“But as to why you wanted Phillips dead, I can only guess.”
“Please do!” Pellerin smiled at him encouragingly. Unlike Blond, he appeared to be enjoying himself.
“I’d say it had something to do with a shipment from Chad to Tianjin.”
“A shipment? What sort of shipment?”
Despite his suspicions, Bennett had to admit, “I’m not sure.”
Pellerin threw up his hands. “
Alors!
There you are. You Americans! It must be your movies. Not only are you the hyperpower, but you have the hyperimagination as well. Even after two hundred years you’re still a nation of wild dreamers.” He put his arm around Bennett. “Perhaps that’s why I’m so fond of you, Dwight.”
“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong party. I don’t think of myself as terribly wild at all,” Bennett said drily.
“Oh but you are, you are. Oh yes,” he assured him. “Though it’s a part you hide and not many see.”
Blond saw nothing even remotely
Peau-Rouge
about the well-cooked American. On the other hand, he undoubtedly knew more than was good for him.
“In any event,” said Pellerin, “we’ll have some good laughs about your shipment over lunch.”
“Sorry. I’d love to stay, but I can’t. Happy birthday, Hubert!”
Staring at each other, the two of them listened to their visitor walk across the hallway and enter the open elevator cage. As the metal gate closed and the creaky, old-fashioned elevator slowly descended, it seemed to suck all the air out of their lungs.
51
MAZARELLE RETURNS
G
iven how long it had taken for Mazarelle to settle down in Taziac, he was surprised how little time it took him to leave. He wasn’t even sure when he dialed Paris that he still had a job there, but his old boss at the commissariat in the
quatrième
had asked him to come home. Fabriani had been following the case of the murdered foreigners in the media and was impressed by the way Mazarelle had dispatched the Taziac killer. And now that his wife had passed away, the commissaire asked, was there really any reason for him to remain in the provinces?
Mazarelle, a little more cynical than he once was, assumed that a call had been placed from the Ministère de l’Intérieur, a request made, some arms twisted.
Voilà!
The way of the world. So he’d left the house and all the furniture with Louise to sell. The money to be kept in trust for Gabrielle. A smart young girl like that would find a good use for it.
Other than Michou, some personal photographs, his treasured collection of jazz CDs, Mazarelle had taken few possessions with him. He wanted a fresh start. The apartment he rented was near the Place de la Bastille. Not very large, but how much space did he and Michou require? He aimed to keep his new life as simple and uncluttered as a Brancusi.
Best of all, his apartment was close enough to the commissariat so that he could walk there. That was all the exercise he needed at his age. Strolling down the fashionable rue Saint-Antoine on his way to work, he could watch all the chic, beautiful, cool-eyed women in
the world go by. The sounds of traffic nonstop, the smell of chestnut trees in the air.
Sitting at his old, beat-up wooden desk and scanning a copy of
Le
Figaro,
the window behind him open to the morning stir of Paris, Mazarelle felt as if he’d never left. He’d forgotten how smooth, how fragrant the coffee here was. Not at all like the bitter stuff they used to cook up in their Bergerac squad room. As he turned the pages of the newspaper, a small article below the fold caught his eye, some names that he wasn’t likely to forget. Émile Pellerin and Hubert Blond. The two former DGSE agents who, Bennett had told him, had hired the Taziac murderer. He’d filed them away on his mental Rolodex. So what were they up to now?
Le Figaro
said they were dead. Accidental victims of food poisoning. Two days ago they’d been found in their apartment on the rue de Berri and rushed by ambulance to the Hôtel-Dieu. The inspector was familiar with the hospital’s emergency casualty center, one of the best in Paris. Tearing the article out of the paper, he pocketed it for safekeeping. That was an accident he wanted to know more about.
After repeated telephone calls, he finally reached the doctor in charge of the emergency center.
“Yes, late last night. Food poisoning,” said the doctor, confirming the cause of their deaths. “Most probably toxic mushrooms.”
Mazarelle was skeptical. “Isn’t that strange? I mean Parisians don’t eat mushrooms and die anymore.”
“Apparently some do,” the doctor insisted. “Strange would be if they were both killed by lightning. Or killed by a shark while swimming in the Seine. But toxic mushrooms can make a person quite sick, and there are some phalloides that kill people. I understand even experienced mushroom hunters—gourmets, as well—may mistake deadly members of that family for edible ones.”
“Did you send blood samples to the central laboratory of the Paris police?”
“Why should we?” he bristled. “There was no official request. Nothing irregular. Let me assure you, Inspector, this was an accident.”
As soon as the doctor had gotten off the phone, Mazarelle spoke
to the head nurse and obtained the rue de Berri address of the two men. He left at once, hoping to arrive at their apartment before anything had been touched. It was not far from the Champs Élysée, a well-tended, late-nineteenth-century art nouveau building with narrow curving balconies. He pushed open the heavy wrought iron and glass front door.
The concierge’s loge appeared to be empty, but he knocked anyway.
“Yes?” A gray head popped out from behind a screen. An alert woman in a blue cardigan looked him up and down. It was plain she didn’t approve of anyone quite so large. “How can I help you?”
A typical cranky Parisian concierge. What she really meant was I’m busy. So make it snappy. Mazarelle showed her his police ID, explaining that he wanted the key to the Pellerin and Blond apartment.
“You too?” She told him they were upstairs now cleaning it out.
The inspector didn’t care for the news. “Who?”
“Government agents. From the Quai d’Orsay with a court order. They’ve been taking out boxes of stuff for the past hour. Said they were almost finished. I told them I wanted a receipt for every single thing they take.”
“Okay, okay! What apartment?”
“Fourth floor.”
Mazarelle ran into the lobby and repeatedly jabbed the elevator button. The dangling cables remained motionless, the elevator stalled somewhere in the building’s upper regions. Tired of waiting, he thundered up the crimson-carpeted staircase that circled the open elevator shaft, and by the time he reached the third floor his legs were as tight as banjo strings. Slowing to catch his breath, he thought he heard the elevator going down and, turning, saw the top of the descending car. He hurried to the fourth floor and rang the bell, pounded on the door. It was unlocked.
Mazarelle called but no one answered. He rushed into the apartment and out onto the balcony. Leaning over the wrought-iron railing, he spotted three men in raincoats running to the black Citroën parked not far from the front door. All three carried boxes. Mazarelle’s booming voice filled the narrow street, but they didn’t even
glance up out of curiosity, unwilling to show their faces. The inspector went back inside to see what they’d left behind.
It was a large, fancy, bourgeois apartment with marble-topped tables and gilt-framed mirrors. Pellerin and Blond seemed to have been doing well for themselves. Whatever those three guys had taken it wasn’t the furniture. Mazarelle found what was probably missing behind the door marked P&B CONSULTING. Except for a few meaningless scraps of paper left on the floor and some unattached wires, the room was empty. The trio had descended like driver ants and cleaned out everything in their path. Mazarelle imagined the room had once been full of computers, printers, disks, copiers, correspondence, file cabinets, travel records, appointment calendars, checkbooks, address books, reference books, maps. Who knew what else?
He walked into the kitchen. It was a mess. The stink of soured milk turned his stomach. Dirty dishes and pots in the sink; piles of old newspapers, magazines, and advertisements on the floor. He went through the bags and boxes in the corner, but they were empty. He picked up a large but otherwise ordinary shipping box beneath the others. The colorful gift box inside was what interested him. Though he’d seen many just like it in gift shops all over the Dordogne promising irresistible
Trésors de Périgord
with pictures of the local gourmet delicacies they contained, this one was empty. But what it did have was an unsigned white card on which was written
“Félicitations et bon appétit.”
Unable to bear the smell any longer, Mazarelle grabbed the two boxes and carried them into the living room, his backside sinking like a medicine ball into the white pneumatic pillow on the brocade couch. He searched for his pipe, which still had some tobacco in it, and lit up. A small welcome-back gift of Philosophe from his friend Monsieur Small.
Mazarelle picked up the white card and studied it. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his wallet. Ever since his long-haired drinking buddy at the Café Valon had made his sketch of the Munich team’s goal, Mazarelle had been carrying the folded paper napkin around with him like a lucky charm. Which it might yet prove to be. There were striking similarities in the handwriting. The letters on
both the card and the napkin bending italically as if in a high wind, the
c
in
“Félicitations”
as glum and closed mouth as in the name Schmeichel, the
a
in
appétit
crookback like that in Basler.
Mazarelle felt a shock of recognition. He was certain that this message had been written by the Taziac murderer. If the card in fact accompanied a gift of deadly mushrooms, then its ironic good wishes reeked of the German’s sense of humor. The inspector needed no further evidence. He knew without a doubt that the food poisoning of Pellerin and Blond was no accident. It was murder. Even more extraordinary, the two former French agents would seem to have been killed by a dead man. Was it
une
flèche du Parthe,
a final stab at payback? And from beyond the grave? If so, add two more bodies to the German’s hit list.
Pulling himself up, the inspector went over to the window, sat down by the telephone at the small desk. He knew he’d made a remarkable discovery. He had to tell someone about what really happened to Pellerin and Blond. Perhaps their former boss at the DGSE. But the three men hadn’t come from the DGSE. The concierge said the Quai d’Orsay had sent them, the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. What did they want here? If he called the ministry now, he knew they’d tell him nothing. And, besides, how could he claim murder when even the head doctor at the emergency center of the Hôtel-Dieu called their deaths accidental? Though he doubted there was anything to be done, perhaps his commissaire would have some advice.
Picking up the receiver, he began to dial the commissariat, when he realized he was holding a dead phone. He slammed it down. Someone had already disconnected the telephone line. Possibly the same someone who was interested enough to clean out their office.
Mazarelle dropped the gift card into the breast pocket of his jacket, scanned the apartment, and opened the door. As he waited for the elevator, he thought back to his talk with Molly at the bakery. Recalling her telling him that Barmeyer had promised her a meal she would never forget—a mushroom omelet. She was lucky to get out of that house alive.
Downstairs the concierge stopped him at the front door.
“Where’s my key?”
“You never gave it to me. The apartment was open,” he said, and let the door slam behind him.
Outside in the street, the sky had clouded over and it was beginning to drizzle. In a few long strides he crossed the narrow rue de Ponthieu and ducked into the arcade, taking a shortcut to the Champs Élysée. At the end closest to Ponthieu—a shoe store, a bookshop, a
bureau
de
change
—it was a little worn with age, having seen better days. At the far end, the one closer to the great boulevard, were the fashionable boutiques. Mazarelle paused in front of the bookshop to glance at the tall racks of postcards. The popular Paris tourist attractions on one rack, on the other the leading stars of French cinema with a sprinkling of such international icons as Charlot, Garbo, Bogart, and Shirley Temple.
He’d just picked out a card—one of Louise’s favorites, Jean Gabin—to send her a few words, when he caught a head-spinning whiff of cheap exotic perfume. Staring up at him, a short, bony young woman wearing spike-heeled boots and a denim skirt the size of a doily. She pointed to the top of the rack, her lashes fluttering, and said, “I need help.”
Mazarelle held up the picture of Alain Delon. “This one?”
She pointed to the card next to it.
“This?” He held up Depardieu and she smiled. It was then that he felt a hand sliding across his bottom and stealthily slipping into his back pocket. His wallet twitched, came alive, gliding up and away as if it had wings. Snatching it out of the air, Mazarelle noted the hand attached to the wallet was hers.
“Let me go, you bastard! You’re crushing my fingers.” She had a voice like a foghorn, stopping people in their tracks.
The inspector glanced around to see if she was part of a team. Fabriani had warned them about gangs of pickpockets roving like bedbugs all over the city. Attacking tourists, especially Japanese tourists, whom they considered easy marks. Did she think he was a Japanese tourist? Mazarelle found that hilarious.
“You’d better try another line of work,” he advised her. “I’m a cop.”
Irate, she shouted, “Are you some sort of plainclothes flic faggot?” The bystanders were having a good time.
“Don’t push me,
chérie
. Just beat it before I decide to take you in. Now fuck off! With your luck you’d do better selling crutches.”