Murder Without Pity (27 page)

“Would you have exposed him?”

“For what that contemptible egoist did to me, for what he made me do to others, through that desk-man, with pleasure. He boasted once he had belonged to a clique of civil servants who had shown the Germans how to really act ruthlessly. It was pride. Frenchmen bettering Germans, so they could sit as equals in Hitler’s New Europe. All they did was corrupt and kill. I turned in the Attalis. There, I finally said it. I betrayed the Attali family.”

A cheek muscle twitched. Stanislas froze his eyes on him, stunned, wordless. He hadn’t expected this revelation either. It had come from out of nowhere.

“Finally, after all these decades, I admit it,” Jules confessed and sagged with shame deeper into the armchair as his breath left him.

“Did you?” Stanislas managed to breathe out and repeated himself so Jules could hear.

“Quid pro quo,” Jules answered, his voice also sunk to a whisper. “One more delivery of names, this desk-man said. One more to finish the job, and your family’s free from any intimidation. I brought them on 15 July 1942, hours before those French Nazis began their Great Raid, the names of Samuel; his wife, Hannah; and their daughters, Rachel, Lea, and Annie. My family’s neighbors, the Attalis. I was sixteen. How could I know? You’re smart. Tell me, please.”

Stanislas felt himself sway. Tears were in his eyes for Anna and Jules. You were young. You acted under duress, he wanted to say except his mouth felt dry, and he knew his explanation was too late. Jules had convinced himself otherwise for years. There was hope somewhere in this, he thought, fumbling for some reply. “And afterwards,” he asked at last, “this desk-man protected you?”

“He got his valuable names that filled those valuable cards. And no doubt his valuable promotion. My family’s with the six million others.”

An explosion of cheers boomed through his pause. “…and I don’t fear using the phrase, ‘invasion of the foreign hordes,’” Fuchs shrilled into his microphone.

“That night at the benefit,” Jules said, “that quarrel Annie and I had over mentioning collaboration in her remarks, I wanted that past kept in the past. No more reminders of what I’d become. I’d had enough of that, dealing with Boucher.

“Little good my protest did. She was headstrong like Gerti. She insisted on dealing with it. You know, I think she’d begun to suspect me. On her office desk once, I discovered a photo of myself in a book,
Daily Life in Paris During the Occupation
. More weight and hair. The same negligible neck, however. I wore a jacket with no Star of David stitched on. She might have thought I was defying the law that day as I left the bakery. But I doubt it. Know what I was really saying? I was already starting to separate myself from my own. I felt dirty, I think, because of what I was doing with those names.

“There you have it, Stanislas. Amazing, isn’t it? You started out with a murder investigation and along the way stumbled upon a blackmailer and participant in mass extermination. If I’d just followed my instinct. If I’d just disobeyed that desk-man. The Attali family….” The thought of what might have occurred choked off any further comment, and he could only shake his head at the possibility.

He cleared his throat as he pushed himself forward, then hesitated. “The Léon Pincus dossier became more than duty with you, yes? Clerks and secretaries and many careerists have duty. Not you. With this case, after a time you never arrived at work and never left. You were always there, no matter how tired or discouraged. You developed that look of obsession that frightens and fascinates. Annie was like that, too. She wouldn’t quit no matter what, if she wanted something.”

He struggled up while waving Stanislas to remain seated. “Sit, please. Old Jules can manage. He always has. This much talking has tired me. It’s time for my pep pills, that’s all. Through the door to your right. The phone’s in the kitchen for any calls you need to make. To the public prosecutor’s office or whoever.”

He plodded his way toward the bedroom off to the left, but near the doorway paused and glanced back. “She was very fond of you, you know.” Suddenly his pale features reddened, and his little-boy body jiggled from some thought.

He was blushing, Stanislas realized. He was definitely embarrassed about something.

“She always found energetic, intelligent men terribly sexy.” He turned away without saying more and shuffled into his bedroom.

“…and why invite more problems in? That is why I say, give our country back to the true Austrian.” Fuchs shot his hands upwards in a V as the camera pulled back for a dramatic view of the stadium.

Stanislas glanced beyond the television screen to the bedroom. He had tracked Jules’s progress by the sounds. The medicine cabinet creaking open. The rush of water from the faucet as Jules filled his glass. The cough as he trudged out of the bathroom, and after that silence, and that was minutes ago.

“Jules,” he called out. “Are you okay?” Not waiting for an answer, he pushed himself up, ignoring his cane that fell onto the rug. He limped quickly toward the bedroom. Something must be wrong, and he had engrossed himself in the coverage and hadn’t heard the cry for help.

“Jules, are you—” Jules lay on his bed, his head lolled to one side. He must have fallen asleep, exhausted, after talking so long. Stanislas gazed a little longer at that beat-up paradox, the strength beneath the frailty, the guilt under the hardness. At last he drew a blanket up to the man’s throat, gently pulled the bedroom door shut, and tiptoed out the apartment. He’d need his rest, too. The procession to the rally would begin in less than twelve hours.

CHAPTER 29

THE PROCESSION

8:30 A. M. according to the Fiat’s clock. 8:29 according to the one in the portable TV mounted on top of the dashboard.

Officer Leclair yawned as he switched off the engine. Here, tucked inside Rue Béranger, a sad excuse for a street as vantage point, they and the plainclothesmen in unmarked cars behind would wait out the hours, Stanislas decided. Several steps ahead crossed the wide Rue du Temple, barricaded to pedestrians and cars until eleven o’clock. On the far side of that avenue, a bank. Further to his right where Rue du Temple swept into the Place de la République, several riot control police stood watch over the empty square, their gloved hands relaxed over their machine gun barrels. Beyond them, the Place de la République itself and its statute in mist like the little merry-go-round to the left of it and across the street in a tiny park.

A woman clutching baguettes against her coat wandered toward one of the controllers and blocked Stanislas’s view into the square. The policeman motioned her to step back out of the way.

9:30. Next to the riot controllers at the intersection of Rue du Temple and the square now stood another policeman, and he fumbled behind his back, adjusting the straps to his bulletproof vest.

A sparse crowd had gathered in front of the bank, and a man with medals glinting down his jacket pointed skyward to his son who gazed up in wonder. Several helicopters hovered high above the mist, the police inside, Stanislas knew, eager to pick off any threat they spotted through their rifle scopes.

The father made playful sweeps of his hands like airplanes in a dogfight. The boy clapped in joy.

Officer Leclair, reaching behind for a thermos on the back seat, said there was nothing glamorous about war. His grandfather still suffered nightmares from that major world conflict in the 1940s. Would Monsieur Judge care for some coffee?

Stanislas shook his head. He returned once again to reading Luc Bressard’s deposition and what notes he had scribbled of the meeting with Danny.

9:45. Near the riot controllers, a man in overalls and jacket worked a matchstick around his mouth as he slouched against a street signpost. He looked like a worker, Stanislas thought, waiting for a May Day parade to start in a former Communist country.

In the closed-off Rue du Temple another controller, thumbs in his belt, right boot kicked out, scanned the thickening crowd for signs of trouble. Still another swaggered into Stanislas’s view from the sidewalk to his right. Up and down Rue du Temple he patrolled, smacking his riot club in his gloved hand.

The man in overalls chewed away.

10:09. Here and there, Stanislas could spot security lapses. In front of the bank, a few children, hoping for a better view, ducked under the crowd-control rope. They scampered across the street and onto the merry-go-round across from the square and statute.

A policewoman near the bank saw them and hurried across the street, screaming at them to get back on the sidewalk.

A curious few, disobeying police orders, peeked out from third-story windows on the distant side of the square. A husky policeman beside the statute grabbed his bullhorn from the steps and demanded they get back inside. They retaliated by tossing garbage over the balconies. The policeman indicated the insurgents to two subordinates, who trotted toward the building’s entrance.

10:17. Northward from Boulevard de Magenta, black limousines punched through the thick mist, one after the other, four of them in all as the procession’s permits had allowed. The entourage parked beside the statute. Rear doors were flung open. Several men in overcoats stepped out to little applause, to many jeers. With their accouterments of power, their briefcases, cell phones, and security detail, the advisors resembled, Stanislas thought, a threadbare government-in-exile.

A tall man, coat collar flipped up against the chill, checked his wristwatch. His short, rotund companion shifted his briefcase to his other hand and also checked the hour. Their exaggerated differences in heights made them look comical out of context, Stanislas thought. As part of the retinue, they appeared threatening.

10:42. Dray and Fuchs and Streible were twelve minutes late. A man wearing a dark suit with an armband strolled out to the rotund man, shook hands, and began chatting. He chuckled at something the other said. They seemed to engage in banter, Stanislas noticed, as though they had known each other once, and the circumstance of the procession had brought them together again.

After a further moment of talk they shook hands, and the man in civilian clothes trotted back toward the middle of Rue du Temple. As he shifted around to face the square, Stanislas glimpsed an ALPHA 1 armband.

“It’s Joxe,” Leclair said, learning forward in disbelief. “Remember, he stopped us that evening? He’s here on his day off. He has gone over to the other side. He’s wearing that far right show of sympathy for that police killing.”

10:51. The onlookers had thickened to ten deep, and they sprawled from the bank across Rue du Temple to where the riot controllers stood. Many had turned restless because of the unexplained delay. Many had turned glum, Stanislas could sense. Any instant they could crash through the metal barricades, trample the police, stampede into the square, fearless of the German shepherds and machine guns and helicopters whirling above. Any moment they could reassert the blind primordial rage of the poor against the powerful. They could burn, loot, and stomp to death innocents like himself, trapped inside with his bad leg. He didn’t care about his safety. He must proceed his way.

10:53. From Boulevard de Magenta off to the left in the distance, six motorcyclists swarmed into the square, flashing red lights. Behind, a solitary black Citroën flared through the fog twenty-three minutes late. Tricolor pennants on the front bumper fluttered as the chauffeur drove the limo with flourish slowly around the statute’s base as though driving a head of state.

Dray waved a hand in greeting out the right rear tinted window. Supporters before the bank and on Rue du Temple pushed against the ropes to glimpse and photograph. They didn’t know Streible and Fuchs also rode with him, Stanislas thought. Soon they would.

The man with the medals hoisted his son onto his shoulders; the boy squirmed excitement.

The chauffeur steered into the middle of the caravan. The rotund man hopped into the Citroën’s front seat. Limo doors were slammed shut, sending out a call to battle that echoed over the Place de la République. Three motorcycle escorts circled to the rear. Three flashed their importance in front.

Stanislas reached into his briefcase and withdrew a Summons to Appear, which he handed to Leclair. He placed it near him on the dashboard.

The man in overalls spit out his matchstick in disgust, shoved his way out of the crowd, and stomped away. A policeman followed.

The procession had begun.

A controller heaved forward a metal barricade and opened Rue du Temple. Leclair eased in at a distance behind the last escorts, followed by the plainclothes in unmarked cars. Stanislas caught Joxe’s eyes widen in surprise as they moved past. Immediately, the policeman closed off the avenue again.

From the Place de la République, the caravan motored east onto Boulevard Voltaire, a featureless stretch of brasseries and two-star hotels. This was still mostly hostile territory for anyone connected to the Pan-European Council, Stanislas could tell, with immigrants and the working class shaking fists and booing as the cavalcade swept passed.

Next, continuing at a steady pace southward along Avenue Ledru-Rollin, then sweeping under a promenade that spanned the street. The authorities must have closed that walkway. Stanislas could see just police sharpshooters above, aiming down on the crowds.

Then across Pont Austerlitz and left along Quai d’Austerlitz, the Seine’s southern bank smudged with grime and graffiti, the dirty route a tiny victory, an anonymous government source had leaked to journalists.

Off to his left across the river and through the mist, Stanislas could make out the huge clock in the Gare de Lyon tower jerk forward another minute.

Leclair jammed on the gas. Stanislas swung his attention ahead and saw they had fallen behind. “Not too fast,” he shouted. “Not yet.”

Leclair eased up.

As they neared Pont du Bercy, the crowds thickened with supporters. Some tottered on folding chairs while they pivoted their heads, tracking the procession with binoculars. Others staggered off the curb and into the street, pushed off by the cheering throngs behind, elbowing for a better view.