“Crow.”
“Has he formally retained you to do so?”
“He doesn’t have to. The Bonnet firm gets a yearly retainer to handle all his problems. Right now you’re the Bonnet firm. You’re going to retain me to work on Crow’s defense, because that’s what Henri and Joelle Bonnet would do.”
Arlette considered it. “Makes sense. That will be interesting. I’ve never worked with you before.” She looked at her watch as we reached the cars. “I have to get to the office. There are several other cases I’m preparing for the Bonnets. They’ll have to be put on delay for the moment, so I can deal with this one. I want to be ready by the time the juge d’instruction sees Crowley this afternoon.”
“If Xavier Escorel decides to press charges, he’ll have to finally let you talk to Crow.” That didn’t mean I’d get a chance to talk to him. Nobody talked to a charged prisoner except his attorney and very close family. “If so, I’ll want to know everything he tells you.”
Arlette nodded. “We’ll have to keep in close touch every day on anything either of us learns. I’d suggest you try finding out about August Pilon’s recent movements, here and in Paris. In spite of what Inspector Soumagnac told you, Pilon might have left some trace of—”
“Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs,” I told her.
“What?”
“Ancient saying. It means I was doing this kind of work, and figuring out where the likeliest leads might be, while you were still in diapers.”
She said evenly, “Yes, but with doddering senility so close you may be forgetting how.”
“Cruelty,” I told her, “is not one of the qualities I admire in a lady.”
“Truce? Or do we go on kicking each other?”
“Truce. But you check on August Pilon. You’re the lawyer, and he worked for lawyers. Call around, see if any of them know anybody he was intimate with that the cops missed. I’m going to be busy looking into other corners.”
“All right. I’ll talk to Crowley’s partner, too. He’s our client, and I know him. Right now he’s in New York, but he’ll be home tomorrow night.”
“Fine.” After I heard what he told her I could decide if I should do any further digging into Crow’s partner myself.
“Don’t forget,” Arlette said, “we exchange information. Regularly. The Bonnets will be back in a week. I want to have as much as possible already prepared for the defense. Even though it can’t come to trial for months, no matter how Escorel pushes it.”
“Crow’s not going on trial,” I told her, and realized my voice was harsher than I’d intended. “I’m not going to let him sit in prison, waiting for it to come to that.”
* * * *
I stopped off at the first post office inside Nice and put through a long-distance call to Fritz Donhoff in Paris.
Fritz and I had worked as partners for some years up there. I still had my apartment next door to his, and we still sometimes worked together when a case brought him to the Riviera or me to Paris. Though an unshakably old-fashioned man in most ways, he’d learned that an answering machine in his apartment did avoid a lot of unnecessary office expenses. But it was his own heavy, melodious voice I got on the line after the third ring.
“I’m glad I caught you in,” I told him.
“I won’t be going out for a week or two,” Fritz said. “I slipped off a curb and broke some blood vessels in my ankle. Embarrassing. It’s swollen and blue, and I have to stay put with my leg up most of the time.”
“Jesus, Fritz, when will you learn to be more careful? At your age things like that take a long time to heal. Have you hired someone to take care of you?”
“No need to get so upset, Peter,” he said in a calming tone. “It is a small injury, though annoying. And no need to hire anyone. A number of the local ladies are taking turns looking after me.”
I relaxed. If his “local ladies” were on the job, there was nothing to worry about. Fritz was seventy-three, and he’d spent all those years learning a lot more than I knew. One of the things he’d learned best was the usefulness of old-world charm. His only problem would be preventing the women from fighting over which of them should take care of him most.
I told him everything that had happened, in detail. From when I’d seen August Pilon with Mona Vaillant the previous morning to the moment of my calling him. Being stuck in his apartment wouldn’t prevent him from working for me. Fritz had been operating in Paris since 1938. His network of official contacts, useful friends, people who owed him favors, and others whose vulnerable spots he knew was staggering. He could accomplish more with a telephone than most detectives could with a full staff of investigators out on the prowl.
I didn’t tell him what I needed from him. Fritz would figure that out as he went along. He’d do what I was going to do: fumble around through all the unknowns until something of interest cropped up.
“Someone close to Serge Lotis is bound to be vulnerable to judiciously applied pressure,” Fritz said. “Perhaps several someones. When I find out which ones I’ll invite them here for a talk. And I’ll try to get a line on Pilon’s movements in Paris.”
“Another possibility,” I said. “When I first knew Anne-Marie she was already into big fees as a magazine model. But before that she worked as a clotheshorse for different fashion houses. I don’t know which ones.”
“Interesting possibility,” Fritz agreed. “And simple to check. We’ll see if she and Lotis knew each other.”
“If you come across a solid lead that requires legwork, let me know and I’ll get up there.”
“It is always a pleasure to see you, my boy.”
I left the post office and went to see if I could break into Gilles’s and Anne-Marie’s apartment.
* * * *
Nice is a seaside resort that grew into a genuine city with a bustling life independent of tourism. The resort is still there and still flourishing. It extends for several miles along the Promenade des Anglais, where the luxury hotels look across at the beaches. But it is only a few blocks deep. Behind it is the Nice of the permanent residents, with its industries and university and vast urban sprawl. The apartment house was in the heart of the city on Rue Rossini, on a quietly expensive block of solid, dignified stone buildings equally remote from the tourist strip and the urban sprawl. City dwellers are not like country people, even in the sun-lulled ambience of the Côte d’Azur. They don’t leave spare keys outside their apartments. And I didn’t have the state-of-the-art burglar’s tools I’d spoken to Soumagnac about. But what I did have, taken from my car, would probably suffice in this case.
One big advantage was knowing the interior layout of the apartment, from my visits as an invited guest. That included remembering what the door and window locks were like. You pay attention to those details automatically when you’ve been a cop.
I left my car at the end of the block and considered the layout as I approached the five-story building. Their apartment took up the two bottom floors. Big rooms, high ceilings, spacious closets and corridors, lots of nooks and crannies. The place had been built in the days when architects believed that people deserved decent amounts of breathing space around them. The ground floor contained the living room, dining room, kitchen, and storage space, in addition to a workroom for Anne-Marie and a study-cum-office for Gilles. Upstairs was the master bedroom suite, separated by a library from their small son’s bedroom and playroom, and accommodations for the Irish nanny who looked after Alain when his parents were working.
I pressed the button beside the building’s entrance, activating a buzzer and a click as the door unlocked itself. I stepped into the building’s small entry and shut the door behind me.
The buzzer was there to alert a concierge, who would come up out of the basement to make sure you had a right to be in the building. But few buildings in France have concierges any more. They were phased out, along with a number of other old traditions, around the time the French decided Elvis Presley was the most significan
t American cultural export since Edgar Allen Poe. Only the buzzer system of entry remains, a leftover from the old days and a means of entering almost any building without being questioned.
That didn’t get me into their apartment, however. The entry hall contained a cage elevator and spiral staircase, both leading to the top floor. I went around them to the apartment door.
There was no reason anyone should be in the apartment. Monday wasn’t one of the maid’s two days a week to come in and clean. The nanny would be taking her vacation in Dublin while Alain spent the summer with his grandparents in the mountains. Gilles wasn’t back from Australia, and Anne-Marie would never be back. The police were unlikely to have gone to the trouble to obtain a warrant to enter for a look around. They would wait until Gilles returned and ask him to let them in. That wouldn’t be a priority in their investigation.
Just to make sure, I rang the bell. No response. Good. I tried the door. Locked solid. Two locks. I remembered them. Not something I could deal with unless I was ready to make a lot of noise and take a lot of time.
Beyond the apartment door, at the rear of the entry hall, was another door that led out to a back garden shared by the building’s tenants. It, too, was locked. But the lock was much simpler than the ones on the apartment door.
I took from my pocket a short, thin steel pick with a small wooden grip. It got the lock open quickly, but not silently. Hoping none of the tenants was in the back garden, I opened the door and stepped out. The garden was empty. There was a long rose trellis screening the tall French windows along the rear wall of the apartment. I walked between the trellis and the wall until I reached the last set of windows, outside the living room. There the side wall of the next building jutted out a few feet. That and the trellis together afforded a certain amount of concealment from anyone gazing down from the backs of other buildings.
None of the windows of the apartment had bars covering them. The sturdy locking system on the apartment’s door was Gilles’s only concession to the insurance company. He knew an experienced, well-equipped thief could get through any defense, given time. The only way to stop worrying about it, Gilles figured, was to keep everything really valuable locked away in a bank vault. Sensible of him. But I was after information, not valuables.
What did cover the windows were stout louvered shutters. Closed and locked. Louvered shutters don’t present a problem, if you know how and where they’re locked inside. I got out a bent wire: thick and stiff. Crouching, I slid it down through one of the lowest louver openings, at exactly the right spot. When I had it hooked under the latch I yanked up. The latch sprang free from its socket. I straightened up and did the same thing to the top latch.
If the glass doors inside were locked I was prepared to handle that with a combination of wire and prick, plus a knife blade. But it wasn’t necessary. As I’d hoped, the glass doors had been left wide open so air coming through the louvers could circulate through the apartment. Artificial air conditioning has never gained much favor in France.
I opened the shutters just enough to slip inside the living room. Then I stopped and stared.
All the drawers in the room had been pulled out and set on the carpet. Their contents were spread neatly around them. The closets were wide open. So were the doors of the small corner bar.
Somebody had been there before me.
Somebody was still there. Braced against the wall just behind me.
A heavy fist with power behind it thudded against the back of my ear and drove me to the floor.
Chapter 12
I executed a fast roll the instant I hit the floor and came up on one knee with my hands cocked to strike back, ready to spring the rest of the way up in whatever direction proved best.
What proved best was that I not move another inch.
His hands were broad, with thick, short fingers. Soiled white cotton work gloves made them thicker. His left hand was still clenched in a fist. His right was aiming a snub-barreled revolver at my face. It looked like a .357 Colt Python. That close to my eyes the muzzle was huge. Not as wide as a cannon nor as deep as a grave, but sufficiently depressing.
I stayed on one knee with my other foot braced against the floor, ready to make my try anyway if I saw that gloved finger begin to tighten on the trigger.
The finger waited. He looked down at me, and I looked up at him.
He wore a long zipped-up brown nylon jacket, baggy dungarees, and black jogging shoes. He was as big as me, but most of his height was in his torso. His legs were short. The jacket fitted loosely, except where his shoulders bulged the material.
His face was hidden by a ski mask that covered all of his head. There wasn’t enough light coming through the louvered shutters to see anything behind the mask’s eye-slits except dark holes.
“There are people in the street outside,” I said. “And more behind those open windows across the garden. And a cop car cruising around the block. That gun will make a very loud noise. If you try to put me out any other way, I’ll fight, and you’ll have to shoot and make that noise.”
I didn’t know how much of the rest of it he believed, but the noise part had to bother him. He had probably already been considering that. It would account for my still being alive and talking. Instead of dead and no further trouble to him.
It was also possible, of course, that my presence didn’t trouble him at all. From the way I’d come in he had to figure I was just a burglar. A fellow professional with a different purpose. That might amuse him.
Backing up a step, he unclenched his left hand and gestured with it for me to stand up. He’d made up his mind not to shoot unless I forced it.
I stood. He pointed to an open clothes closet.
I said, “You want me to go there?” It was a try at prodding him to say something, just to hear his voice. There were a couple other things I’d have liked to try even more. But with that mask I couldn’t gauge the state of his nerves. He didn’t want to make that loud noise with the gun, and I didn’t want to push my luck. Standoff.
He didn’t say a thing, just continued to point at the closet with his free hand and at me with the Python. I moved sideways to the closet, watching him. His gun and the dark holes behind the slits in his mask followed me. I stopped in front of the closet. He gestured again. I took a breath and backed into the closet. It was better than being out of it with a hole through my skull.
He pushed the door. It locked in place when it closed. There was no way to unlock it from inside; the only knob was on the outside of the door. Closet makers don’t give much thought to somebody having a problem getting out of one.
It was dark and stuffy in there. And hot. I thought about him sweating under that ski mask. But he wouldn’t be wearing it anymore. That was just something he carried with him for emergencies—like my walking in on him, or having to get away if there was danger of being spotted and recognized. Very professional. Prepared for everything.
I put my ear to the door and listened. There were small sounds. He was moving things around, shoving drawers back in place. I hoped that he’d started his search upstairs and was close to finishing the job down here.
What he was up to was obvious. He was the cleanup man, looking for any loose ends that needed to be removed. Judging by the fact that I hadn’t spotted any signs of forced entry, he was probably the same one who’d gotten into Pilon’s office and apartment, and into Crow’s studio.
That didn’t tell me if he was the only one involved, or the main one, or working for someone. Nor if he was just a cleanup man or a killer as well. What it also failed to tell me was what was being covered up.
I hoped he wasn’t as good at spotting the things that needed removal as he was along other lines. If he was, there wouldn’t be much left for me after he had gone.
* * * *
It’s hard to judge passage of time when you’re locked in the dark. My body temperature was raising the heat inside the closet. I hadn’t heard anything out there for what seemed a long
while. Keeping my ear to the door, I began a silent count. When I got to five minutes I decided to break out.
Then I heard something and stopped myself. I listened harder. The next sound was unmistakable: the apartment door being shut.
I waited another couple minutes. There were no further sounds.
The closet was shallow for what I had to do. But the width was just right. I braced my hands against the side walls at the height of my waist, pressed my shoulders against the back wall, and raised my feet off the floor. I brought my knees up to my chest and rammed both heels against the door just above the lock.
It crashed open on the first try. The force of my kick tumbled me to the floor, half out of the closet. I took a few deep breaths as I got up and then did a fast preliminary tour of both floors of the apartment.
He had put things neatly back in place the way he’d found them. The antique silver statue of a mermaid that Gilles kept on his desk was still there. Anne-Marie’s fur coats were still in their storage closet. He hadn’t been interested in the kind of valuables an ordinary thief would take. Neither was I. I went through the apartment again, carefully this time, to see if he had missed anything that would be of use to me.
One thing I knew he’d gotten: a good look at my face. Next time we ran into each other he would know me, faster than I would recognize him.
That could pose a hazard. I intended to meet him again.
* * * *
Anne-Marie’s appointment calendar wasn’t in her workroom, or anywhere else in the apartment. Neither were any of her old check stubs or credit card statements. No letters, diary, stray notes, or anything else that would give me a lead to where she’d gone and whom she’d met over the past months.
Nobody was likely to notice these things were missing for a long time, if ever. If someone did, innocent explanations were easy to come by. She could have taken the appointment calendar with her and left it somewhere. She could have thrown away the rest, as people do from time to time with old stuff.
I cursed softly and went back into Gilles’s study. The cleanup man hadn’t been interested in Gilles’s appointments or financial statements. I went through his appointment book, back to the first of the year, without finding anything significant. Then I tackled his check stubs and credit card statements.
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