The Bookseller (15 page)

Hugo was wondering whether to indulge when Roussillon touched his elbow. “I'd suggest the port. It's a 1963 Croft; I'm not sure you'll find better.” He reached out and picked up a glass, filled it with the ruby liquid, and handed it to Hugo. “Try it.”

Hugo sipped obligingly and rolled it gently around his mouth, surprised at the difference between this and other ports he'd tasted. It felt like velvet, offering a perfect touch of sweetness and a fullness of fruit that kept opening up on his tongue. “I'm no expert,” he said when he'd swallowed, “but I can honestly say that I've never had port this good.”

Roussillon seemed genuinely pleased, clasping his hands together and flashing white teeth. “I shall have a glass myself,” he said. “Not much of this stuff left, half a dozen cases maybe. Then it's on to the 1970s, of which we were sensible enough to lay down aplenty. Of course, it's the '77s and the '94s we're really looking forward to.” He looked to the heavens, as if God himself were awaiting the ripening of those particular vintages. “Did you enjoy dinner?”

“I did, very much.”

“You met Jenny. I trust you enjoyed her company, too?”

“Thank you, yes.” Hugo took another sip. “I assume her…company will be waiting for me at the end of the evening?”

“Monsieur Marston, why would you ask me that?” Roussillon's look of shock was the same one that Hugo had seen on a thousand guilty faces.

“Oh, let me see,” Hugo said, smiling to let his host know he was not offended. “First there was the seating arrangement. I suppose that putting me next to her could have been pure chance, two single guests. But the deaf gentleman on my other side meant no distractions, no way to avoid Jenny's charms.”

“And charming she is,” Roussillon said.

“Oh yes. Charming, pretty, and intelligent. And when she's actually attracted to someone she probably flirts quite well.” Hugo waved away Roussillon's offer of a cigar. “But when she's told to do it,
paid
to do it perhaps, well, then she doesn't want her signals to be misinterpreted as mere friendliness, so she overdoes it. Which, ironically, makes her somewhat less appealing.”

“Are you saying I should have hired a professional, Monsieur Marston?” Roussillon said, more amused than concerned that his ruse had been unearthed.

“Perhaps.”

“But my other guests would have wanted an explanation for a stranger's presence.” He leaned in to Hugo. “They do like to gossip, you know.”

“Most people do.” Hugo drank more of the port and wondered why he'd never bothered to seek it out before. “I assume it was done for your daughter's benefit more than mine,” he said.

“Two birds with one stone. Although jealousy can be a powerful agent, don't you think?”

“No doubt.” For all his money and his title, because of them perhaps, Roussillon was proving to be a manipulative and controlling man. “I guess I'm wondering what happens if I say no to young Jenny?”

“Then the next one I send will be younger.”

“And if I still say no?”

“Then the one after that will be younger still. And if that doesn't
work, I can always send boys. I have found that while one never knows the predilections of one's friends and acquaintances, one can be sure that they have them.”

“Perhaps, monsieur,” said Hugo, draining his port, “you should not judge others by your own standards.” He set the glass down on the table and extended his hand. “Thank you for a delicious meal. I have an early start tomorrow so will excuse myself.” Hugo didn't wait for the response, suddenly unsure of his ability to remain polite. And a senior member of the US Embassy didn't need to be throttling French nobility, no matter the provocation.

As he let himself out of the library he looked toward the main room. The flames from the fireplace cast flickering shadows on the white wall and he could see clusters of women standing and sitting, the conversation subdued after the large meal. Gossip still to be swapped, but the good stuff was out of the way. He thought about raiding the room for Claudia, but that might indicate a disagreement with the host, and it would stir up gossip for sure.

He walked into the reception hall and went straight to the closet to fetch his hat and coat. He stepped to the front door, willing no one to see him, but paused by the circular table when he realized that he didn't know how to contact his driver. No matter, that's what taxis were for; he'd find one sooner or later. If not, he could always call Emma and have her send one. Or Claudia. He opened the front door silently, closed it quickly behind him, and trotted down the steps, the cold night air surprising him with its bite, a pleasant contrast to the suppressed anger that warmed his face.

He walked down the gravel driveway to Boulevard D'Argenson and looked up. The moon was a thin sliver and the evening breeze had pushed the day's clouds out of sight. The homes around him sat in curtained darkness, blankets of trees softening their glow and allowing the stars their moment.

He started down the boulevard and had gone less than a hundred yards when a black Mercedes pulled up beside him. The window came down and Jean's face appeared. “Can I drive monsieur home?”

Hugo hesitated, but not for long. “
Oui
, Jean,
merci
.”

Jean hopped out and opened the rear door. Hugo thanked him again and started to climb in, suddenly wondering whether it had been Claudia who'd sent Jean, whether she might be in the car herself. He plopped down into the seat and found the car empty. He wasn't sure whether the sharp twinge in his stomach was relief or disappointment.

 

 

Hugo awoke early on Friday to a Paris that twinkled after a long night's frost. The clouds that had sat over the city for two days had finally descended across the streets, buildings, and trees, clinging to them before disappearing with the dawn, leaving the city bright and glazed under a clear blue sky. He left Tom to sleep in and stepped out of his apartment, the crisp air and faint smell of wood smoke making the previous night's soiree seem like a fairy tale, a bizarre and unlikely fantasy wiped away by the stroke of midnight and made unreal by the bright light of morning.

His plan was to find the neighboring bouquiniste, and even though she'd not been there on previous occasions, he felt an urgency as if she was already in place, waiting for him. He was hungry but didn't want to spend time ordering in a café, so he stopped instead at a bakery to pick up a croissant and coffee to go. As he left the shop, he narrowly missed spilling the hot liquid on a man in a cloth cap who hurried past the store's entrance. He tried to apologize, but the man hunched his shoulders and kept going.

Hugo walked on, turning onto Rue Bonaparte, where he glanced into the window of a wine shop. Roussillon may have been an ass, but he sure had good port.
Another time
, thought Hugo. He continued walking north up Rue Bonaparte, and when he got within sight of the Seine he turned left, keeping the busy street between him and the stalls. He kept his head down, not wanting Chabot to spot him. When he did glance up, the little weasel was busy setting up for the day and not yet on the lookout for customers.

A hundred yards down the street, Hugo waited for a break in the traffic. When it came, he trotted across the road and turned right when
he got to the sidewalk. The woman he wanted to talk to, the bouquiniste who'd been harassed the day he'd bought the Rimbaud from Max, was also setting out her wares.

He slowed as he approached her stall, not wanting to startle her, and out of habit removed his hat when he greeted her. She was struggling with a stack of books, the slippery plastic covers making them hard to hold with the woolen mittens that covered her hands. She smiled and gave Hugo a friendly “Bonjour.” Her wind-chapped face glowed red in the cold and was the only part of her body not covered in swathes of clothing. A nose crisscrossed with broken blood vessels and watery red eyes suggested her affinity for strong drink. An unashamed appraisal of his cashmere coat and obviously American boots suggested an affinity for ways to obtain it.

“
Madame
,” he said. He picked up and shuffled through a stack of postcards, picking out two that were sepia photographs of well-dressed couples, one holding hands in front of the Eiffel Tower, the other taken alongside the Seine in roughly the spot they were standing now. She asked for two Euros for the cards, but he gave her five and waved away the change. A narrowing of her eyes told Hugo that the old woman knew there was a reason for the tip. He pocketed the postcards and decided to try a straightforward approach. “I am looking for a friend, a bouquiniste. His name is Max Koche.”

“Max?” A look crossed her face that fell between wariness and fear. “He's a friend of yours, did you say?”

“Yes,” said Hugo. “I've known him a long time. I work at the US Embassy and have bought many books from him.”

“Yes, I've seen you talking to him before.” She turned her back to him and straightened a few books. Hugo let her think about it. “I haven't seen him for a week,” she said, then looked over her shoulder. “One day he was there, the next…” She shrugged.

“Were you working here last week?”

“
Oui
, all week.”

“
Non
, your stall was closed for a while.” Hugo stepped closer. “But you were here to see what happened to him.”

She stared for a moment, her watery eyes crisscrossing his face as she considered the question. She shook her head and turned to her stall.

“
Non
.”

“You told police that he got onto a boat with some people, voluntarily.” It was a guess, he knew she'd been working that day and that if she'd returned to her stall she couldn't have missed the fracas. “But you saw what really happened, didn't you?”

“I saw nothing.” She looked over her shoulder at him, and her tone softened. “I am old, monsieur, old and tired. And my memory is as bad as my eyesight, probably worse. I am sorry.”

“Even an old woman would have seen that Max was kidnapped,” Hugo urged. “Please, I need you to tell me what you saw.”

All he got was a sad smile.

“
D'accord
, I understand,” he said, softening his tone. “I'm Hugo Marston, by the way. What's your name?” Her eyes narrowed again. For some reason she was afraid. Hugo reached into his pocket and pulled out his credentials, and the shiny State Department badge seemed to reassure her.

“I thought perhaps you…” She pulled a glove off and offered a cracked hand, her grip surprisingly strong. “I am Francoise Benoit.”

“Is there something going on with
les bouquinistes
, Madame Benoit?”

She looked up and down the street, but their only company was a family of frosted leaves that scuttled along the sidewalk, propelled by the wind. “I mind my own business. You might want to do the same.”

“Max was my friend, which means his disappearance
is
my business.”

“Your friend.” She said it quietly, as if she finally believed it. She straightened and turned to him, glancing up and down the quai again. “It's supposed to be confidential, but we have been offered money for our stalls.”

“Who has? All the bouquinistes?”

“
Oui
.”

“By whom?”

“I don't know. Not exactly.” She went back to placing books on the metal shelves, talking to him with twitches of the head and sidelong glances down the street. “About a month ago Bruno Gravois, the head of the SBP, called a meeting of all members. Most of us were there. Gravois told us that the
Chambre de Commerce et Industrie
in Paris, along with the
Office du Tourisme
, wanted to give the Seine
un ravalement
.” A facelift. “You know how it is, Monsieur Marston. A year ago we got a new government, which means we got a new crop of bureaucrats with bright ideas. Monsieur Gravois said we would get severance packages for signing over our stalls to him.”

“And what was he going to do with them?”

“He said he was working with the
Chambre
and the
Office du Tourisme
to update them and put in new bouquinistes.”

“‘He said,'” Hugo repeated. “You don't believe him.”

Her laugh was more of a cackle and her breath hit him from fully six feet away. The mint she was sucking did little to hide the distinctive, sweet tang of alcohol. “Did you see that weasel Chabot? If that's his idea of attracting tourists, then Paris might as well fall into the Seine and float away. The man doesn't know which side of a postcard to write on, let alone anything about books.” She looked up and down the sidewalk again. “I don't know what is happening, monsieur, but I know it's not being done for the good of Paris.”

“But they can't force you out, can they?”

“No?” She snorted.

“If you're frightened and think they'll force you out, why not take the severance?”

She cackled again and reached under a folding wooden chair. She pulled an almost-empty bottle out of a brown paper bag and shook it. Vodka. “See this? You give me a lump of money and I'll stick it straight into my liver. At least when I work I am forced to drink myself to death slowly. If I am still alive when the money is gone, what then? What else can I do to make a living?”

Fair enough
, Hugo thought. “Do you have any idea why he's replacing all the bouquinistes?”

“I assume he's putting his friends in place and takinga cut. Why else?”

Why indeed. Easy enough to make that kind of agreement with friends and acquaintances. Legal too, if you papered it right. Certainly a lot easier and more legit than extorting it from hundreds of unwilling sellers. But replacing all those bouquinistes was expensive and a lot of trouble, even assuming most were happy to take the money and get out of the cold. And what about the others, like Madame Benoit? And Max?

“That man you were arguing with last week,” Hugo said, “who was he?”

“Him?” She spat. “That
salaud
. One of Gravois's
capitaines
.”

“Capitaines?”

“That's what he calls them. He has three or four men who keep an eye on us to make sure we're not selling more postcards than books, telling us when our stalls are too untidy. They are men like Chabot who know nothing of the tradition of
les bouquinistes
, and they don't care. They are like Chabot, but with strong arms and angry faces.”

“Why was he harassing you?”

“Why? Because I'm still here. I don't make trouble for them and I try to do what they say. But that isn't always enough, monsieur, because at the end of each working day, I am still here.”

“I see.” Hugo offered his hand again. “Is one of those capitaines called Nica?”

“I don't know their names.”

“The one I'm thinking of, he's tall like me, with a face like it's carved out of rock.”

“Maybe. I turn the other way when I see them coming monsieur, so ‘maybe' is all I can say.”

“OK. Thank you for your time, Madame Benoit.” He turned to leave.

“Monsieur Mouton—”

“Marston,” he corrected gently. “But please, call me Hugo.”

“
Oui, oui
, Hugo. Have you thought—” she blew her nose into an enormous handkerchief, “have you talked to Ceci?”

“Who?”

“She was the last chief of the SBP.”

“Before Gravois?”

“
Oui
. I think perhaps she was the first to be removed. She is a good woman and very wise. If something is going on, she might know.”

“Might?” Good enough. “Where do I find her?”

She frowned and shook her head. “I think your badge might help you find her.”

“Her last name at least?” The look on her face told Hugo that Ceci had never had a last name to her bouquinistes, that the idea of her with a last name was an oddity. He replaced his hat and smiled. “Never mind, I'll find her.”

Hugo walked away from the stall, ambling slowly beside the river. He stopped occasionally to stare into its depths, but the surface slid beneath him, a lid of impenetrable steel protecting its secrets with no hope that it would hand out answers, or even comfort, today.

As he walked, he thought about coincidences. To him, life was too chaotic and random for them not to pop up now and again. Put differently, as he'd once explained to the church-going Christine, he did not believe in fate. Fate and religion, he'd said, were for those who didn't want to take control of their own lives—or weren't able to. Much easier to believe in fate or a slew of gods than to accept a universe of chaos. With a god or fate behind you, you could place your future in someone else's hands, let them be responsible, and when it went wrong you had a convenient patsy. Christine had argued with him, of course, blue eyes blazing at his heresy, but he always suspected her anger was to cover her own fear that she agreed with him. She certainly couldn't change his mind. No, those oddities that people ascribed to God and fate, the chance meetings with old friends or the car that swerved off the road and narrowly missed the little boy, they were nothing but coincidence and luck. Coincidence and luck were real, and if you didn't recognize their existence then you were looking for meaning where it didn't exist.

This meant that Max's disappearance immediately after selling him a book worth hundreds of thousands of dollars
could
be nothing more than chance.

And yet his mystical sixth sense, the one that conflicted with his views on God and the unknown, kept ticking away, nagging him to forget chance and happenstance and tie these random events together into a meaningful package.