlette, “Have you found out anything about August Pilon so far?”
“He has an aunt in Paris,” she told me. “She’s the one who raised him. According to an attorney who used Pilon frequently, he always stayed with the aunt when he was up there. The attorney doesn’t have her name or address, but Pilon gave him her phone number in case he had to get in touch with Pilon in Paris.”
She got the number from her briefcase, copied it on a page from her notebook, and gave it to me. I put it in my pocket and looked at Arlette with the respect she deserved. “You do good work, too.”
She smiled. “Thank you. It’s nice we appreciate each other. But it looks like we’re going to have to postpone this evening. I still have to work on the dossiers of those other three cases for the Bonnets, and I won’t be able to get to them until late. A long night of work ahead.”
Nathalie was looking thoughtfully from Arlette to me. I ignored that and told Arlette, “There’ll be other evenings.”
“There had better be, or I’ll sic that cobra on you.”
As it turned out, I got to see her father sooner than I expected.
Chapter 14
Society page columnists unable to dream up enough scandal sometimes resort to enlightening their readers about the “most desirable” places to live on the Côte d’Azur. Some name two locations, others four or five. Whatever the number, the long, slender-necked peninsula of Cap Ferrat is invariably listed as one of them.
Cap Ferrat’s small walled estates contain celebrated villas and gardens that switch owners with each sharp shift in the world’s economy. Who is currently buying which villa from whom is a better indicator of changing fortunes than The Wall Street Journal. Cap Ferrat estates go where the money is.
Their inhabitants used to be people like Somerset Maugham and Jean Cocteau, David Niven and Rex Harrison, the Grand Marnier family and the Rothschilds. The new names tend to be oil-rich Texans and Arabs, with a sprinkling of major Italian tax dodgers.
With the high ridge in the middle of Cap Ferrat, every place there is on a slope with a view of sea and mountains. One side looks across the Bay of Villefranche to Nice and the Esterel Massif, the oth
er across the Gulf of Saint Hospice toward Beaulieu and Monaco. The Plage d’Or was on the latter side, in a sheltered spot under a slope of umbrella pines and lofty eucalyptus trees. From the table where I was having my late lunch I could see the small cape behind which my own modest house and cove were hidden.
I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and lack of sufficient sleep the night before was catching up with me. My lunch centered around a large order of grilled daurade: a salt-water fish with plenty of protein and iodine to restore my energy and wake up my brain.
My table was one of a dozen on a raised deck that also held the kitchen and a curved bar with a roof of interwoven palm fronds shielding it from the sun. Below the deck the shingle beach had rows of orange mattresses and green shade umbrellas. Most of the men using them were middle-aged and paunchy; most of the women were younger, lissome, and topless.
There were twenty small changing cabanas and two shower stalls. A number of woven-rope walks crisscrossed the beach and a short pier jutted out over the water so that people could get from their mats and into the sea without crippling the soles of their feet on the sharp little stones.
Nobody was swimming that afternoon. The wind had grown steadier and stronger, churning up small whitecaps on the surface of the water. The five yachts that had come out of the Beaulieu marina and anchored off the beach were rolling a bit in the swells. It didn’t seem to disturb the people sunbathing in the nude on their decks. But only two sailboards were out. The boy on one of them knew what he was doing, using the wind to skim along at high speed. The young guy on the other had spilled over into the sea at least seven times while I’d been eating and was in pretty much the same place as when he’d started.
I ate the last forkful of daurade and took a cool sip of dry white Bellet, a light local wine with a delicate aroma, while I looked around for Pascale Roca.
Back in the Real World Page 8
