The Death Collectors

by J. A. Kerley

  Danbury fired strands of French at the old man. In Mobile I would have watched the interviewee’s eyes and body for reactions to words and phrases. Lacking that ability, I studied Danbury’s voice, her French an aural version of a mountain stream gliding over rounded stones.

  “Ceci est fini!” a woman’s voice cawed.

  The door behind us opened and Mme Badentier strode in, her high heels gunshots on the wooden floor. “Fini!” She clapped her hands, spoke rapidly to Danbury.

  “We’re getting the bum’s rush,” Danbury said to me. “She thinks we’re tiring Marcel.”

  I held two fingers up. “Two minutes,” I pleaded to Mimi. “Please.”

  The woman crossed her arms and glared. “Non.”

  Non I understood. Not knowing this, she repeated it.

  I looked at the old man. “Another game?” I said, pointing at the board. “Chess, Monsieur Duchamp?”

  The old man’s eyes lit with delight.

  “Non, non, non,” the woman said, taking me under the arm and trying to pull me from the room.

  “Mimi,” the old man said softly. She froze, turned to him. He looked at the door. “Quittez la chambre.”

  Her eyes blazed at me and she spat a few words in French, not water over stones, but rocks against my head.

  “She’s coming back in ten minutes,” Danbury said. “Hurry.”

  Marcel reset the table, this time adding a corkscrew and empty snailshell to the mix. He checked beneath the table for another spider. Finding none, he advanced a white feather. I greeted it with my thumbtack. He grunted.

  “Don’t piss him off. Lose, just take a few minutes to do it.”

  “Ask him questions, Danbury. And hit him again with the vino.”

  “Vin?” The old man’s eyes sparkled as Danbury poured a healthy shot into his glass. He tapped the glass with his finger, grinned at Danbury, said a few words.

  “Oh shit,” Danbury said.

  “What.”

  “He wants me to smoke the damned pipe.”

  “Fire it up. Bet they didn’t teach that in Jschool.”

  Danbury made a face and lit the pipe. She puffed and hacked and gagged, tears welling in her eyes. “Scent of heaven, my ass,” she gasped. “It tastes like fried lint.” When it was burning strong, she lowered it to his face. He wafted smoke to his nose with his hand.

  “Ah, l’odeur du ciel.”

  Marcel and I moved and countermoved, tacks and feathers and shells shifting on the surface of the table. While we dueled in the smoke-filled air, Danbury kept up a running conversation with the old man, translating without missing a beat. She didn’t ask questions while Marcel pondered a move but after it, saving the most involved questions until he took one of my pieces, which made him more garrulous. It was the perfect response to the situation, probably as useful to a reporter as a cop.

  I listened and fired questions back, simultaneously trying to ascertain the rankings of the items on the table, hoping to stay in the game long enough for Danbury to ask all the questions. It became rhythmic, dance-like. Danbury and I were almost in the zone Harry and I sometimes reached, knowing in advance how the other will act, even in a completely fluid situation.

  I advanced a pen nib, and Danbury kept up her dual conversation. “He says Hexcamp had a crude vitality to his work. But he wasn’t masterful, more an illustrator than an artist. Hexcamp never realized his limitations, calling his critics liars and jealous of his talents.”

  My nib fell to the salt cellar. Danbury kept translating.

  “Hexcamp fancied himself a roué, a playboy. But again he deluded himself. He was a…a…”

  The old man cackled at Danbury and made a circle with his left thumb and forefinger, thrusting his right forefinger through it. After several repetitions, he clamped down with his left hand, trapping his finger. He giggled, that high keening sound, followed by a few more words.

  “Translation, Danbury.”

  “Hexcamp was a slave to, uh, pussy. Evidently he needed to dominate women in public, be dominated by them in private.”

  I answered a paperclip thrust with my button parry. “How does Marcel know this?”

  Danbury spoke. Marcel replied briefly, aiming his hands at one another, opening and closing them quickly. I heard the sound paree.

  “It’s Paris, everyone gossips,” I ventured.

  Danbury grinned. “Damn. You’re learning the language.”

  Marcel spun a matchbook in a circle. I jumped it with an eyedropper. He whispered merde, bumped the eyedropper with his cork and spoke several more sentences.

  “He says Hexcamp’s charm, his words, his lovely face, drew women like moths. But the women were always burned.”

  Badentier’s snailshell took my candle nub. “By Hexcamp?” I asked.

  “Vin,” the old man bayed.

  Danbury jumped for the bottle and refilled his glass while translating. “By another woman; she’d let the new women stay for a few days - fresh toys for Marsden - then send them packing. It was the woman who herself drew Hexcamp like a moth. He loved her fire and sought it. She held his heart in her hands, alternately kissing and biting it. It drove him insane with need.”

  I took his eraser with my button. Danbury froze, cocked her head. “I hear the elevator. It’s not been ten minutes.”

  “Maybe metric minutes are shorter. Ask about the woman. Who was she?”

  He set a thimble behind my bobbin, flicked the bobbin from the table. My pieces were disappearing. He traded sentences with Danbury.

  “One of a circle of friends of Hexcamp’s. Some students, some the usual crowd of Paris drifters. They blew in like gypsies, stole what they could, then scattered like leaves.”

  “What was her name, Danbury?”

  I met his breadcrust with my watch crystal. He snorted, then zoomed in a bottlecap from the far edge of the board and dropped it over my watch crystal. He started laughing, wiggled a gnarled forefinger at me.

  “Echec,” he said. Check.

  “The damned cap,” I said. “I never saw it coming.”

  Danbury turned an ear toward the door. “Footsteps outside. Madame is closing in.”

  “Did the woman have a name, Danbury? Ask him.”

  As Danbury leaned in with her question, the door opened and Mimi strode across the floor like a bee-stung Amazon. She grabbed us by our arms and pulled us toward the door with surprising strength. The table tipped, wine slashed across the floor. Danbury yelled, “What was the name of the woman? Hexcamp’s woman?”

  But Marcel was studying the wet floor, perhaps planning his next game. Mimi hustled us into the anteroom. The door to Marcel slammed with the concussion of a shotgun blast. Her long finger twitched at the front door. “Out.”

  “Please,” I begged the statue of her face. “One more question, une question.”

  She walked to the door to the hall, opened it. “Non.”

  “You were there, weren’t you?” I said. “At the academy? You’ve always cared for your brother in one way or another?” We were in the hall. Danbury spun my words into French. The woman stared at me. I saw fear in her eyes.

  I said, “You were there, Mimi. I see it in your face. Tell her the truth, Danbury. We’ve come five thousand miles because people are dying and I don’t know why.”

  Danbury spoke as the door squeezed shut. The building went quiet as stone. “I think we’ve worn out our welcome,” she said quietly.

  We shuffled down the hall to the elevator. Our diminutive operator was nowhere in attendance, a rolled-shut paper bag left in his place. I opened it to discover a croissant and a single white ballet slipper. After several halting attempts - and one terrifyingly fast two-floor descent - I deposited us on the first floor.

  “Watch your step. Where to now, Danbury?”

  “You have to meet with some local cops to make the nut on the grant, right?”

  We headed out the door. I shrugged. “It would make the chief happy. The accountants, too. Might as
well do something.”

  She pulled out her notes, flicked her hand in the air, and had a cab in front of us in seconds.

  Chapter 38

  Security at the police substation was rigorous. While our papers were scrutinized, we were led to a small bench in a corridor and told to sit and not move. We did just that. I scanned the bustle of activity, finding patterns recognizable from home. My gaze brought me to a square-built man with ruffled gray hair. He leaned against a pillar two dozen feet away and studied us from beneath a frown. I looked away, locked my fingers behind my head and enjoyed the show until a beefy French cop told Danbury whoever she’d spoken to from Mobile wasn’t in and we’d have to say au revoir.

  He escorted us toward the door as Danbury argued the point with little success. Just when it seemed the street was inevitable - how many places could we be booted from in one day? - a gruff voice behind us made our escort disappear without a word.

  I turned to see the man who had been studying me from across the room. He gestured us back into the station and led us to a small, glassed-in office awash with files and papers. He sat, nodded toward two chairs. He looked at me.

  “You are a gend—, a policeman.”

  I was surprised. “How do you know?”

  “I watched you walk in the door. You studied the room and relaxed. There are few people who relax while in a department of police: hardened criminals, and, of course, other police.”

  “What makes you think we’re not hardened criminals; jewel thieves or the like?”

  He paused a moment, as if finding the precise English before he spoke.

  “I saw you smile before; it was real, a smile using both eyes and mouth. Criminals can’t smile: the eyes never perfectly synchronize with the mouth. The smile is the first item a life of dishonesty steals.” He nodded toward Danbury. “Plus, criminals do not generally travel in such lovely company.”

  “Who are you, sir?” I asked.

  It turned out that we were in the presence of Deputy Inspector Bernard Latrelle, which explained our sudden acceptance into the heart of the department. We introduced ourselves and I handled the major business first.

  “We have a strange story, Inspector Latrelle,” I said. “But first I have to say, ‘smuggling.’”

  A raised eyebrow. “Your strange story is about smuggling, Detective Ryder?”

  “No. But now that we’ve discussed smuggling, the government will pay for my trip.”

  Latrelle had a rich laugh, and it punctuated my explanation of the payment plan for my journey. As a cop, he’d seen it before, bureaucracy having no borders. I shifted subjects. Latrelle was fascinated by my story of Marsden Hexcamp. “The art of the final moment?” he asked at one point.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Latrelle shook his head and kept writing. My telling took ten minutes and he reviewed the notes carefully.

  “I will look back through the records for any crimes corresponding to yours. Are there any other questions before you leave?”

  On a whim, I handed him a copy of the art with the Eiffel Tower in the background. He studied it, looking between my face and the drawing. “And?”

  I said, “Is there a location from which such a drawing could be made?”

  He looked at me. “You don’t know?”

  “It’s a puzzle, sort of.”

  He looked around the file-blanketed office. “You have paperwork, do you not? At your police department in Mobile.”

  I held my palm a meter off the floor.

  “As you’ve noticed, so do I,” he said. “You’ve given me a reason to escape it for a few moments.”

  We followed him to a large black Renault parked outside by a hydrant. I gestured for Danbury to take the front and I sat in back. We whisked through the streets of Paris, me studying everything from the corner of my eye, trying to seem jaded, just another day in the City of Light. Not Danbury. She pointed at everything, asking rapid-fire questions in two languages. Latrelle enjoyed her enthusiasm.

  I had but one question: Would Monsieur Latrelle be so kind as to engage the siren for a moment? He did, and it performed a satisfying wah-hunh, wah-hunh.

  Ten minutes later, Latrelle parked on a narrow boulevard studded with trees. He pointed to a cluster of rectangular brick buildings with gray mantels beneath the windows. A small courtyard separated the buildings and young men and women sat on benches or sprawled on the green lawn. Most were conversing, others drawing in tablets. A young man sat against a tree and strummed a water-blue guitar.

  “Formerly l’Académie d’Art Graphique,” Latrelle said, “now l’École d’Art et de Conception - the School of Art and Design. Paris is always changing, never changed.”

  We walked past the buildings and up a rise to a small park overlooking the city. There were a dozen empty benches and the requisite bronze statue. Several large and stately trees were in attendance, a species of oak, it appeared, ringed at their bases with yellow flowers. A sense of tranquility suffused the place.

  Latrelle led us to a small brick circle at the edge of the overlook. An iron fence denoted the perimeter. A spreading tree stood twenty yards beyond, down the incline. In the distance, over rooftops and between buildings, was the Eiffel Tower. Latrelle bade me lean against the fence.

  “Here is where you stood,” the old gendarme said, tapping the photo with his finger. “Now do you remember?”

  “I’ve never been here. There’s speculation the drawing might have been made thirty-five years ago.”

  “A relative?” he asked, glancing between me and the picture.

  “No one in my family has ever been to France.”

  He studied the picture again, then raised a world-weary eyebrow.

  “Someone is lying,” he said. “You or time.”

  Latrelle dropped us on the opposite side of the wide boulevard from the hotel. We crossed it in a scattering of pigeons, our steps quiet in the grass. A trio of young mothers sat on a bench and watched toddlers play with an orange ball. For a moment I recalled the shotgunned woman in the Mobile alley, her body in the street and the orange in the nearby grass. I wondered if Roy Trent had nailed it shut.

  Surely, I thought; it’s been two weeks.

  “Over there,” Danbury said, touching my arm and pointing. On a park bench opposite the entrance to our hotel sat the lone figure of Mimi Badentier. She looked frightened, her white hands clasping and releasing on her dress.

  “What do you think she wants?” Danbury said.

  I had thought Mimi’s guardianship of her brother excessive, overwrought, like she had a personal stake in our questions.

  “Maybe she needs to tell us secrets,” I said.

  Chapter 39

  “Most were children with faces like poems by Verlaine,” Mimi said in a hushed voice. “They were beautiful, but haunted.”

  We sat on facing benches pulled closer. Rather than sit across from Mimi - as I had done - Danbury sat beside the woman, a message of camaraderie over opposition.

  “Marsden Hexcamp?” I said.

  Mimi spoke in heavily accented English. “He was pure beauty. Like a ray of light. People only had to see him to want to be his friend, to make him happy, to make him say, ‘Come with us tonight, we’re going to a club.’”

  I paused as a pair of taxis passed by fifty feet away, horns blaring at some slight. “What did people think of his art?” I asked.

  “Most didn’t understand it. My brother thought it excessively emotional and simplistic - zeal eclipsing talent.”

  “What was Hexcamp’s reaction?”

  “He declared no one had the capacity to understand his art but him and a few select comrades. He claimed a different artistic language, one not available to the bourgeois mentality instilled by the art establishment, my brother included. Marsden was adamant, almost obsessive, that art be his legacy. It seemed all he wanted from life was to be the next Picasso.”

  “What did people think of him?”

  “Most thought him a l
ittle -” Mimi spun her finger at her temple: crazy. “Or maybe not so little. He didn’t care. In the system of belief he cultivated, those who questioned or laughed at him were lesser beings, cattle. After a while, most people simply ignored his pronouncements. Except for a very few.”

  “The select few,” I said. “The chosen.”

  “The wounded,” Danbury corrected, her voice almost lost in the nearby traffic. “The tormented.”

  Mimi Badentier shook her head sadly. “Marsden gave off a sense not so much of personal strength, but of nurturing a grievous wound, one to his soul. He claimed he created from that suffering.” Her eyes looked into mine. “Some people would rather follow a wounded man than one who is whole.”

  “They have a closer identity, perhaps?” Danbury said.

  “The wounded man provides hope,” I said. “The followers might never be whole, but could imagine their special pain provided abilities not available to others. Not to the degree of Hexcamp - someone had to be the leader, the paradigm - but they’d finally been granted worth.”

  “Abilities not available to others…” Danbury looked at me, raised an eyebrow.

  I nodded. “Manna to a sociopath like Hexcamp. If the group’s abilities were beyond the normal, it’s axiomatic that the standard laws of society no longer applied.”

  Danbury said, “Insanity. But they lined up to follow.”

  Mimi’s eyes stared into the past. I felt waving a blazing torch in front of her face wouldn’t draw a flinch. “Mimi?” I said. She didn’t hear.

  “Mimi?” I repeated. “Hello?”

  Her eyes came back. I put on my gentlest voice, one I’d learned from Harry. “These children, the lonely and special children, Mimi - were you one of them?”

  She closed her eyes and turned her head away. When she turned back, her eyes were wet and her voice was a whisper.

  “I wasn’t yet thirty. I had never been to college; my only study was the typewriter, the stenography pad, the Dictaphone. My brother employed me as an assistant as a favor to our parents. All the while, swirling about me, were lovely young men and women with talent and sophistication. Or so it seemed to someone like me.”