Little John had cold eyes!
Maigret would have been hard put to explain what he meant by that, but he knew it nonetheless. Four or five times in his life, he had met people with cold eyes, those eyes that can stare at you without establishing any human contact, without giving any sense of the universal human need to communicate with one’s fellow man.
The inspector had come to speak to the man about his son, this boy to whom he sent letters as tender as love notes, and Little John was observing him without any curiosity or emotion, as if he were looking at a chair or a stain on the wall.
‘You’re not annoyed that I left you alone so long?’
‘No, because I think I’ve just discovered something.’
‘Ah!’
‘I’ve just discovered that Little John has cold eyes …’
Maigret was expecting another smile from his American colleague. He was almost aggressively anticipating it, that smile. Agent O’Brien, however, looked at him thoughtfully.
‘That’s awkward …’ he said slowly.
And it was as if they had had a long conversation. Suddenly there was something between them that resembled a shared uneasiness. O’Brien held out a can of tobacco.
‘I prefer mine, thanks all the same.’
They lit their pipes and fell silent once again. O’Brien’s office was ordinary and rather bare. Only the smoke from the two pipes gave the place any feeling of intimacy.
‘I suppose that after your eventful crossing you must be tired and are no doubt looking forward to bed?’
‘Because you would have suggested a different scenario?’
‘Oh, just that we go and have a nightcap … in other words, one last whisky.’
Why had he taken the trouble to bring Maigret to his office, where he’d simply left him alone for a quarter of an hour?
‘Don’t you find it rather cold in here?’
‘Let’s go wherever you like.’
‘I’ll drop you off near your hotel … No, I won’t come in; the front desk staff would start to worry if they saw me show up … But I do know a little bar …’
Another little bar, with a jukebox in a corner and a line of solitary men leaning on the bar, drinking with stubborn concentration.
‘Try a whisky anyway, before bed. You’ll see, it’s not as bad as you think … and it has the advantage of getting the kidneys working … By the way …’
Maigret understood that O’Brien was finally getting to the point of this last nocturnal ramble.
‘Can you imagine, outside my office a little while ago, I bumped into a colleague – and what do you know, he started talking about Little John.
‘Mind you, he’s never had a thing to do with him, officially … Not this colleague, not any of us. You understand? I can assure you that respect for personal freedom is a beautiful thing … When you’ve understood that, you’ll be real close to understanding America and its people.
‘Look: a man arrives here, a foreigner, an immigrant. You Europeans, you take offence or make fun of us because we make him answer a bunch of written questions, because we want to know, for example, if he has mental problems or has come to the United States intending to assassinate the president.
‘We require that he sign this document you find so laughable.
‘Afterwards, however, we ask nothing more of him. The formalities for entering the US have perhaps been lengthy and meddlesome, but when they’re over, at least our man is home free.
‘You get it?
‘So free that unless he kills, rapes, or steals, we have no further right to pay any attention to him.
‘What was I saying again? …’
There were moments when Maigret could have hit him. That fake candour, that nuanced sense of humour he felt incapable of ever figuring out completely …
‘Oh, yes … For example. In fact it was that same colleague, while we were washing our hands, who was telling me this story. Thirty years ago, two men got off a boat from Europe, the way you did this morning. In those days, a lot more of them came over than do today, because we needed workers. They came over in the ships’ holds, on the decks … They were mostly from Central and Eastern Europe. Some were so filthy and vermin-ridden that our immigration services had to hose them down … I bet you’ll have another nightcap?’
Too interested to even think of saying no, Maigret simply refilled his pipe and sat back a little because the fellow on his left kept elbowing his ribs.
‘The point is, there were all kinds of them who came. And they met with different fates. Today some of them are Hollywood moguls. You’ll find a few in Sing-Sing but also in government offices in Washington. You must admit we’re really a great country to absorb everyone who comes along the way we do.’
Was it the whisky? Maigret was beginning to see John Maura no longer as a wilful and brusque little man, but as a symbol of the American assimilation of which his companion was speaking in a slow, soft voice.
‘So as my friend was telling me …’
Did he have three, four whiskies? They had already had some Armagnac, and before the Armagnac two bottles of Beaujolais, and before the Beaujolais a certain number of aperitifs …
‘J and J …’
That was what he remembered most clearly when he finally collapsed into bed in his too-sumptuous suite at the St Regis.
Two Frenchmen, at a time when men wore stiff detachable wing collars, starched cuffs and patent-leather shoes … Two very young Frenchmen, greenhorns fresh off the boat without a cent, full of hope, one with a violin under his arm, the other with a clarinet.
Which of them had a clarinet? He couldn’t remember any more. O’Brien had told him, O’Brien with his sheepish smile yet as mischievous as a monkey.
The violin, that must have been Maura.
And both were from Bayonne or thereabouts. And both were around twenty years old.
And they had signed a declaration regarding the president of the United States, whom they promised not to assassinate.
Funny man, that Agent O’Brien, taking him to a little bar to tell him all this as if he himself had nothing to do with it and were chatting about things completely unconnected to his job.
‘The one’s name was Joseph, the other’s, Joachim. That’s what my friend told me. You know, one shouldn’t put much trust in stories people tell … We in the FBI, we have nothing to do with all that. Those were the days of vaudeville cabarets, what in Paris were known as cafés-chantants … So to earn a living, even though they were both conservatory graduates, even though they considered themselves great musicians, they put together a comedy act as “J and J”: Joseph and Joachim. And both hoped some day to have careers as virtuosi or composers.
‘My friend’s the one who told me this. It’s not important, obviously. Except that I know you’re interested in Little John’s personality. I’m pretty sure now that he wasn’t the clarinet guy …
‘Bartender … The same again …’
Was Agent O’Brien drunk?
‘J and J,’ he repeated. ‘Well, my first name is Michael. You know, you can call me Michael. Which doesn’t mean that I’ll be calling you Jules, because I know that’s your first name, but you don’t like it …’
What else did he say that evening?
‘You don’t know the Bronx, Maigret. You should get to know the Bronx, it’s a fascinating place … Not beautiful, but fascinating … I didn’t have time to drive you there; we’re very busy, you know … Findlay, 169th Street … You’ll see, it’s a curious neighbourhood. It seems that even today there�
�s still a tailor shop right across the street from the house … This is all just talk, just my colleague chatting, and I’m still wondering why he mentioned this to me, since it has nothing to do with us … J and J … They performed a number, half music, half comedy, in the cabarets and music halls of those days … And it would be interesting to find out who played the comic role. Don’t you think?’
Perhaps Maigret wasn’t used to whisky, but he was even less used to being treated like a child and he was furious when a bellboy escorted him up the stairs at the St Regis, inquiring much too solicitously if he needed anything before retiring.
Another of O’Brien’s little jokes, O’Brien with his quiet and terribly ironic smile.
3.
Maigret was asleep at the bottom of a well over the opening of which a red-headed giant was leaning, smiling and smoking an enormous cigar – why a cigar? – when a nasty ringing noise slyly set his face twitching, like a too-smooth lake ruffled by the morning breeze. His entire body heaved twice, from one side to the other, dragging along the covers, and at last an arm reached out to seize the water pitcher at first before the phone was found and a voice growled, ‘Hello …’
Sitting on his bed, uncomfortably (for he had not had time to adjust the pillow and was obliged to hold the damned phone), he was already – humiliatingly – sure, despite O’Brien’s doubtless ironic remarks on the diuretic virtues of whisky, that he had a headache.
‘Maigret, yes … Who’s calling? … What?’
It was MacGill, and that wasn’t at all agreeable either, to be awakened by this fellow whom he did not care for in the least. Particularly when the other man, aware from his voice that he was still in bed, took the liberty of inquiring brightly, ‘A late night, I bet? Did you at least … have a pleasant evening?’
Maigret looked around for his watch, which he usually placed on his night table but which was not there. He finally spotted a recessed electric wall clock, and his eyes popped: it said eleven.
‘Tell me, inspector … I’m calling on behalf of Mr Maura. He would be very glad if you could drop in to see him this morning … Any time now, yes … I mean, whenever you’re ready … We’ll see you soon. You remember the floor, right? The eighth, all the way at the end of corridor B … See you soon.’
He looked everywhere for a bell on a cord by the bed, the kind used in France, to call the maître d’, the valet, anyone, but saw nothing like that and for a moment felt lost in his ridiculously large suite. Finally he remembered the telephone and had to request three times, in his semblance of English, ‘I would like my breakfast, miss … Yes, breakfast … What? … You do not understand? … Coffee …’
She said something he couldn’t quite catch.
‘I am asking you for my small lunch!’
He thought she then hung up, but she was transferring him to another line, on which a new voice announced, ‘Room service …’
It was quite simple, obviously, but only if one knew what to do, and at that instant he was angry at all America for not having had the elementary idea of installing bells on cords in hotel rooms.
To cap it all, he was in the bathtub when someone knocked at the room door and although he kept yelling ‘Come in!’ the knocking continued. There was nothing for it: dripping wet, he had to put on his dressing gown to go and open the door, because he had locked it. What did the waiter want now? Fine, he had to sign a slip. But now what? The man was still waiting, and at last Maigret realized that he expected a tip. And his clothes were in a heap on the floor!
He was about to explode when, half an hour later, he knocked at John Maura’s door. MacGill greeted him, as elegant as always, flawlessly turned out, but the inspector sensed that he had not slept much, either.
‘Come in, sit down for a moment … I’ll tell him you’re here.’
He seemed preoccupied. He wasn’t bothering to be amiable. Paying no attention to Maigret, he walked into the next room without closing the door behind him.
The second room was a sitting room, which he crossed. Then came a very large bedroom. And still MacGill kept going, to knock at one last door. Maigret hadn’t time to see very well. What struck him, though, after the series of luxurious rooms, was how bare the last one looked. And it was later in particular that he realized this, trying to reconstruct the sight he’d had an instant before his eyes.
He would have sworn that the bedroom the secretary entered at the end looked more like a servant’s room than a St Regis hotel room. Wasn’t Little John sitting at a simple pine table and was it not an iron bedstead that Maigret glimpsed behind him?
A few words exchanged in low tones, and the two men came towards him one behind the other, Little John still tense, his movements deliberate, seemingly filled with prodigious energy he was forced to hold in reserve.
Entering the office, like his secretary he was none too welcoming, and this time it did not occur to him to offer his visitor one of those famous cigars.
He went to sit at the mahogany table in the chair MacGill had been occupying, while the latter casually sat down in an armchair and crossed his legs.
‘I am sorry, inspector, to have bothered you, but I thought that we should talk.’
Little John looked up at last at Maigret with eyes that expressed nothing, neither sympathy, nor antipathy, nor impatience. His slender hand, astonishingly white for a man, fiddled with a tortoise-shell letter opener.
He was wearing a navy-blue suit of English cut, a dark tie with a white shirt. His clothes set off his defined yet delicate features, and Maigret noticed that it would have been difficult to tell his age.
‘I suppose you’ve had no news of my son?’
He did not expect a reply and spoke on in a neutral voice, as if to an underling.
‘When you came to see me yesterday, I was not interested enough to ask you certain questions. If I’ve understood correctly, you came over from France with Jean and indicated that it was my son who asked you to make this crossing.’
MacGill was puffing on a cigarette and calmly watching the smoke rise towards the ceiling. Little John was still toying with the letter opener, staring as if unseeing at Maigret.
‘I do not think you opened a private detective agency after leaving the Police Judiciaire. On the other hand, given what is widely known of your character, I find it hard to believe that you would have embarked on such an adventure lightly. I suppose, inspector, that you follow me? We are free men in a free country. Yesterday you gained admittance here to speak to me of my son. That same evening, you contacted a member of the FBI to obtain information about me.’
In other words, these two men were already aware of his comings and goings and his meeting with O’Brien. Had they had him followed?
‘Allow me to ask you a first question: under what pretext did my son request your assistance?’
And as Maigret made no reply, while MacGill seemed to smile with a note of irony, Little John continued, tense and cutting.
‘Retired inspectors do not usually chaperone young people when they travel. I am asking you again: what did my son tell you to make you decide to leave France and cross the Atlantic with him?’
Was he not speaking contemptuously on purpose, hoping thereby to make Maigret lose his temper?
Except that Maigret grew calmer and more imperturbable as the other man spoke. More lucid, too.
So lucid – and this showed so clearly in his gaze – that the movements of the hand holding the letter opener became abrupt and awkward. MacGill, who had turned his head towards the inspector, forgot his cigarette and waited.
‘If you
will allow me, I will reply to your question with another question. Do you know where your son is?’
‘I do not, and that is not what is at issue at this moment. My son is at liberty to do as he pleases, do you understand?’
‘So, you know where he is.’
It was MacGill who gave a start and turned quickly to Little John with a hard look in his eyes.
‘I tell you again that I know nothing about it and that it is no concern of yours.’
‘In that case, we have nothing more to say to each other.’
‘One moment …’
The little man had leaped to his feet and, still holding the letter opener, had darted between Maigret and the door.
‘You seem to forget, inspector, that you are here in a way at my expense. My son is a minor; I assume that he did not let you travel at his request yet at your own expense …’
Why did MacGill seem so angry at his boss? He was clearly unhappy with the turn things had taken. And what’s more, he did not hesitate to intervene.
‘I believe the problem lies elsewhere and that you are offending the inspector to no purpose.’
Maigret saw the look the men exchanged and, although unable to read it on the spot, resolved to decipher its meaning later.
‘Obviously,’ continued MacGill, who rose in turn and paced up and down the room more calmly than Little John, ‘obviously your son, for some reason unknown to us, although perhaps not to you …’
Wait a minute! He was making such a serious insinuation to his boss?
‘… felt compelled to appeal to someone known for his wisdom in criminal matters …’
Maigret remained seated. It was instructive to watch the two of them, so different one from the other. Almost as if, at moments, the contest were playing out between the two of them and not with Maigret.
For Little John, so brusque at first, allowed his secretary, a man thirty years younger, to go on talking. And he did not seem happy about it. He was humiliated, that was clear. He was yielding the floor with regret.
Maigret in New York Page 4