Three Drops of Blood and a Cloud of Cocaine

by Quentin Mouron

  “Yes, that does ring a bell…”

  “That cat was at least half the cause of the scandal. Contrary to what Zola thought, or pretended to think, it could only have served to underscore the sexual connotation of the work. I ask you, what can this cat possibly represent but the vagina the girl is covering with her hand?”

  “That’s really fascinating,” declares Franck, though he is no longer smiling and is feeling a bit drained.

  They move on to Argenteuil.

  “It looks Impressionist.”

  “You couldn’t be more right! But it’s the work of a different kind of Impressionist, as Manet wanted to keep his distance from the movement. He was chosen as its master without wanting it. This painting represents a kind of encouragement to his followers, to Monet’s ‘gang’. It was a splendid way to do them justice.”

  Franck looks at the canvas without any great conviction.

  “Come, Franck. Here’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. What can I tell you about it?”

  “I’m sure something will occur to you…”

  “Well, the young boy in the center is said to be the illegitimate son of the painter – who, between us, was quite a womanizer. It’s really something, isn’t it? Have you noticed the lovely treatment of the light?”

  They move along, with Lyllian chattering on as he moves confidently from one painting to the next, recounting the history behind each, describing its context, slipping in a few anecdotes, a few technical details, or recalling the historic scandals they provoked when first exhibited.

  Some visitors, attracted by the youth of this extemporaneous guide (a change from the aged ones usually on offer), have begun to follow him; they shower him with compliments and keep close at his heels. By the time they reach A Bar at the Folies-Bergère it has become a real procession.

  “Ah! Just look at this! This is his masterpiece!”

  “Another one?” asks Franck.

  “No, no, his true masterpiece! His absolute masterpiece! In comparison with this, the others are just appetizers!”

  Franck nods.

  “Just look at the supple execution! The shimmering light (Velázquez was the only master he recognized)! He was near the end of his life when he painted what I consider a kind of testament.” He raises his voice. “Can’t you sense the approach of death in this play of mirrors exalting appearances, the ephemeral, the fragility of existence?”

  Before they leave the room, Lyllian receives a salvo of thanks and congratulations. “You’ll go far, young man,” predicts an English lady who resembles the late Queen Mother in her dress and hairdo. A financier from Seattle insists on embracing him, while the man’s wife religiously takes down his contact information. The flute player smiles and clucks, pressing the hands that reach out to him. “You’re welcome! Only too happy!” The ovation continues for another few minutes, and then the two men leave the room.

  Lyllian seems delighted. “Did you enjoy the tour?” he asks.

  “A lot! Now I know for sure that you’re cut out to be an actor.”

  “Really? What makes you think so?”

  “The baloney you were spouting, of course! It so happens I’ve already read it word for word. In some booklet, I think… Some Taschen art book, perhaps. But what does that matter? You didn’t utter a single heartfelt or personal word. Not one risky idea. Nothing to show who you are… It was just parroting! All an act!”

  Lyllian turns crimson. “Franck, that’s not true!”

  Franck laughs, and slaps the flutist on the back.

  “Come on! You know perfectly well I’m right. You read some brochure while you’re sitting on the john, and then reel it off to everyone you bring here – and they swallow it, the idiots; they’re your audience. As for you, you’re an adorable actor. Full of someone else’s words, you perform marvels. Obviously you have to renounce your own identity, to compromise. But what does that matter? You’ll go far! The prospect of an excited public will direct your fingers much better than any conductor could. You’d commit murder in order to please. So would I! But here’s the thing: not to please others! You see the difference? You’re just like that little tart in the Manet painting.”

  “Stop!” cries Lyllian.

  “Oh, come on! I’ve drunk your watered-down wine without complaint. I think that deserves some consideration!”

  “You’re mistaken about me!”

  For a few moments Franck says nothing. They go down the staircase.

  In the main hall, as Lyllian is about to leave, the detective catches him gently by the arm. “Listen, I’m not going to apologize again.”

  They stare at one another. Then the flute player looks away. “I’m going. Goodbye.”

  “As you wish, Lyllian.”

  The flutist goes down a few steps, then turns and cries again, “You’re wrong!”

  Lyllian heads for the exit, but then stops and makes for the washrooms.

  “Now I’m presentable again!” exclaims Franck, after combing his hair and examining himself carefully in the mirror. He unscrews the silencer from the Steyr TMP and slips it into his pocket; he returns the pistol to its holster and then snorts a short line of cocaine from the back of his cell phone. Then he carefully closes the door of a cubicle where the flutist lies in a pool of his own blood, his torso riddled with bullets.

  Now that’s what you call drawing a line under a friendship, he smiles to himself. Then he leaves the washroom, whistling the “Libera Me.”

  In the entrance hall the swarm of visitors is thicker than ever. You’d think it was La Musique aux Tuileries! My flutist would probably have had something very profound to say about that! thinks Franck as he threads his way through the motley crowd of wonderstruck tourists; he notices a big blond guy pretending to sodomize a Greek statue, an Asian taking a selfie between two mummies, and a French mother out of her mind because she has “lost Anouck! Anouck! Where’s Anouck?” – but then she finds Anouck behind a fluted column and bursts out laughing.

  Reaching the door at the top of the monumental staircase that leads outside, Franck feels a shiver run through him. (And I didn’t even see the Van Goghs! he thinks.) He hesitates for a few moments. Then, making up his mind, he makes for the parking lot. Sitting in the 300C with the Fauré Requiem just coming to an end, he consults his messages.

  Mariella: “Appointment Patricia Froger school principal 4:30.” He enters the school’s address in the GPS and then, checking that the guard is nowhere near, lights a cigarette.

  After all, he reflects, my little Texan windbag wasn’t so awful… It was just that he was itching to play to the gallery. He’d have killed for a few whistles… The appeal of the crowd, of the stage, of that brief instant when all eyes are on you – when, for a few moments, you’re bigger, more solid, the only thing that exists – is probably what motivates the neophyte artist. But Franck judges the flute player severely in comparison with the men he admires: gifted artists, now long dead. He knows them only through their biographies. He can’t understand how such books can have been written by admirers who make every effort to introduce “inner necessity” as a smokescreen to obscure the constant, aggressive trait of vanity. Lyllian, in his desire to please, was no more repulsive than the bulk of visual artists and daubers, or the sludge of pianists, dancers, and carvers of PVC. He was no more stupid than any novelist, thinks Franck. He actually had that rather cold elegance lacking in most American artists, as badly dressed as they are stupidly optimistic. The fact is, I had no reason to wish him harm. Closing his eyes, Franck takes a prolonged drag on his cigarette, then exhales a substantial cloud of smoke.

  “Maybe I was a little hard on him,” he repeats to himself. Then, opening his eyes again, he drives off.

  20

  Handcuffed and sitting on a metal chair, Alexander Marshall spits on the floor and declares categorically, almost solemnly, “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ more.” Then he straightens up, and his face closes. He has adopted the pose of cool insubordination, the defianc
e of a convict, that brutal assertion of the will which – in contrast with the inevitability of the conviction – generally inspires more pity than respect. Beside him, his lawyer puts away the documents spread on the table in a file folder, and then confirms, “My client won’t be making any further statement.”

  McCarthy nods. “Return the suspect to his cell,” he orders two officers who have been following the interrogation from an adjoining room, behind a one-way mirror. Then he says goodbye to the lawyer and leaves the room.

  In the next room, Gomez is sitting with a large mug of coffee in front of him.

  “Did you hear everything?” asks the sheriff.

  “No,” answers the deputy. “I came in at the end.”

  McCarthy sits down. “He says he didn’t know Hiscock, but he’s lying. I know he’s lying.”

  “Because of Laura Henderson?”

  “Because of her, and his computer.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That Marshall and Hiscock met on at least two occasions.”

  “At their place?”

  McCarthy nods.

  But even without Laura Henderson, even without Hiscock’s contact information found on Marshall’s computer, hidden under the borrowed name of a household appliance store, McCarthy would have bet that the two men were acquainted – though less on account of any strictly logical reason than because of a certain similarity, a family likeness. Those two are a perfect match, thinks the sheriff. And indeed they share the same rocky itinerary, the same need to dominate, the same appearance of fate.

  “So,” asks Gomez, “could it have been Marshall that introduced Hiscock to old Jim?”

  McCarthy reflects for a few moments. “I think it was Laura that mentioned Hiscock to her father. That she was the intermediary.” McCarthy stops, and then goes on. “Maybe I’m a bleeding heart, but I like to think that Laura actually wanted to do something for her daughter, just a gesture… No big deal! Just lift a finger! The hope that there was still a glimmer in her, a hint of goodness that…”

  “That made her hope that young Julia could make it in life.”

  McCarthy nods, then asks, smiling, “Do you think I’m being naive?”

  “No, Sheriff, I think that if reality can really be dark, human beings” – he mechanically touches the gold chain of his crucifix – “are still capable of earning themselves a few bright spots… rare though they may be.”

  “Thanks,” answers the sheriff.

  McCarthy’s gratitude is sincere. In response to the cynicism that is common in some police departments, and which is mistaken for realism, the sheriff and his deputy try to approach humanity from its least repugnant side. Sometimes they simply aren’t able to, or else the thread they are grasping at frays through. Yet they go on hoping. Their effort is as much a moral as a professional obligation. “If everyone is as wicked as they say,” they sometimes repeat, “what’s the use of getting up every morning? What’s the use of risking your life, and your family’s? No, if we do get out of bed it’s because there’s some hope, a glimmer that guides us when we put on our uniforms in the middle of the night, buckle our belts, and pick up our guns.”

  “So, Marshall brings Hiscock to Laura Henderson’s…”

  “Then she introduces her father as a potential drug mule…”

  “He still has to agree.”

  “His daughter convinces him. He loves little Julia, so he accepts.”

  The two policemen fall silent. Each is reflecting inwardly.

  It isn’t all that rare for a man who has gone straight all his life to embark on a criminal career in later years. Often he is simply driven to it by the financial problems resulting from the inadequacy of his pension. Such is clearly Jimmy Henderson’s case. But it can also be interpreted as the sign of a last-minute rebellion against a social order that has crushed him for forty or fifty years, exploiting him while forcing him to grin and bear it, robbing him while expecting him to express gratitude. So, when he reaches retirement, he rebels. He starts to frequent underage hookers, or push crack. In Canada, a 101-year-old grandmother got caught putting heroin in her cup of coffee. When the cops arrived, she just looked at them with a mischievous little smile that said, I’ve come to an age when you can’t touch me. I’ve seen it all! Now it’s my turn. I can give you the finger the way I’ve been given it all my life.

  Gomez breaks the silence. “So you think Hiscock is mixed up in our case?”

  “That seems plausible… But to what extent? Was he directly involved in Henderson’s death? It may be just a coincidence… On the one hand there’s Henderson’s murder and the mutilation of his corpse, and on the other there’s Hiscock and the stolen drugs. There are logical connections between the two, but no clear cause and effect.”

  It is the absence of any tangible line of inquiry that frustrates the sheriff. There is no clue, nothing coherent. Just an ordinary guy found on a street corner in unusual circumstances. Around that, vague explanations, but nothing adequate. Suspicions, but no corroborating facts. It may have been a settling of scores, as often happens between drug traffickers; it may also have been committed by Alexander Marshall, but – and this is McCarthy’s thinking – there may be a third angle…

  “You see, Gomez, we’ve explored the Marshall angle and the Hiscock angle, wondering what links there might be between them. But it’s possible we’ve gotten it all wrong, that this murder was carried out by a killer who wasn’t acting in any rational way, or was following some code we don’t recognize, a genuine lunatic we know nothing about except that he’s roaming our streets – and that he’s a killer. A guy acting without any motive apart from his own pleasure.”

  That is what frightens the sheriff. Basically, there is nothing surprising about a totally crazy crack addict murdering his own father-in-law, nor would there be anything unusual about the father-in-law being murdered by his employers because he was dabbling in drug dealing on his own account. You can talk rationally about these two examples; maybe they are justified by the statistics. The citizen with his head in the newspaper just gives a sad shrug: that sort of thing is inevitable. It’s also possible to situate them geographically: in the Bellams, a deprived Boston neighborhood where countless sordid events occur, or at Fort Owl, in a shady fitness club run by a former porn star. You can reconstitute an itinerary, suggest explanations, and sometimes even justifications. Human beings are always human. But what can you make of a crime the only motivation for which is the pleasure of committing it? How many people would be capable of murder for a reason like that? Very few, McCarthy would like to reply. But he’s not convinced. Maybe that kind of crime usually just remains unsolved. When a gang leader is found dead with a dozen bullets of different calibers in his body it’s easy to get your hands on whoever’s responsible: you just have to look at the competition. When a rich dowager has been butchered in her mansion and her jewelry taken, there’s an explanation, and very often only a little persistence is needed to uncover the precise circumstances. But when one guy stabs another in the open street, without any motive apart from a desire to exercise his power, where is the investigator supposed to begin? He can’t form even the vaguest impression of a killer like that, for he can look like anyone. He doesn’t necessarily live in the Bellams or in Dorchester; he doesn’t necessarily haunt the murky streets of the periphery, where the trafficking goes on, where gangs are organized, where clever robberies and villainous crimes are planned; he hasn’t necessarily gone from prison cell to prison cell. Maybe he lives in a big house in the center of Watertown, in a henhouse deep in Hidden Hills, or, as often happens, in an ordinary home in a law-abiding neighborhood, apparently leading a law-abiding existence. The sonofabitch could live in the Foxtraps, on my street, be my neighbor, McCarthy thinks.

  This final thought turns the sheriff’s blood to ice. He thinks of his daughters. Of his wife. If he’s certain his family has no connection with thugs like Hiscock or Marshall, there’s nothing to say that they don’t encou
nter a killer every day who, in the anonymity of a family backyard, is preparing to commit some massacre. So, in God’s name, what can I do? How can I protect them? he thinks. His nocturnal angst grips his heart again. It’s no longer merely the unpleasant prospect that their investigation may lead nowhere, that justice will never be done. It is the immediate, chilling perception of danger, his impression that the threat may come from any direction – and that there is nothing he can do about it. Nothing, except spend his days with his family, armed, waiting for the bastard to turn up. But is it possible for such a man, who is capable of murdering another human being without any apparent reason, to live comfortably in one of the comfortable homes in the Foxtraps? Is it possible for him to live an ordinary life, to attend neighborhood parties, to take his kids away for the weekend, to clip his hedge, to cook on the barbecue? Does he have the same white mailbox, with his name on it, a completely ordinary name? My God, he thinks, shouldn’t his name at least be written in capitals? Is it really possible for him to go unnoticed? But most likely he can, and McCarthy knows it. He distrusts depictions in terms of good and evil, of struggles between angels, with explosions, an enormous din, celestial drumbeats, cries of glory, and gorings. That kind of hyperbole leads to the fanciful nicknames that the press bestows on murderers: The Vampire of Düsseldorf, the Milwaukee Cannibal, the Butcher of Rostov… beasts, monsters, and demons all. If people tried to be a little less sensationalist, he thinks, we’d have some nice surprises: The Electrician of Amstetten, The Insurance Man of Orlando, The Accountant of Thunder Bay. Who’s to say Gomez and I aren’t dealing with the Potter of Watertown?

  The theory of a psychopathic killer is taking shape; Hiscock and Marshall fade into the background. Of course, other possibilities remain – and there can’t be any question of releasing Marshall or refusing to clear up the Hiscock murder. But at this precise moment that isn’t what McCarthy believes: Marshall is too obvious, too predictable. He could kill, and maybe he did, but he didn’t commit this particular murder, he’s sure of it. “It could just as easily be you or me, Gomez. Someone who’s around but nobody notices, someone no one has noticed.”