She’d been busy when I had gotten there, and I’d sent word I wanted to see her when she got free. She was still busy, I saw, helping her two beach boys carry trays of drinks to beach loungers too lazy to come all the way up to the bar.
The beach boys looked almost like twins. Sun-bronzed young athletes with the muscles you get from dedicated weight lifting. Each wore only a cache-sexe, a coy G-string affair with a pouch just sufficient to enclose their genitals. Pascale Roca wore loose dungarees, an oversized shirt with long sleeves, a peaked fishing cap, and rubber sandals.
In Paris, I remembered, American clients of hers had dubbed her “the Rock.” She looked it: big and strong, almost my height, buxom and wide-shouldered. In the years since Paris I’d forgotten exactly how she looked. When I had sat down and spotted her on the beach it had suddenly made me think about the character in the ski mask and loose nylon jacket whose voice I hadn’t been allowed to hear.
But her broad hands were long-fingered, and no jacket could have entirely concealed that bosom. Though the danger of running into the cleanup man was real, I warned myself not to get paranoid about it.
I was the last lunch customer in the platform’s dining section. At the table next to mine a couple of bankers, one French and the other German, were finishing after-lunch drinks while arguing about whether to buy or sell dollars. Their utter lack of comprehension about what made any currency go up or down was enough to send the uninformed masses scurrying back to the barter system.
Getting up, they called to two women at the bar and headed back down to their beach mattresses. The women slid off barstools and strolled after them lazily. One was a voluptuous Scandinavian blonde. The other was darkly exotic: Ethiopian or Yemenite. Each had the top of her one-piece bathing suit rolled down to a neat thin strip well below the navel. The dark one’s strip was white, the blonde’s was purple. They went by me discussing what gowns they intended to wear to the Monte Carlo Red Cross Gala.
A dinghy with an outboard motor was on its way in from one of the yachts, carrying two young couples. Pascale Roca and her beach boys went over to meet it. They pulled the dinghy all the way up onto the beach and helped its passengers out. The two couples climbed the five steps and settled onto barstools. The beach boys went off to see if anybody else on the beach required service. Pascale Roca glanced up and down the beach, checking on whether anything else demanded immediate attention. Finally she came up onto the dining deck and scanned the eaters and drinkers.
Her broad face had always been plain but not unattractive. Now it was badly sunburned and dried out, almost ugly. I remembered that she’d never given a damn what she or anybody else looked like. Anne-Marie, back in those days, had begun to be edgy about being regarded as a pretty toy. It had been one basis for their friendship.
I raised a hand and signaled Pascale Roca. She came over and stood frowning at me.
“Remember me?” I asked her.
“Not your name. But I do remember you were one of Anne-Marie’s boyfriends.” No hostility there. No warmth, either.
I asked, “Have you heard what happened to Anne-Marie?”
“It was on the radio this morning. About her being murdered.” Her frown got tighter. “I remember now—you’re a detective. If that’s what you came to see me about, it’s wasted time. I don’t know anything about it. And I don’t want you to involve me.”
“She was your friend.”
“I thought she was. And then she dropped me like… That wasn’t the act of a friend. Blaming me for everything.”
“Everything,” I repeated. “What are we talking about?”
“I told you,” she said fiercely, “I don’t want to get involved in it. Anne-Marie’s dead, and that’s too bad, but it’s got nothing to do with me. I haven’t seen her in a long time, and I don’t know who killed her or why. And it’s not a subject I have any interest in discussing. It’s none of my business.”
“That’s enough!” I growled, startling her. “We both know you’re not tough just because you look like you are. It’s stupid to pretend you’re something you’re not.”
She looked away from me, out to where the guy with the sailboard had overturned again, holding herself stiffly.
I said, “She was your friend. Your friendship hitting a bad patch doesn’t change that. I have to find out what was going on in Anne-Marie’s life that got her killed. You may be the only person in the world she trusted and cared for enough to tell about her personal problems.”
She still wouldn’t look at me.
I said, “Please sit down and let me buy you a drink.”
She turned suddenly and called to the bar, “Bring me a brandy, Maurice.” Then she sat down across the table from me. Her expression had lost its hardness. Her eyes had a wet shine. “Anne-Marie really hurt me,” she said softly. “Turning on me like that. It wasn’t my fault.”
“What wasn’t?”
She clenched her big hands together on the table, squinting down at them, brooding.
“Let’s try it one step at a time,” I said quietly. “Do you know about any of the men she had affairs with?”
“I know about the one who got her in trouble,” she blurted. “Him—not me. He… She stopped herself from going on with it.
“Anne-Marie is dead now,” I said. “Nothing you say can hurt her. The only thing you can do for her is help me find out who murdered her.”
The barman brought a large brandy to our table, set it in front of her, and went away. Pascale Roca picked up the glass and took a long swallow. “The way her husband treated Anne-Marie,” she said angrily, “it’s no wonder she went to bed with other men.”
“How did he treat her?”
“He decided she only married him because he was Mona Vaillant’s son and business manager. He turned into an ice cube with her because of it. Hell, of course that was part of what made him attractive to her. Part of the package. Like Anne-Marie’s being beautiful was part of her whole package. Would he have married her if she was dumpy and homely?”
She was right all the way. I’d known that was the major problem between Gilles and Anne-Marie. But there had been no way to make him understand it that way. Gilles had very few people he allowed himself to trust emotionally. He could never forgive any of them he thought had tricked him into that kind of trust. He was wrong, but that was Gilles.
“So she consoled herself with other men,” I said. “That’s not a crime. But one of them got her in trouble.” Pascale Roca rolled her glass between her rough palms, gazing down into the swirling liquor as though consulting it. “There weren’t actually that many men she went to bed with…only a few. And never any one of them for long. She didn’t really care for any of them. Except Gardier. That was different.”
“What’s his full name?”
“Christian Gardier.”
It didn’t mean anything to me. “How much did Anne-Marie care for him?”
“I think she was in love with him. Or she thought she was, from the way she talked about him to me. And it scared her. Because she thought her husband had met some woman he had fallen for. That he’d divorce Anne-Marie if he thought he could get their son. Apparently he loves the kid as much as she did.”
I scowled at her. “What was she afraid of? In a divorce, French courts almost always give custody to the mother.” Pascale Roca nodded. “Unless the husband can prove she’s not a fit mother. That being with her might be bad for the child.”
“How could Gilles prove something like that?”
“If he could prove Anne-Marie associated with unsavory people, wouldn’t that do it? She thought so.”
“It would depend on how unsavory they were,” I said. “And how deeply she was involved with them.”
“Well, her love affair with Christian Gardier was serious,” Pascale Roca told me. “And he’s a professional criminal. Smuggling, armed robbery—maybe worse she didn’t tell me about.”
I experienced a tightening at the small of my back. �
�What does this Christian Gardier look like?”
Chapter 15
“I never met him,” Pascale Roca told me. “And Anne-Marie never described him to me. Except that he’s good-looking and strong. And tender.” She smiled dryly. “A tender criminal.”
“Is he big or short? Thin or strongly built?”
“I don’t know.”
I repressed a frustrated sigh. “Did she tell you how she happened to meet this Christian Gardier?”
“She knew him from when she was a kid. They grew up in the same village. La Brigue. They were childhood sweethearts. That was before she moved to Paris. And before he went to prison the first time—for smuggling.”
La Brigue is very close to the French-Italian frontier. Smuggling across the rugged mountains there is part of the region’s heritage, going a long way back. Some people there engage in occasional smuggling all their lives, as a sideline, and never get caught. Christian Gardier had been unlucky, or careless.
“They never saw each other again,” Pascale Roca said, “until—oh, I guess it’s a year and a half ago, now. He got out of another term in prison, this time for armed robbery in Marseilles, and paid a visit to La Brigue. He didn’t have any family left alive there. But he went to see Anne-Marie’s parents—to ask where he could find her. They wouldn’t tell him. But he found out from other people in the village.
And the next day, when she came out of the Mona Vaillant offices in Nice alone, there he was. Waiting for her.”
She took another long swallow of her brandy. It didn’t leave much in the glass.
“When she told me about it later,” she resumed, “she said it really threw her, seeing him there after all those years. He hadn’t changed much from the way she remembered him, according to her. And the way he looked at her—that threw her, too. They drove up into the hills and talked a lot about the old days together. He told her he kept thinking about her in prison. That in the end it was only thinking about her that kept him sane.”
I said, “That kind of passion would be hard to resist.”
“Well, she certainly couldn’t resist it. Anne-Marie told me all her old feelings for Gardier suddenly welled up in her—and coupled with her anger at her husband. They made love right there—up in the hills. In the grass. And she said it was as though they’d never been away from each other.”
“And after that?”
“He had something he had to do back in Marseilles that night. But they agreed to meet again a few days later.”
“Marseilles is a long trip,” I said. “Three hours by train, nearly that by car. Where did they get together the next time?”
“That’s what Anne-Marie came to ask me about,” Pascale Roca told me. “She wanted someplace to be with him that would be pleasant and safe. Out of season I still do publicity work. Mostly for show business people that come into Cannes for business festivals and conventions. The kind of people who have affairs while they’re here. Little trysts they wouldn’t want anyone finding out about. So Anne-Marie figured I would know the best places for it.” She finished off her brandy and added flatly, “She didn’t tell me about her long-lost love being a criminal. Not until much later. If I had known that, I would never have—” She was interrupted by one of the beach boys coming up to our table with a problem.”
“Pascale, some of the customers are complaining. The wind’s starting to blow over their umbrellas.”
“So close them and put them away,” she snapped at him. “It’ll be shady soon anyway.” She nodded toward where the shadows of the trees were beginning to spread over one end of the beach.
He shrugged and hurried off to carry out her instructions. She glared after him. “Helpless customers and incompetent summer workers—I make a living off them, and I loathe them.”
“It’s the same in resort areas all over the world.”
“I guess so.” She picked up her glass, saw it was empty, and put it back down.
“Let me buy you another.”
“No, I get headaches if I drink too much.”
I said, “You were about to tell me what you recommended to Anne-Marie.”
“The Hotel Dhalsten. Do you know it?”
I nodded. The Dhalsten was beyond the other end of Nice and just past the Côte d’Azur Airport, in Cagnes-sur-Mer. It had been one of the grand old hotels in bygone times. But it had deteriorated to a point where there was talk of tearing it down. Until a hotel chain had bought the place, about five years ago, and renovated it.
Its exterior had been restored to its former turn-of-the-century glamour, and the interior had been revamped for modern luxury. Since then the Dhalsten had become a four-star favorite. Being that close to the airport made it handy for traveling businessmen, entertainers, and diplomats. And it was perfect for meetings between people who’d just flown in and others due to fly out.
It also developed a reputation as a good place for a discreet non-business rendezvous. Its staff was trained to pay no attention to any visitors a guest might have, day or night. With two side entrances through which elevators could be reached without going through the lobby, guests and visitors could slip in and out easily without being noticed.
“Not a bad choice,” I acknowledged to Pascale Roca.
“She thought so, too,” she said with a touch of bitterness. “She thanked me for it after she met Gardier there the first couple of times.”
“And they went on using it.”
Pascale Roca nodded. “The only thing that sometimes spoiled it for her, Anne-Marie said, was always being afraid that her husband would find out. And that she’d lose her son because of it. By the time she told me that she’d also told me about Gardier having a criminal record. But by then she was too hooked on him for anything I could say to make her stop seeing Gardier.”
“Until something went wrong. What was it?”
“I don’t really know. Anne-Marie just phoned me one evening sounding almost berserk. That must have been…oh, almost a year ago. I can remember her exact words, and that crazy fright in her voice. She asked me what kind of friend I was, to send her to ‘that awful hotel.’ She was very acid with me. Said she never wanted to see me or talk to me again.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I tried to ask her, but she banged down the phone on me. I kept trying to call her back, but she always hung up when she heard my voice. Finally I gave up trying.” Pascale Roca shrugged angrily. “I guess somebody she knew saw her in the Dhalsten. Maybe with Christian Gardier. But that’s not my fault, if they got that careless.”
I didn’t say anything to that. But there had to be more to it than what she’d just said. Somebody seeing Anne-Marie in the Hotel Dhalsten—even seeing her with Christian Gardier—would not be enough to make her that crazy-scared. It did not add up to hard evidence that she was having an affair with a professional criminal. And that, I had a very strong hunch, was what someone had gotten their hands on. Maybe along with something else even more incriminating.
* * * *
I drove away from Cap Ferrat and up into the hills around the Loup Valley.
The fastest way of getting what I wanted next was by going to visit the cobra.
Chapter 16
The two big Dobermans leaped at me with bared fangs and nerve-shattering snarls. They crashed into the chain-link gate and dropped back on all fours, legs spread, regarding me patiently and making low sounds deep in their throats. It was the sort of sound a cat might make when eyeing a trapped mouse. But it wasn’t mice the dogs had been trained to make a meal of.
The gate was part of an outer chain-link fence that surrounded Marcel Alfani’s property. There was an inner fence of the same kind. Alfani called the area between the fences, patrolled by the guard dogs, his “moat.” The dogs had been trained never to touch the inner fence. All night, and sometimes during the day, it carried a high-voltage current of electricity.
One of Alfani’s bodyguards emerged from the rambling, ranch-style house inside the double f
ences. There was a long-barreled revolver holstered on his belt and a high-power rifle with a scope sight slung over one shoulder. Perfectly legal, as long as he didn’t go off Alfani’s property with the weapons. Protection of domicile.
He studied me through binoculars, confirming that I was who I’d said I was over the intercom beside the gate. Alfani’s bodyguards knew me. He went back inside to deactivate the electronic locks on the gate.
I waited. It was only a thirty-minute drive from Nice, but I had the feeling of being much further inland. This was a world of forests and stretches of emptiness, surrounded by high stone mountains. It was the kind of scenery Marcel Alfani was most comfortable with. He was no sea lover. He’d been born in the mountainous heart of the island of Corsica, and his first experience of the sea had been when he took a ship from Corsica to Marseilles at the age of fifteen. He’d gotten violently seasick and had never forgotten it.
His property took up an entire hilltop several miles from the nearest town, the fourteenth-century fortified village of Tourette-sur-Loup. There were no other houses in sight of Alfani’s, and nothing at all above it. Below it the hill sloped down on all sides toward the sheer-walled gorges of the Loup—the River of the Wolf.
The bodyguard appeared again and blew a whistle. I couldn’t hear it, but the dogs did. They raced off around the moat between the fences and vanished from sight. The bodyguard came toward me, opened the inner gate, crossed the moat, and opened the outer one. He let me get back in my car and drive through without first searching me for weapons. Alfani had proclaimed me a member of his family.
He didn’t have much family left. His four brothers had been killed in their teens, in early battles among the gangs of Marseilles. His first wife had died long before, without offspring. His much younger second wife, the mother of Arlette, had died six years ago. Alfani’s family now consisted of his daughter, two unmarried sisters who had never left Corsica—and me. It was an honor I didn’t enjoy, though it was sometimes useful.
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