Murder Without Pity (22 page)

“It’s probably a stray,” Stanislas said.

“Let’s hope so,” Leclair said. “Bruno stayed around inside as long as he could take it.”

“As long as I thought it wise.”

Bruno leaned forward out of the back seat’s darkness into the dimness of the front, as if to defend himself. The man bulked massively, Stanislas noticed, with rounded shoulders and a face lined like a coal miner’s and with a beery odor and a cigarette jammed into the side of his mouth. He handed the field glasses back to the undercover.

“Bruno!” Leclair snatched the cigarette away.

“I’m not stupid enough to light up. It’s for my nerves. This job got to me. Those guys inside looked like anarchists ready to bomb.” He snatched his cigarette back and shoved it into the side of his Peabody jacket. “Happy?”

Leclair appeared to sense the bar experience had shaken him and said nothing.

Bruno roughed off his knit cap with a sweep of his hand and shook his long hair loose. “I’ve been drinking there about a week. Each time I walked in, I could feel thirty eyes or so on me the moment I stepped inside.”

“They suspect you’re undercover?”

“If there’s shooting, you’ll have your answer, Monsieur Judge. Maybe not. You know how drinking regulars are when a stranger enters their territory? Suspicious. Afterwards, they settle down. No one asked me anything. I volunteered nothing. I was simply an unskilled laborer in for a drink after a tough day.”

Leclair passed him a bottle of mineral water. Bruno jerked the Vittel up and gulped in savage swallows. “From what I could overhear, the owner, a Monsieur Stevanovic, a blustery guy, immigrated here from Belgrade a decade ago.”

“A political refugee?” Stanislas held the plastic cup under his chin and let the coffee steam away cold from his lips and nose, while he gazed ahead to the bar.

“A dreamer, who’d seen too many Parisian tourist posters in my opinion. Thought our streets were cobbled with gold. Believed every woman looked like Catherine Deneuve. Anyway, he ended up running this home-away-from-home dive for his countrymen. A huge Serbian flag across the back of the bar. Posters of a monastery and the Danube. A metal box to aid the motherland next to the cash register. Satellite TV, too. Nice and comfy, except you can do just so much with a hole-in-the-wall. Don’t ask me why anyone except Serbs would go there.”

Leclair glanced back. “Number one, they’re probably naturalized French, Bruno. Number two, skip the editorial and get on with it.”

Bruno ignored him. “Here’s where it gets interesting, Monsieur Judge. First, this tall guy I hadn’t seen before walks in. Next, the bartender brings him a Stella Artois without his ordering. Guy walks in. Bartender pops the cap. Just like that, and seconds later this other guy from one of the tables goes over to join him.”

Stanislas twisted around. “Like the tall guy’s a regular?”

“My impression exactly,” Bruno said. “Like he goes there often. See what I mean by ‘interesting’?”

“The guy who joined him, catch his name?”

“Slavko. Slavko-something-or-other. It’s got a mean sound, huh?” He took another savage gulp.

Leclair peered at him. “Bruno, please, a clean report. Your brother-in-law was Albanian. He never returned from the war in Kosovo. We’re sorry to hear that. But don’t let that color anything.”

Bruno kept his eyes on Stanislas, acting like Leclair didn’t exist. “This Slavko character joins him for a minute or two at the bar. No more than that. No chitchat. Strictly business from the first word. Before I know it, they’re through a door to the immediate left of the bar. Not the WC, if that’s what you’re thinking. What passed for that is outside. I’d used it earlier when I checked things out.”

“Where were you seated when you saw them leave?”

“At a table near the wall far to the left. That’s how I caught a glimpse of those wooden crates.”

“Wooden crates?” Did they ship alcoholic beverages that way? Stanislas wondered.

“Lots of them, Monsieur Judge.” Leclair reentered the conversation. “And stacked to the ceiling.”

A drunk bellowed gibberish into the night.

Questions about Bruno’s discovery could wait. Stanislas palmed away condensation from his side of the windshield and squinted. The drunk appeared to wave a bottle above his head. Another man, a head taller, joined him. He clapped an arm around the drinker’s shoulder. As he steered him back to the doorway, the glare from the lone bulb overhead caught the tall man’s face.

“That’s our suspect,” Leclair said.

Inside his car now, the man stoked the engine, revving the cold motor again and again. After a further moment he backed out, and his car’s blackness misted into gray. As it slipped left into a thick patch of fog, its tinted windows and sleekness made it look as mysterious as the one he had spotted from Pincus’s studio window months ago, Stanislas thought. It was unquestionably a Renault Safrane, and its expensiveness in the quarter stuck out. He tried to catch the license number, but the mist obscured its plate.

“Mother Mary, may I earn my pay tonight.” Leclair gripped the wheel with one hand.

Stanislas tossed his coffee out the window.

Leclair twisted the ignition key as he tensed to see if anyone else left the bar. When no one did, he flipped on the wipers. Then he teased the Fiat out and toward the intersection, his head almost against the windshield, determined to follow.

Losing Jules Altmann on his Italian Lake District trip must have galled the officer more than he himself realized, Stanislas thought.

Despite the fog and darkness the quarter, at the northern edge of the Boulevard Périphérique, couldn’t hide its banality, he noticed, its bland seven-story buildings, its launderettes and garages that skimmed past. The mist couldn’t conceal the immigrant’s signs either. A poster threatened a hunger strike against the police. Another promised a demonstration at the Place de la République. Graffiti shouted ASYLUM FOR ALL, and HANDS OFF MY BROTHERS!! yelled back in solidarity. Despite the hour the downtrodden seethed.

They traveled south for a distance, passing a long army convoy of jeeps and trucks, before swinging west. In minutes they motored along Boulevard de Clichy. The Safrane bolted through a red light. Leclair wisely braked. The thought of losing the target, though, unnerved him, Stanislas could tell, for he kept wiping his hands on his trousers. A woman with a spiked collar around her neck and a man in black jacket and tights ambled across the crosswalk. Leclair focused on the taillights that thinned to two dots in the distance. The man blew him a kiss. Leclair stared ahead.

“This weather and riots haven’t stopped night crawlers from coming out in Pigalle,” Bruno muttered.

The light flicked green. Leclair jammed the gas. The Fiat lurched ahead. After a time they crossed from the Right Bank to the Left at Pont de l’Alma, swung a quick left onto Quai D’Orsay for several long blocks and past an eighteenth century mansion with a pompous colonnade. Next, a right to a deserted square and into a one-way street.

“We just passed the National Assembly,” Bruno said in astonishment. “And over there, the Defense Ministry. This guy’s going into the very heart of the government. He’s involved in a coup?”

The suggestion was too wild to deserve reply, Stanislas thought. Then again, who knew what to believe anymore? Leclair remained too focused to comment.

Another turn and now past a darkened park to their left. Leclair inched the Fiat forward to the end of the short block and mumbled to himself, and Stanislas realized he was counting the seconds till he thought it safe to turn. At last he slowed his way around the corner. Halfway down the block, the taillights flashed red. The driver had braked and turned left into someone’s drive.

THREE HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

The news affected each differently when Stanislas finished running an ownership check on the mansion.

“I just don’t believe it,” Officer Leclair repeated.

“You heard it yourself.” Stanislas snapped shut his cell phone.

“Why would a family of that stature get involved?”

“I wasn’t far off,” Bruno said. “A conspiracy financed from one of the wealthier families around. And some of the plotters living in the heart of our government.”

“Just because the Le Brunes own that town house doesn’t make them plotters in a murder,” Stanislas said.

“They own a lot more than that,” Bruno said. “The Le Brune line of cosmetics and perfumes. Those Loire Valley wineries. That means money, and money can buy power over me and my family, and that’s something I don’t like.”

“There’s only one way to find out how they’re involved.” Stanislas pushed open his door and struggled out. “Call my clerk and tell him to meet me inside.”

“You shouldn’t go in alone, Monsieur Judge.”

Stanislas dipped his head. “Officer Leclair, if I show up with police, what’s going to happen? Nothing. Whoever’s inside will stiffen, and I’ll get nowhere. I want to see how they react when I’m there with no backup. Besides, don’t you think dowager Le Brune’s harmless at her age?”

Leclair gave up with a shake of his head and switched off the engine. “Remember your cell. We’re here if you need us.”

Leclair was right, he thought, limping off toward the town house. Harm could come without warning. He would have to accept the risk.

Like other mansions in the Faubourg Saint-Germain district, this nineteenth century one hid its luxury and pedigree discreetly. A wrought-iron fence along the sidewalk and a blind of fir trees on the grounds walled the town house off from passersby who might barely notice it as they strolled past. Whatever mystery it guarded, it kept out of sight and deep within.

He waited on the sidewalk near the gate several minutes. He heard nothing except his breathing and occasional police sirens in the distance. The grounds appeared deserted, and the mansion in mist stood dark till light suddenly brightened through the louvers of a shuttered window off to his left.

When he at last gripped one of the bars, the gate oddly creaked open. He stepped inside the enclave, committing himself, and knew he had to proceed to the entrance.

There, he paused. The front door lay ajar. He pressed his fingertips against the heraldic knocker and gave a slight push. The door eased open further. He braced for a blow on his head or an arm yanked around his neck. Nothing happened.

He leaned inside and squinted into the dimness ahead to a dead men’s row of busts on pedestals. Still he heard nothing. As he stepped into the corridor, a rich smell came to him. Someone had passed through moment’s ago, smoking a brand of cigarette he couldn’t recognize.

“Madame Le Brune.” He realized the hush had made him say her name too loudly. Turn back, he warned himself. She’s not here, and someone else is, and you can’t handle him.

He remembered the flash of light through the louvers and thought, She must be here somewhere, or at least a servant or two, and limped down the hallway. “Madame Le Brune, are you in?” From somewhere to his right, deep within came the whoosh of a toilette flushing.

He rattled the doorknob to his right and discovered the room was locked. “Hello anyone. I’m Examining Magistrate Stanislas Cassel.” Even that announcement of his position brought no response from whoever had used the WC.

As he felt his way forward, his hand grazed a door to his left with enough force to crack it open. He nudged it open further and peeked inside to a grandiose salon that looked appropriate for a monarch or the very rich. An immense rug fringed in gold covered the parquetry. From gold cords plunging from the ceiling dangled lit chandeliers. At the far end, a desk seemed to ooze gold from its edges in swirls and to drip in curls down its legs that ended in lions’ paws. He picked up voices at last, rough murmurs that sounded like an argument from a room off to the right side of the salon.

A heel scuffed behind him. As he turned, someone slammed him against the door. His forehead hit the gold molding. His hands sprang open from pain. His cane clattered to the floor. He felt the attacker yank his right arm behind him. “Who are you?” he heard screamed into his ear. “Whose messenger boy are you?”

“Hey, Danny. Easy. Does he look like some ghetto hood?”

Danny held him pinned against the door. He appeared to relish inflicting pain, Stanislas noticed, as he felt the man thrust a hand into his right pocket.

“I was taking a leak and smoke when I heard a noise, Monsieur Fuchs. I shouldn’t have left my post.” Danny released his grip and displayed a cell phone in his palm.

Stanislas rubbed his forehead and felt a little blood. As he shifted around, he saw in the doorway at the far end of the salon a lean, youthful man smile at him.

“You okay?” the man named Fuchs asked. “No bones broken? Danny will safeguard that piece of property till we know what’s going on.”

“Want me to get more help?”

“That won’t be necessary right now, Danny.”

“What’s the commotion about, Rudi? Who’s disturbed our peace at this hour?” A man’s querulous voice came from inside the side room.

Stanislas frowned; he had heard that voice somewhere.

“We seem to have an uninvited guest,” Fuchs said over his shoulder.

“What’s this nonsense about?” With his fingertips on Fuchs’s shoulders like a concerned brother, the second man poked his head out the doorway, and for an instant the two heads looked fused to one body. Then André Dray stepped around Fuchs and into the salon. “Who are you?” And just as quickly he relaxed into his public smile. “Aren’t you…? Yes, I believe you are that examining magistrate. Monsieur Stanislas Cassel?”

Stanislas nodded while he patted his forehead with his handkerchief.

“You’ve lost your boyish good looks the media liked to play up,” Dray said. “I suppose age does that. You’re heavier in the face these days. And gray, too.”

“The camera no longer agrees with me,” Stanislas said, trying to sound pleasant as he stooped to pick up his cane.

“Or with me,” Fuchs said as he stepped into the salon.

“With any of us.” A third man appeared at the threshold of the side room. He stood taller than his companions and had a ruddy complexion, as though suffering a permanent blush over something obscene. In his left hand he held a notepad with a page filled with handwriting. “André, you see that video clip of Rudi and me at our last Pan-European conference? My wife warned me to permit shots only of my good side. To capture my Roman profile, she insisted. I told Greta that was my good side.” He chuckled at his joke, a swagger in his tone, and winked at his friends before turning to Stanislas. “Luckily, the people like our ideas.”