Chasing Cezanne

by Peter Mayle

  Franzen brushed the crumbs carefully from his mustache, and as he did so he found himself smiling. This time, it could be different. He glanced down at the case that was wedged beneath the table. He had the paintings, and while he had those he held the advantage. He was, despite his shady occupation, a man of some integrity and would never consider trying to extort more than the agreed fee. But there had to be a little give-and-take. He wasn’t Holtz’s exclusive property. It was only right that he should have the freedom to make an honest living, to forge for others when the opportunity arose. And just such an opportunity was on his doorstep, or would be in a matter of hours, when Pine and his friends arrived at the apartment.

  Franzen fished through his pockets and took out Pine’s card. He looked at his watch: still too early for a civilized man to be awake. He had plenty of time to find a hotel and call from there. Cheered by his decision, he gathered up his bags and went out of the station into the thin sunlight of a new and, he felt sure, better day.

  Bruno Paradou sat in his car, watching the Rue des Saints-Pères come to life. A door opened, and a middle-aged, bespectacled man appeared—a pessimist, wearing a raincoat and carrying an umbrella in defiance of the settled, cloudless blue of the morning sky. The man looked up, glanced at his watch, set off at a purposeful walk toward the boulevard: a subway man, of no use to Paradou.

  It was half an hour before he saw what he had been waiting for. A woman crossed the narrow street to unlock a car almost opposite Franzen’s building. Paradou pulled out and moved down, blocking access to the parking spot. The woman settled into her seat and embarked on a line-by-line review of her makeup in the mirror before taking a brush from her bag to arrange her already carefully arranged hair. Behind Paradou, a waiting driver sounded his horn. Paradou put his arm out of the window and made the time-honored gesture, then sounded his own horn. The woman turned to look at him, her face a study in scorn. With exaggerated deliberation, she took out a pair of dark glasses, put them on, and eased away from the curb.

  Bon. Paradou parked, cut the engine, and spread a copy of Soldier of Fortune, the magazine of the well-read mercenary, across the steering wheel. Not having more than a few words of English, and those mostly the scrapings of the language picked up in bars, he missed the subtleties of the editorial content. But he loved the pictures and the advertising. As a diligent investor might pore over the Wall Street Journal, so he pored over the announcements—fascinating if only partly understood—of new and improved tools of destruction. Today, his eye was first caught by the new Glock 26, photographed nestling in the palm of a manly hand. Nine-millimeter caliber, ten-shot magazine, weight 560 grams, the kind of gun you could tuck in your double-knit, combat-tested Swiss army sock. Leafing through the pages, he paused at other advertisements: a knife that could sever a three-inch free-hanging manila rope, an enticing subscription offer from Machine Gun News, deerskin gloves with lead knuckles, night vision equipment of all sizes, a sniper training course, bulletproof vests. What a wonderful country America was, he thought, studying a picture of a blonde wearing an ammunition belt, an automatic weapon, and nothing else. From time to time, he looked up to check the street, but for the moment there was nothing to do except think of ways he might spend his fee. Seventy-five thousand dollars would go a long way, even with Uzis the outrageous price they were.

  As it often does, jet lag proved to be more of a stimulus than any alarm clock. That, and Lucy’s excitement at the thought of seeing more of Paris, led her and Andre down to breakfast at the Montalembert just after seven. They found Cyrus already there, pink-cheeked and smelling faintly of bay rum, looking through the Herald Tribune.

  “Good morning, my dears,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you this early. What ever happened to breakfast in bed? A romantic boiled egg overlooking the rooftops of Paris, a splash of champagne in the orange juice …”

  Lucy bent down to kiss him on the cheek. “I think it’s time we found you a girlfriend.”

  “Yes, please.” Cyrus took off his reading glasses to look around the room. “Do you see anything here that might suit? A wealthy widow with an angelic disposition, a firm and opulent bosom, and an apartment on the Ile Saint-Louis. Ability to cook preferred but not essential; must have a sense of humor.”

  “Have you tried room service?” asked Andre.

  As the pots of coffee came and the room began to fill, they discussed what is surely one of the most pleasant dilemmas in the world: what to do on a fine day in Paris. There was, of course, the ten o’clock appointment, with the possibility of lunch with Franzen if all went well. But the afternoon was theirs, and Lucy was bombarded with well-meaning but infinitely confusing suggestions from Cyrus and Andre: the Musée d’Orsay had to be seen, the view from the top of the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré-Coeur, a bateau mouche, the café La Palette, where Andre had spent most of his university career, the pyramid of the Louvre, the final resting place of Oscar Wilde, Willi’s Wine Bar, and on and on. At last they stopped, giving Lucy a chance to speak.

  What she would like, she told them—what she would really like, corny as it might be—was to be a typical tourist, just for one day. The Champs Elysées, the Eiffel Tower, the Seine. And what would make her the happiest tourist in Paris would be for Andre to take photographs of her to send home to Grandma Walcott, who had never been further from Barbados than Port of Spain, when her nephew married a Trinidadian girl twenty years before. Was that too terrible, she asked, looking anxiously at the two men.

  “How I long to see the Eiffel Tower again,” said Cyrus. “Don’t you, dear boy?”

  Andre was silent, watching Lucy’s face. She wasn’t sure whether Cyrus was serious or making fun of her, and there was a sweet solemnity to her expression. “You’re not kidding?” she said.

  “I never kid this early in the morning. Now, what shall we do first, before we see Franzen? The river or the tower?”

  The river won. They left the hotel shortly after eight—only a few unfortunate minutes before a phone call came through for Monsieur Pine, suggesting some changes to the arrangements for the morning. The bellboy ran up to the boulevard in the hope of delivering the message, but he was too late. There was no sign of Pine among the figures hurrying to work.

  As it happened, they had gone the other way, taking the backstreets to reach one of Andre’s favorite corners of Paris, the area around the Rue de Buci, where every day seems to be market day.

  The atmosphere here is more like that of a busy country town than a capital city. Stalls spill into the street; market dogs dispute among each other for scraps under the trestle tables; greetings, insults, solicitous inquiries after health in general and the condition of the liver in particular pass between stallholders and their regular clients. There is a great feeling of appetite in the air, with a spectacular abundance of cheeses, breads, and sausages; and vegetables of every shape and color, from the squat potatoes called rats to haricot beans little thicker than a match, so fresh they snap. There are permanent shops behind the stalls, many of them traiteurs with their galantines and terrines and tarts and tiny, delicious birds arranged and presented in the windows like the works of art they are. On one corner, while the season lasts, there are barrels of oysters and a man with leather hands who shucks them and puts them on beds of crushed ice. And always flowers—flowers in extraordinary profusion, offering a variety of pleasures to the passing nose: the heady scent of freesias, the moisture of petals, the fine green smell of ferns.

  Lucy stopped at one of the stalls and made her first Parisian purchase: two tiny roses of the darkest red, boutonnières, which she put in the lapels of the men’s jackets. “There,” she said. “Now you’re ready to have your pictures taken.” They set off down the Rue Dauphine for the river and Paris’s oldest bridge, named, naturally enough, the Pont Neuf.

  An hour passed, a slightly silly hour of posing for Grandma Walcott against a selection of backgrounds chosen by Lucy and photographed in turn by Cyrus and Andre. When not behind th
e camera, each man took the part of an extra or a human prop—Andre on one knee in front of Lucy, Cyrus leering from behind a lamppost—until finally Andre was able to persuade a gendarme to take a picture of the three of them on the bridge, arms linked, the Ile de la Cite in the background. And when the gendarme agreed to have his picture taken with her, Lucy was sure it would be the talk of Barbados.

  “It’s funny,” she said as they were walking back to their appointment in the Rue des Saints-Pères. “All you ever hear is how snotty Parisians are. You know? Difficult, rude, arrogant. But can you imagine getting a cop in New York to take your picture?”

  “What you have to remember,” said Andre, “is that they’re French first and cops second. And a proper Frenchman will always make an effort for a pretty face.”

  “Quite right, too.” Cyrus looked at his watch, quickening his pace. “Is it far? I don’t want to be late.”

  As they were turning off the quay to go up the Rue des Saints-Pères, Paradou flicked the last of a chain of cigarette butts out of the car window, put away his magazine—several pages turned down at the corners for future reference—and concentrated on the street, looking for figures that matched the descriptions given to him by Holtz: a tall silver-haired man, well dressed; a younger man, dark, possibly with a camera; a slim, good-looking black girl. Not a difficult trio to spot. Paradou took the detonating device from the bag next to him on the passenger seat. Five to ten. Any minute now.

  He saw them hurrying down from the direction of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, their faces animated and laughing, the girl almost having to run to keep up with the two men. He watched them dispassionately, seeing them not as people but as seventy-five thousand dollars on the hoof, his mind taken up with timing. Five minutes after going through the courtyard door, maybe a little more if the old one was slow up the stairs. And then, paf!

  They stopped outside the door as Cyrus took a scrap of paper from his pocket, checking the code Franzen had given him before tapping it into the key pad. He stood aside to let the other two pass through, straightening his bow tie, a half-smile on his face. Paradou watched the door close behind them and checked his watch. He had decided to give them seven minutes.

  They made their way across the courtyard and were looking for a buzzer to push by the front door, when it opened and a man came out wheeling a bicycle, a cellular phone to his ear. He brushed past them with hardly a glance, and they went through to the hallway. Cyrus consulted his scrap of paper again: top floor, right-hand door. They began to climb the stone staircase. Out on the street, Paradou’s eyes never left his watch, impatient fingers tapping the steering wheel.

  “Well,” said Cyrus, a little breathless as they reached the top of the stairs, “living up here would keep you fit.” Andre knocked twice; the deep note of the old brass knocker echoed against the walls; the door yielded to his touch on the handle and hung ajar. They waited, undecided.

  “He must have left it open for us,” said Andre. “Come on.” He pushed open the door. “Nico! Good morning. We’re here.”

  They had stopped on the threshold, noses wrinkled against the pervasive smell of gas and feeling a little like trespassers, when there was the shuffle of slippered feet behind them in the hallway.

  “Il est parti.” The voice, thin and suspicious, came from an elderly woman who had emerged from the neighboring apartment. She wiped her hands on a faded apron, bright old eyes flicking from Cyrus to Lucy to Andre. “Parti,” she said again.

  “But he was expecting us,” said Andre.

  The old woman shrugged. That was of course possible, she said, but artists were irregular and not to be relied upon. Last night, there had been comings and goings. She—being a light sleeper, you understand, not from any vulgar curiosity, although one had a duty toward one’s neighbor—she had heard noises. Evidently, the sounds of departure. And, she said, sniffing the air, it was clear that someone had left the gas on. She shook her head at such careless and clandestine behavior. “Ils sont comme ça, les artistes. Un peu dingues.”

  Paradou saw the second hand of his watch mark the end of seven minutes, and he hit the button.

  The double blast ripped through the apartment like a thunderclap, destroying the kitchen, one end of the studio, the skylight, the windows, and a good part of the roof. The force of the explosion, amplified by gas, blew the front door from its hinges, picked up the group on the landing, and threw all four of them against the wall. Then there was silence, except for the thud of a falling piece of masonry and the soft rain of settling debris.

  And then, from the old woman, came a torrent of abuse as she struggled to push a dazed Cyrus from his reclining position across her chest. Andre shook his head against the painful ringing in his ears, felt the touch of Lucy’s hand on his shoulder. They both spoke at once: “Are you OK?” Two relieved nods.

  “Cyrus? How about you?”

  “Fine. I think.” He moved an arm gingerly, provoking another squawk from the old woman. “I’m sorry, madame. I beg your pardon. Andre, do tell her it wasn’t intentional.”

  Slowly, they disentangled themselves. Andre helped the old woman stand up. “We must call the pompiers,” he said to her. “May we use your phone?”

  The old woman nodded, her hands instinctively smoothing the front of her apron. “Wipe your feet before you come in.”

  Even filtered by distance and muffled by walls, the roar of the explosion had sounded reassuringly loud. Paradou wondered how soon it would be before the police and the fire department arrived. And an ambulance. He needed to see the bodies. Already, three or four passersby had stopped in front of the building, staring at the closed double doors to the courtyard and telling each other that something very grave had undoubtedly taken place. It wouldn’t be long before the street was sealed off and getting out would be impossible. Paradou decided to risk a ticket, leave his car on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and come back on foot, just another ghoul attracted by someone else’s disaster.

  Preceded by the tinny bleat of klaxons, a fire truck turned into the street and came to a halt outside the building, followed by a police car, and then another. Within minutes, uniformed figures had taken over the area, throwing open the double doors, pushing aside the growing knot of spectators, diverting traffic, shouting instructions over the crackling hubbub of their walkie-talkies. Paradou put on dark glasses and attached himself to a small group of people on the sidewalk opposite the building.

  The uniforms split up at the top of the stairs, a squad of pompiers moving cautiously through the ruins of Franzen’s apartment, two police officers going next door to question the four survivors. The old woman was now sufficiently recovered from her shock to be indignant and was delivering a lecture to the senior police officer—a weary-looking man with an end-of-the-shift blue chin—on the scandalous irresponsibility of her neighbor. Even now one could smell the gas. They could all have been killed, écrasés, and she a woman of nervous disposition, alone except for her cat.

  The police officer sighed and nodded with as much sympathy as he could muster. A pompier put his head around the door to report the absence of any bodies in the wreckage. The long process of taking names, addresses, and depositions began.

  Paradou waited in vain for the hoped-for ambulance. As the minutes passed without any signs of further explosions, bloodshed, or corpses to divert them, the spectators were gradually drifting away, making his efforts to be unobtrusive more difficult. He looked up and down the street for a refuge, before ducking into an antiquarian bookstore, where he positioned himself near the window, camouflaged as a browser with a leather-bound volume of Racine.

  The police officer referred back through the pages of his notebook and looked up, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t think I need detain you any longer,” he said to Andre. “One of my men will drive you all back to your hotel. I regret that you’ve had such an unfortunate experience in Paris.” He turned to the old woman. “Thank you for your cooperation, madame.”

  “
You will want me to come down to the station, I suppose.” She sighed heavily, the dutiful citizen. “For more of your questions.”

  “No, madame. That won’t be necessary.”

  “Oh.” She stood in the doorway to watch them leave, mild disappointment on her face.

  Paradou saw the three human targets, dusty but otherwise unharmed, come out of the building and get into the back of a police car, as a pompier ran out to move the fire truck that was blocking their way.

  “Merde!” Tossing the book on a table, he dashed through the door and off to his car. The bookseller watched his departure with raised eyebrows. Racine was not to everyone’s taste, as he knew, but such a vehement reaction to the great man’s work was rare.

  The police car drove fast through Saint-Germain, Paradou keeping up with some difficulty, swearing steadily. Putain police. They drove like lunatics. He shook his head and fumbled for a cigarette. How could they have walked away from a blast like that? He could see them now, all three in the back seat, the older man turning his head to say something to the girl beside him. Seventy-five thousand dollars was sitting there, not ten meters away. And now, as if he didn’t have enough problems, he felt an insistent pressure on his bladder. Where the hell were they going?

  With a squeal of tires, the police car turned right off the boulevard into the Rue du Bac and down the side street to stop at the Montalembert, leaving Paradou, in his mounting discomfort, to find somewhere, anywhere, to park his car.

  “I don’t know about you two,” said Cyrus, “but I could do with a drink.” As they were turning to go into the bar, the girl from the front desk ran across the lobby. “Monsieur Pine? This came just after you left. We tried to catch you”—she gave a charming shrug—“but you were too fast for us.”