Stifling Folds of Love

by John Brooke

  Local Scene

  How pathetic! That one woman can elude the Police so completely speaks volumes of the abilities of the man at its supposed head…Quelle crise d’esprit! Where is leadership? Where is Pearl?

  A spiritual crisis? Everyone on both teams at Rue des Bons Enfants knew it was Claude now — dead central to Tommi’s sense of drama. In disgrace? An embarrassment to the force? They could not let that distract them. With Commissaire Duque’s blessing, Inspector Nouvelle crafted a memo to her judge requesting an Article 9 charge on behalf of Claude Néon, not the citizen but the member (still on the payroll) of the Police Judiciaire. Captain Mathieu Deubelbeiss agreed their MO had to include the fact of Claude Néon’s well-being. Monique was instructed to CC the divisional office in Strasbourg.

  And there was also the personal element, an abiding worry that was Aliette’s alone.

  A faithless bastard? She couldn’t let that matter either. How was his heart these days?

  28

  Claude in Exile

  Exile from the job was cruel and unusual. Claude Néon had been unsure where to begin to fill the time. The garden was waiting for him, but he went to the club instead. No sense hiding. They were watching him — he knew that and expected it, but tennis was tennis, with or without Pearl Serein. He’d gone to plead his case with Gaston, who listened, detached, cop-like, in fact, and said he’d have to run it past the membership committee. Claude went back to his yard and started to dig. Two days later, around the cocktail hour, he was sitting in his kitchen like a zombie after a futile afternoon with his planting when the telephone rang. Gaston said, ‘OK, we’ll give it another go.’ Claude’s probationary membership was renewed.

  ‘Merci.’

  ‘Act like a member, not a cop.’

  ‘Understood.’ So he’d washed his face and gone to the club — a short walk — and had his cocktail there. Scotch on the rocks. Single malt. He’d signed a chit. That made him feel bona fide, if not welcome. Because no one said a word to Claude Néon. After such an easy-going chatty supper a week ago with the inspector beside him, it was a rude surprise realizing he hadn’t the foggiest notion how to re-engage. Act like a member? He’d made a promise to Gaston. He sat there smiling till he finished his drink, mumbled ‘bonsoir,’ and strolled out. What now? A haircut?

  What about a sauna? Claude Néon felt moist heat from the showers as he descended to the basement area. He paused to consider the B&W glossy tacked on a notice board by the locker room door: Remy Lorentz grinning at him. The notice urged everyone to sign up for a session with Remy and get in shape for the new season. An hour honing your strokes with Remy cost 250 francs. Claude had not dared ask Gaston if and how Remy’s status had been affected by Saturday night.

  He had no idea how Remy had fared in Provisoire. Horrible to be out of the loop.

  There was an older member, naked on a bench, carefully sprinkling talc over a hoary belly, sagging scrotum, and between his bony toes. He eyed Claude the way people everywhere will eye a cop suddenly in their midst. Acting like a member, Claude picked up a towel from the pile. The older member said, ‘You were damn lucky.’ (Vous avez pas mal de chance.) Claude wanted to say, No, I was a dumb ass. (Un vrai con, moi.) But he did not. He smiled, yes, I was lucky. ‘Seven to six,’ the older member added. ‘You should know you’ve got a friend in Gaston.’

  The older member returned to his fastidious sprinkling. Another naked member stepped out of the shower. Claude stood there on the verge of panic. Seven to six? Seven to six? ‘Ah! The vote.’

  The older member looked up, suspicious, covered his crotch with his towel.

  ‘Democracy’s a beautiful thing,’ Claude averred, tossing his unused towel back on the pile, thinking, I am a lucky guy but maybe we’ll leave the sauna for another time.

  The naked member drying himself said, ‘In the hamper…’ looking toward the corner.

  ‘Ah, the hamper.’ There were many things one didn’t know. Claude obediently retrieved his towel and put it there. See? I can do exactly like you’re meant to. And left.

  Claude ended up skulking by the tennis courts, busy with fours and pairs on a warm Thursday evening. He watched carefully, noting different skill levels, trying to gauge where he might fit in, a careful eye on shoes, racquets, shirts and shorts. Saturday he would head downtown and shop. Or maybe drive to Basel. The Swiss had better tennis players, maybe they had better gear. Suddenly he found himself looking through the fence at Remy Lorentz, alone on court 10 with a bucket of balls.

  Apparently Gérard Richand had not found a reason to let Remy rot in jail. Remy was damn lucky too. Claude wondered if he knew it. Probably not. The handsome pro was methodically —angrily, it appeared — smashing bullet serves across the net. He did not respond to Claude’s presence at the fence — he continued smashing serves, each one accompanied by an ugly grunt of exertion.

  Claude Néon wondered if one must do the grunting bit. He took a quick mental count and decided that about half the members he had observed did, and of the half that did, the majority were female. Hmm… But if the pro did it… When his bucket was empty, Remy picked it up and went to the other side of the net and began to gather up the balls. He seemed deliberately disinclined to acknowledge Claude. Fine. Claude would not say a word. He would watch. When all the balls were back in the bucket, Remy went to the service line on the other side and began to hit again — at which point Claude began to walk away. Without a word, Remy’s bluff was called. Before Claude took ten steps, he heard the pro’s snide warning, ‘Forget it, man. You’re just another little conquest.’

  Ouch! It hit Claude Néon dead on. But he stayed low-key — the only way to win, especially at a place like this. ‘Is that all she’s into? What about tennis? She promised she would teach me.’

  Ignoring tennis, Remy added, ‘Forget about it. When she shows up again, it’ll be with the next one. She’ll walk right past you… Count on it.’

  Claude considered that. ‘And will I be dead?’

  Remy Lorentz shook his head like he’d seen far too many men like Claude. (Especially at a place like this.) He followed with another heavy-duty groan as he slammed another serve.

  As Remy got himself back to the start position, ready to hit the next serve, Claude could not resist wondering, ‘So did she teach you to groan like that? Or vice-versa?’ Claude tried groaning from the sidelines as Remy tossed his ball. It caused Remy to swing wild and miss completely.

  Claude said, ‘At least, that’s how I remember it.’ And winked.

  Would Remy have come off the court and fought with Claude? He was under a very stern order from Judge Richand to keep the public peace. (Would it apply at a private club?) And would our suspended commissaire have reprised his Saturday night performance and most likely lose all hope of ever being a full-fledged member in good standing? Claude did not like the tennis pro and was feeling quite prepared to rub his lovely face against the steel-meshed fence. More than prepared: Standing there daring Remy Lorentz to try his luck, Claude Néon sensed something inevitable at play, something bigger than himself. Exiled or not, he had to keep moving forward.

  Claude realized he was glad he’d bumped into the awful Remy.

  Claude Néon would pursue his bid for membership in good standing, but Remy Lorentz reminded him that he was cop, first, last and always. It was a moment of clarity in a week filled with distracted non-direction. Claude savored it, adrenaline surging. Cop energy. His life blood.

  It was suddenly diluted by the next intruding presence. Claude turned to face a miserable looking Agnès Guntz, former special assistant to the late Bruno Martel, all in white again — for tennis, not meditation — suited up for a lesson with Remy. Her cool regard sent a clear message: Claude was hateful. She moved quickly through the gate and onto the court.

  Claude remained silent. He lingered till Agnès and Remy gave up waiting for him to leave and began to hit. Agnès Guntz began to grunt with each effort to return the ball.

 
; Walking home, Claude contemplated an uncomfortable dissonance between grunting and the club. Not what you’d expect… But who’d expect a rough-hewn cop to ever be a member? Life was filled with dissonance. Claude was unaware of a hooded jogger passing on the far side of the street.

  Though he wouldn’t be the least surprised if he had noticed. Of course they were watching him.

  Our commissaire is sometimes dangerously compulsive, but not entirely stupid.

  29

  Expert Opinion?

  Friday. After speculating as to whether or not a certain American starlet was wearing underwear when she’d crossed her legs repeatedly during a interview with the German press at Cannes, there was this at the bottom of Le Vrai Tommi: Local Scene: To Pearl… Come home! Everyone needs you (including some people we don’t really like). It came with a shot of Claude Néon watching Remy Lorentz hit serves. Tying up some loose ends? Or looking for another fight? A sidelined cop watches a partnerless pro. Clear and nasty. And how did Tommi hide himself so completely? The shot presupposed a rooftop or a tree.

  After attending to an in-box full of tedious boss-like administrative duties, Aliette Nouvelle went down to see the doctors. The morgue door squeaked once as she swept through and once as it swung closed behind her. The inspector was welcomed effusively by Gilles Conan. ‘Bonjour!… Up to our ears in it!’ Gesturing at the work area, proudly proprietary. Corpses, hearts, paperwork, and all manner of instruments and machines.

  And so? You’ve had a week. The basic question: ‘Why did they all die of heart attacks?’

  Enjoying his mid-morning cappuccino, the famous doctor was delighted to explain what they’d established. In all seven hearts the key mechanical factors at play could be deduced post-mortem. After again walking her through the likely susceptibilities found in each, Conan pronounced, ‘given lifestyle, drug regimens or the lack of preventive measures, these organs all show dangerously vulnerable states of wear and/or extraordinary stress on the vascular system.’

  She liked him, but there was something too casual. Too academic? ‘I need to prove murder.’

  Gilles Conan smiled, commiserating. He knew her need. ‘However, as for a common point of attack leading to death, this remains obscured.’ Why? Because the crucial electrical factor could not be known. ‘An EKG might show it, but a body has to be alive.’ Conan shrugged. ‘In this modern era, you could say death is the absence of electricity.’

  ‘Electricity?’ Benumbed by a litany of oxidants and statins, too much booze, nicotine, sleeping pills, anti-depressants, Bruno Martel’s weight-loss drugs, Didi Belfort’s love of Debutal…Aliette Nouvelle gazed at the lifeless organs on display in a line atop the counter.

  ‘Well, yes.’ Leaving the hearts, crossing the floor to where five well-worked corpses rested on gurneys, tapping each on the top of its head with his pen as he paced and expounded, ‘The brain receives a message then sends another one down the spinal cord in response to what it’s just been told, telling adrenaline to form in the nerves, which are the delivery system. Nerves…electricity. That is what’s common to these hearts which have been attacked, as we call it. It’s hard to get more specific after death, when there’s no more electrically induced rhythm to analyze. The traces of the attack in each are much the same. These six,’ mused Conan, returning to the hearts in their gleaming trays, ‘and, I would guess, the other man as well, died…um…quickly, yes, but like I say, with their various constitutions, conditions and drugs contributing, it’s fairly certain they each died in their own kind of way, likely at a different rate of passage. That’s the electrical factor.’ He considered that last idea for a moment. ‘Yes, each man dies differently.’

  ‘Even if killed the same way,’ added Raphaele Petrucci. He knew what she wanted to hear.

  Aliette frowned. ‘How differently?’

  Dr. Conan slowly shook his head, Sorry, no idea. ‘Just different. Varying health and pharmacology. Nerves and systems operating at different speeds. As for a catalyst, the pain of love is just as likely as sudden fear or sustained panic or abiding anger. We can’t know. Still, all of them probably bore a macabre kind of witness to their own deaths, if that’s a help…’ Conan was beaming, too obviously enchanted by the intensity of the cop with the silver-blue eyes. He wanted her to push him. He wanted to tell her everything he knew, and more.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A flood of adrenaline affects one’s sense of time. Things that happen in a moment can seem drawn out.’

  Fascinating. But she was feeling something similar: as if suspended, contemplating veiny lumps of meat, while the over-eager eyes of Gilles Conan studied her. (Of course she knew it.) From deep inside this suspended place she stared at Conan: Not good enough. ‘We need to show that they were killed, probably by the same person, therefore likely in the same way. I need something in common and tangible that leads from the heart to the life it drove.’

  It came across with cold insistence, fusing the antiseptic air inside the morgue.

  The doctor took an instinctive step back from the inspector’s confrontational tone.

  Big difference between expounding and making excuses. He looked like he’d been slapped.

  Raphaele Petrucci’s heart caught for a beat. He had seen it before, and felt it — the sharp tear to the soul that came with being found wanting by Inspector Aliette Nouvelle. He dreaded the thought of an alienated Dr. Conan saying I don’t need this and heading straight back to his faculty in Strasbourg. Raphaele stepped forward. ‘What about some freshly baked biscotti?’

  He was ignored. Gilles Conan was not used to being found wanting. ‘This woman you’re looking for,’ he mumbled, ironic, tripped up by her challenge; ‘this Pearl. Tangible. Common?’

  A twist of the inspector’s mouth conveyed her unamused response.

  Blushing, Conan hurried past it, ‘And, given their social status and professional profiles, this thing psychologists have dubbed a Type-A personality — all inherently aggressive, action oriented, focused on achievement at all cost, said to thrive on confrontation, testing limits, and therefore prone to the stress naturally associated with any and all of these things. I’d say they share that.’

  ‘Physical!’ blurted Aliette, feeling stressed but not about to die. ‘I need something physical!’

  ‘Stress is physical,’ countered Conan, steely, now eyeing her with his own questions: who is this cop? ‘The stress of love, stress of work, loneliness, sadness, grief, fear, failure. Type A and failure can be a deadly mix… Any negative emotion can affect the flow of blood to a dangerous degree, Inspector. Surely you’ve experienced these things. You’ve felt them — physically. No?’

  ‘Of course. But I cannot put stress in a plastic exhibit bag and present it to the judge. There has to be some tangible quality common to these heart attacks that I can use to demonstrate a modus operandi and prove murder.’ Aliette did not put much stock in Type A’s…or B’s or C’s.

  ‘I told you the day I arrived here: Adrenaline.’ Gesturing to the storage drawers, Conan added, ‘Each of our five bodies has totally depleted adrenal glands. We could cut them out and put them in your plastic bag.’ Quietly snide now. As if addressing an uppity intern.

  Aliette turned away from the doctor’s sarcasm. Closed her eyes. Breathed. She did not need Conan as much as Raphaele appeared to. But she did need allies. You always need allies, on the street, and in every professional nook and cranny the justice system holds. Needing to salvage something here, she did what her mother had taught her. She smiled. She apologized. Neither was difficult. ‘I’m sorry. I’m on the verge of something with this, but I’m blocked.’

  Folding his arms, sighing largely, letting his own Type-A adrenaline surge abate, Conan seemed to accept this. He was sorry too. ‘We are working for you, Inspector.’

  ‘I know you are. I’m only trying to cover all the bases. I need to. I’ve got a judge obsessed by rules and the man watching over me is a realist, and — ’

  ‘My frien
d Norbert?’

  She nodded. Divisional Commissaire Norbert Fauré. ‘A total, down-to-earth realist, and — ’

  ‘ — and I know for a fact a lot of good work has depended on him being exactly that.’

  ‘Which means I have very little room to move, Doctor.’

  Conan’s bright smile returned, spreading back into the kindly avuncular territory that seemed its natural place. ‘But you — are you not a realist, then, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes, yes…of course I am…’ moving to the five corpses, pallid, rubbery. ‘But if every man’s heart attack can be different, then reality is relative. Or at least that’s what you’d have to think.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

  Behind them, Raphaele Petrucci breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

  Aliette extended a hand toward the five dead lovers. ‘Why won’t one of them give us a hint?’

  ‘It is frustrating,’ said Conan, approaching, ‘believe me, I know the feeling of needing a solution.’ He wanted this cop’s respect. ‘A death mask only shows death. But that’s the thing… I mean to say, we’re starting to believe there is so much more in the act of dying. We’re starting to suspect it may not be the agony poets have traditionally ascribed it, nor the flat, abrupt transition to the other side of zero we see on our machines. I mean, in some cases. Obviously a bullet in the head…’ A shrug. But, ‘Have you ever seen a bird caught in the jaws of a cat?’ She nodded. (Piaf’s dark side.) ‘…no struggle, as though it knows, in a bird sort of way, and has given itself over. And many people, at the end of a long battle with cancer — just before the end, they seem to collect themselves and become calm. It’s beautiful. Affects anyone who’s with them — it’s so important that one leaves gracefully, if at all possible… Do you know anything about endorphins?’