Murder Without Pity (29 page)

“Oh, Judge Cassel!”

A familiar voice, high pitched and obnoxious, sang out from somewhere in the depths of the throng to his right, he noticed.

A petite woman with bangs squirmed free through the crowd and kicked past two gendarmes. They lunged to grab, but she slipped under the rope and to within a step of him, grinning at her feat. “Getting a story’s a war sometimes.”

“Madame Sharpe, you never sleep.”

“Especially when the news concerns you.” She jutted her chin toward the Citroën behind them. “What’s the story? It concerns the men on their white horses? Feed your sparrow a few crumbs.”

“There’s nothing I can talk about.” He watched her squint suspicion. “You know I can’t comment on an investigation.” He hoped that strong statement would quiet the pest. Even if he could comment, what could he say? he wondered. He had accused Dray with the pretense of a compelling dossier. Yet apart from momentary surprise and perhaps anger, that man hadn’t flinched from guilt as hoped.

“Make your Cosette happy,” she persisted, grabbing his hand with both of hers. “A little of the story for your pretty one. Who’s shoved who? It’s Monsieur Dray, isn’t it? His elbow into the Hun’s back? The rumors are true, aren’t they? Jolly André doesn’t like Storm Trooper Franz?”

He shook loose her grip with a shrug, eased a foot inside the Fiat, dropped into the seat with heavy weariness.

“Return to your cage, Madame Sharpe. Feed off someone else today.” A policewoman escorted her toward the rope, while another pushed shut the Fiat’s front passenger door.

“There’s a story here somewhere,” Madame Sharpe shouted to him over her shoulder. “I can smell it like church incense. There always is, whenever you’re involved.”

Several police shrilled a volley of whistles for the crowd to move back. His eyes drooped from fatigue as he waited for the way to clear. What story was there? he asked himself. A druggie’s mumblings; a naïve youth’s hurried tale; the contradictions of those two; Hans Rauter vanishing; his own suspicions about Dray, whose long friendship with Nazi collabo Boucher attested to a racist who might have incited murder—insufficient evidence to charge that Frenchman, that was one story, he realized.

And there was also another one, he understood, his own. That in his desire for revenge, he had rushed his accusation. That he had failed to catch Dray off-guard, when he had bluffed with a strong case. That he should have waited till he had recuperated and conducted a thorough investigation.

With a weak dossier he would, in the end, have to discharge the man as a suspect, he knew. And noble Dray, demanding his right as a citizen, would demand publication of his innocence, which would allow that scoundrel to publicly humiliate him. Madame Sharpe and her colleagues, who lived off the blunders of others, would love that story, he reflected. His enemies, too.

The police shrilled another barrage. A path at last parted ahead for the Fiat. He lifted his eyes to gaze at the clock set into the portable television. It was 11:59. Dray was scheduled shortly to mount the stage. He could do nothing more except watch.

I WANT THE BORDERS CLOSED

Officer Leclair steered carefully ahead. “There’s a pharmacy somewhere further up on the right, if we can spot its green neon through this fog.”

Stanislas grunted acknowledgement as he shifted his gaze from the time on the portable TV’s clock, 12:06, to its screen. The cameraman had tightened his shot of the stage. At the edges of the frame stood two security men in dark glasses. Within the center eight politicians, who had defected to Dray, sat behind the podium as trophies. With arms folded, some looked impatient. Others appeared bored as a mayor from a small town droned on at the lectern, and all of them looked uncomfortable from sitting too long under the blaze of the stage lights. One kept glancing upwards to the source of his distress. Another shook open his kerchief and patted his forehead as the speaker finished his remarks.

Rapture exploded throughout the stadium. Blue, white, and red balloons at the lectern’s sides tossed about from the waves of approval, while he strode off to shouts of “bravos” and “Vi-va Dray.”

“…and in case you’ve joined us for the first time today,” the anchorman continued over the cheers, “that was Monsieur Mayor Claude Carré, a leading member of the French First Party. We’ve yet to receive any explanation for the mysterious appearance and disappearance of Messieurs Fuchs and Streible.”

“There a pharmacy is,” Leclair said, slowing the Fiat against the curb.

To his left stood a man, strands of white hair combed across his bald top, who smelled of whiskey. He shifted his interest from a box of condoms to Stanislas and his bruise.

Stanislas ignored his stare and pushed his medication form across the counter to the druggist. The man studied the slip, then glanced up to his wound, and volunteered rest as a supplement to his pills. He didn’t need anyone to lecture him how tired he felt, Stanislas snapped, and would he just fill his prescription?

Minutes later and with pills in hand, he approached the cashier, a young woman with a frizz, who stepped back as he tossed his euros down. With that gash, his limp, and fatigue he must look a mess, he reflected as he hobbled out.

He spotted Leclair further down the block staring into a store window and moved off in that direction in tired, ragged steps. At last he stood beside the policeman. He noticed luxury goods displayed inside the boutique and along the bottom of the window in gold script the names of chic branches in Monte-Carlo and Rome, London and Beverly Hills. A sign against a minimalist block of sculpture touted a new model television that featured a tissue-thin screen its owner could mount on a wall like a painting.

In an artsy fit someone had piled, behind that sculpture, eight small-screen versions that zigzagged, four on a side, into a pyramid. At the pinnacle rested a solitary large-screen model, its sound turned low, that made the ensemble, Stanislas thought, resemble a Hydra. Twenty-three minutes after his scheduled appearance, the main speaker stood at the dais.

Stanislas sagged, letting his cane take the weight of his fatigue as he watched, drawn by what? he wondered. By the masochistic desire to watch the speech delivered? He didn’t know as he saw nine images of hate, nine Drays at nine podiums in uncharacteristic delivery bellowing and hammering the air with rage.

He smelled whiskey and glanced right. The man with strands of white hair from the pharmacy had joined them to watch.

“You missed his entrance,” Leclair said, concentrating on the top screen. “No waves or bantering this time. He went straight to the lectern without his usual hearty theatrics.”

“He looks a little bit, I don’t know, out of sorts tonight, wouldn’t you say?” the man with strands of white hair asked.

“I stand before you a free Frenchman,” Dray continued. “Free from Eurocrats in Brussels and Strasbourg telling me, native born, how to live. Free from grasping internationalists in far-off Wall Street. Free from other elitists, these in Paris, who have shown too much laxity for too long with our problems.”

A woman near the stage leaped up, shouting, “We’re with you, André!”

“I say,” Dray continued as he glanced at an index card, “why not our own people first? France beware! France awake! The true France forever!”

“The true France forever!” roared back his admirers, and the lectern’s balloons bobbed wildly from the tether of their strings.

“One people, one France!” he shouted.

“One people, one France!” the vast audience chanted in thunderous devotion.

Dray flung his arms outward, demanding quiet.

Stanislas shifted toward the Fiat. He had seen enough. Dray would finish his oration. Dray would receive the rapturous blessings of his admirers. Dray would triumph and grow in stature. He must look after himself, he decided, and get some sleep. A loud pop pop pop stung the air. He glanced back as a startled Dray jumped. Notes flew into the aisle near the first row.

Someone from behind must have bumped him. But no, it was something else, of course, Stanislas realized as he caught Dray’s eyes dart away from the podium’s edge. Dray’s brows dipped in a severe frown while he struggled to reassert his rhythm. “France is…it must…destiny has called us to a higher….” He shuffled frantically among his remaining cards that had scattered on the dais as he groped for his place. His efforts proved futile. The more he fought to regain control, the more he stumbled, entangled in some thoughts. His jaw gritted determination to proceed. Yet another emotion worked itself outward and glistened down his face, and no amount of frantic dabbing his lips and forehead and cheeks could stop it.

“Look at him!” Leclair shouted and pointed toward the top screen.

“I thought so,” the stranger said.

Stanislas’s heart quickened. He gripped his cane tighter and bent forward, stunned. Something inside Dray had collapsed.

“There, there, Monsieur Judge,” Leclair sputtered. “Look at him.”

“I used to teach rhetoric,” the stranger said. “I’ve seen it before. It can happen to the best of speakers. It’s not a pretty sight when that occurs.”

Yes, it is, Stanislas thought. Nerves. For there Dray stood, mopping away more sweat, fumbling, glaring around for help. And in that moment as Dray stared into the camera, something more showed, something nearly missed while he blinked, Stanislas realized. It was there, it was gone. This time though he caught it, the self shuddering, a fraction of an instant of panic in a cornered man’s eyes. Dray, fearful. Dray, he felt certain, in a way starting to confess.

Leclair turned to Stanislas, in his excitement, ignoring the stranger. “Some fearless savior. Your accusations must have got to him, after all. Have you ever seen such a dazed, lost look? His enemies will kill him with ridicule.”

The stranger nudged Cassel in the side, eager to comment on the event. “I certainly wouldn’t want anyone that jumpy from a little pop pop noise having his finger on any nuclear button. You idiot!” he shouted at the large image. “You should have inhaled deeply before you began. That would have calmed you.” Shaking his head, he tottered away, taking along the smell of drink.

A jumble of shouts and curses from people in the control booth, unaware they were being broadcast, broke out. “What the shit’s going on? Do something!”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Mademoiselle Le Brune. And don’t use that kind of language.”

“Don’t you yell at me. I’m paying for this hour.”

“Stop it, both of you. Play the ‘Marseillaise,’ someone. And turn down those stage lights before more balloons go off.”

The national anthem sputtered loudly from speakers. Supporters began singing, hesitantly at first, as though they didn’t quite know the words, before they gathered strength from their vast numbers. Bolder and bolder, they sang, to dispel, it seemed, what had happened. The camera jerked upward to a huge French flag behind Dray just as he squinted at the TelePrompTer, still struggling to find his way.

“Jacky, more volume,” Mademoiselle Le Brune cried.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the commentator said, “we apologize for any technical difficulties you may be having. Our telecast will continue after these commercial messages.”

“Monsieur Judge, difficulties for Dray for a long time, and they won’t be technical. His humiliating appearance was broadcast before millions. He’ll be tied up for ages, trying to explain himself.”

“When he isn’t in my office.”

Leclair turned toward the Fiat. “You’ve earned your sleep for tonight. For the rest of the year as far as I’m concerned.”

Still gazing at the huge French flag, Stanislas punched in some numbers on his cell phone. An operator at the Interior Ministry answered somewhat crossly. “This is Examining Magistrate Stanislas Cassel,” he said. She turned deferential and immediately heeded his order and put him through. Moments later another woman, this one with authority, answered. “I want the borders closed,” he ordered, “and the airports and train stations watched for Monsieur André Dray. As of this moment.”

He slipped his cell back into his overcoat pocket with his mind elsewhere. He still had time before the first formal questioning to strengthen his case. He’d put that man under round-the-clock surveillance. He’d order a search of his home and office. Maybe do it twice, each time starting at one minute past the earliest legal hour approved. He’d call the German authorities every few days to check on their search for Hans Rauter. He’d question Danny again until he felt confident of his story. He’d get a tape of the rally too, have Dray’s features magnified, and study the terrain of the liar. And afterwards, that official interrogation, the first of many for sure. Him against Dray. And with that tape played back, Dray versus Dray. The one who denied against the one who had panicked. He’d pound him again and again and again with questions, while he waited for the tick or stammer that’d betray. And after that, he’d order that man to confront a clean Luc Bressard. And when he finally had a solid dossier to send to court, charging Dray as an accomplice in murder, he’d push for his imprisonment before his trial as a flight risk. Jules was right, he reflected as he thumped his cane on the pavement. The old man was right all along. This was war. War without end. War without mercy. “You’re driving me back to the Annex,” he said.

“In your condition?”

Stanislas Cassel jabbed his cane toward the little car ahead with extra vigor as his answer. He’d rest awhile before reviewing his notes on Dray for an hour or two. Tomorrow, he’d show up early to continue work on the dossier. For Anna, Léon and Jules, for all the others he would stand at the line to fight. The hour was late, and he had much work still to do.

* * *

Discover other titles by Steve Haberman at www.parismurdermysteries.com:

The Killing Ploy

Darkness and Blood
coming next year