Deadly Tasting (3 page)

“Certainly. I’m going to see a friend who can give me more information.”

“May I have this friend’s name?”

“I’d rather not divulge it at this point.”

“Whatever you think is best,” said Barbaroux. He thrust out his chin without taking his hands out of his pockets. Benjamin returned the detective’s wordless good-bye with a nod.

Benjamin, followed by a silent Virgile, stepped out of the apartment. His stomach was bloated and gassy. Elisabeth had warned him the first few days of the diet might be slightly embarrassing. He had also been advised not to smoke, but he reached for his sharkskin cigar case and took out a magnificent Cohiba Siglo VI, whose cap seemed especially supple. He lit the Cuban cigar with relish and drew several generous puffs of the honeyed flavors. He held the smoke in his mouth as long as possible, allowing it to temporarily satisfy his hunger.

3

Ensconced in his convertible, Benjamin had been waiting for more than half an hour when he finally saw Franck Dubourdieu through the vapor on his windshield. His friend, dressed simply in white shorts and a navy T-shirt, was whistling as he emerged from the tennis club. He had a terrycloth was draped around his neck and a gym bag slung over his shoulder. He was carrying a racket.

“Hey, Benjamin!” he yelled, seeing the winemaker. “What are you doing here?”

Benjamin climbed out of his classic Mercedes 280 SL and almost winced when Franck shook his hand with the forceful grip typical of exuberant athletes.

“I thought I might catch you here when I didn’t find you at home.”

“As always, Benjamin, you know how to follow your nose. I’m getting a later-than-usual start today. But as you’re aware, I usually try to squeeze in a game of tennis before I get down to work.”

“Did you win, at least?”

“Win or lose, who cares? The key with age is to keep improving, like good wine. Hopefully, the wine is thoroughly relished and gone before it has the chance to turn into vinegar.”

Franck Dubourdieu’s house was a stone’s throw from the Primrose Tennis Club, one of the posh spots in the city, always a fashionable place to go when you wanted to hit a few balls in polite company. In this well-manicured and slightly snobbish neighborhood called Caudran, Franck maintained an unaffected attitude without prejudice or concerns about social status. He was focused only on enjoying life. As an agronomist, trained oenologist, and, above all, a long-standing friend, he often surprised Benjamin with his appreciation of poetry, his integrity in tasting innumerable crus, and the equal delight he took in a Beethoven quartet and a Chet Baker ballad. His sense of youthfulness and wonder was still intact, and this trait never failed to charm Benjamin.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll take a quick shower,” Franck said as he opened the door to his home and threw his bag in the entryway. “I’ll just be ten minutes. In the meantime, taste this 1989 Suduiraut-Cuvée-Madame. It’s a beauty.”

He uncorked a bottle, put two crystal glasses on the coffee table in the living room, and left Benjamin with his glass of dessert wine. He disappeared upstairs, but not before taking time to slide a Lennie Tristano CD into the stereo.

The pianist’s harmonic progressions swept up and down the keys. The melody rose in torrents before cascading in fine dulcet droplets that made Al Levitt’s cymbals tremble delicately. The melody ascended again, driven this time by the smooth, sustained sounds of Lee Konitz’s alto saxophone and the supple modulation of tenor Warne Marsh. Benjamin found himself pleasantly carried away, and he instinctively felt the intensity and depth of Tristano’s genius.

Unlike Franck, who was an aficionado, Benjamin had never immersed himself in the world of jazz. He found it a bit intimidating, and yet it had analogies in the world of wine. While the jazz lover deciphered the liner notes on an album, the wine connoisseur gleaned information from the label on a bottle. The jazz lover eagerly committed to memory the names of hundreds—perhaps thousands—of artists and could surmise which were shooting stars and which were eternal flames. Similarly, the wine connoisseur could commit to memory myriad domains with mysterious names. The jazz lover noted innovative creative trends the same way a wine lover discovered emerging terroirs. And listening, feeling, and analyzing a rhythmic meter or harmonic thread were similar to tasting, feeling, and analyzing an aromatic palate or tannic presence. Indeed, there were many palpable connections between jazz and wine.

“Ah, 1952, a great vintage,” Franck said as he pulled on an old cashmere sweater. “The July 17 concert in Toronto. Peter Ind on contrabass and Al Levitt on drums. Tight section, very smooth, with just the right amount of tension. I like this album because the pieces are long, as they often are on stage, and it’s the duration that brings out the best in this music. It’s got beautiful development—firm and fluid, full of finesse. Complex but elegant: it has aged majestically, believe me!”

Benjamin raised his glass of Sauternes and nodded in agreement with his friend’s remarks, affecting an air of competence that he did not actually have. He admired Franck’s work in oenology and often consulted his books on the topic, especially
Les Grands Bordeaux
, published by Mollat. He kept a worn copy on his writing table.

“Do you know that Elisabeth is infatuated with genealogy, etymology, and heraldry and has done some research on your name?”

“Really? How is your charming wife?”

“Very well, thank you. She found a certain Bernard Dubourdieu, who was a brilliant captain under Napoleon. If my memory serves me, he was born in 1773 and died in 1811. He took part in campaigns in Italy and Egypt, distinguishing himself in numerous battles against the British Navy. In short, he was one hell of a character. But the strangest thing is that he was the son of a master cooper from Bayonne. It seems that if your name is Dubourdieu, you are destined to be involved in the wine world.”

“Surprising, indeed. But I don’t think he was one of my ancestors. As far as I know, anyway.”

“Four years before he died in artillery fire in the Mediterranean, he sailed to Bordeaux on a ship called
La Pénélope.
Records show he captured thirteen British vessels, including two privateers, and took three hundred prisoners.”

“That’s interesting, Benjamin, and please thank Elisabeth for looking into the subject, but I don’t imagine that you came all this way to tell me the story of this particular Dubourdieu, who had the luck to be born in a wine barrel and gave up the ghost at sea.”

Benjamin sipped the Suduiraut and clicked his tongue.

“You are right, Franck. I just need you to give me your insights on Pomerol.”

“I don’t know what I could possibly teach you,” Dubourdieu said. “You know perfectly well what I think of you, and I get some rather caustic comments from jealous colleagues when I tell them. But hey, you’re heads and shoulders above the rest of us, and you have to accept that.”

“It’s nice of you to think so,” mumbled Benjamin, who always felt embarrassed at being so highly regarded. “But I think you, on the contrary, could help me in a rather delicate matter. Let’s say it’s a sensitive case.”

“I don’t like it when you get that worried look on your face.”

“Have you had a chance to watch the news today?”

“No, I haven’t had the time. You forget that I just played three hard sets against a formidable opponent.”

“There were two slayings in the Saint Pierre neighborhood a couple of hours apart. Two men well over eighty. A ritual appears to be involved in both, although I don’t think the police have told the reporters about that yet.”

“How were they killed?”

“Knifed. Both of the men were stabbed and bled like pigs. But for me, the most intriguing part of these two cases is the wine that was left at the scenes. Twelve glasses were lined up in both apartments. At the first, one glass was filled, and at the second, two glasses were filled.”

Benjamin relayed the information meticulously, detailing every point, including the fact that he had tasted the wine at each murder scene.

“You’re really sure it’s a Pomerol?” Franck asked with a frown. He got up from the couch to turn down the music.

“Yes, absolutely certain. I let the inspector believe I was hesitating, but I have no doubt. On the other hand, I’m completely stuck as to the vintage.”

“You must have a suspicion, though.”

“To be honest, all I know is that it is not very young and that I’ve never tasted it before. But I don’t want to tell you any more. The inspector gave me two samples, and I have the test tubes in my pocket.”

“I imagine all this must remain confidential.”

“Obviously. I trust your opinion as much as your discretion.”

“Thank you, Benjamin. I’m happy to be of any help, but don’t be too optimistic. You know as well as I do that it’s a tricky business.”

Franck Dubourdieu brought out two new glasses and set them on the coffee table. Benjamin poured out the contents of the test tubes and waited patiently for his friend to begin tasting. From the corner of his eye he watched Dubourdieu weigh, observe, sniff, and chew the wine in his own personal style.

Lennie Tristano continued his melodic forays, and Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh responded with their own. It was all brotherly jousting, where the point wasn’t winning or losing, but savoring the camaraderie.

“I have an idea, and I’m surprised you didn’t tell me about it,” Franck said right away.

“That is?” Benjamin said slyly.

“It’s a Pétrus, and you knew it. You couldn’t possibly have missed it.”

“That’s exactly right. But admit that it was tempting not to let on ahead of time. It’s part of the game.”

“I don’t blame you. I would have done the same thing. That said, this is not an exceptional year. It is, indeed, a very old vintage, but it’s the nose that lets you perceive the characteristics of Pétrus. The body is a bit weakened, and I suspect we are dealing with an average harvest.”

“If you are being so careful, you must have a clue.”

“It does remind me of certain very distinctive years in the Bordeaux region.”

On the stereo, the blending of ivory, ebony, and brass with just the right amount of genius, reverie, tension, and sweat culminated in a moment of grace. The music went silent. Dubourdieu put the CD back in its case and slipped it into a cabinet drawer under the letter
T
, between Cecil Taylor and McCoy Tyner.

“I have the feeling that this wine could be well more than a half century old,” Dubourdieu continued as he started looking through another drawer of CDs.

“Okay, so what?”

“It could be from the nineteen forties. You must have thought of that too.”

“Yes, the oldest Pétrus I have ever tasted was from 1945. We all know that was a remarkable year. We call it the vintage of the century, mostly because it’s closely linked to the end of World War Two in Europe. I admit it’s one of my most spectacular wine tasting memories.”

“I’ve also tasted it, and I agree with you.”

“I have had many chances to taste post-war Pétrus, and even though those specimens were superb, they couldn’t quite match the 1945.”

“You’ve never tasted the ones produced during the war?” Dubourdieu asked. He took out a CD of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet recorded in 1952 on the Pacific Jazz label.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Those wines have the same iconic bouquet. But the mouthfeel is light. Maybe that’s a clue. I would opt for a 1943, but you’d have to check by opening one from the same vintage.”

“Why 1943?”

“Because it’s a good year but not a spectacular one. Mind you, Pétrus is a remarkable wine, regardless of the year. Nevertheless, winemakers throughout the Bordeaux region faced terrible obstacles during the war. The men were off fighting, and the women and children had to tend the vineyards and make the wine, on top of what they were already doing. Most of them weren’t as experienced as the men. In addition, all equipment and trucks had been requisitioned for the war effort, and that slowed harvests and production. Those who were left on the estates managed pretty well and were even quite valiant, but the quality of the wine was affected.”

“You really believe this is a vintage from that period?” Benjamin asked.

“It’s entirely possible, but to get a more precise idea, we would have to find bottles from that vintage, assuming they are still well-preserved and drinkable.”

Gerry Mulligan’s baritone sax was rising above the trumpet sounds of Chet Baker. The ringtone of Benjamin’s cell phone was a shrill interruption. He stepped into the hallway to take the call and returned to the living room a few minutes later.

“Is something wrong, Benjamin?”

“That was Inspector Barbaroux. There’s more trouble.”

4

A harpsichord piece by Scarlatti, a Jamaican calypso, a soft-drink commercial, an old Celine Dion hit, an urgent news flash, a Muslim sermon, some nineteen sixties rubbish, a futile discussion of euthanasia… Benjamin impatiently scanned the radio stations on his car radio. He stopped when he recognized the familiar voice of Rudolph Martinez. Benjamin had been invited to the France Bleu Gironde radio studio each time a new edition of his guide was released. He had come to know this mysterious young man with elegant hands and a dark, seductive gaze beneath long eyelashes. Benjamin appreciated the interviewer’s pertinent and carefully researched questions. The engaging dialogue always made for a successful show.

Benjamin slowed down and turned up the volume; he loved the incisive clarity of Martinez’s commentaries. This one was mischievously titled “Bobo of Bordeaux”:

Bordeaux suffers from a pernicious type of modesty that keeps us from proclaiming our superiority. Let me explain: on the radio or television, how many times have you heard people say, “No, Bordeaux is not cold” or “No, Bordeaux is not dreary”? In print, how many times have you seen Bordeaux described as a sleeping beauty—a young woman who’s hardly even alive? Even our mayor has gone on the defensive, saying that Bordeaux is not the stiff and stuffy city that certain people say it is. Why are we always denying our vibrancy and flagellating ourselves? In truth, under Bordeaux’s gray eye shadow, there’s a passionate young woman who’s just waiting. She’s wearing red lip gloss and a lacy thong. She’s funny, festive, and sexy. She just needs to be stirred a bit.

Benjamin parked on a grassy embankment and turned off the engine. Martinez’s slightly naughty and understated humor put him in a good mood. He turned up the volume, unable to suppress a gleeful smile that made his reflection look a bit silly in the rearview mirror.

We all know that Bordeaux is not fond of change. When she’s not described as a sleeping beauty, she’s considered aloof, her bosom held firmly in a corset. That makes her safe and respectable. But safe and respectable are for other cities, not our fine and bedazzling Bordeaux. The young woman from the Garonne is ready to toss away her chastity belt and be emancipated! Enough of the sad and disturbing stuff of the past. Today’s Bordeaux is a rare beauty ready to seduce both those who live here and those fortunate enough to visit.

A Spanish truck whizzed by. It brushed dangerously close to the convertible, and the displaced air shook the car. Benjamin turned the volume up even more.

The people of Bordeaux must go off the defensive and take charge of the future. Our city, this sleeping beauty, just needs to be kissed by the prince. And
voilà
. We have the city we dreamed of. Those who write and talk about this city need to get with it. Continuing to call Bordeaux cold, boring, lethargic, nostalgic, distant, aloof, and sleepy just makes me grumpy and sleepy. I realize I’m mixing my fairy tales, but you understand what I’m saying.

“Well said, kid!” Benjamin exclaimed as he restarted the engine.

It was, in fact, time to put those clichés to rest. The city had changed considerably since the time, now ancient, when the writer Francois Mauriac had fled the sorrows of his childhood, the suffocating secrets of his family, the Sunday rituals, and the Jansenist smell of the Grand-Lebrun high school to be reborn in the lights of Paris. Benjamin remembered a little book written in the nineteen twenties in which Mauriac had described Bordeaux as “endlessly organized in a hierarchy.” The road a resident lived on, the type of wine he sold, and other more subtle distinctions classified him as ship owner or merchant, wine trader or fishmonger.

Still, Benjamin realized that some of those observations were still relevant, especially if you spent any time in the Chartrons neighborhood: “In Bordeaux, the gap between pretense and reality shocks you at first. Then it makes you laugh”; “Bordeaux is the port city that makes you dream of the ocean, but the ocean is never seen or heard.”

Benjamin continued on his way, savoring Martinez’s iconoclastic—to say the least—program, which nonchalantly wandered from syrupy violin pieces, Mississippi bluesmen, and Brazilian cooing to funky horn selections, London rock, and Byzantine choirs. This guy had a sense of connection and tempo and a depth of musical knowledge that allowed him to tweak his listeners with just the right amount of bad taste to keep them both intrigued and amused.

As he approached Libourne, road construction slowed traffic. He turned off and headed toward the first street that seemed clear. Trusting a vague sense of orientation, Benjamin made several detours in an area with tidy houses whose white plastic fences vainly attempted to imitate lacquered wood. After turning into two dead-ends and finding himself in the same traffic circle a number of times, he arrived on the road that led to the cemetery. A police van and two unmarked cars were parked outside the main entrance. A plainclothes detective stood guard on a carpet of wet grass. The winemaker identified himself and was allowed to enter. He could make out the slightly compact, oblique profile of Inspector Barbaroux, who was gesticulating in the middle of a small group of people.

Benjamin walked down the first road and cut through a row of vaults, some of which, surrounded by rusty gates or decorated with small stylized chapels, were in need of weeding.

Benjamin saw Barbaroux wave to him and start to walk over. The inspector extended his hand when he reached Benjamin. It was sweaty. He’s still on edge, Benjamin thought.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Barbaroux grumbled as they started walking toward the spot where the inspector had been talking to the group of people. “But you didn’t need to. I could have sent the samples to your office.”

“Your phone call made me too curious. I had to come. What happened, exactly?” They had reached the grave site, and Benjamin nodded to the three experts from the forensics unit who were standing on its perimeter.

The tombstone was coldly austere and clearly desecrated. But Benjamin could still make out the name on the black marble plaque in the middle. It read:

ARMAND JOUVENAZE

1914–1998

The final
e
of the name had been covered with a thick
i
of red paint that had dripped before drying just above the date. The concrete cross overlooking the burial place hung dismally by the end of its metal structure.

“Look at this shit,” the inspector said. “Someone took a sledgehammer to the headstone and that slanderous transformation of his name. And, as usual, the fucking twelve glasses.”

“Three of them filled,” Benjamin said, approaching the grave. “Except this time, the body has been aged!”

Barbaroux gave a hint of a smile and then broke into a full grin. “More than a decade fermenting in the cellar!”

“He was a contemporary of the first two victims.”

“That’s worth noting. We’ve locked down the area, photographed the grave site, and taken samples from the glasses. If you feel like tasting them, they’re all yours.”

Benjamin proceeded fairly quickly, crouching near the grave and spitting the wine on the grass. He carefully set down each of the three glasses.

“These are not ideal conditions, but I can confirm what I told you the two previous times.”

“Pétrus?”

“Yes, the wine is a bit too cold. Although it’s not that chilly outside for October, the wine has been sitting here for several hours, which has compromised it somewhat. I can’t tell you much more.”

Barbaroux motioned to his forensics team to clear out. He told them to wait for him at the cemetery entrance. Then he turned back to Benjamin, who was examining the red paint. “That slur painted there smells of vengeance,” he said, pulling a tissue from his coat pocket just in time to catch a sneeze.

“You’re right. It seems like a fairly straightforward message to me. Maybe a bit cartoonish, but hey, obviously this Armand Jouvenaze was lucky to die when he did, or else he might have been butchered like the two others. Why he is being called a Nazi, well, that’s certainly a lead to pursue.”

Barbaroux wiped a drop from the end of his nose and stared at the winemaker. There were dark circles under his tired eyes.

“You’re a shrewd one, Mr. Cooker.”

“Why do you say that?”

“In Lot-et-Garonne, where I come from, we would even say you’re a
sacré mariole—
which means pretty clever, and a bit of a smart-ass.”

“Is that so?”

“You’ve put your finger on the only really interesting point. Clearly, this desecration is connected to the two murders. But from the beginning, we’ve assumed that the person doing this might be planning twelve murders. It seems now that there won’t necessarily be twelve victims.”

“I agree with you,” Benjamin said, “Some of the people who’ve been targeted might already be deceased. Just consider the ages of the two men who were slain and the man in this grave.”

“That’s what I mean about being clever!”

“It all seems very logical. Our challenge is finding out why these men have been targeted.”

“Yes, it’s useful to know what drives the perpetrator of a crime. It usually has to do with passion, whether it’s hatred or love, vengeance or remorse.”

“So you have to find out if this Jouvenaze has a past, and why he’s being called a Nazi. I’m sure you’ve already looked into the backgrounds of the two victims, right?”

“Obviously,” the inspector said. He sighed and dabbing his nose with his balled-up tissue. “What do you take me for? That’s a basic part of the job.”

“I’m sure it is. And what have you found out about them?”

“As a rule, I am not allowed to give you such information.”

“Of course, but let me remind you that as a rule, I am not obliged to help you in this sort of investigation. And I suppose that my name has not been mentioned officially in regard to these cases, am I right?”

“I see where you’re going with this, Mr. Cooker! You’re trying to dig something out of me.”

“Which seems appropriate in a cemetery…”

Benjamin could see that Barbaroux was trying to smile. He heard him snicker instead.

“Okay, two can play this idiotic game, but you have to promise absolute discretion. Things are heating up.”

“In this investigation, I assure you that things are heating up. The higher-ups are getting agitated, which is affecting the mood in the department. And the reporters are swarming.”

“You can at least tell me if there is any connection between the victims?”

“It’s unclear at this point. It’s possible that they have a connection with the criminal without necessarily having anything to do with one another.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“No, not at all. But you have to take everything into consideration. And besides, I wanted to see how you would react to that kind of theory.”

Barbaroux sneezed and pinched his nose. Benjamin remained silent, knowing perfectly well that the inspector would eventually part with some information. All he had to do was wait patiently.

In the silence of the cemetery, Benjamin could make out the distant noises: the whiny mopeds, the barking dogs, the construction, the squeals from the schoolyard. They were all signs of life seeping into this final resting place for the dead.

The inspector looked annoyed. He wiped his hand across his face, stomped his feet, and cleared his throat.

“Okay, I’ll give you the basic details, and you can sort them out later. Here are the main points. Jules-Ernest Grémillon lived his whole life in that apartment on the Rue Maucoudinat where he was killed. He was actually born there; it belonged to his grandparents and then his parents. He worked for thirty-eight years at the Massip Company. You know it, the old leather company that—”

“Yes, I know Alain Massip very well. He runs the business,” Benjamin said. “He has a store on the Places des Grands Hommes and a workshop nearby.”

“Grémillon worked at Massip as a leather cutter, and he stayed there until his retirement. Initially, however, he didn’t intend to go into this line of work. We found out that he spent almost two years in a seminary. Then, during the war, he didn’t seem to have a regular job.”

“How did he get by?”

“At that point in time, he seemed to live by his wits. Who knows how? One thing is sure: he was still living with his parents. He seems to have been politically active with two collaborationist groups, Fire and the French Popular Party.”

“What was his involvement?”

“It appears that he was a kind of grass-roots organizer. He didn’t have anything to do with the leaders of the Vichy government or any other higher-ups. At any rate, I’m not an expert in that area. All I know is that he was some kind of small-time collaborator, fairly unknown. He didn’t suffer much at the end of the war. He spent two months in detention. Then he went to work as an oyster grower for a cousin who had a few oyster farms in the Arcachon Basin. In 1949 he found his job as a leather worker in Bordeaux.”

“And do you have as much on Émile Chaussagne?” Benjamin asked.

“More or less. He got around more. He came from a middle-class family in Périgueux. He studied the humanities, Latin and Greek, and then went to law school in Bordeaux. When the war broke out, he was still a student, but he dropped everything to concentrate on journalism at some really trashy fascist-leaning newspapers. After the Liberation, it appears that a group of former Resistance fighters wanted him for something or other. They trailed him. According to our intelligence, he lived here and there: Marrakech, Douala, Pondicherry, and Spain, near Alicante. He didn’t return to France until 1974, just after Georges Pompidou died, and the old stories were being forgotten. Let’s say things worked out for him. He survived on what was left of the family fortune. If I were a novelist, I would say he squandered his inheritance by living parsimoniously. In short, he was starving but was still living like a discreet old gentleman in the Saint Pierre neighborhood.”

“And both of them lived just a few blocks apart,” Benjamin said. “It would be interesting to know where Armand Jouvenaze lived. He’s buried in Libourne, but he might have spent his whole life in Bordeaux. It’s strange, all the same—this geographical coincidence, the Saint Pierre neighborhood, and the Pétrus. I can’t help but think it’s all connected.”