Back in the Real World

by Marvin Albert

  I left my car on the gravel parking area. The bodyguard relocked the gates, blew his whistle, and strolled off on a routine tour of the grounds. I walked through the house and spotted Marcel Alfani in his swimming pool out back.

  A second bodyguard stood on the pool patio, dividing his attention between his boss and the surrounding scenery. Like the other, he had a heavy-caliber revolver holstered on his belt. The weapon slung on his shoulder was a pump-action repeating shotgun. I guessed the third bodyguard was inside sleeping, so he could take over at night. The three bodyguards proved that Marcel Alfani was indeed in retirement. When active in the milieu—the underworld—he’d never had less than six around him at any time.

  Alfani was treading water in the deep middle of his pool. He didn’t look like a gangster. He had a short beard as white as his glossy hair. He wore black-rimmed glasses that gave his dark, dignified face a scholarly expression. Very nearsighted, he could wear his glasses even when swimming because he never put his face under water. It gave him claustrophobia.

  He waved and smiled. “Come in. We’ll have a conference.”

  The idea of holding “conferences” in the middle of a swimming pool had come to him years before. It guaranteed that nobody attending the meeting was carrying a concealed bug.

  “I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”

  “So? We’re all men here.”

  That was true. His bodyguards doubled as cooks and housekeepers. Alfani didn’t feel comfortable with women. Odd, for someone who’d started his career as a sixteen-year-old pimp. Or maybe not so odd.

  When I took off my jacket and hung it on a patio chair Alfani immediately noted the gun under my arm. “You take chances.”

  “Necessary.”

  “Are you hunting or hunted?”

  “Both.”

  “Ah, in that case…

  I placed the holstered gun on one of the patio tables and stripped off the rest of my clothes. Alfani regarded me with open interest as I approached the pool edge. “It always amazes me how big you became. When I first knew you, you were smaller than my hand. Your mother once let me feel you moving inside her.”

  That story bored me. I’d heard him tell it about a hundred times. I dove in and surfaced beside him, treading water, careful not to splash any drops on his glasses.

  “If you have come to see Arlette,” he said in the stilted, formal way he had of speaking, “I’m afraid she is working late tonight. She phoned to tell me so I wouldn’t worry. A good daughter.”

  “I know she’s working late,” I said. “I also know she’s married, so—”

  “A stupid marriage,” Alfani interrupted. “To a stupid man. Not strong and smart enough for her.”

  “Aren’t you proud—somebody with your background winding up with a member of the nobility as a son-in-law?”

  Alfani chose not to notice my tone in mentioning his “background.”

  “That is not the kind of nobility that impresses me,” he said. “I am much more proud of having saved the life of a woman who has since been awarded both the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’honneur. Along with her son. You are the kind of man Arlette should be married to.”

  “I’m not strong and smart enough for her, either. I’m not going to be your new son-in-law, Alfani.”

  “It would be good for both of you. And would give me pleasure. I have known you since before you were born. I don’t like her marrying strangers.”

  I always detested his possessiveness toward me. I don’t like gangsters. I didn’t forgive this one for having forced me to wreck my government career to save him. He knew how I felt and ignored it.

  I said, “It’s you I came to see. I need a favor.” I explained what I wanted to find out.

  “You know I am no longer in the milieu, Pierre-Ange. Information does not come to me as it once did.”

  “But you have associates in Marseilles who can find out these things for you.”

  “Not associates, not anymore. Just some men who might make certain small inquiries for me, as a courtesy.”

  And because they were afraid that if he got mad he might decide to go back into business.

  “Swim,” Alfani told me. “Enjoy my pool. I will use the telephone. Be patient.” He dog paddled to the side of the pool. The bodyguard was already there, waiting to help him climb out.

  Alfani wasn’t wearing a bathing suit either. Age hadn’t robbed him of his look of physical strength. He was tall and heavyset without much fat. A peasant’s build. Like the man in the ski mask. Too many people were built like that.

  The bodyguard handed him a white terry cloth robe and draped a thick towel over his head. Alfani belted his robe and toweled the back of his head as he trudged into the house.

  I began to swim. I prefer the sea, because that’s pleasure, while swimming in a pool is just exercise. But I needed some exercise, and I probably wouldn’t have enough strength left for anything but climbing into bed by the time I got home. I kept doing the length of the pool, back and forth, going at a good, steady clip. I got the exercise. It was more than half an hour before Alfani came out of the house.

  He removed his robe and towel. The bodyguard helped him climb back down into the water. He paddled over to meet me in the middle of the pool, and we had our conference.

  * * * *

  “In answer to your first question,” he said, “Christian Gardier is medium height and slim. Strong, but a lightweight—physically as well as in other ways.”

  One hunch gone awry. Gardier wasn’t the cleanup man. “He is still involved in a certain amount of theft and smuggling,” Alfani told me, “but his main source of income since his last stretch in prison has been narcotics. He’s a drug pusher. On a small scale. Everything Gardier does is small.”

  If someone could prove Anne-Marie was intimately involved with a drug pusher, that could have resulted in her losing her son.

  “Gardier is an independent,” Alfani continued. “Not a member of any milieu organization. Though, of course, he has to pay a percentage to one or he would not be allowed to operate.”

  “Which one?”

  “Bernard Salamite’s.”

  I’d heard about him. Among the Riviera mobs still fighting for pieces of Alfani’s relinquished empire, Salamite was reported to be gaining control of the choice operations.

  Alfani said, “Salamite doesn’t know such a small-timer personally, naturally. After I spoke to him he had to make some phone calls of his own to check on Gardier. That’s what took me so long.”

  “Did he find out where Gardier lives?”

  “Christian Gardier doesn’t have a permanent address. He changes residences frequently. Rooming houses when he is poor, hotels when he has money. But nobody in the milieu has seen him around in the past few weeks. Salamite is having further inquiries made, as a personal favor to me. I will phone you tonight if I learn more. Where will you be?”

  “You can get me at home,” I told him. “Find out anything about the Hotel Dhalsten?”

  “No milieu organization controls it,” Alfani said. “As a matter of fact, they have all been warned away from having anything to do with it. So whatever is going on there, nobody knows about it.”

  That was curious. “The warning would have to come from pretty high,” I said, “to keep the mobs away from a choice plum like the Dhalsten.”

  “Very high,” Alfani agreed. “From Paris. The government. Unfortunately, since I am no longer an active power I am not privy to exactly who in the government issued this warning.”

  * * * *

  High-level government protection for a Riviera hotel was peculiar. It could merely be because the Dhalsten was so often used by diplomats, French as well as foreign. Or it could be that something else was going on there that I didn’t know about.

  What I did know was that Anne-Marie and a small-time dope pusher, thief, and smuggler named Christian Gardier had used the Dhalsten for their rendezvous. And something had happened there that had terrif
ied Anne-Marie. That she had been murdered months later might or might not be connected to what had scared her.

  Either she or Gardier would have had to show identification when registering at the hotel. Neither would have wanted to use their real names. Gardier was the one who could easily obtain false identity papers. In his business he probably had several different identities ready for use when required.

  I didn’t know what name he had used at the hotel. But I had a good photo of Anne-Marie in my pocket, along with one of Gilles. They’d both been enlarged from the originals by a photo shop in Nice. I’d left the originals there before meeting Nathalie and picked up the results after leaving her and Arlette.

  The Hotel Dhalsten was on my way home. I decided to drop in for a short preliminary check.

  The wind from the Mediterranean hadn’t penetrated the mountains around Alfani’s house, and the sky was still relatively clear up there. But down near the sea the wind was in full force, pushing in a dense cloud cover and ground mist that was bringing on an early dusk. I turned on my low lights as I drove into Cagnes-sur-Mer and maneuvered through its narrow streets to the Hotel Dhalsten.

  The first thing I saw when I got there was the guy I thought of as the cleanup man.

  Chapter 17

  I could have been wrong. All I saw was his back, for a few seconds.

  I didn’t think I was wrong.

  The parking spot I’d found was a couple blocks away. I was approaching the Dhalsten’s front entrance when I saw him. He was walking away from the hotel, and away from me. Wearing a dark gray business suit. He had a wide head and not much neck, and his hair looked dark in the mist. Tall and solidly built, long body and short legs.

  As I’d been noticing all afternoon, a lot of men were built that way. What convinced me was the way he walked. A bit spread-legged, with his feet slightly turned out, balanced in a way that no man who spent most of his life behind a desk could manage. Sailors walked that way from always balancing on rolling decks. So did people used to sudden violence and ready to shift direction when it came. The man in the ski mask had moved that way when he had come to shut the closet door on me.

  I followed him, quickening my pace to narrow the gap between us. The hard bulk of the H&K P7 holstered below my armpit was no longer annoying. If he was still carrying his gun, we’d be on more even terms this time.

  He crossed the next intersection just before the traffic light changed. When I got there I had to wait until five impatient motorists gunned past before I could dodge across. By then my quarry was almost to the end of the next block. I went after him as fast as I could without running. He reached the corner and turned into the side street, and I lost sight of him.

  When I entered the side street I couldn’t spot him again. There were a lot of people hurrying to get to wherever they were going before the rain arrived. He wasn’t one of them.

  I went through the side street to the next corner, but he was gone. He could have gone into any of a couple dozen buildings. Or jumped into a passing taxi. Or sprouted wings. I’d lost him.

  I walked back to the main entrance of the Hotel Dhalsten. Maybe he hadn’t come out of the hotel. He might have just happened to be walking past it. But I’d long ago learned to distrust coincidence.

  The doorman was small and dressed in a scarlet and gold uniform with a white top hat that sported a large violet plume. He looked like he’d worn that outfit long enough to stop feeling silly in it. I held a fifty-franc note in my hand and described the man I’d just lost. The doorman eyed my money but shook his head. He didn’t want to lose his job for lying to somebody who might be a police detective.

  “If he just came out of here I didn’t notice,” he told me. “I’ve been busy helping people in and out of taxis.”

  I showed him the photograph of Anne-Marie and asked if he remembered her.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but we’re not supposed to talk to anybody about our hotel guests. Even ones who haven’t stayed here in a long time.”

  That was good enough. If he remembered her, other employees would. I slipped him the fifty francs. He tucked it away and went to open the rear door of a limousine that had pulled up to the curb. I put the picture back in my pocket and went into the hotel.

  The main lobby was marble and dark oak, stained glass and potted ferns. I asked the clerk behind the counter if he’d seen my man go out through the lobby: “My height, but heavier build. Short legs, the rest in his body. Dark gray business suit.”

  He frowned at me, trying to decide what I was. “I’m afraid that description is much too vague. So many people go in and out of here all the time… As for a dark gray business suit…” He indicated himself. He was wearing one, too. He was also almost my height, and heavy. I saw his point.

  He said, “May I ask—”

  “Who’s your chief of security here?” I cut in, hitting him with that tone of authority a cop doesn’t forget once he’s acquired it.

  He blinked. “Monsieur Jacques Morel. Is there a problem? I can phone and see if he is in at the moment.”

  “Never mind,” I told him. “I’ll phone him myself later.”

  “If you would care to leave your name, I’ll…

  But I was already walking away, back across the lobby.

  Jacques Morel was not a name I knew. Most hotel security chiefs were former police detectives. I knew a lot of ex-cops, and I’d hoped the security man at the Dhalsten was one of them. Failing that, I’d have to find someone in the police that did have a good connection with this Jacques Morel.

  It was Morel I wanted to show Anne-Marie’s picture to next. He was the one who could help me find out what I wanted to know: about the times she’d been there with Christian Gardier—and what might have happened to scare her. But he wouldn’t help unless he knew and trusted me, or I came guaranteed by somebody he did trust.

  I went out of the hotel and around to one of its two side entrances. No doorman guarded this one, and the door wasn’t locked. I went in, thinking how easy it would be for a thief to get in and out this way. But I hadn’t heard of any robberies at the Dhalsten in the years since it had been renovated. That told me more about the potency of the hotel’s high-level protection than what Alfani had said.

  Inside, there was a marble hallway leading past a lounge bar to an automatic elevator. I stood there and scanned the hallway. It took a few moments to spot it: up in a corner near the ceiling above the elevator. The tiny eye of a closed-circuit video camera was registering my presence and probably putting it on tape. I’d seen others in the main lobby, but those had been more obvious. This one wasn’t meant to be noticed.

  Contrary to the Dhalsten’s reputation, no guest or visitor entered or left without being seen and recorded.

  I went into the lounge bar. It was a cozy room with a short bar and half a dozen curved, leather-padded booths. Four of the booths were occupied by well-dressed couples grumbling about the nasty change in the weather.

  I sat at the bar, ordered a small cognac, and described the man I’d seen to the barman. Like the clerk in the lobby, he found the description too vague. I agreed with him, drank my cognac, paid for it, and went out. I had spotted three more carefully camouflaged video cameras in the cozy room. One aimed at the bar, the other two covering the booths.

  It started me speculating on whether the booths were bugged as well, to record any interesting conversations that occurred in them.

  I was beginning to doubt that the Dhalsten’s security man would give me much cooperation—unless I got a very good connection to him.

  Chapter 18

  I drove from Cagnes-Sur-Mer past the airport to Nice, ate dinner at a Tunisian restaurant in the Old Town, and then drove home. It was completely dark when I got there. I went through the house turning on lamps. I’d had two strenuous days without enough sleep between them, and I was worn out. My mind was a jumble of facts and hints and faces and questions. I intended to sink my brain into a solid ten hours of rest a
nd recuperation before attempting to unscramble it all. But there were phone calls to make before I slept.

  The answering machine had messages from Fritz Donhoff and Marcel Alfani, both asking me to call them back. First I phoned the Nice commissariat and asked for P.J. Inspector Soumagnac.

  It took a while for them to locate him, and he came on the phone barking, “I’m busy. What do you want?”

  I asked him if he knew the Dhalsten’s security chief, Jacques Morel. He didn’t, but he promised to ask around and see who did—when he found the time. Then he hung up on me and went back to work. I hadn’t asked if there was anything new on Crow. He wouldn’t talk about that over a phone in the commissariat.

  I called Alfani.

  “Christian Gardier has been in Naples,” he told me, “attending to some business. He is returning to Marseilles aboard a cargo ship. It is due to arrive sometime after three tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I want to be there to talk to him as soon as he comes off that ship.”

  “I thought you might. There is a businessman in Marseilles—his name is Joseph Lepec. You should phone him when you arrive in Marseilles. He will introduce you to Gardier—and make sure Gardier answers your questions.” He gave me Lepec’s phone number. I copied it down, thanked him, hung up, and then called Fritz Donhoff.

  “Your Anne-Marie did work for Serge Lotis before she became a magazine model,” Fritz told me. “So she did know Lotis. Whether she saw him recently I don’t know as yet. But I’m hoping to get something on Lotis’s personal secretary, before long, that will open her up.”

  “Anything else?” I asked him.

  “Only confirmation of Madame Vaillant’s suspicions. At least one of them. From an assistant designer Lotis fired a couple months ago. He told me Lotis suddenly changed all his designs for that couture collection of his, at the very last possible moment. Lotis claimed he’d gotten an inspiration. His former assistant doesn’t know where the inspiration came from.”

  I told Fritz about the aunt Pilon stayed with in Paris. But Fritz already knew about her. One of the women taking care of him would bring Pilon’s aunt around to see him the following day.