by Derek Haas
His radio squelches and I hear a burst of information in colloquial French about a stabbing but he moves his fat fingers down to his waist and quickly twists the knob to cut off the sound.
“Pssh, interruptions, interruptions, now let me tell you the story I am working on, yes, and then you can tell me how I may help you and maybe when I’m finished with my new manuscript you can sell the rights to Martin Scorcese for me, ha, ha, ha, yes?”
Without waiting for me to respond, he plunges into his tale of a put-upon French policeman in the Bastille district who is misunderstood because of his weight problem. He is the hero, you see, and much smarter than even his superiors care to admit. Twenty minutes later and Officer Gerard is finally concluding the narrative and somehow a croque madame has joined her husband in his stomach without the detective missing a single plot twist or stultifying morsel of dialogue.
When he finally reaches the end, breathless, I force on my most engaging smile and tell him I am certain my agent in Hollywood will want to read the novel as soon as it is finished. He laughs like I’ve told a hilarious joke, emits a greasy burp, and then shakes my hand without bothering to brush the crumbs from his shirt. “Maybe we will both be walking down the red carpet next year, yes, yes, ha ha.”
Thirty minutes later, we are inside the conference room dedicated to Organized Crime within his department’s headquarters, flipping through detailed files covering the last two decades.
It only takes a few more seconds of flattery before I am alone.
The first time Alex Coulfret officially came to the attention of the specialized branch of the French police was eight years ago. A new lieutenant named Chautier had been promoted within the Organized Crime department and was challenged with tightening a rope around the professional criminals moored in his district. He had been educated in New York and Washington and had returned to his native city with a different approach to tackling the problem, one that promoted sending a mix of uniformed and plainclothes police officers out onto the streets, not to make arrests or threaten incarceration, but simply to listen. A neighborhood is a living entity, Chautier preached: it sleeps, it eats, it breathes, and quite often, if you allow it a slight bit of freedom, it talks.
One name popped up on the lips of citizens again and again: Alexander Coulfret. From what the police officers could surmise after sifting through rumors and eyewitness accounts and exaggerations and embellishments, Coulfret had started as muscle for an aging boss named Dupris. He was used for everything from shakedowns to collections to enforcement, and his brutality earned trust and loyalty from his boss. This was at a time in the late nineties when French professional crime was changing from a family affair to an every-man-for-himself dogfight, and Coulfret was Dupris’s pit bull, a sure bet in a shaky world.
More of Alex Coulfret’s life comes into focus as I continue to read. The police reports include organizational charts, and Coulfret’s name ascends the pyramid rapidly, almost month by month. Names and faces above his keep dropping off the chart, an indication a principal player died or went missing. It isn’t difficult to hypothesize how. By the time I finish flipping through the files, Coulfret’s name has replaced Dupris’s at the top.
There are three pictures of Coulfret in the file. Two are from his previous arrests, when he was still a young man. He appears stocky, muscled, sinewy. He has a razor-thin mustache and an angular face, but his eyes crackle with intelligence. His expression—photographed while being arraigned—appears bemused, unperturbed, like the thought of going to jail is a minor inconvenience, a mosquito to be swatted. His nose is large and hooked and looks misplaced below those eyes.
The third picture is from a surveillance photo, taken just before his name appears on the list of deceased following the train derailment. The man has aged, and his mustache has grown into a full beard, but his expression is the same. He is standing in front of a restaurant, pointing to someone outside the frame. His physique remains athletic; he doesn’t appear to have gone soft after he found himself at the top of the ladder. His nose is the same, a toucan’s beak.
I snatch the photo from the file and hide it in my sock. The police won’t have much use for it when they construct their new pyramid.
I’m able to glean a few more bits of information—he’s never been married; he’s childless; he speaks English, German, and Italian, as well as French.
I spot an interesting nugget in one officer’s report. “Plant listening device through Coulfret’s nose? Avid wine collector. CI describes him as having an advanced sense of smell, proud of wine sniffing. Wire bottle with mic?”
They must not have attempted this . . . at least I can’t find a report or transcript centered upon a bugged wine bottle. Yet, it is nuggets like this that I file away. Hints to his personality. The man likes his grapes and fancies himself as a bit of a connoisseur. Perhaps I can build a strategy around this idea as I get closer to my quarry.
The rest of the reports offer nothing of consequence, and are perhaps most intriguing by what is absent from them. No one is sure where Alex Coulfret is currently living. Most of the reports don’t buy his death, theorizing he moved to Switzerland or London or Rome. Others place him in a different section of Paris, the First or Second arrondissements, thinking maybe he changed his face, had some work done. Only a few think maybe the train crash death is real, that Occam’s razor explains why their trail has gone dry, that the easiest explanation is usually the correct one. Coulfret died on that train and his body was cremated before proper identification could be done. End of story.
I’m looking for a different explanation. I don’t believe a man like Coulfret ever leaves his neighborhood after exerting so much energy to rule it. It’s a power source for him, a fuel, and moving away would wither that power as surely as starving a man would waste him down to skin and bones. The answer must be, as is so often the case, rooted in the past. The missing piece of information, the piece absent in the reams and reams of police records, the piece no officer cared to chronicle is this: what compelled Alex Coulfret to fake his death? And with so few people fooled, especially the police, it means he only needed someone to believe the ruse for a short time. So who is that someone, and was he fooled?
If I can discover the answer to that, then maybe I can discover where Alexander Coulfret is holed up now.
Officer Gerard is all smiles as I leave the police building.
“You will e-mail me when you get home, yes? Please call if you need anything or want some background information or need some spicy dialogue delivered the way a true French police officer talks, ha, ha. Maybe you’ll have a part for this handsome face in your movie, yes? But I don’t come cheap, ha, ha, ha, yes?”
I shake his hand, and he pumps it warmly, like he doesn’t want to give it back, afraid his connection to Hollywood will evaporate like a mirage. I assure him I will shoot him an e-mail as soon as I return to my computer, and he finally nods and steps back into the station, mollified.
In my hotel room on the Rue de Balzac, I sit on the end of the bed and withdraw two photographs from my sock. One of Coulfret, the other of a low-level enforcer named Roger Mallery I managed to also nick right before I closed the file.
From what I am able to discern, Mallery is an up-and-comer within Coulfret’s network, low-grade muscle who makes sure narcotics deals go down smoothly. He lives with his brother on Rue Stendhal in the Twentieth arrondissement in a one-bedroom flat and serves as a part-time butcher in a pork and chicken shop up the road. He has been picked up by French police for questioning on several occasions, most notably when three West African men tried to set up a rival supply chain in the Bastille district and ended up with their throats slashed by a serrated carver’s knife. He didn’t back down from the interrogation—“gave as good as he got,” stated one detective’s report—and was never arrested.
But one item stood out in their files, and I focused on it like it was written in red. Mallery has a side business with his brother, and he doesn’
t think the cops are aware of it. The French police are currently gathering information about this business, building a solid case to bring it down, aware that a bust here could serve as a key to opening a bigger box but so far they have yet to make a move on the two men.
So I’m going to move first.
When I walk into the butcher’s shop, he is behind the counter, thinly slicing ham from a roasted pig.
“Hello.”
“English?” he asks, just looking up for a moment before returning to his work.
“American.”
“Pshhh. . . . ” like the mere act of thinking about my country has given him a migraine.
In person, he is larger than I guessed from his picture, though he’s not overweight. In fact, he seems skinny, fit, and yet somehow, well, big, like a blown-up photograph where the scale changes but the proportions remain the same. His face is dark and rough.
I wait for him to ask me what I want, but realize after a minute this is futile. He ignores me while continuing to slice razor-thin pieces of meat, his fingers working the blade hypnotically.
“Can I have a half-pound of bacon?”
Mallery looks up, grunts, and moves over to a small refrigerator from which he withdraws a paper package of meat. A minute later, and he’s moving to the cash register.
“Eight-fifty.”
I exchange euros for the package, and he considers me with sleepy eyes before returning to his cutting board.
When I don’t leave the shop, he lifts his eyes again, waiting.
“I’m looking for a passport.”
He stops cutting the pig and hammers the blade down in the butcher’s board, then moves to a sink, washes and wipes his hands, drawing it all out in a puerile attempt at intimidation.
“You lose one?”
“No.”
I keep my eyes level so he knows I mean business.
“What makes you tell me this?”
“I’m sorry. I might have been misinformed. Is your name Mallery?”
He just stares at me, non-committal.
“I was told you’re the man to see about papers.”
“Papers? What is this, papers?”
I nod like I’ve made a mistake. “I apologize. Thank you for the bacon.”
I reach the door to the shop, and his voice stops me. “What kind of passport?”
I turn around, and though he is not grinning, his expression has shifted to agreeable.
“Italian.”
“Five thousand euros.”
“I paid three in Naples.”
“Then go back to Naples.”
I consider, then reach down to my wallet, but he clucks his tongue.
“Not here. The shop closes in two hours. Come back when you see me locking the door.”
“I’ll be here.”
He resumes slicing the ham, the conversation over.
I follow Mallery through a maze of alleyways and side streets. His apron is off, hanging from a hook in the butcher’s shop, I’m sure, but the smell of his work clings to him like a cloud: fresh-cut meat and viscera and blood. He’s riding a ten-speed, and with his huge bulk, he looks ridiculous on top of the bicycle, like a clown riding a miniature.
When we reach a wide sidewalk, he slows to match my gait, side by side. Perched on the bike, he’s at least a foot taller than me, maybe more.
“Who told you about me?”
I have anticipated this question. I know it’ll be risky, but I don’t believe he’ll breach etiquette to check my story.
“Coulfret.”
This doesn’t elicit more from him than a raise of the eyebrows.
We stroll and roll along again in silence for a moment. I feel him wanting to say more, but he’s fighting the urge. Finally, he loses the battle to stay cool. “You do work for him?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of work?”
I point my finger like a gun and bend my thumb like a hammer cocking.
He raises his eyebrows again. “He didn’t hire you to kill me, did he?”
I shake my head when I see he was trying to make a joke.
“How many jobs have you done for him?” he asks.
“You want to talk about this inside somewhere?”
He appraises me, then nods, appreciating my caution. We move along again in silence until the street takes a few more turns. Finally, we arrive at a courtyard. He dismounts, and swings the bike up on to his shoulder with no more strain than if he were lifting a sack of feathers. He presses a few buttons into a keypad, a security gate opens, and we move inside.
His apartment is more spacious than I would’ve thought: two bedrooms and a comfortable living room filled wall to wall with computer equipment. A log fire in the fireplace casts odd shadows over the room while it beats away the cold. A small kitchenette with a large refrigerator stands at the far end, behind a counter that separates the two rooms.
A man who can only be Mallery’s brother looks up from a monitor as we enter. Roger swings the bicycle up on to a set of hooks attached to the ceiling and then gestures in the direction of his sibling.
“This is Luis.”
“Hello.”
The man nods, cautious.
“You mind if I pat you down?”
“Yes.”
“You are carrying a weapon?”
“Several.”
Mallery grimaces. He’s not used to men like me, and it shows. I could’ve lied, could’ve told him I am unarmed and then wait to see how thoroughly he wanted to frisk me before I have to react, but he is testing me, testing to see if I’ll let him be the alpha dog in his own home. My refusal lets him know what level of professional I am. He chews his lower lip, then foregoes the frisking.
He moves over to his brother, and they converse briefly in French.
Luis addresses me, his voice more resonant than his brother’s, but deferential. “You need Italian passport, correct?”
“Yes.”
“The Netherlands would be easier for you.”
“I already have one for the Netherlands.”
Luis smiles. “Okay . . . Italian it is. You have money, correct?”
“Five thousand euros. You’ll get it after I’ve had a chance to inspect your work.”
“Of course. You have a preference for a name?”
“Something common.”
“Yes, okay. I will take a photograph first.”
He directs me to a red line he has taped to the floor, facing his computer. After he clicks his mouse, he spins the monitor so I can take a look. I nod, and Mallery appears beside me, holding a bottle of wine.
“Let’s move to the kitchen and have a drink while we wait.”
He’s had eight glasses and is laughing hard at my story, having lost track of my intake after I matched him the first three times he refreshed our drinks.
“So it comes down to this, I’m down to my last day to do this job, I’ve been fighting a goddamn fever for the better part of two weeks, I haven’t really had time to formulate a secondary plan, so it’s now or never and more and more it’s looking like never.”
“What time of year?”
“Middle of July and hot as hell. And you’ve never experienced heat until you’ve been in Houston in July. You can park your car right outside the door to your air-conditioned building, and by the time you take the ten steps and get behind the wheel, you’re soaked through. Hundred percent humidity. Believe me, the last thing a gunman needs to battle is sweaty hands. Throw a fever on top of that and it’s like I was walking around on fire.”
Mallery laughs. “Please continue.”
“So the mark is visiting this construction site across the street and the amount of time I have to pop him is predicated on an elevator ride—”
“Why did someone want your target dead, by the way?”
“I have no idea. I don’t ask questions, I don’t seek answers, I just kill the mark at the top of the page.”
“Incredible.”
; “Yeah, so I know the bottom of that elevator disappears into a subterranean chamber, a bunker, and if he got down there, who knew when this bastard would ever emerge again, so if I was going to do it, I’d have to do it right then. I was completely out of time.”
“Would I know this man?”
“You’ve seen his face in the business section of the Wall Street Journal if you follow stocks at all . . . ”
Mallery waves like it’s not important. He just wants me to keep going.
“So I’m in the high-rise across the street and he’s in this elevator surrounded by muscle, and the wind kicks up, a scorching hot wind from the west, but I don’t mind, the entire shot’s maybe five hundred meters and I slow my breathing to a standstill and sight the target and this guy better have prayed his affairs are in order as the elevator car moves halfway down the building and I pull the trigger and . . . nothing.”
“What?!”
“The gun jammed. Nothing and no time to check it and I am on my feet and scrambling down the five flights of stairs as fast as my legs can carry me.”
Mallery is laughing so hard, tears have sprung to his eyes. He pours himself another glass.
“Down, down, two at a time and all I have on me is my Glock which is a damn fine gun but only at a range of thirty meters or less and I’ve never missed a target and I’ll be damned if this asshole’s gonna be my first.”
“What did you do?”
“So I bust out of the door and look up and see that the target’s elevator has about four floors to go and I am a city block away and since that building is under construction there is a barbed-wire fence surrounding it which is another good forty meters from the mark. I am taking all this in at once, and I’m not even thinking about traffic or pedestrians or civilians or police, I have to shut everything down and concentrate only on the moment, this moment, killing this target on this day, right then. It’s hard to describe but the world becomes like a tunnel, everything else is blocked out, the only thing remaining in your vision is the strike point on your mark, where you have to shoot him to make sure he stays down forever.