Dead in the Dregs (16 page)

Instead he joined the
gendarmerie
, and his natural abilities and ready intelligence made for swift advancement. Growing up under such circumstances, he felt himself to be an outsider; now he turned it to his advantage.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Never mind. It was a long time ago. Anyway, I received an excellent Catholic education.
Alors
!” he called to our waiter, “
l’addition, s’il vous plaît
.” He regarded me again with startling blue eyes. “I am an old man, nearing retirement. They are reorganizing the
Police Judiciaire
and have been trying to get rid of me for several years, but I am holding out until the end. This will probably be my last case. So what if I break a rule or two? What can they say? ‘You’re fired’?
Eh, bien.
Who cares?”

Once we were in the car I said, “Forgive me. I know it’s an impertinent question, but your name, Sackheim, it sounds so . . .”

“German?” he laughed. “My father was from Alsace. My mother was Lyonnaise. But my hair—it was red when I was a boy—and my blue eyes, they provided, how do you say, ‘protective coloration’ at the
lycée.
But you, Shtayrn, you’re a Jew,
non
?”

I nodded.

“I thought so. Your name. And, unlike me, you, my friend, look Jewish.” We both smiled. “So, do you need to check into your hotel? No? Excellent. First you need a geography lesson. This place, Bourgogne, is maddening.”

We drove south down the N74, turned off the highway at Fixin, and found ourselves on a narrow road.

“This is La Route des Grands Crus. It goes through Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-Saint-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny.” We passed
through one legendary village after another, and I remembered back to when I’d first attached these real places to the names I’d memorized as a young sommelier.

On the far side of Chambolle, we switchbacked by the Clos de Vougeot, and Sackheim pulled over to take in the legendary vineyard and domaine. The place floated on a sea of mist broken by the tips of vines that fanned out in unending rows, the château’s volumes of gray stone massed and fractured as if they had split and multiplied over centuries. He gazed at the place in awe.

“These wines, they are . . .
incroyable, extraordinaire.
” English was insufficient, obviously, and the wines, a few of which I had tasted in my glory days, were a luxury I could no longer afford on a bar-tender’s tips.

In Nuits-Saint-Georges, Sackheim pulled into a parking space across from a
tabac
, took the map I had in my hands, and ordered me out. He spread the map on the hood of the Citroën, overlooking a stream that passed through the south side of the town.

“In two months this river, le Meuzin, will be full, rushing . . .” He extended his arm to the west.

In broad strokes he explained the Côte d’Or, a patchwork of vineyards forming an irregular and inscrutable checkerboard of names—
communes, premiers crus, grands crus
—so complex in their array that I wondered how a worker found his way through the maze of plots and parcels and rows.

“But you know all this,
non
? Lieutenant Ciofreddi told me that you are a distinguished sommelier.” I thought I detected a touch of irony. No American could be the real thing in a Frenchman’s eyes. “Come, I will take you to your hotel.”

We turned off at the sign for Aloxe-Corton. The road passed through a corridor of ancient acacias and narrowed, winding its way through two small squares. Sackheim dropped me in front of the hotel. I stood at the curb, my bag at my feet. He rolled his window down.

“Tell me, is there a restaurant in town where guys like Feldman and Goldoni might tend to go?” I asked. “Somewhere people talk about?”

“Perhaps you should try La Bourguignonne. She is a very good cook.
C’est branché
.

“Thanks.”

“Happy hunting,” Sackheim said. “And pay attention,” he added. “You must watch your back, eh?”

Le Chemin de
Vigne stood off the street, set back from a low stone wall, the vestibule framed by trellised roses, its façade awash in a crimson scrim of ivy. I entered the hallway and, finding it empty, walked into the common room. A woman was bent at the fireplace, sweeping ashes into a dustpan. Hearing my steps on the flagstone, she craned her neck.

“Ah,
pardon, Monsieur
,” she said, standing and wiping her hands on an apron. She was young, her black hair in a wild tangle, and she wore black jeans and flip-flops and a loose sweater beneath her apron. She led me to the front desk, where I handed her my passport and a credit card. Then she took me upstairs.

“
Voilà, votre chambre
,” she said. “It is okay?”

“Better than okay. It’s perfect, lovely.”

“Enjoy your visit,
Monsieur.
”

I looked around. The room had a rustic elegance, its off-center lines framed by rough-hewn beams, the walls washed with pale mustard-colored plaster. I splashed my face at the marble sink to shock myself awake and did a circuit of the room, wondering if I’d have a chance to enjoy it. The windows faced a vineyard to one side and a small park to the other, a towering linden and an ancient, stunted holly set amidst a table and chairs that had been covered for the season.

Downstairs, I asked if she had a phone book.

“
Oui, bien sûr.
” She returned a moment later with a thin Pages Jaunes in her outstretched hand.

“Is this just for Aloxe-Corton?” I asked.

“
Mais non
, it has all the communes surrounding Beaune,” she said, then disappeared through a door at the far end of the room.

I sat at a table and leafed through the book until I arrived at
P
. There were two listings for Pitot in Nuits-Saint-Georges: Gilbert and Henri. I copied the addresses in my notebook and walked to the door through which the woman had gone.

“
Excusez-moi, Madame
,” I called. I thanked her and asked if she could call me a taxi.

I had the cab drop me at the Hertz office in Beaune, where a prim attendant handed me the keys to a sporty Rover sedan, fittingly painted a rich burgundy red. I went over the map with her and figured I’d start at the Novotel, the place Eric Feldman said he’d be staying.

The Novotel, the local representative of a national chain that catered to the business traveler—in France, an exclusively male club—occupied a square block on the edge of town not far from the Hertz office. I’d stayed in one of these places on my first trip to France, organized by a distributor in Seattle. Made a Day’s Inn feel like the Plaza Athénée. I remembered how I’d felt in the morning. The coffee alone had made me homicidal, not to mention the day-old croissants, foil-wrapped butter, and recycled
confiture
. Personally, I’d want to punch my first client in the nose. Given the range of accommodation available, it seemed an unlikely choice for a wine writer, but Feldman was doubtless on a budget, and his pick fit Jordan Meyer’s description of him: dry, lifeless, keeping himself ascetically aloof from the sybaritic pleasures of his métier.

Management had seemingly abandoned ship, leaving the operation on autopilot. I rang twice, and a man peered out from the office behind the front desk.

“
Oui, Monsieur
? May I help you? Checking in?”

“
Non, merci.
I am looking for Eric Feldman. He arrived . . .”

“On Sunday,” the man answered efficiently.

“He is not here?”

“
Non, Monsieur.
Mr. Feldman has his appointments. Would you like to leave a message?” He placed his hand on the lip of Feldman’s room box. It was empty. When I said nothing, he busied himself with paperwork and fiddled with the computer.

“If you would like to leave your card,
Monsieur
, I will make certain that Monsieur Feldman gets it,” he said, staring at the computer screen.

A card. That was good. What would mine say? That I was a retired sommelier and unsuccessful sleuth?

“
Non, merci, Monsieur
,” I said.

I stood in front of the desk, contemplating my next move. The man stared distractedly at me from the tops of his eyes and then, when I didn’t budge, retreated to the excitement of his office. I dawdled at the desk, checking out the lobby. He peeked out a few minutes later and, seeing me still standing there, disappeared back inside.

Come on
, I thought,
be a Frenchman. Stand firm and be rude to me. I’m an American, damn it
. But he refused to cooperate.

I found my way to the center of town and parked off the Place Carnot. It was too early for dinner, even for an American. I wandered into Athenaeum, a famous bookstore specializing in the subject of wine, and browsed the shelves. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.
Why French Winemakers Hate American Critics
?
How to Kill a Wine Writer
? I was out of luck.

By the time I left the store, dusk had fallen. The sky was a flat gray mirroring the expanse of gravel that swept across the square. I asked a woman rushing home for directions to La Bourguignonne. She shrugged and shook her head, but, after wandering around for thirty minutes, I found the alley that led to the little bistro.

The place was virtually empty. I explained to the young man who greeted me that I’d just arrived, and apologized for not having a reservation. He seated me at a table tucked in a corner of the dining room, by the door to the kitchen. The menu, written in chalk on a blackboard, hung on the wall. I asked for a wine list. It read like a who’s who of the
côte
, the big names cheek by jowl with the up-and-coming stars of the younger generation I’d seen featured in the wine mags.

I ordered a plate of
petit-gris
snails and a bottle of Pommard and
sat back. A few minutes later, just as the maître d’ poured me a taste of the Pommard, two unmistakable Americans entered the restaurant. I immediately recognized the shorter of the two—I’d seen a photograph of him in
Wine Watcher’s World.
It was Frederick Rosen, Biddy’s contact, for whom I’d left a message. He hadn’t returned my call. He had bushy eyebrows that drooped over sweet, dark eyes ringed by sallow folds. A thick moustache followed the sagging line of his lips, which immediately broke into a huge, phony smile revealing a mouth full of nicotine-stained teeth as he greeted the young man who’d suddenly abandoned me—obviously, the chef’s husband and co-owner—and introduced his companion.

“Gérard, I want you to meet Smithson Bayne,
un avocat.
”

The lawyer must have stood six-four and wore ostrich-skin Luccheses, jeans, and a Hawaiian shirt, its tails loose beneath a buckskin jacket. His sandy hair was pulled back in a short ponytail. He stretched out a hand that could have palmed Gérard’s skull and winked.

“Hey, Jirard, how ya doin’, buddy? Pleasure,” he said, his voice bellowing in the tiny dining room.

“There’ll be four of us,” his companion reminded the host.

“
D’accord
, Freddy.
S’il vous plaît.
” They were seated at a table in the middle of the room.

As I waited for the escargots, I watched the two men pass the wine list back and forth. Just then, a young woman entered the restaurant. Her hair, straw streaked, was pinned up in a tight chignon, revealing strikingly beautiful eyes, slightly sunken, that were heavily lined with kohl. Taken separately, her features were a little off: her forehead too broad, the chin too weak, her mouth too wide. She was like a young wine whose elements had not yet come together, but as an assemblage, their effect was startling, an immature first-growth claret wrapped in a brown paper bag for a blind tasting. You had to work hard not to look, and I gave up without a fight.

“Monique,” Rosen said, rising from his chair to kiss her. “This is Smithson Bayne,” he continued. “This is the young woman I was telling you about, Monique Azzine.”

“Bone swah, Mamwazell,” Bayne boomed, rising to his full height to shake her hand.

At the same instant, a new arrival came through the door.

“Freddy!” he said, heading for their table.

I watched, fascinated.

“Jacques Goldoni, Smithson Bayne. And this is Monique.”

It seemed too good to be true: I was getting a look at Goldoni on my first night in Burgundy, but, as I knew too well, the wine world was small and all too predictable. Eric Feldman was the only one missing. I thought about going over and introducing myself but decided to stay put and watch the evening unfold.

“Hi, Monique,” Goldoni said, offering an unattractive grin that he undoubtedly fancied seductive.

“Hello, Jack,” she said, looking at him with barely disguised distaste and making a point of pronouncing his first name
Jack
. He seemed unfazed and seated himself.

Goldoni was around my height but had to weigh at least half again as much. He had an immature face, open and clean-shaven, but his eyes darted with a calculating energy as he looked from Rosen to the girl to Bayne. His tweed sport coat, rumpled and devoid of shape, stretched across his back as he sat down. Gérard fussed over them, describing the evening’s specials in detail.

“So, tell us, how goes the
stage
?” Rosen inquired.

“I arrived just in time for the harvest,” Monique said, fiddling with her napkin. Her accent was nearly imperceptible.

“But Richard said he saw you in Barsac,” Rosen said.

“Yes,” she said, glancing at Goldoni. “I started there. A second growth, third-rate château. Terrible
propriétaires.
So arrogant. I was very alone. They treated me like a servant. I left before the harvest.”

“Am I missing something? You two know each other?” Bayne said, showing more perceptiveness than I’d have credited him with.

“Last spring Jack was with Richard in Barsac” was all she offered by way of explanation.

“They treatin’ you any better here?” Bayne asked.