Murder Without Pity

by Steve Haberman

  “Guess what else I know? Hans kept flicking his butane lighter near the Jew’s eyes. He was giddy with torture; he hates them that much. He threatened to burn the Jew’s eyes out unless he confessed. The Jew kept shaking his head, denying he was blackmailing. Luc eventually realized they might have the wrong guy and pulled Hans aside to discuss matters. That’s when the Jew bolted. He must have suffered a heart attack and tripped down the stairs.”

  With a look of terror in his eyes, Stanislas thought. “Were there others involved?”

  “If there were, I didn’t catch their names. Those three left the mansion as if it was on fire and split in Luc’s car.” Danny jumped from a sudden ringing. He lunged for his cell phone. “Brit, what? Slow down. I don’t understand your babbling.” He clapped a hand over his ear to hear better. “Ringing? A lot? Shit. It must be them. Brit, listen, don’t answer. You hear me? Do not answer. Wait till I get there.” He punched off.

  “You got some background information.” He snatched his overcoat off the back of the chair. “Those bastards must be wise to me.”

  Stanislas grabbed his arm. “Where’s Hans Rauter?”

  “The guy probably fled back to Germany. Ask Luc.”

  “What’s Luc’s weakness? What does he fear?”

  Danny shoved him away with one hand as he rushed toward the doorway while jamming his Beretta into his belt. “He’s a druggie.” He clopped recklessly down into the darkness, still shouting. “A prison cell with no distractions from his withdrawal, Monsieur Justice. He fears himself more than anything.” Then he stopped and came back to Stanislas in a disembodied voice. “And remember your promise, my comments are off-the-record.”

  As Stanislas stood in the dimness breathing to calm down from what he had heard, something crawled up his neck. He smacked his nape, stinging his sweaty skin. He wiped something sticky on a pant leg when a breeze blew out the candles.

  He groped down, felt reassuring metal, and flicked on his flashlight. Red eyes glowered at him before he realized a mangy cat crouched in the corner. It leaped out the window, and the beam encircled a pile of syringes. He had had enough of this syphilitic ruin, filthy with bugs and a stray and deadly probably with HIV or hepatitis and with Danny and those toughs, who had once held him captive. He stooped for his cane and limped toward the stairs with one word, blackmail, distressing him. He hoped he was wrong.

  CHAPTER 27

  DARKNESS

  Someone tapped once more on the Annex’s Security Cage’s door. “Monsieur Cassel?” The man rattled the doorknob again, pushed to enter, discovered the door was locked, and tapped a third time, “Monsieur Examining Magistrate?”

  Stanislas felt too tired and disheartened to respond to the caretaker’s whispery fear. Couldn’t that fool take the hint he wanted privacy and go home?

  “Shush. He asked no one disturb him.”

  Good for you, Christophe, Stanislas thought. Explain the situation to the old buzzard. You’ve already explained things to me in a way with your grandfather’s search for respectability.

  And Christophe did explain his order because within moments Stanislas heard their footfalls retreat, and the old man’s mutterings about budgets and waste thinned as they headed down the corridor and into the night.

  He should have asked Christophe to type those hurried notes of his meeting with Danny. No, he thought. He should have asked his clerk simply to stay. He needed company at a time like this, not to discuss the horror he had discovered in the report before him, but to take his mind off it. Christophe had left, though. In that barren room, he had no distraction from that document or its ancient warning, whose stamped severity the decades hadn’t lessened: TOP SECRET. OPERATION SPRING WIND. He shouldn’t have followed his hunch after questioning Danny, he scolded himself. He shouldn’t have phoned the police archivist at home and demanded to see Occupation personnel records for 1942. But there the report lay. He couldn’t turn back. He had to know the truth.

  The report blurred. It’s the hour and fatigue that caused some misinterpretation, he reflected. How else to explain the meaning there? Because on the face of it, his finding of betrayal on that scale was monstrous. It required a leap into the unthinkable, an acceptance of complicity in a crime no decent human would perform, and having a conscience was definitely the case here.

  Give it a rest, he told himself. Study the report first thing tomorrow when you’re fresh. That might put a different slant on cover names and police informers and weekly clandestine meetings, on the whole sordid business of treachery. And afterwards, pay a visit to try to understand before proceeding to the last stage of the Pincus dossier.

  He couldn’t let go. One more try. A short break should do the trick. Then return for one final read that’d surely find the key word or nuance or overlooked page that’d explain the entire filthy story. He pushed back his chair.

  The night’s cold burned his nostrils as he paused outside the Annex. He looked out on a gray wilderness. He and a sole gendarme beside him seemed the last survivors on the planet.

  The guard snuggled his gloved hands deeper beneath his bulletproof vest, glanced up to the foggy evening, and sighed.

  “We’ll have a little sun before long,” Stanislas said. “I’m going down to the esplanade for a few minutes break.”

  “There are three others around back if you need help.” The policeman’s pleasantries finished, he moved off to his patrol, leaving Stanislas to himself.

  As he hobbled across the deserted street, mist drifted over his path. A breeze fanned it into swirls as he continued down the muddy way to the sliver of a dirt walkway that edged the Seine.

  He relaxed his elbows on the damp railing, when a worry came to him. Had he scribbled a reminder to notify the security services about his meeting with Danny? he wondered. The dossier wouldn’t let him rest.

  Make a game of something, he thought, to take your mind off it, and he gazed across to the far bank in the direction of a cathedral. Notre-Dame was the scene of many illustrious and not-so illustrious occasions. The English Henry VI was crowned there in…. Did he hear something? A footstep? At this hour? It must be the breeze. Old Henry was crowned there in 1400. Or could it have been 1430? Napoleon, being Napoleon, crowned himself emperor of our blessed, sometimes cursed….

  He cocked his head, listened, and waited. He heard nothing and turned back to the river. You definitely need ten-hour’s worth of sleep, he told himself. He heard a soft, soft sound, like a leaf crunched. He half-turned when the blow fell. Next a howl of pain, and he thought, how odd it wasn’t his. His legs crumbled. Blood streaked across his cheek. His blood, he felt certain, and he was going to die. And in that instant as he collapsed and saw the railing fall away, he wondered how with all these months of warning about a possible attack he had ever let himself get that careless.

  CHAPTER 28

  BLACKMAILER’S SONG

  “Monsieur Judge?” There was a pause, as if uncertain about how to proceed. “Are you alive? Can you hear me?”

  The voice came from far away. Stanislas stirred an eyelid open. A blurry Christophe flitted into view to his left, a bundle of some kind pressed under one arm. “I’m breathing,” he muttered and closed his eyes again.

  “And with no tubes in you this morning. You look better than six days ago.”

  Stanislas glanced across. His clerk smiled weakly as he pushed the door shut and locked it.

  “You were sedated the first time I visited and confused me with one of the nurses. I wouldn’t have dropped by again so soon except that I got your call. ‘Urgent.’ ‘Vital you come.’ I figured since you used those words, I’d better avoid a second Le Brune mishap.”

  “What?”

  “You know, not get caught in another random police check. So I asked a friend in the Interior Ministry, and she told me which streets to avoid.” He looked over to the television set bolted high at the walls’ junction. The Franco-German station continued its symposium on the far right. At a round table disc
ussion, a bespectacled panelist bristled at a Communist teacher’s charge Austria had done nothing to fight extremism.

  At the end of the three-day Berlin conference, Cassel suspected, the participants probably would only resolve to meet again like they had last year and the year before. He lowered the volume with his remote and tossed it aside. He had grown tired of their posturing. “You bring the newspapers and deposition?”

  Christophe shook his head in mock despair as he drifted toward the windows. “Not ‘How are you?’? Just ‘You bring the newspapers and deposition?’” He widened a slit in the blinds and peeked out to the street below. “I was born nervous. It comes from my parents. They barely escaped Vietnam just before the Americans pulled out. Helping you sneak out while gendarmes are everywhere won’t improve my constitution either.”

  He shifted his attention to the right. “That was one of the few things I understood you wanted me to do when you mumbled over the phone: Bring the newspapers and deposition. As to your other order, yes, I looked into it. The police are holding your attacker.”

  “In a tiny cell by himself?”

  “Since they captured him after his assault, howling in pain in the mud. Monsieur Luc Bressard, still in a tiny cell by himself and with no distractions. He hasn’t lived up to his tough guy image of pony tail and ear ring. Officer Leclair told me he started breaking from his forced drug withdrawal days ago. I compared what he dribbled out to your notes of the Danny X encounter.” He half-turned toward Stanislas. “Each contradicts the other in some respects.”

  “That was my worst fear: non-confirming versions.”

  “I don’t think you have a solid case so far to send to court.”

  “A few words from an addict. Several minutes with a frightened, naïve youth, giving a hurried tale I heard just once. The contradictions of those two. And my suspicions, which, I hate to admit, have caused me to have doubts. That’s practically all I have after months of investigation. You’re right. I’ve a weak case.”

  “Maybe you have the wrong suspect. Maybe Messieurs Rauter and Bressard acted on their own.”

  “I’ll go with what that Danny and Luc agreed on and look for a sign.”

  Christophe faced him fully. “What do you mean?”

  “Some confirmation the dossier’s worth pursing in its present direction.”

  “You’ll need something to give you hope. By the way, doctors have assured me Monsieur Bressard tested negative for AIDS. You don’t have to worry about his blood you got on your face.”

  “It’s a miracle.”

  “Unfortunately, no miracle yet in locating his buddy, Hans Rauter, or his attacker.”

  Stanislas began to elbow himself up against the pillows when pain cracked through his head, and he groaned as he slumped back.

  “You’re sure you can leave?”

  “I’m breathing,” and as proof he extended his hand in greeting. “Of course, it’s good to see you. You can’t know how depressing a hospital is.” He noticed Christophe, despite his smile, looked strained with tension.

  “You’ve assuaged me so I’ll answer you,” Christophe said and displayed his bundle. “On top, the icing, your newspapers. Liberation has you suffering a concussion. Le Monde, sorry. You rated merely a paragraph. Same conclusion, though. In and out of consciousness for days. The same with the other dailies. Little mention. You had competition with that big to-do tomorrow at Bercy Stadium. It’s on the first page of practically all of them. Beneath the icing, the cake. Monsieur Bressard’s testimony to date.”

  “Any mention of Messieurs Fuchs or Streible in those dailies?”

  “No mention of those dragons. Only that Monsieur Dray.”

  No word had leaked to the media the other two had sneaked into Paris. Surprising everyone, Stanislas feared, they too would mount the stage with their French colleague and add to the clamor of hate.

  Christophe dropped the bundle on a folding chair against the wall and swung it toward the bed.

  Stanislas glanced at the newspapers. “The itinerary to Bercy in any of them?”

  “It’s Item One in all the papers. Like they’re trying to incite violence by publishing it. It’s a security detail’s nightmare, an assassin’s dream, that route.” Christophe untied the cord and studied a drawing of the upcoming procession in one daily before displaying it. “France 2. France 3. The BBC. The American CBS and ABC. Every network will cover the rally, assuming those three arrive. This has the most detailed map in any of them. What lovely targets they’d make.” He smacked the paper with his fingers in a display of bravado as he handed it across before he swung another chair out from the wall and dropped into it.

  Stanislas studied the map of the itinerary the motorcade would travel. The television reports were accurate. The route avoided the Arab Institute as much as possible and certain riot. Instead, the procession would begin at the Place de la République, travel southeasterly along Boulevard Voltaire, then proceed south along Avenue Ledru-Rollin and onto the stadium. And the three demagogues, he knew, hidden within their bulletproof limousine, would arrive safely to inflict more riots across the continent.

  “Your idea of having the Summons to Appear served like that is bold,” Christophe said.

  “Bold or reckless?”

  “Having it served in that manner is, I imagine, at best borderline legal. I prefer ‘bold.’ It hides the truth. Our careers are, no doubt, at stake.”

  Stanislas felt the sedative dragging him under again. His hands went limp. The newspaper fell away. How he craved sleep. “Who had you held captive? Who’s frustrated and humiliated you all these months?” He heard Danny’s mocking in his drift. He forced open his eyes. A swarm of vague images from the television screen jumped. The Franco-German station must have finished coverage of the symposium and switched to the upcoming Bercy extravaganza. An announcer said something about a retrospective of Franz Streible’s early career. The rally, he thought and fought against the pillow’s softness as he waved Christophe closer.

  “In your condition, you really shouldn’t leave.”

  He couldn’t afford more rest, Stanislas realized. He couldn’t study again those Occupation personnel records. He had little time left. “Officer Leclair has his van outside?”

  “He couldn’t get his brother-in-law’s. He had to borrow one from Officer Henner. It’s on a side street, as you wanted.”

  “Tell the nurses and doctors and especially those gendarmes not to disturb us. I saw those guards reading some disturbing political pamphlets, and I don’t trust them. The valise with my clothes is in that closet. Visitors’ hours began in thirty minutes. When the hallways crowd, we leave.” And afterwards, he thought, a phone call to that Danny, if he could reach him, to clarify. And then some unfinished business to finish to ensure he understood everything.

  The elevator doors eased shut. Stanislas paused in the hallway alone, unsure how to proceed after he had knocked on the door. Someone in the apartment to his right turned up the volume, and he heard a television commentator’s excitement about the upcoming Bercy rally. Three elderly women, going out as he had entered the ground floor, had argued over it. When he had taken the elevator up to the third floor, a couple next to him had listened to reportage on their portable radio. Before that, traveling there in the van he had switched over the dial and heard the same result. Nothing else seemed to matter in Paris throughout the day except that event. And in that instant, the distraction of the coverage freeing him from anxiety helped him understand. Given what he was going to hear, he knew there wasn’t anything he could say. He’d simply listen, like Anna had listened to him, and give the man dignity. He reached to press the buzzer.

  He heard a shuffle, sounding more than ever like defeat. A moment of precaution taken to survey through the peephole. Then the door inched open in the manner of someone on guard.

  “Well, Lazarus arisen. You’ve finally come.” The door pulled back a little more.

  Stanislas stepped closer to hear. The voi
ce sounded weaker than usual. “You’re not surprised?” he asked.

  Jules laughed his sad, worldly laugh, no longer caring to hide anything. “At my age, I’m afraid I’m hard to surprise. I overheard Annie talking to you on the phone once about your suspicions of Monsieur Boucher. From that moment on, I knew it was merely a question of time.” He glanced over Stanislas’s shoulder to the elevator behind. “No clerk or police?”

  “This is unofficial.”

  “Ah.” Jules’s mouth stayed open after what had sounded more like agony than understanding. “Tenacity and intelligence are a deadly combination, Monsieur Examining Magistrate.” He let his bony hand fall lifelessly from the doorknob, left the door ajar, and shuffled down the hallway and toward the living room off to his right.

  He moved slower, Stanislas noticed, like a prisoner trudging to his execution. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  Jules blinked up at him as though not concerned about his health. “Six months. Six years. Does it matter? Annie’s gone,” he said, as he led Stanislas into the room.

  In the center the television was on, its volume low, its screen filled with images of delirious masses waving support at some rally. “They’re featuring uninterrupted coverage through tomorrow. These are scenes of a past Franz Streible hoopla in Dresden,” Jules said. “Filled to capacity, according to one estimate. I don’t know why I watch. I’ve witnessed that sort of harangue too often. Hitler in Berlin. Mussolini in Rome. Stalin in Moscow. Different year. Different speaker. Slicker packaging. Same speech, nirvana at the expense of the defenseless.” He gazed up to Stanislas with watery eyes. “An old story we never learn from.”

  He gestured to a sofa to the right of the TV and plopped wearily into his armchair. “Sorry I can’t offer a drink. I ran out of vermouth weeks ago and haven’t felt like restocking.” He pushed himself forward and squinted across. “That guy really gave you an ugly gash on your forehead.”

  Stanislas eased himself down, settling his cane across his lap. He smiled as best he could across to Jules; hearing the old man out wasn’t going to be easy.