by Gerald Jay
He pulled out the rifle and looked it over. A 6.5-millimeter. Mannlicher-Carcano, the same type of gun that blew the top off Jack Kennedy’s head. Reiner checked the bolt action. It was super smooth, slipping in and out like a hypodermic. Very nice! He had to laugh at the reputation the Carcano had of being so poorly made that the only thing it might kill was the shooter. Garbage! It was good enough to do the American president at eighty-eight yards with a four-power scope. But he couldn’t find any cartridges, which made it less than useless to him. He wasn’t about to go shopping for a box of 6.5s anywhere in the area. The double-barreled shotgun, on the other hand, had two twelve-gauge number one shotshells in it, which experience had taught him could do more damage than either double-zero or triple-zero shot. A powerful instrument at close range, though crude and not to his taste. Wiping both guns off carefully, Reiner replaced them in the case. He had another plan for the unlucky tourist.
Ben felt as if his head were exploding. He opened his eyes. In the dim light coming in under the door, he could see that Judy wasn’t there. He crawled out of bed, dragged himself into the bathroom, put his head under the faucet. The cold water helped. They had been going out to dinner every night since their friends arrived and lately he’d been drinking a lot. What the hell, he thought, it’s a vacation.
Showered, dressed, and with a few aspirins under his belt, he was feeling almost human when Judy opened the door a crack. Her face—tan and smiling—glowed in the morning light.
“Ah, I see you’re finally up, sleepyhead. How are you feeling?”
“Tolerable. Why?”
“You were snoring like a foghorn.”
Picking up his wallet from the top of the night table where he had tossed it the night before, he glanced inside, wondering if he’d remembered to put away his Visa.
“What’s the matter, Ben?”
“Did you take any money from me?”
“No, why?”
“All my five-hundred-franc notes are gone.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“How many did you have?”
“Five.” Although his smaller French bills were still there, he remembered quite clearly the five five-hundreds.
“You probably spent them last night at the restaurant.”
“Don’t be silly. I used my Visa card.” He showed her the receipt in his wallet. Flipping through his credit cards, he ticked off each one carefully, and then turned to her in astonishment. “It’s not here.”
The previous evening the four of them had driven down to Villeneuve-sur-Lot to have dinner at the Toque Blanche, a terrific hilltop restaurant with a magnificent view of the countryside. When he called to ask if they had found his Visa, the woman who owned the place remembered “les quatre américains,” but no card had been left behind. Judy wondered if perhaps it might have fallen out of Ben’s wallet and suggested that he look in their car.
He rummaged through every part of the Peugeot, scouring the interior and growing more and more frustrated, his annoyance heightened by the nonstop hammering in the barn. It suddenly occurred to him that Ali was the only stranger around. That was it. The Arab had taken his money and credit card.
“That’s ridiculous, Ben. He’s been in there working since he got here. Besides, you’ve been sleeping all morning. How would you know?”
“Were you over there watching him?”
“Come on …” A troubled Judy gave her husband’s arm an affectionate squeeze. “Cut it out, Ben.”
“Well maybe it wasn’t him. But somebody sure as hell ripped me off.”
Though Judy tried to talk him out of making a big deal of it—certain that he’d spent the money and that his lost Visa card would eventually turn up—her husband was adamant about going to the police. Judy decided to go along, keep an eye on him.
In Taziac, the gendarmerie nationale was located on the edge of the village, a one-story stucco building surrounded by a chain-link fence. Parked inside the fence was a blue van marked Gendarmerie. The door in the fence was padlocked.
“I told you nobody would be here on Sunday,” said Judy, considerably relieved. “Now let’s go home.”
“Not on your life.”
Throwing the car in gear, Ben hit the gas, and his rear wheels kicked up a shower of gravel as he sped north. It was only about twenty minutes to Bergerac. Ben hoped that the bruiser from the bakery, the famous Inspector Mazarelle, worked weekends.
8
COMMISSARIAT DE POLICE,
BERGERAC
Bergerac was a city of twenty-six thousand. That Sunday nearly every one of them seemed to be out on the road. Inching its way up the rue Neuve d’Argenson, Ben and Judy’s car crawled along bumper to bumper, past the square, past the mairie. “Here it is!” Judy shouted, when they reached the boulevard Chanzy. “Make a right.”
The two-story-high vertical sign on the side of the stone and stucco building announced Hôtel de Police. Ben pulled into the fenced courtyard and parked around back beside the lone car. There were iron bars on the first-floor windows. The tricolor hung limply over the front door. Peering through the glass, Ben saw someone inside and tried the door. It was open.
In the small waiting room, the empty chairs hugged the wall like a police lineup. A young female officer in a blue uniform sat behind the high counter, her frizzy- and short-haired head bent over her desk. Ben waited for her to look up. On the wall behind her, a framed message bearing the city’s coat of arms asked visitors to “Support Our Police.” Ben was willing in principle but quickly ran out of patience. Clearing his throat by way of introduction, he said, “Inspector Mazarelle, s’il vous plaît.”
The suspicious cop looked him over as if he were a ticking duffel bag dropped on her doorstep. She asked if he had an appointment. Ben figured Mazarelle was there and explained why he’d come. Picking up the receiver, she spoke briefly in a low, tight-lipped voice. Was she trying to protect him from strangers? Hanging up, she announced he’d be down shortly. Ben glanced smugly at Judy, pleased with himself for coming. Twenty minutes later he wasn’t so sure.
Mazarelle—his collar open, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows exposing cable-thick forearms—had been working at his computer when the telephone rang. It was Lucille with some American tourists who had been robbed. Though in no rush to go downstairs, he didn’t mind the interruption. He was getting bored doing paperwork. Nobody wanted to be in the commissariat on Sundays, but since Martine’s death at the end of last year, one day was very much like the next for him.
He thought of how different it had been in Paris. Not always good by a long shot, but Paris was Mazarelle’s city. Born and bred from its sounds, its smells, he had a career there, a job that meant something. It was the one place in the world in which Mazo, as his pals called him, felt most alive, most in tune with his flesh, and every day was a new throw of the dice. Never knowing what the next mail would bring, the next phone call, the next knock on the door. And everything, no matter how insignificant, seemed to add up.
But when her doctor found cancer and said “C’est grave,” Martine told Paul that she was going back to Taziac, the village where she’d grown up, to die. She never asked him to leave Paris, leave the work that he loved at the heart of France in the Police Judiciaire. She never asked him to transfer to the boonies. He knew that it made no difference to her one way or the other, though she said it did.
The truth was, it came as no surprise to him that a creature so young and lovely could be so hard. Marrying her, he knew from the start what he was getting into but not how bad at times it could feel. He gazed at Martine’s picture on his desk, taken only a few years ago in the Tuileries. How could he have been so lucky? A beautiful young woman half his age and brimming over with life caught brushing back her long windswept blond hair while smiling mischievously at the photographer (a complete stranger as far as Mazarelle knew).
There had always been bits and pieces of his wife’s life that he knew noth
ing of, and it was just as well. He told himself: ask no questions and she’ll tell you no lies. If she disappeared for a few days, that was her business. Not that these absences of hers didn’t hurt. They had had their share of battles, nasty knockdown fights marked with bloody scratches, black-and-blue bruises, her clothes trashed on the floor, his precious jazz records broken. Even so, he hadn’t given up all hope of her fidelity, but he’d come to realize he was clinging to a frayed rope. No matter. He was always glad to have her back whenever she came.
From the top drawer of his desk Mazarelle pulled out a plastic pouch labeled Philosophe. It was his favorite, a mixture of tobaccos that included some orientals, a whisper of perique, and latakia from Syria. They gave the blend its dark, meditative aroma. One of the few luxuries he still took pleasure in. Specially ordered from Paris. The English tobacconist who sold it was located in a gallery just off the Palais Royal. As Mazarelle lit his pipe, the tobacco flaring up with a ruby glow, he recalled Monsieur Small’s soigné shop with its woodcuts, its polished mahogany display cases, its wonderful odor. Merely to enter it—even after a day of being mired hip deep in the crap of society—made him feel somehow improved, judicious, a soupçon more civilized.
A loud, bloodcurdling cry jolted him. It seemed to be coming from downstairs. At first he thought it was the noisy drunken bastard they had brought in last night and tossed into a jail cell to sleep it off. Hearing shouts outside, he went to the window. On the field behind the commissariat one of the players was down on the grass, writhing in pain. Probably kicked in the balls on a high, sliding tackle. And all the ref did was hold up a yellow warning card. The handful of screaming fans wanted his head.
There was usually a game there on Sundays, and Mazarelle had forgotten all about it. As he had Lucille’s call. He seemed to be forgetting more and more lately. The names of old movie stars, restaurants he was once fond of in Paris, even some friends from the past with whom he’d played rugby. All gone, lost because of alcohol and age, he supposed, along with his alleged good looks and a few brain cells. No big deal. As long as it didn’t affect his appetite. He shrugged, par for the course. Satisfied to see Asterix zipping over the Saharan dunes to save his computer screen, he went to find out what Lucille had waiting for him.
The inspector recognized the couple from the boulangerie at once. Perhaps he wasn’t ready for the scrap heap quite yet. He even remembered the tarte tatin they had bought and asked madame how they enjoyed it. Mazarelle was genuinely interested in people, curious about what made them tick. But it wasn’t always easy for him to soften his tone from that of the trained interrogator.
Moving heavily up the stairs ahead of them, he led the way to his office, where Ben told him of the missing money and credit card, insisting that the inspector do something.
Mazarelle recognized the type. A born upper-middle-class pampered darling, used to making demands and getting his own way. Confirmed by the elaborate style of his signature, Benjamin Reece, on his American passport. Mazarelle listened to his talkative visitor, noting that he spoke French reasonably well, wore an expensive gold watch, an unusual gold wedding band that matched his wife’s, and smelled strongly of alcohol. The inspector considered the latter a vote in his favor, but even he ordinarily didn’t start drinking this early in the day. On the other hand, he reminded himself, Reece was on vacation.
Mazarelle was curious why Monsieur Reece suspected the owner’s handyman, Ali Sedak. Ben admitted that he had no proof. Merely a hunch. He didn’t trust the man. Sedak came and went at odd hours and walked into their house—to use the phone, ask a dumb question—whenever he wanted. He always had some excuse.
Mazarelle asked, “Anyone else living on the premises?”
“Only our friends from Montreal—Schuyler and Ann Marie Phillips. They arrived here the day after we did.”
The inspector appeared interested. “Who are they?”
“The Phillipses?”
“How long have you known them?”
Ben and Judy looked at each other. She laughed and said, “Schuyler is one of my husband’s oldest friends. They were roommates at Dartmouth. You’re not suggesting—?”
Ben, unable to restrain himself, broke in and asked, “Have you ever heard of the Canadian multinational corporation Tornade, Inspector? Makers of jet planes, high-speed trains. The owners of Tornade Financial Services.”
“Go on.”
“Sky Phillips is the CEO of their entire worldwide operation. He doesn’t need my Visa card. As I told you, Inspector, Ali Sedak is your man.”
Though Judy didn’t object to letting her husband have his little bête noire, she was confident the inspector wasn’t about to believe such nonsense without evidence. He was no fool. She wondered if the pretty young woman in the framed picture was his dead wife. He had decked the photo out like an impromptu shrine with a sprig of deep yellow forsythia in an Orangina bottle. How thoughtful! She might have been his daughter she was so young looking. Judy wondered why some girls marry men old enough to be their fathers. Or grandfathers in the case of Saul Bellow and Pablo Casals. She had to admit the inspector was certainly a good listener, which any woman yearns for in a man.
After hearing Monsieur Reece out, Mazarelle leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe. Sparks flew into the air and smoke wreathed his face. Crime, as they no doubt realized, was not unknown in Bergerac. A major contributing factor was that, except in the smaller surrounding villages, people no longer knew their neighbors the way they once did. And families nowadays fell apart like wet tissue paper.
He sighed, a ghostly stream of smoke rushing out of his mouth. With the stem of his pipe, the inspector gestured toward the local map on the wall. Pinned to it were dozens of tiny green, yellow, and red paper flags. Each one, he pointed out wearily, represented an unsolved crime. Fortunately, all relatively minor. There were no black flags because there had been no murders, the last one a crime passionel three years ago—long before he arrived—in which the killer was never in doubt. If only they weren’t so badly understaffed and underfinanced. Unfortunately, that was the way it was here in the Dordogne. Judy felt genuinely sorry for him. Maybe it was those sad, sympathetic brown eyes of his and the droopy mustache. He seemed to need more help than they did.
In any case, he explained, it would be difficult to track down their lost money. The Visa, if stolen, was quite another matter. Though he promised nothing, he said he’d do what he could. Getting up, he asked if Monsieur Reece had notified the company about his missing credit card. Feeling stupid, Ben admitted that he hadn’t. Mazarelle studied him for a few seconds without a shred of enthusiasm and suggested that whether his Visa was lost or stolen, he thought that would probably be a good idea. “N’est-ce pas?”
Downstairs at the door, the inspector shook hands with each of them. Should anything develop, he said he’d be in touch. Ben was afraid the inspector was a dead end.
Back in his office, Mazarelle picked up the pad on his desk and glanced at the notes he’d taken. Though he wasn’t sure about the exact location of L’Ermitage—the hilltop house outside of Taziac where they were staying—he knew the road below them that bordered the Chambouvard farm and the nearby gravel pit. He wondered why the Reeces hadn’t gone to the gendarmerie in Taziac to file their report rather than to the commissariat. It seemed that even tourists knew the difference between the police nationale and the tin soldiers in the village. Outside his window the shouts grew louder as the game heated up.
While waiting impatiently for the Reeces to come out, Reiner sat scrunched up in his little Renault and watched the game. The midfielder ran breathlessly down the field and sent a diagonal pass ahead to the racing striker who had broken free of the defense. He kicked at the ball wildly, and it trickled into the net past the lunging goalie. The fans went wild. Waving off the goal, the ref declared him offside. The small crowd of idiots roared at the poor man, but Reiner saw he was right.
Reiner loved what Pelé called the “beautiful game.”
But it was torture watching this one, even with only half an eye. All they did was kick the ball as hard as they could and run after it like panting dogs. “It’s the ball that needs to run, you narren,” he muttered, “not the player.” Each side huffing and puffing as if it couldn’t wait to give up possession to the other. No plan, no discipline, no control. The qualities that made the great Matthäus such a joy to watch. Not only did the crack German playmaker know exactly what had to be done on the field, but he had the skill and power to do it.
Reiner had recently read the amazing story about Murdoch, the Australian press czar, bidding one billion dollars for Britain’s Manchester United. He dreamed that one day he himself might have enough money to buy a club. A Bundesliga championship team of his own! He had to laugh at those Ossis still clinging to their Trabis and the good old DDR days of Stasi, shortages, watchtowers, and barbed wire. Idiots! Weak-minded sentimental fools suffering from Ostalgie and longing for a workers’ paradise.
Someone was coming. Reiner slumped down in his seat and waited to see who it was. The two of them came marching around to the back of the commissariat and walked toward the Peugeot. Reiner checked his watch. He’d been staking out their car for almost an hour now. They were arguing about something, but they had started out that way when they left L’Ermitage. The comings and goings of everyone in that house were important to him the closer he came to the end of the month. He was surprised by where they had gone, curious to know what it was about. The one thing he did know was that it had nothing to do with him.
9
L’ERMITAGE, TAZIAC
Reiner went to call Zurich the next day. A public telephone was at the intersection not far from the house where he was holed up. On one corner a small, tile-roofed, rust-stained factory, its metal shutters closed. Diagonally across the way, a Total gas station. At the side of the road, a glass telephone booth that stood out in the midst of farmland like a solitary hitchhiker.