I took comfort in that sentence, and for a long time it became my touchstone when I had a difficult decision to make.
The first person other than me to worry about Vinca’s disappearance was Alastair Rockwell, her grandfather and legal guardian. Vinca had often described him as a tight-lipped, authoritarian patriarch. The epitome of an industrialist, he was a self-made man who saw his granddaughter’s disappearance as a kidnapping and therefore an attack on his whole family. The parents of Alexis Clément also began to ask questions. Their son was supposed to join some friends for a week of skiing in Berchtesgaden but had not shown up, nor had he visited them, as he usually did, to celebrate the new year.
Although the families worried about these disappearances, it took some time before the police launched a serious investigation. That was partly because Vinca was over eighteen and partly because the prosecutor was reluctant to initiate proceedings, since it was a legal nightmare as to who had jurisdiction. Vinca held both French and American citizenship. Alexis Clément was German. It was not known where or when they had disappeared. Was one of them the aggressor, or were they both victims?
It was at least a week after the start of the school term before the police showed up at Saint-Ex, and even then, their investigation was limited to brief interviews of Vinca’s and Alexis’s close friends. They conducted fairly minimal searches of their rooms and then had them sealed, though they did not call in a forensics team.
It was only much later, when Alastair Rockwell flew to France toward the end of February, that the pace of the investigation picked up. The industrialist made the most of his contacts and told the media that he had hired a private detective to find his granddaughter. There was another visit by the cops, this time the Nice Serious Crimes Unit. They questioned a number of people—including me, Maxime, and Fanny—and collected DNA evidence from Vinca’s room.
Gradually, from witness statements and from documents they seized, they were able to get a clearer sense of what had happened on Sunday and Monday, December 20 and 21, the days when Vinca and Alexis had vanished into thin air.
In his statement, Pavel Fabianski, the school caretaker, insisted that on Sunday, December 20, at about eight in the morning, he had raised the gate to allow an Alpine A310 driven by Alexis Clément to leave the grounds. Fabianski was positive that Vinca Rockwell was in the passenger seat and had rolled down her window and waved to thank him. Some minutes later, at the Haut Sartoux traffic circle, two council workers clearing snow saw Clément’s car; it skidded slightly as it approached the intersection, then took the road toward Antibes, and it was on the avenue de la Libération that the car was found, parked outside a launderette near Antibes train station. A number of passengers on the Paris TGV remembered seeing a red-haired girl with an older man wearing a soccer cap emblazoned with the name of Clément’s favorite team, Mönchengladbach. On Sunday evening, the night porter at the Hôtel Sainte-Clotilde on the rue de Saint-Simon in Paris stated that a Mademoiselle Vinca Rockwell and a Monsieur Alexis Clément took a room for the night. The reservation had been made by telephone the previous day, and they paid in cash. They consumed a bottle of beer, two cans of Pringles, and a bottle of pineapple juice from the minibar. The porter went on to say that the girl had called down to the front desk to ask whether they had any Cherry Coke, and he had told her that they didn’t.
Up to this point, the story of lovers running away together made sense. But after that, investigators could find no trace of them. Vinca and Alexis had not had breakfast in their room or in the hotel restaurant. A chambermaid had seen them in the corridor early in the morning, but no one could say for sure when they left. A toiletry bag containing makeup, a toothbrush, a Mason Pearson hairbrush, and a bottle of perfume was found in the en suite bathroom and put in a storeroom where the hotel kept lost property.
And that’s where the investigation ended. No credible witness ever came forward to say he or she saw Vinca and Alexis after that. At the time, most people expected them to reappear as soon as the fires of passion guttered out. But Alastair Rockwell’s attorneys persisted. In 1994, they obtained a court order to have the toothbrush and the hairbrush left in the hotel tested for DNA. The results confirmed that they belonged to Vinca, though this did not move the investigation forward. It’s possible that some single-minded cop later made a token attempt to reopen the case so that it would not be closed under the statute of limitations, but as far as I know, that was the final act of the investigation.
In 2002, Alastair Rockwell fell ill and passed away. I remembered meeting him a few weeks before 9/11 on the forty-ninth floor of one of the towers of the World Trade Center, where he had his New York offices. He told me that Vinca had often talked to him about me, that she described me as a kind, generous, sensitive boy. Three adjectives that, on the old man’s lips, did not sound like compliments. I felt like telling him that I was so sensitive that I had beaten a man half to death with a crowbar, but I bit my tongue. I had asked to meet with him to find out whether the private detective he had hired had come up with any new leads about the whereabouts of his granddaughter. He said no, although I never knew whether this was the truth.
Time passed, and, with the years, almost everyone stopped worrying about what had become of Vinca Rockwell. I was one of the few people unable to move on. Because I knew the official story was a lie. And because one question had haunted me ever since: Was Vinca’s hasty departure connected to the death of Alexis Clément? Was I to blame for the disappearance of the girl I’d loved so much?
For twenty years, I had been trying to shed some light on this mystery. And I still did not have the faintest idea.
Different from Other Boys
7
The Streets of Antibes
1.
When I arrived in Antibes, I drove to the parking lot of Port Vauban, where some of the most beautiful yachts in the world are moored. It was in this parking lot in July 1990—just before I turned sixteen—that I had my first summer job. Not much of a job, to be honest. I raised the barrier after relieving tourists of thirty francs so they could park out of the blazing sun. This was the summer that I read Swann’s Way—the Folio paperback edition, with Monet’s painting of the Rouen cathedral on the cover—the summer I fell dreamily in love with a Parisian girl with wavy blond hair cut in a bob who went by the glorious name of Bérénice. On her way to the beach, she would always stop off at the sentry box for a little chat, though I quickly realized she was more interested in Glenn Medeiros and New Kids on the Block than she was in Charles Swann and Odette de Crécy.
These days, the summer parking-lot attendant jobs had given way to an automated barrier. I took my ticket, found a space near the harbormaster’s office, and walked along the quays. Many things had changed in twenty years; the entrance to the harbor had been completely redesigned, the road had been widened, and most of the area had been pedestrianized. But the view was the same. For me, it is one of the most beautiful on the Côte d’Azur: the blue sea in the foreground, a vast, reassuring silhouette of the Fort Carré rising behind the forest of masts, the azure sky sweeping everything away, and the pale mountains just visible in the distance.
The mistral was blowing hard today, and I loved it. Everything came together to reconnect me with my past, to make me feel rooted in this place I loved, this place I had left for tragic reasons. I had no illusions—the city was no longer what it had been when I was a teenager, but as with New York, I liked my idea of Antibes. A place apart, sheltered from the tawdry glitz of many towns on the Côte. The city I had once introduced Vinca to was the city of jazz, of the Lost Generation, one that had welcomed almost every artist who mattered to me. Maupassant had moored his yacht Le Bel-Ami here. In the 1920s, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald had stayed at the Hôtel Belles Rives. Picasso had set up his studio in the Château Grimaldi, a stone’s throw from the apartment where Nicolas de Staël executed his most beautiful paintings. Finally, Keith Jarrett, whose concerts provided the soundtrack for all of
my novels, still regularly played at La Pinède.
I walked through the stone arch of the Porte Marine, the ancient ramparts dividing the harbor from the old walled city. It was a spring weekend; the place was buzzing, but the tidal wave of tourists that robbed the city of its atmosphere had yet to arrive. It was possible to walk along the rue Aubernon without being jostled. On the Cours Masséna, grocers, florists, cheesemongers, and local craftsmen were packing up their stalls, but the covered market still shimmered with a myriad of colors. People chatted in patois, solving the world’s problems amid a symphony of scents: black olives, candied lemons, mint, sun-dried tomatoes. Outside city hall, the last wedding of the morning was ending, and a beaming couple was coming down the steps to a shower of cheers and fluttering rose petals. Although my life was far removed from such festivities—these days, the idea of being married made no sense to me—I let myself be swept along by the whoops of joy and the wide smiles.
I walked down rue Sade, the narrow alley where my father had lived as a child, toward the Place Nationale and strolled as far as Le Michelangelo—known to locals as Mamo, after its owner—one of the restaurants that defined the city. There were a few free tables on the terrace, so I sat down and ordered the local specialty, a citron pressé with pastis and basil.
2.
I have never had an office. Ever since elementary school, I have loved working in bright, open spaces—my parents’ kitchen, the reading rooms of public libraries, the cafés in the Latin Quarter. In New York, I did my writing in Starbucks, in hotel bars, in parks and restaurants. I felt that I could think more clearly amid the bustle; I was swept along by the conversations and the hum of life. I laid Stéphane Pianelli’s book on the table of the restaurant and, while waiting for my aperitif, checked my phone for voice mail. There was an irritable message from my mother, who did not bother with small talk: “Zélie tells me you’re here for the fiftieth anniversary of Saint-Ex. What were you thinking, Thomas? You didn’t even tell me you’re in France. Come over for dinner tonight. We’ve invited the Pellegrinos. They’d love to see you.” I typed a curt response: I’ll call later, Mom. I downloaded the iPhone app for Nice-Matin and bought the issues from April 9 to April 15.
I skimmed through them and quickly found the article I was looking for—Stéphane Pianelli’s piece on how students had found a sports bag stuffed with cash in an old locker. There was little new in the article and I was disappointed that there were no photographs of the sports bag, only an aerial view of the school campus and a photo of the rusty locker, but it did say that “a number of students shared pictures of the money on social media before being told by police to delete them so as not to obstruct the investigation.”
I thought for a moment. There would be some trace online somewhere, but I was not clever enough to find it without wasting time. The Antibes offices of Nice-Matin were only a few steps away, next to the bus station on the Place Nationale. After a moment’s hesitation, I decided to call Pianelli.
“Hey, Stéphane, it’s Thomas.”
“Can’t live without me, can you?”
“I’m down on the terrace at Mamo and I thought if you were in the area, I could buy you lunch. We could split a shoulder of lamb.”
“You put in the order and I’ll be there as soon as I’ve finished with this piece.”
“What’s it about?”
“The retirement and leisure exhibition at the conference center. Not something that’s likely to win me Journalist of the Year, I’ll grant you.”
While I waited for Pianelli, I picked up his book and was yet again struck by the photograph on the cover: Vinca and Alexis Clément on a dance floor. It had been taken in mid-December, a week before Alexis was murdered and Vinca disappeared. I had always found it painful to look at. Captured at the height of her innocence, her beauty, Vinca was gazing at her partner. Her eyes were filled with love, admiration, and a feverish desire to please. As the pair of them danced the twist, the photographer froze them forever in a graceful, sensual pose. It was like Grease photographed by Robert Doisneau.
Who had taken the photograph? I had never thought to wonder before now. A student? A teacher? I looked for a photo credit on the back of the book, but it simply said © Nice-Matin, all rights reserved. I used my camera to take a picture of the cover and texted it to Rafael Bartoletti, a celebrated fashion photographer who lived on the same street as me in Tribeca. The man was an artist. He had a comprehensive knowledge of photography, an eye that noticed even the tiniest detail, and a way of analyzing things that was singular and remarkable. For years, he had taken all of my promotional photographs and those that appeared on the dust jackets of my books. I loved his work because he always managed to find in me an innocence that I might have had a lifetime ago but had lost. His portraits depicted a better me, happier, less tortured, the man I might have been if life had been kinder.
Rafael called me right away. He spoke French with a slight Italian accent that many people found irresistible.
“Ciao, Thomas. I’m in Milan doing a shoot for Fendi. Who’s the beauty in the photograph you just sent me?”
“A girl I was in love with long ago. Vinca Rockwell.”
“I remember—you’ve talked about her.”
“What do you think of the photograph?”
“Did you take it?”
“No.”
“Technically, it’s a little out of focus, but the photographer certainly knew how to capture a moment. That’s all that matters. The decisive moment. You know what Cartier-Bresson said: ‘Photography must seize upon the moment at which the elements in motion are in balance.’ Well, your guy did that. He captured a fleeting moment and transformed it for all eternity.”
“You always say that there is nothing more deceptive than a photograph.”
“And that’s true!” Rafael said. “But I don’t see any contradiction.”
On the other end of the line, someone turned up the music. I heard a woman’s voice urging Rafael to hang up.
“Gotta go,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”
I opened the book and began to leaf through it. It was full of information. Pianelli had had access to police files. He had personally corroborated the statements given by witnesses. I had read the book when it first came out and had conducted my own investigation, interviewing every imaginable witness. I spent twenty minutes skimming through the book. The various memories of different witnesses all told the same story, the one that, over time, had become the official version: Vinca and Alexis had left Saint-Ex in the Alpine, the “young woman with flame-red hair” on the train to Paris next to the older man “wearing a German soccer cap with some unpronounceable name on it”; they’d checked in at the hotel on the rue de Saint-Simon and later “the young lady phoned down to ask for Cherry Coke”; the chambermaid had glimpsed them in the corridor the following morning; and then they’d disappeared—“When the receptionist came to take over from the night watchman, the room keys were lying on the front desk.” The book asked questions and highlighted a number of gray areas but offered no compelling evidence for a credible alternative theory. I had an advantage over Pianelli; while he simply had a hunch that the official story was false, I knew it was. Clément was dead. He could not have spent those two days with Vinca. She had run away with another man, with a ghost I had spent twenty-five years vainly trying to track down.
3.
“I see you’ve finally decided to read a good book!” Pianelli said as he took the chair opposite.
I looked up, still a little dazed from wandering through my labyrinthine past. “Did you know your book’s been banned by the Saint-Ex library?”
Stéphane speared a black olive from the little bowl. “Yeah, by that old bat Zélie! Not that it stops people who want to read it from downloading the PDF and passing it around.”
“How do you explain the current students’ obsession with Vinca?”
“Just look at her!” he said, flipping to the photo section of the book.
I did not even look down. I didn’t need to see the photographs to know exactly what Vinca had looked like. The almond eyes, her stylishly tousled hair, her pouting lips, her mischievous expressions that flickered between ladylike and lascivious.
“Vinca created a very distinct image,” Pianelli said. “She embodied what people used to call French chic, somewhere between Brigitte Bardot and Laetitia Casta. Most of all, she symbolized freedom.” He poured himself a glass of water. “If Vinca were twenty years old today, she’d be an It girl with six million followers on Instagram.”
The restaurant owner personally brought out the lamb shoulder and carved it for us. After a mouthful or two, Pianelli continued his lecture. “Obviously, all this went right over her head. I can’t pretend that I knew her better than you did, but behind that façade, she was pretty dull, wasn’t she?”
When I did not respond, he taunted me: “You idealize her because she disappeared when she was nineteen. But just suppose that the two of you had gotten married back then. Can you imagine what things would be like now? You’d have three kids, she’d be fat with saggy tits, and—”
“Shut up, Stéphane!”
I had raised my voice. He backpedaled and apologized, and we spent the next five minutes polishing off the lamb and the salad without talking. In the end, I was the one who broke the silence.
“Do you know who took this photo?” I asked, nodding at the cover.
Pianelli frowned and his face froze, as though I had caught him out. “I, um…” He checked the copyright credit. “I suppose it’s part of the Nice-Matin archives from way back.”
The Reunion Page 8