“I don’t know why you read this tabloid garbage.” She sniffed. Millie had what looked like a chronic case of pinkeye but which she claimed was allergies. She slapped the latest Weekly World News down in front of him. “Look—just look! This stupid magazine has a story about monsters in a ghost town called Lara Vieja.”
“Does it now?” Alex reached for the paper and glanced at the photo. Story on page three. He quickly opened the newspaper and began reading.
Millie continued to unpack her tote and complain, though she knew it would do no good. Once a week she made the trip to the grocers and picked up pâté and champagne—Dom Perignon, of course. Not precisely the meal recommended by health-conscious doctors, but he didn’t worry about such things anymore. Cholesterol and cirrhosis of the liver weren’t what would kill him. Millie didn’t agree, though. She was a vegetarian, a lifestyle she treated as a religion that required endless proselytizing. She believed that Alex’s chronic pallor was due to a lack of vitamins.
Alex was equally convinced that her diet was to blame for her sallow skin, which was the same color and texture as the tofu she ate for lunch every day.
A low-protein diet couldn’t explain her oddly shaped head, though. That had to be due to some freak of genetics. Her skull was pinched in at the temples, as though someone had applied a tight rubber band to her head when she was an infant. She had to buy children’s frames when she got eyeglasses because that part of her head was so small.
Alex preferred to surround himself with beauty and usually only employed the young and attractive. However, he had learned the hard way that in a personal secretary discretion and efficiency were paramount—especially these days. Millie was both, and loyal besides. That she looked like a freak was unimportant.
“Merde!” he muttered when he reached the end of the article. Then, when Millie glared, he added: “Apologies for the language, chérie.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking at the newspaper with another sniff of disgust. The picture in the middle of the page was fairly grotesque. The victim had been blown up by a grenade and then burned in some kind of building fire. But in spite of the extensive damage, it was very clear to Alex that what he was seeing was not a human—at least not completely human—but was in fact a designer ghoul. He knew of only two people who made such creatures, and both of them were supposed to be dead.
Millie picked up the paper. “Disgusting! You know they doctor those photos, don’t you?”
“Oui, I am aware. And nothing is wrong. I have just recalled that I need to phone my editor and he shall be leaving the office soon.” He also needed to call some other people that Millie didn’t need to know about. That meant using the landline in his office and wearing those repulsive rubber gloves.
“Oh.” She blinked, and in an instant had transformed into his secretary. She knew his dislike of phones, even the landlines. “Shall I do it for you?”
“No. I must speak to him myself. But you may cancel my trip to New York this week and see about getting me on a flight to Mexico, somewhere near the border. Or perhaps San Diego would be best. I can drive down from there. I shall want a jeep—an older model.”
“San Diego?” Her eyes went from his face to the newspaper. “You aren’t really leaving now—”
“Research, my dear. This ghost town is very interesting. You know how important historical details are to me.”
This time Millie snorted, but her aura had settled down to the gentlest of orange glows. She was a very efficient secretary and she knew that he always made his deadlines, even when the book was refusing to come along willingly.
“Uh-huh. I know exactly how much you care about historical details.”
“Nevertheless, be a pearl beyond price and make the arrangement for me. I shall call Christopher at once and break the news to him.”
“He’ll give birth to kittens,” Millie warned. “The book is due next month.”
“Oui.” Alex allowed himself a small smile. “But birth shall be a novel experience for him.”
Millie shook her head. “You’re a cruel, selfish man, Alex Dumas.”
“That has always been my reputation,” he agreed, but softly. It wasn’t something he was proud of.
I understood my life was threatened. A few days later a prison doctor appeared and prescribed for me a diet of biscuits soaked in wine…About ten minutes after he left I was seized by fierce intestinal pain…As a result of repeated poisonings I found myself afflicted with deafness. One of my eyes had completely lost its sight and I was in an advanced stage of paralysis. The symptoms of senile decay came upon me at the age of thirty-nine years and nine months.
CHAPTER THREE
I understood my life was threatened. A few days later a prison doctor appeared and prescribed for me a diet of biscuits soaked in wine…About ten minutes after he left I was seized by fierce intestinal pain…As a result of repeated poisonings I found myself afflicted with deafness. One of my eyes had completely lost its sight and I was in an advanced stage of paralysis. The symptoms of senile decay came upon me at the age of thirty-nine years and nine months.
—General Dumas on his time in a Brindisi prison, arranged by Gustav of Sweden probably at Napoleon’s request
Macaroni à la Napolitaine
4 pounds silverside (lean beef from hind leg of cow)
1 pound raw smoked ham
4 pounds tomatoes
4 big white onions
1 sprig of thyme
1 bay leaf
1 small sheaf of parsley garlic to taste (at least one bulb)
Chop meat and vegetables and moisten with water. Reduce at a simmer for three hours. Prepare pasta, boiling in lightly salted water until it is che cresca in corpo (swollen in body), then remove from heat and add iced water to halt cooking. In a soup tureen (warmed) place a layer of finely grated parmesan cheese. To the bed of cheese, add a layer of macaroni, then one of sauce. Repeat until tureen is full. Cover tureen and let stand ten minutes, then serve.
“Christopher, cher ami, I am afraid that I have to put off our visit for just a while.” Alex spoke with a pronounced French accent. He could lose it when needed, but it was expected by his publisher, being that he was Alexandre Dumas and had supposedly lived all his life in France. “I am very afraid that I shall have to go to Mexico this week to do some research.”
There was a pause, and when his editor spoke it was with a bit of tightness in his voice that always preceded a panic attack. He had them regularly, so Alex knew the signs.
“But I thought the new book was set in Tangier—that’s what I told marketing and the art department. Tangier. And it’s due in three weeks, Alex. You can’t be doing research still.”
“It is set in Tangier.” Alex made his voice soothing. “I just need to interview someone who is now living in Mexico about a small but important detail. I shan’t be gone long.”
Another long silence. Alex reached out and examined the cover of his latest release: An Affair in Algeria. It amused him to see that his publisher had taken his suggestion and used as the cover quote a review Victor Hugo had given him for The Three Musketeers: “Gripping drama, warm passion, true dialogue and sparkling style!” So what if the cover quote was a century and a half old? The book had made the New York Times best sellers list.
Chris cleared his throat and managed to speak. “I see, well…Did you want me to try and approach Claude about a further advance? Because you know how Claude feels about expenses related to research—”
Alex laughed. He knew exactly how Claude felt about spending money. It was easier to get blood from a stone. This was probably a good thing in a company president, if it wasn’t carried to extremes.
Lady de Winter hopped up onto Alex’s desk and regarded him with unblinking eyes. Alex frowned back. She was beautiful but not exactly inviting, and certainly not affectionate in any usual sense of the word. In fact, he was glad that he did not suffer from sleep apnea, because he had a feeling that if his chest eve
r stopped the steady rise and fall that affirmed life, she’d move straight in for a late dinner. He really couldn’t understand why he kept the cat around. He couldn’t be that lonely, could he?
But perhaps he was. To this day he missed his aviary at Monte Cristo. He’d had two parrots, a golden pheasant, a cock—what had he called that cock and pheasant? Caesar and Lucullus!—and there had been a vulture from his tour of Tunisia that he had ended up calling Diogenes. There had also been three monkeys, five dogs, and his cat, Mysouf, an animal of a very different stripe than Lady de Winter. Things had often been loud at the château, but he had found the animal clamor comforting. It drowned out all the greedy voices of the avaricious humans who always wanted something from him back then. And it helped him forget that he had been forsaken by his creator.
“Alex? Alex, are you there? Damn it! You haven’t wandered off again, have you?”
“Oui. I am here. Be at ease. I think we need not mention this trip to our parsimonious friend—or anyone else.” Calling Claude a friend was stretching the truth, but it made Christopher feel more comfortable to believe that Alex regarded his publisher as one of his circle of intimates. “Adieu for now, cher ami. I shall see you in a few weeks.”
“Three weeks. Three. You promised.” Chris’s voice was tight again. “And you don’t have to come—just get me the manuscript! I’ll take it with me on vacation. Though why they call it vacation, I don’t know, since I have to work the whole time.”
“Did I say three weeks? Then three weeks it shall be,” Alex promised again, wondering if this time he would keep his word. He had never had writer’s block before, but something about this book was causing him trouble. Just as in real life, he could not move forward and he could not go back.
Alex hung up the phone and peeled off his kitchen work gloves. He reached for a handkerchief. He had dozens of them tucked in his pockets and desk drawers, all monogrammed, of course. He took a moment to scrub the rubber smell from his hands. He had to keep the phone insulated from his skin or he got static on the line, but he had yet to find a suitable sheath that didn’t leave a vague trace of sour rubber smell on his hands. It was probably because of the constant electrical currents passing over his skin.
Fingers sufficiently clean, Alex reached for his notebook. The mood to write was not upon him as often as he would like these days, and he wondered if it would help to go to his old apartment. He had kept the residence under a series of names since the days before the Dark Man. He called it an apartment, but that was a rather grand term for the small single room that held a small cot and an enormous Louis XIV writing desk. The only decorations were two paintings that had come from his son’s collection, bought at auction some years after Alexandre fils died. One was a study of cats by Eugene Lambert, the other an Interieur d’Atelier by Meissonier showing the charms of the bold Louise Pradier posing naked for her husband. Alex supposed it was careless to leave such valuable paintings in a place he rarely visited and that had no security beyond a locked door, but he didn’t want them in his current home, which felt entirely too modern for these artifacts that were also a kind of memento mori. He’d kept little else. The rest were relics of a dead life and it didn’t do to burden oneself that way. One ghost haunting him was quite enough.
“And you, m’lady? Would you like to visit my ancient pied-à-terre?”
The cat considered his offer.
The apartment had been built in the seventeenth century as barracks for the king’s musketeers, and it felt old. The building still had no elevator, and the only access was up a narrow winding stair that was badly worn, or down the sheer exterior stone wall below the room’s lone window. It had neither heat nor air-conditioning, but then, he didn’t need either of those things. And sometimes being in an old place helped him to focus and remember the past more clearly.
Alex looked over at the enormous clock standing against the wall. There wasn’t time to go to his apartment now. He would force himself to work here and then perhaps on the plane. It would be good to have something to keep his mind occupied. Flying still felt like the most unnatural thing a man could do, and he had to remain calm so that his own magnetic field did not reach out and disturb the plane’s electrical systems.
Chapter Two A Polite Exchange
El Grande had not been home—which was perhaps just as well since both Dr. Travers and Detective Maxwell had been staggering with exhaustion and blood loss by the time they reached the Montagne and El Grande’s very grand villa. Thomasina Marsh assured them that Senor Diego-Vega would be devastated to have missed them, and Remus agreed; if it turned out that the man had actually sicced assassins on him, he would probably be very sorry to have missed them.
The two men declined a drink, citing their disheveled clothing, but agreed to come around for a visit in a few days.
Remus had seriously considered paying a call on the villa that same evening after everyone was abed, but El Grande kept dogs, and he had still felt dizzy, even after being stitched up and having a short nap followed by an excellent dinner with his now nearly unshakable friend, Dr. Travers.
Remus was up early the next morning, though—early enough to notice that the dawn was delayed by the weather. It was an unusual event that time of year. There was an eerie lightning—St. Elmo’s Fire—accompanying the sudden squall, but no wind to speak of. The storm just stalled suddenly as it came up on land, and the black clouds dropped their load of rain all at once, as if they were too exhausted to carry it any further.
Ten minutes later, the deluge was done and the clouds scattered, letting in the delicate light of the delayed dawn. He had seen such a storm only twice in his life and never in Africa. He wondered if it was some sort of omen.
Remus pried open the shutter to his room and looked out into the street. A small scorpion sat on the windowsill, taking shelter from the wet. Remus was not fond of the stinging creatures, but he had to agree that it was still a bit wet to be out and about, especially with the torrent not yet subsiding in the street.
“Just stay out of my shoes,” he said to the scorpion. “If I find you in there or in my clothes, you’re going for a long swim.”
He did have new clothes for scorpions to hide in. Dr. Travers’s tailor had done well by him, which was fortunate, because the detective’s splendid suit was beyond repair; shooting, stabbing, and hauling heavy tapestries—and the resultant spilled blood from these activities—had ruined the fine wool.
Remus pulled up a chair near the window and, giving the scorpion plenty of room, allowed himself to have his first deep thought of the day.
Who was Remus Maxwell? And how much of him could The Chameleon use while getting into the role? Understanding motivation was important in playing a part well, and he was going to play it. There was no longer any doubt. This affair with El Grande quite intrigued him, and he was prepared to embrace the role of a lifetime.
The first important question might be why Remus was a private detective. There were a number of reasons why a detective might like to remain private rather than join a formal police force. Money could be one of them. Certainly, if his letters were anything to go by, the detective’s fees per case were roughly five times the yearly salary of the average British policeman.
That was probably not the overriding consideration, though, The Chameleon was fairly sure. The detective had been bright, ambitious, and didn’t like losing. Official police were constrained by things like rules and regulations, also interdepartmental rivalries, politics, and public opinion. Remus would have had little tolerance for these things.
In other words, he was intelligent, impatient, and arrogant. This posed no problem for The Chameleon, because he was all these things, too.
Would he have been a total loner, though? The Chameleon was less sure.
Personally, there was little that he allowed himself to be attached to. He traveled light and put his trust in gold and gemstones, which, while they did not offer love or praise, were always solid and held their
worth in every country. It wasn’t that he abhorred property or other, less portable possessions, but he had learned early on that such things could be taken away—a sudden hike in taxes, a capricious landlord, even eminent domain or courts bribed by so-called creditors who wanted the widow and kids out on their ears because they looked like a losing proposition for paying off a debt and they wanted their pound of flesh immediately.
And there were the unofficial crooks, too, professional gamblers who lured men into play, confidence men of many stripes who could lure a man into terrible debt—and to do even more terrible things when he could not pay.
The detective seemed a loner. Probably he had rooms somewhere, but The Chameleon had never heard of Remus Maxwell having property—certainly he had no country estate. If there had been one, The Chameleon would have gone to call. The new Remus Maxwell smiled briefly at that thought.
Well, then, probably he should play this as a lone wolf. After all, part of this mobile lifestyle meant that one probably had few if any friends. Important lesson number one: Two people could successfully keep a secret—if one of them was dead. Remus Maxwell was a man with many secrets. It seemed unlikely that he had a confidant. Or a wife. This would simplify things for The Chameleon. He wouldn’t worry about some intimate friend appearing out of the blue and spoiling his game.
There came a small scrape on the door. Recognizing the noise, Remus called out to the houseboy who brought his morning tea. Later the boy would be back to look through Remus’s belongings. He didn’t take this personally. It was cultural tradition. And they could search his rooms to their hearts’ content; they wouldn’t find anything. All of the detective’s papers were well hidden. That was important criminal lesson number two: Leave no clues to one’s real identity or plans—present or future. The detective would have understood this. It is possible that he would have chosen the same hiding place for his papers.
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