Animosity

by David Lindsey

  Amado shook his head at these latest revelations and sipped his beer. He stammered a few questions to which Ross responded in varying degrees of evasion.

  “And then, after the divorce, what?” Amado asked.

  “Then we’ll see.”

  “She’ll move here?” Amado unwrapped a greasy corn shuck, removed the tamale, and dropped the shuck on a growing pile of them on a newspaper in the center of the table.

  “Maybe.”

  “God,” Amado said, taking half the small tamale in a single bite, “Ross, every time I talk to you you’ve got something else outrageous to tell me. When does this . . .” He searched for the right word.

  “Insanity?”

  “Yes, why not, when does this insanity end?” Amado wiped his hands on a paper napkin and picked up his Pacifico, chasing the peppery tamale aftertaste with a swig of the cold Mexican beer.

  Outside, the mockingbird was alone in the bougainvillea, her choice of songs a soft, triple-note fluting that she repeated over and over, almost as if she were doing it absently, her mind elsewhere.

  “It may never end,” he said. “It may be the nature of her life.”

  Amado looked at him. “Aren’t you a little apprehensive about . . . making all of that part of your life?”

  “Yes.”

  “But . . .”

  “I’m not as afraid of the ‘insanity’ as I’m afraid of life without her.”

  Amado nodded, regarding him thoughtfully. “And what about . . . this criminal matter, Ross? What happens to that?”

  “It doesn’t go away.”

  “And it won’t.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Amado hesitated. “And I’m the only one who knows about it?”

  “Just the three of us.”

  “Then it’s a solemn thing.”

  “Yes, it is. A solemn thing.”

  • • •

  He pitched once more into work on Leda’s sculpture, which now was made even more complicated by the incredible revelations in Paris. But the complications served only to strengthen his fascination with the challenge that he now felt was something like a calling for him. He and Céleste corresponded almost daily by e-mail and talked on the telephone a couple of times a week. The divorce was going to take some time. Maybe four months.

  He made good progress on the sculpture during November and most of December. For the week of Christmas Céleste flew into Austin. He picked her up, and they drove to San Rafael. It was a clear, warm Christmas, the kind that normally put him out of sorts. He liked Christmas to be cold and overcast and wet. Still, it was chill enough for a sweater during the day, and at night the temperature dipped low enough to require a slow mesquite fire in the fireplace.

  During the day he tinkered with the small sculptures of cicadas while Céleste read or talked to him while he worked. He had hidden the unfinished sculpture of Leda. He didn’t want Céleste to know about it. Not just yet, even though it was essentially finished. They tacitly agreed not to talk about the risks of the investigation that was being conducted in isolated silence away from them. It was an odd feeling to have your future being decided for you by strangers in another country while you simply waited to be informed. But because of the oddness of their predicament, they convinced themselves that worrying was futile. There was nothing they could do.

  In a way, it was a liberation. But as the holidays went by, he could not shake a sense that underneath their relaxed good pleasure was an acknowledgment of their provisional happiness. They had eluded so much misfortune, escaped so much tragedy that could have separated them forever, that to react to their present happiness with anything other than quiet gratitude would have seemed profane.

  Céleste returned to Paris two days after Christmas, and the day after that the rain the Hill Country had been needing for so long arrived on the leading edge of an arctic cold front. It rained for two days and then the temperature dropped below freezing, and he spent New Year’s Eve iced in. Sleet whitened the ground on the first day of the new year and San Rafael was shut down, its hilly streets impassable. The fragrance of oak and mesquite fires sweetened the still air and mixed with the fog and mizzle that hung over town.

  After the fourth day the weather station said they could expect at least another week of near freezing drizzle. No one was complaining.

  He put chains on the Jeep and drove down Lomitas into town. He shopped for groceries, went by a coffee shop for more beans, and then stopped by Kirchner’s for a cup of coffee and an almond croissant. From his window table he could see only the lower half of San Rafael. The upper parts were shrouded in a pale drizzly cloud.

  After he got home and unpacked the groceries he went into his bedroom to check his e-mail and fax machine. There was an e-mail from Céleste wanting him to call her. Something had happened.

  “Vautrin wants to talk to me again,” she said. Her voice was not strained, but there was a forced calm about it. “He asked me if you were in the city. He wants to talk to you, too.”

  “When?”

  “He said it wasn’t urgent, but soon.”

  “Is that all? Nothing else?”

  “He didn’t say what he wanted to talk to us about, if that’s what you mean. He did say that if you preferred, he could have someone with a law enforcement agency in San Rafael interview you. I didn’t think you’d want that.”

  “No, you’re right. But if someone here could do it, it sounds like routine stuff to me. I mean, if it was something serious, you’d think he’d want to do it himself.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll go there. Try to arrange something for three days from now. I’ll be in touch about when you can expect me.”

  Chapter 45

  He booked a flight for early the next morning and then hired a charter flight out of San Rafael to Austin that afternoon. Considering the weather, it would be better to spend the night in a motel near the airport than to risk missing his flight the next day. He packed a small suitcase and threw the bag into the Jeep and headed for the airstrip south of town. This time he didn’t worry about getting someone to stay at his place. The important events were going to be happening in Paris.

  • • •

  January was the coldest month in Paris and, after August, its wettest as well. Céleste had agreed to meet Raymond Vautrin at three o’clock at a brasserie very near her flat in the Marais. When they arrived at Brasserie Dupuis, Vautrin was already there, at a table near the front window.

  As Céleste introduced them, he studied the inspector from the Police Judiciaire. He was in his late forties, dressed in a double-breasted dark suit, white shirt, dark burgundy tie. His hair was longish, but despite that he gave the impression of being a businessman of no particular distinction. He spoke excellent English and had a relaxed, easy manner. He smiled pleasantly, but Ross got the impression that he was a sober man.

  “I’m sorry,” Vautrin said, gesturing for them to sit opposite him at the table, “that you had to come to Paris for this, Mr. Marteau.” They all sat down. “Marteau. Very nice French name.”

  There were dirty dishes in front of Vautrin. He had eaten lunch here.

  “I’m always looking for an excuse to come to Paris,” he said. “My great-grandfather was French, they say.”

  “You didn’t know him?”

  “No.”

  The waiter came and took away the dirty dishes and took three orders for coffee.

  “Well,” Vautrin said, crossing his arms and leaning his elbows on the table. “I’ll bring you up-to-date on what has been happening in the investigation of Monsieur Lacan’s disappearance,” he said, looking at Ross. “But first, did he ever go to San Rafael?” he asked, turning his head to Céleste and addressing the question to her.

  “No,” she said. “At least, I never knew that he did.”

  “No.” He nodded. “We couldn’t find any record of it either,” Vautrin said. “That’s interesting.

  “Okay then,” he continued
, “as you may have already guessed, Monsieur Lacan seems to have been involved in the drug business. Trafficking. In a small way, but with very big people. He invested in shipments of cocaine from time to time, but mostly he just played at it. He was one of those men who liked living on the edge of a dangerous life while not actually being a fully involved part of it. When it came to violence, he much preferred to experience it in a different context.”

  The waiter arrived with their coffee, and Vautrin waited until it was served before he resumed.

  “We don’t know what happened to him,” Vautrin said, then sipped his coffee tentatively and returned his cup to its saucer. “I, personally, believe he is dead. I’m sorry, madame.”

  It was not really an apology, but rather a remark of deference out of respect.

  “We do not find any evidence,” he said, continuing to speak to her, “of foul play in his disappearance. Although I am quite sure that there was.”

  “What do you mean?” Céleste asked.

  “I think he might have been murdered.”

  Ross didn’t look at her, but he knew Céleste had reacted. How? He couldn’t imagine. Did she feign shock? Surprise? He watched Vautrin’s face to see if he was convinced, but the inspector was far too experienced.

  “Why?” Céleste asked. “If there’s no evidence . . .”

  “Evidence. Yes.” Vautrin smiled. “Well, there’s legal evidence that can be admitted into a trial, and then there’s extralegal evidence. Circumstantial. Intuitive. Experientially informed evidence.”

  “So, then . . . what happens?” Céleste asked.

  “Well, of course, we will continue investigating, but as more and more time goes by without new leads, my superiors will begin to lose interest. Soon they will be giving me other cases, and those investigations will be more demanding. After a while no one will look at this case very much. Rarely, even.”

  “That’s it? It’s over?”

  “Not yet, no. As I said, I have my ‘intuitions,’ and I have never been comfortable with unresolved cases.”

  Vautrin took another sip of coffee. Outside, the rain began drumming down on the awnings, and Vautrin looked out at the sound. He watched the rain, and the corner of his eye glinted in the gray light.

  He turned back to them.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “that it will be a long time before the estate can be settled.”

  “That won’t affect me,” Céleste said. “I’m divorcing him.”

  “Yes,” Vautrin said, “I know that. Why?”

  “I don’t want to have anything more to do with him,” she said. “Whether he’s alive or not.”

  “I see. Still, you do have a little something coming to you. A divorce will void that.”

  “It’s not worth it.”

  He studied her. “I understand that,” he said nodding. “A new life is what you want.” He glanced at Ross. “I can understand that.”

  To his surprise, Céleste showed a flash of anger.

  “I’m not looking for approval, Monsieur Vautrin. I don’t have to justify myself. I’ve earned the right to want something better than what I had.”

  “I was not being judgmental, madame.” Vautrin was embarrassed that his glance had provoked her. “Not at all. Only . . . only I have a few more questions.”

  Céleste took a drink of her coffee, her hand unsteady with emotion. Now Vautrin looked at him.

  “You’ve been very patient, Mr. Marteau,” he said. “Thank you.” He frowned and stared into his coffee cup for a moment, gathering his thoughts. When he looked up he looked at both of them, addressing them alternately with his eyes.

  “When a man disappears like this, let’s say he is murdered, it has been our experience—statistics bear it out—that most of the time the wife is a guilty party. And often—most of the time—the wife has a lover who was involved as well.” He shrugged. “It’s a fact.

  “So you see my task. It’s not personal. I am not being judgmental. I am doing my job.”

  “I understand that,” Ross said. “You don’t have to explain.”

  “With Monsieur Lacan, however, the situation is more complex than might be typical. There are complicating factors. Still, those factors do not rule out what I have just said. Of course, suspicion fell very heavily on you, madame. You must have known that.”

  “Yes, I assumed that,” Céleste said.

  Vautrin looked at Ross. “Did you ever meet Michel Lacan?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you ever see him?”

  “No.”

  “The last person we can find who saw Lacan alive was the woman he kept in Strasbourg,” Vautrin said. “That was two weeks after you last saw him,” he said to Céleste. “That was a long time ago. Three weeks before you went to San Rafael for the summer. Much of that time we think he must have been out of France. We’re checking with our counterparts in Sicily, Colombia, Mexico, Eastern Europe, a few places in Asia. He could easily have disappeared in one of those places.”’

  He stopped to sip his coffee again.

  “I’ll be honest with you, madame. I think we will never solve this case. He traveled too much. Too many identities. He was too secretive. Too strange. It is so easy for people like that to come to a bad end in some obscure place—gone forever. I think Michel Lacan falls into that category.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re telling me all of this,” Céleste said.

  “You are his wife, madame, his sole heir, for another month, anyway.”

  “He didn’t have any family?”

  “No immediate family.”

  “Really?”

  “None. Only second cousins.”

  “They will inherit his estate, then?”

  “Theoretically. They will have to be notified, and then they will have to make claims. The magistrate will have to go through the process of justifying those claims. It will take a lot of time. And there is so much money involved, I expect there will be a battle among the cousins about who gets what, how it is divided. A person could grow old waiting for this case to close.”

  “Isn’t all of this irrelevant now?” Ross asked.

  “We certainly thought so,” Vautrin said, “until a week ago.”

  Ross braced himself and could almost feel Céleste doing the same, but neither of them responded. They simply waited.

  “After your niece’s suicide,” Vautrin said, “you cleaned her things out of Lacan’s home in the Chaillot district. You sold her clothes, threw away personal items you did not want to keep. The normal things one does after a death.”

  “Yes.”

  “The rest of the house you left for later.”

  “I just wanted out of there,” Céleste said. “I got all of my things out, all of Leda’s things out. It wasn’t difficult. It was a big house, but I didn’t live in all of it.”

  “How did Monsieur Lacan and your niece Leda get along?”

  “They didn’t,” Céleste said. “They never talked. They didn’t like each other. Each was barely tolerant of the other.”

  Vautrin nodded, his expression that of a consulting physician listening to a patient give him the facts of his symptoms. He was making calculations and judgments that he wasn’t sharing . . . yet.

  Vautrin bent and picked up a briefcase that had been resting against the leg of the table. He put it on the table, opened it, and took out a bundle of documents and handed them to Ross.

  “We found these in another part of the house,” Vautrin said, “in a room that she seemed to have used often. There was a desk there with scissors, tape, folders. The articles are about you. The notations are in Leda’s handwriting.”

  Ross went through the clippings. There were articles from art journals, Le Monde, Paris Match, tabloids, various newspapers. He felt a chill wash slowly over his body, which responded like a tuning fork to a low-pitched hum from within.

  “I’m sure you are already familiar with the articles themselves,” Vautrin said. “But rea
d the notations.”

  Scattered throughout in the margins, at various angles and in various colors of ink, Leda had written:

  ml says that r’s favorite pastry is an almond croissant.

  according to ml r hates this kind of publicity. . . .

  he never listens to music while he is working—ml

  doesn’t like models talking to him while he’s working

  r’s workday is regulated by the angelus bells in the chapel of san rafael—ml

  meets amado about three times a week at graber’s—ml

  “‘Ml.’ Michel Lacan?” Ross asked. “Is that what you think?”’

  Vautrin nodded.

  “How would he know all of this personal information?” he asked as Céleste took the articles from him.

  “I don’t know,” Vautrin said. “How would you explain the notes?”

  “If you had known Leda, you wouldn’t have had to ask that question,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The fact that she read these articles . . . made notes about me in the margins . . .”

  “That’s Leda,” Céleste said, looking up from the articles. “Once we had decided on a sculptor, she went to great lengths to learn everything she could about him. In fact, the journal articles are mine. I shared them with her. Did you find the articles on the other sculptors?”

  “No.”

  “We were considering three sculptors before deciding on Ross. We researched each of them this way. We got articles, bios from agents. Whatever we could. Articles, especially interviews, that gave details about the sculptors’ personal life were her favorite. It gave her insight into their character that she couldn’t get from the drier art journal articles that were more about the artists’ work techniques.”

  “Then why does she use the initials ml?”

  Céleste looked down at the notes and shrugged. “I don’t know what she meant by that. Who knows what she was doing there.”

  Vautrin looked at Ross. He shook his head.

  Vautrin considered their responses while looking back and forth between them. He seemed not to want to believe them, yet at the same time he seemed to have to admit to himself that what they were saying sounded reasonable enough.