Cries of the Lost (20 page)

W
HEN
I got back to the flat, Natsumi had already changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt.

“Where did you get that little black number?” I asked. “And the boots?”

“The boots I bought yesterday. I was going to surprise you, which I guess I did. The skirt is one you’ve seen. I just shortened it with some duct tape. You can use that stuff for anything.”

“What did you think of our Frenchman?”

“Don’t let Monsieur Arnold hear you say that. He’s Alsatian. And damn proud of it.”

“Ah.”

“He’s the full-time caretaker of the Château de Saint Sébastien. He’s got a 6,000-square-foot house, a few barns and a lot of little outbuildings, and seventy-five acres, mostly forest and garrigue, to look after.”

“Who’s the boss?”

“A Spaniard named Fulgenzia Bolaños de Sepúlveda.”

“A woman.”

“
Si
. A very rich woman who visits her château maybe a dozen times a year, including her big annual event in the spring.”

“A social event?”

“More like a business meeting, he thinks, because he clears the furniture out of the biggest room in the house and sets up chairs theater style. He doesn’t know what they talk about, because the Madame makes him leave for the week they’re there and brings in temporary housekeepers. Wouldn’t matter anyway. Christian can’t speak a word of Spanish.”

“Christian Arnold. Sounds Alsatian. I bet he hasn’t been on the job very long.”

“Two years. The Madame recruited him off a big farm up in Alsace. He was single, no kids, bored with growing hops, thought it would be romantic to live in Provence. Now he’s not bored, since there’s so much work to get done, but he’s lonely as hell.”

“You didn’t happen to get his phone number did you?”

She handed me a damp paper napkin.

“His mobile. Although he might hate me now for ditching him.”

“Does the Madame have a Monsieur?”

“Nope. Not that he can determine. He called her
la vieille chatte dingue.
Something like, that crazy old pussy, and I don’t mean the feline variety. Though it sounds worse than it is. He actually seemed to like her. Maybe because she’s the only company he gets.”

“She’s not there now, I take it.”

“No. And won’t be for another few weeks.”

By now I was at the computer searching for Fulgenzia Bolaños de Sepúlveda. In America, it’s a whole lot easier to track down someone named Horatio Hortence than Bill Smith. Same with Señorita Bolaños de Sepúlveda. There couldn’t be that many of them.

I was almost right about that. There were none. At least none that attracted the attention of Google’s omniscient bots.

I turned to Natsumi. “I liked the boots. You looked great.”

“In a slutty sort of way.”

“What was your cover story?” I asked.

“Looking for real estate for my rich parents back in Japan who always dreamed of retiring to Provence. I thought that might wrangle me an invitation to his place, but he didn’t bite. In fact, he said he was under strict orders to never let anyone set foot on the property.”

“What kind of a guy do you think he is? How safe did you feel with him?”

“He was pretty sweet, all in all. For a rough farmer-type character. Just wicked horny, and who can blame him.”

“How would you feel about one more date?” I asked.

“Depends.”

I told her my plan. She calls Arnold and apologizes for disappearing on him. Couldn’t get off the phone with a neurotic girlfriend until it was too late to call. Would like to see him again, but during the day.

“You want a tour of Aix. Keeps you out among the public. Meanwhile, I’m breaking and entering, seeing what I can dig up at the château.”

She poked me gently in the chest.

“Okay, but don’t start getting pimp fantasies. A café table is as close as anyone’s going to get to this
chatte dingue
.”

T
WO DAYS
later I was walking through the Provençale woods with my smartphone in my hand and pack on my back. I had a new pair of hiking boots and a light rip-resistant jacket designed for the exact purpose they were being put to. I had a compass and a second handheld GPS just in case the phone fell in a stream or had a sudden software glitch.

It was ten in the morning. Natsumi had texted me while I waited in the Opel that she and Christian were having a lovely late breakfast under the plane trees of the Cours Mirabeau. I left the car in a little glade accessed by an unpaved road I’d spotted on my first trip into the hills, and I was now within the confines of the Saint Sébastien estate, as shown by no-trespassing signs posted with great frequency.

The early autumn day was pleasingly on the cool side, though the sun, still close to the horizon, was bright and difficult to block with the rim of my baseball cap. The woods were thick, but frequently opened up on garrigue—treeless spaces filled with local varieties of bramble and dense shrubbery, like kermes oak, juniper and wild thyme. The ground was littered with the pale grey rocks, designed to twist ankles, that seemed ubiquitous around the Mediterranean region. Which meant I spent as much time looking down as I did staring at the smartphone or surveying the landscape around me.

It took about an hour of strenuous hiking before I came on the first man-made landmark, a stone structure enclosing an ancient well once used to water livestock. I fixed it on Google Earth and the smartphone, and created a waypoint on the GPS. The house was about twenty minutes away, assuming the same speed-overground. I pressed on.

The blue dot representing me came within theoretical eyeshot of the main house about the same time I actually did. It was a mostly stone dwelling made up of several buildings of different heights cobbled together in an orderly fashion, which I knew from the aerials was in the shape of a U.

There wasn’t much in the way of landscaping beyond a few pergolas buried under mounds of roses, honeysuckle and wisteria, and small patio seating areas furnished with heavy iron tables and chairs and teak chaise longues.

I moved through the aromatic air and searched the exterior of the house for a way in other than the front door. I found what I was looking for near the end of a perpendicular leg of the U. There were no little signs alerting the criminal class that this building was equipped with an alarm system, as there would be in America, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t.

I studied the door frame and those of nearby windows, but found no telltales, like brass contacts, blinking motion sensors or errant narrow gauge wires, not that these things were usually visible from the outside.

While thus engaged, I didn’t notice the actual domestic defense apparatus walk up and sniff the small of my back.

I turned to see a
Dogue de Bordeaux,
a dog the size of a stunted elephant with a grotesquely wrinkled head about twice that of a beach ball. I looked at him and he looked at me for nearly a minute.

“What a beautiful dog,” I said in French. “Would you like a treat?”

I unwrapped and handed him a gooey energy bar.

He took it and left about a quart of slime behind, covering my hand and halfway up my forearm. I petted his gigantic head and his thin tail began to wag.

“You are a very distinguished gentleman,” I said, this time in English. “I think maybe you’ve been miscast as a ferocious guard dog. At least, that’s what I hope.”

As I intensified scratching the furrows between the big flaps of skin covered in short, reddish brown fur, he thrust his head forward, challenging the strength of my hand. The downward Churchillian cast to his face belied what seemed like sheer pleasure at being thus attended to. When I got my other hand into the action, he reared up and lapped a slippery tongue from chin to forehead across my face. I repressed the thought that he probably outweighed me by about forty pounds and could have taken the whole of my head in his mouth.

“You are a total mush, you know that?” I said. “Thank God.”

I told him in French to sit and give me his paw. He got the first part, and failure at the second likely meant I didn’t use the correct French. I gave a few commands in Spanish, which he took to more readily.

“Eres un perro muy bueno. Muy guapo. ¿Me puedes decir cómo invadir su casa?
”

He seemed to like the compliments, but opted not to show me how to break into his house. Though he also did nothing to stop me when I used a glass cutter to remove a piece of windowpane and reach in to unlock a casement window. I patted him on the head once more before pulling myself up to the windowsill and slithering headfirst through the opening. I rolled onto my back and lay there, listening for threatening sounds.

What I got was ten tons of dog when my new friend followed me through the window. The gouges in my arms and chest fortunately missed important veins, but the ballistic force of his weight crashing down made me fear for my ribs.

“Holy crap,” I yelled, involuntarily.

My recompense was an aggressive lapping by the bath towel-sized tongue, which I eventually resisted well enough to get back on my feet.

“Man, you are a very persistent doggie.”

I don’t think he heard this, because he was already prowling around the dark room, his nose to the ground and tail in the air, great baritone sounds emanating from deep in his chest. I realized he’d probably spent no more time in the big house than I had, and was keen on investigating this long withheld prize.

I was in a little library, barely big enough to contain a pair of high-backed stuffed chairs and a love seat. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and books were stacked on a surplus of side tables. A shallow desk made of satin-finished fruitwood had a felt writing pad and a stand with a quill pen. But for the slightly fussy excess of the Provençale aesthetic, it was a nice room. I could live there, assuming broadband access.

I searched the desk and poked around the bookcases for boxes or anything else that might contain papers, mail or documents. The Dogue rejoined me and I asked him if he liked the house. He shook his head, showering me and the environs with stringy saliva, which explained why he hadn’t spent much time inside.

We moved on.

A hallway led to other small sitting rooms, more than one would think normal people would need. “I’m tired of sitting in the blue room, Philippe. Let’s sit in the pink room tonight.”

I searched each one without result. I next came across what I assumed was the principal living room, very large with a half-dozen seating areas. I could see that Madame could create a meaningful meeting space by switching out the furniture. I went back to searching every drawer and shelf and looking behind every picture frame. I wasn’t a professional at this by any stretch, and there was no time to check floorboards or tease out hidden panels. But I felt like I was doing the best I could under the circumstances.

The Dogue offered little assistance, though I started to enjoy the company. He’d disappear on quests of his own, then reappear, his arrival signaled well in advance by the sound of tiger claws clattering across the floor. I learned to guide him into pressing against my leg, avoiding most of the torrent of slobber. As long as the crushing mass didn’t cause a compound fracture of the thighbone, it was a good approach.

We worked our way to a large kitchen and separate eating area with a blocky natural wood table and chairs. Dozens of copper pots, bunches of wild herbs and oversized forks and ladles hung from wrought-iron racks attached to the ceiling. Open shelves screwed into clay-colored plaster walls were crammed with crockery and glass jars filled with grains, rice, pasta and coffee.

I tried to figure out how to say, “Go fetch the secret documents. Good boy,” to the Dogue, but he was busy jumping up on the counters and center island seeking targets of opportunity.

It wasn’t necessary. A desk built into an alcove directly off the kitchen had a woven basket filled with mail contained by a rubber band. I sat down at the desk and unbound the mail. All but two letters were addressed to Madame Fulgenzia Bolaños de Sepúlveda. These belonged to Domingo Angel. One was from the
Dirección General de la Policía y de la Guardia Civil,
the other was a plain envelope. The return address was on West 72nd in New York City. Apartment number, but no name.

I put both letters in my pocket and searched the desk. Nothing.

It took an hour to go through the bedrooms upstairs. Then the Dogue and I left the house and went to visit the outbuildings. The first was a huge barn, dark and filled with the stink of abandonment. I didn’t even try to mount a search, knowing it would take a full team of crime-scene investigators a week to make a dent in the possible hiding places. And given that the mail was dropped off at the desk, I thought, what was the point? They didn’t think they needed to hide anything.

I checked the other building just for the hell of it, and finding nothing of obvious interest, decided to leave. The Dogue walked with me through the forest. Along the way I told him stories—all true—and he seemed to enjoy hearing them.

When we reached the border of the property, he sat down. It didn’t seem possible that he was stopped by an invisible fence, given the property’s size. Somehow, he just knew. I scratched his gigantic head and thanked him for being such a good host.