Murder Without Pity (26 page)

Stanislas studied the map of the itinerary the motorcade would travel. The television reports were accurate. The route avoided the Arab Institute as much as possible and certain riot. Instead, the procession would begin at the Place de la République, travel southeasterly along Boulevard Voltaire, then proceed south along Avenue Ledru-Rollin and onto the stadium. And the three demagogues, he knew, hidden within their bulletproof limousine, would arrive safely to inflict more riots across the continent.

“Your idea of having the Summons to Appear served like that is bold,” Christophe said.

“Bold or reckless?”

“Having it served in that manner is, I imagine, at best borderline legal. I prefer ‘bold.’ It hides the truth. Our careers are, no doubt, at stake.”

Stanislas felt the sedative dragging him under again. His hands went limp. The newspaper fell away. How he craved sleep. “
Who had you held captive? Who’s frustrated and humiliated
you all these months
?” He heard Danny’s mocking in his drift. He forced open his eyes. A swarm of vague images from the television screen jumped. The Franco-German station must have finished coverage of the symposium and switched to the upcoming Bercy extravaganza. An announcer said something about a retrospective of Franz Streible’s early career. The rally, he thought and fought against the pillow’s softness as he waved Christophe closer.

“In your condition, you really shouldn’t leave.”

He couldn’t afford more rest, Stanislas realized. He couldn’t study again those Occupation personnel records. He had little time left. “Officer Leclair has his van outside?”

“He couldn’t get his brother-in-law’s. He had to borrow one from Officer Henner. It’s on a side street, as you wanted.”

“Tell the nurses and doctors and especially those gendarmes not to disturb us. I saw those guards reading some disturbing political pamphlets, and I don’t trust them. The valise with my clothes is in that closet. Visitors’ hours began in thirty minutes. When the hallways crowd, we leave.” And afterwards, he thought, a phone call to that Danny, if he could reach him, to clarify. And then some unfinished business to finish to ensure he understood everything.

The elevator doors eased shut. Stanislas paused in the hallway alone, unsure how to proceed after he had knocked on the door. Someone in the apartment to his right turned up the volume, and he heard a television commentator’s excitement about the upcoming Bercy rally. Three elderly women, going out as he had entered the ground floor, had argued over it. When he had taken the elevator up to the third floor, a couple next to him had listened to reportage on their portable radio. Before that, traveling there in the van he had switched over the dial and heard the same result. Nothing else seemed to matter in Paris throughout the day except that event. And in that instant, the distraction of the coverage freeing him from anxiety helped him understand. Given what he was going to hear, he knew there wasn’t anything he could say. He’d simply listen, like Anna had listened to him, and give the man dignity. He reached to press the buzzer.

He heard a shuffle, sounding more than ever like defeat. A moment of precaution taken to survey through the peephole. Then the door inched open in the manner of someone on guard.

“Well, Lazarus arisen. You’ve finally come.” The door pulled back a little more.

Stanislas stepped closer to hear. The voice sounded weaker than usual. “You’re not surprised?” he asked.

Jules laughed his sad, worldly laugh, no longer caring to hide anything. “At my age, I’m afraid I’m hard to surprise. I overheard Annie talking to you on the phone once about your suspicions of Monsieur Boucher. From that moment on, I knew it was merely a question of time.” He glanced over Stanislas’s shoulder to the elevator behind. “No clerk or police?”

“This is unofficial.”

“Ah.” Jules’s mouth stayed open after what had sounded more like agony than understanding. “Tenacity and intelligence are a deadly combination, Monsieur Examining Magistrate.” He let his bony hand fall lifelessly from the doorknob, left the door ajar, and shuffled down the hallway and toward the living room off to his right.

He moved slower, Stanislas noticed, like a prisoner trudging to his execution. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

Jules blinked up at him as though not concerned about his health. “Six months. Six years. Does it matter? Annie’s gone,” he said, as he led Stanislas into the room.

In the center the television was on, its volume low, its screen filled with images of delirious masses waving support at some rally. “They’re featuring uninterrupted coverage through tomorrow. These are scenes of a past Franz Streible hoopla in Dresden,” Jules said. “Filled to capacity, according to one estimate. I don’t know why I watch. I’ve witnessed that sort of harangue too often. Hitler in Berlin. Mussolini in Rome. Stalin in Moscow. Different year. Different speaker. Slicker packaging. Same speech, nirvana at the expense of the defenseless.” He gazed up to Stanislas with watery eyes. “An old story we never learn from.”

He gestured to a sofa to the right of the TV and plopped wearily into his armchair. “Sorry I can’t offer a drink. I ran out of vermouth weeks ago and haven’t felt like restocking.” He pushed himself forward and squinted across. “That guy really gave you an ugly gash on your forehead.”

Stanislas eased himself down, settling his cane across his lap. He smiled as best he could across to Jules; hearing the old man out wasn’t going to be easy.

Jules relaxed his old face into a smile. “As he hit you, I tried smashing him with everything I had. I thought I bashed him good when I surprised him. Clipping him behind his leg. Then jabbing a broken bottle into his face and yelling for the police. You should have seen me afterwards, stumbling away, gasping like death had taken hold. How my lungs burned. Would I presume too much if you called me Jules? We’ve been through a lot together.”

“And I want you to call me Stanislas.”

Jules brooded a moment at his hands folded in his lap. Then he looked across with his all-knowing sadness. “As you’ve probably guessed, I followed you around by taxi or walking whenever I could. Luckily for me, you have that limp. I’d hoped you’d quit your investigation. You’re one of the few people I’ve misjudged. You found me out.
Mazel tov
! Tell me, how did old Jules slip up?”

“You, sick, insisting on flying off alone and in this cold; there had to be something important that’d make you risk your health. Losing Officer Leclair on your side trip to the Italian Lake District; it took an expert to lose one. Your age; speculating what you did during the Occupation. Bits and pieces. Enough to make me wonder.”

“And dig around.” He tried another smile, but a coughing attack twisted his mouth into pain and heaved him about. “Age,” he mumbled, shaking his head, then pulled out of his pity. “I always feared I’d betray myself out of guilt. I’m tired of pretending, Stanislas. With what time I have left, I’d like the luxury of being myself. You’re right. I was a catcher. I helped entrap my own.”

The confession was surreal, Stanislas thought. A hollow-cheeked little man, looking lost in that armchair, as a police informer.

“I was part of that annihilation gang,” Jules continued. “Me. That Louis Boucher. That madman Théo Dannecker. And others. Only I was worse. I was part of the community. And for that betrayal, not a moment’s peace since.”

He paused several moments, eyes downcast, appearing to ready himself for what else he would relate. Then he gazed across. “My story begins long ago and with a murder. I killed a man in my youth. He’d raped my mother in Berlin where we lived, you see, and given the climate there my parents knew I couldn’t get a fair trial. So we fled to Paris just before France fell. Here, believe it or not, I played soccer and got to know many in our community.

“One morning some time later, two Black Coats came for me. Gestapo, of course. They took me to a dim room at the police prefecture, and behind this pretentious desk sat a man. Face in shadows, this man with no name came to the point. The police had a Central File with a card for each Jew in Paris and its suburbs. A hundred and twenty thousand names. Some figure like that. These Central File names were for humanitarian purposes, he claimed. To know how many families there were for food and clothing and coal during the winters.

“Well, someone, maybe a Communist saboteur, had messed with some cards in the A category and their duplicates. Erased a few of the thousands of names and addresses, and a higher-up’s deputed him to fix the damage.

“My, my, what to do? If the police nosed around, neighbors or the listees might get the wrong idea, you see. But me, why he had heard people trusted me. Find out where so-and-so families lived without telling who sent me because that would just increase their worries. In return he promised protection if the Germans caused the Altmanns problems. A quid pro quo was his phase for this arrangement, making it sound legalistic with rights and obligations.”

A righteous cheer exploded from the Streible rally. Stanislas ignored the bedlam. Though he had suspected what Jules would say, hearing his confession numbed him.

“I’m not dumb, Stanislas. I was aware these police had already arrested thousands in our community in past sweeps. These roundups were common knowledge, though where these French and foreign Jews ultimately ended up, only God knew. Maybe this official’s request was a trap. On the other hand, I should be partly responsible for people dying from lack of food and blankets during the upcoming winter? Especially families I knew? I explained I needed time to think.

“On his desk was this alarm clock with two huge bells. He set it, smiling at me as he did this, and said I had five minutes to decide and walked out.

“I was sixteen years old. I was sick with thinking what to do. Next thing I knew, those bells clanged with their alarm I hear to this day. He strutted in, smiling, because he knew my answer. Seeing me to the door, he said something very casually, ‘Oh, by the way, a deadline for these names, the fifteenth of July.’ Winter’s months away, but they had red tape to deal with, he claimed. I said okay and left.

“One night as usual, I went to the prefecture with names. It was the fifteenth of July, and these were the last ones. At headquarters police rushed around. Phones rang. There was this excitement like the eve of a great battle. A gendarme ordered me to wait for this man, who sat behind this important-looking desk, which I did. After awhile with nothing to do I wandered, being curious as to what was happening with this commotion business. I passed by this office I hadn’t noticed on past visits because it was in darkness. That night the prefecture was on fire with lights, and I saw it. No name plate or number on this door that was open. I passed by like I was searching for the WC and peeked inside. A very young Monsieur Boucher was there, though I didn’t know his name then. A rising star, no doubt, in the illustrious Interior Ministry, and he was arguing with this German officer. ‘We must proceed with determination with these lists.’ ‘We must not be squeamish.’ That’s how he spoke.”

“You’re absolutely sure the man was Monsieur Boucher?”

“A Frenchman in civilian clothes lecturing a German officer? Who could ever forget that?” He fell back into his armchair from the strain of making his point. “I delivered my names and went home, feeling sick, fearing something horrible was going to happen. Three days later, the eighteenth of July, rumor swept through the community. A terrible crime’s happened. Arrests far bigger than past sweeps—up to thirteen thousand innocents in Operation Spring Wind, we would later discover—and I thought, Oh no, what have I done?” He fumbled for a glass, cupped it with both hands, and gulped.

He hadn’t expected Jules acting under duress, Stanislas realized. He glanced at the television screen. The network now showed footage of Rudolph Fuchs stepping to the podium at a rally outside Vienna.

“The war ended,” Jules continued at last. “I needed respectability and heard about a refuge an Auschwitz survivor had started for death camp returnees. I went there and met this old-looking young woman, Gerti Steiner. A baby was there too, always by her side. Annie, of course. I became a volunteer.”

“No one suspected?”

“A fellow Jew as catcher? It was a taboo subject then. Besides people wanted to move on. I took no chances though and read the newspapers. Someone who’d made it back and wanted to ambush me with charges, that was my fear. It was better to anticipate, so I could account for myself.

“One day while reading I spotted in some sheet a photo with a name under it. Louis Boucher. He worked for a big corporation here in Paris. They built glitzy hotels in Spain and had promoted him and lots of money went with his new position. I decided to visit and reminisce.”

He looked across to Stanislas with an intensity that belied his frailty. “He was in the white pages; he was that sure the past was past. As he left his apartment one morning, I confronted him and told him Judgment Day had arrived. He denied everything, naturally. Then the names came: crypto-Communist, Resistance hooligan, avenging Jew, and ordered me away, or he’d call the police. I threw my hands up like he’d got me, and as I left I dropped a trail of details: the date, the fifteenth of July 1942; what he wore that night, his overcoat with its fur-lined belt; the hour he was in his office; the German officer he lectured, somebody named Kleist; those words uttered to Kleist that I’ll remember even on my deathbed, ‘We must not be squeamish.’ Suddenly his smirk vanished. He knew I had him.”

Jules chuckled. “He became my lifetime annuity. Payment yearly or sooner if I wanted. Paris to Madrid. Paris to Milan. No matter. I always ended up in Zürich, waiting for his knock. After some financial reverses, he used a Londoner named Lenny as a conduit to sell possessions. I donated most proceeds to the Center.” His face flushed with bitterness that had come up from some reservoir of strength. “It was war. War without mercy. War without end. His side against ours. It still is. It always will be.

“The swine threatened to shoot me early on—he already had that scar. While in detention for his post-Liberation trial, another prisoner had slashed him. ‘Go on. Shoot me,’ I yelled. ‘I’ll be through with my misery, and your family’s will be starting.’ That’s when I told him about notes my lawyer would discover in my safety deposit boxes. That got him pleading. There he was, Stanislas, a major functionary in that infamous Big Raid of 1942, a murderer of thousands of innocents, helping plot their deaths without pity, begging for mercy.”