Back in the Real World

by Marvin Albert

  I got a cab outside the station and had it take me to the Canebière, the bustling main street known to generations of English-speaking seamen as the Can-of-Beer. Most of the hotels are around there, along with the greatest concentration of bars, shops, and restaurants. I checked into the Hotel Provence, on the Cours Belsunce just off the Canebière. Then I walked a few short blocks to the Vieux Port, had lunch at the Cintra Bar on the Quai des Beiges, and went for a long stroll around the port.

  I didn’t see anything there that bore any relation to the nearby Côte d’Azur. Marseilles is an ugly, grimy, lusty commercial harbor, the biggest anywhere around the Mediterranean. Everything about it is based on those thousands of cargo ships and tankers using its miles of docks. It’s a merchant sailors’ town and has been for a couple thousand years.

  I was soaked from the rain when I got back to the hotel. After a drink at the bar I took a bath and shower and changed into dry clothes. By then it was after seven. Time to make a couple of calls.

  My first was to Fritz Donhoff. August Pilon’s aunt hadn’t been able to tell him anything at all about what her nephew did in Paris. But the secretary of the late Serge Lotis had been more helpful. A man named August Pilon had phoned the office on Wednesday of the previous week and had asked to talk to Lotis. When she asked him to state his business, he’d said to tell Lotis there was going to be trouble over his last couture collection. Lotis had taken the call, gone out of the building a few minutes later, and returned in less than an hour extremely upset about something. He had made a call to Nice immediately after returning.

  She also remembered that Anne-Marie had phoned Lotis about four or five months ago, and that he’d gone off somewhere to meet her. She had no idea what their meeting was about. Nor did she remember the exact date—but she’d promised Fritz to look it up in her office calendar as soon as she could. Along with checking the number in Nice that Lotis had phoned last Wednesday. The Lotis offices were closed for a couple of days because of his death.

  My next call was to Gilles. He came on the line sounding puzzled and worried.

  “It’s going to take a couple of days to get photostats of Anne-Marie’s checks and credit statements,” he said, “but the rest of what you wanted… Pete, something has been going on that I can’t explain. All of her jewelry is missing. I don’t know where it is or when she removed it from the box, but…

  “What about her securities?” I asked him.

  “They’re gone, too! I checked and found she had sold them all.”

  “When?”

  “Over a period of a few months, beginning nine months ago. I don’t know what she did with the money she got for them. It’s not in her savings account. That’s almost depleted. She used to have a considerable amount in savings, but she withdrew most of it. In cash.”

  “When?”

  “Half of it almost a year ago. The rest the following month. It’s not like Anne-Marie to strip herself financially like that. You know she wasn’t a spendthrift or… I just don’t understand it.”

  I didn’t either, but I wasn’t as surprised as he was.

  * * * *

  At eight I phoned Joseph Lepec. He was sorry, but the ship carrying Christian Gardier wouldn’t come in until shortly before noon the following day. Lepec gave me a place to meet him the next morning at eleven.

  I had dinner in the hotel dining room and went back up to my room to phone the Nice commissariat. I asked for Soumagnac. They told me he and his partner, Ricard, were out on an assignment and not expected back until the following evening.

  I hung up, turned on the room’s television set, and settled down to finish my day watching an old western. It was one of the good oldies—My Darling Clementine, dubbed in French.

  I’d seen it before, but it still took some getting used to, hearing Wyatt Earp say: “Arrête ta saloperie et haut les mains…

  It ended the way I remembered. Doc Holliday died nobly at the O.K. Corral. The Clanton gang got shot to pieces. Henry Fonda earned the love of Cathy Downes. I went to bed and got another full night’s sleep.

  Chapter 20

  The rain had stopped, but there was fog so thick that everything half a block away was diffused into unreality. Garbage odors mixed with normal harbor smells of spilled fuel, dead fish, and stagnant water. It was shortly after one the next afternoon. I was climbing the hill of the Panier quarter behind the Joliette Bassin of the Marseilles docks.

  The Panier always makes me think of the Dickens descriptions of criminal enclaves in Fagin’s London. The fog made it more sinister than usual.

  It’s the birthplace of the Riviera milieu—a densely crowded warren of moldering dwellings where immigrants from all parts of the Mediterranean fight one another for living space and racket control. For over a century sailors have been warned against going in there. The worst danger is getting killed for your money and dropped down a deep hole to the rats in the sewer system. But dim bars and cheap whores continue to lure seamen there, and each year the same percentage vanish without a trace.

  Not the smartest neighborhood for a stranger to explore without an eight-shot confidence booster.

  I went up the steps of an alley where high walls leaned toward each other, almost meeting overhead. On a bright day little light would filter into the sloped alley. With the fog it was murky.

  At the top was a bar called Les 4 Aces. I put my back to the wall across from it and waited.

  Shadowy figures lurking inside deep doorways watched me but did not beckon or approach. I had arrived and planted myself there too purposefully to be a wandering fun-seeker. They smelled cop. A discriminating sense of smell is often important for survival in the Panier.

  The bar had a wide, cracked window and torn lace curtains. Inside a pair of dim lamps revealed women on bar-stools waiting for the afternoon influx of customers while their men sat at tables playing cards.

  This was where Joseph Lepec had told me to wait for Christian Gardier. I’d been right about Lepec’s throat. There was an ugly knife scar across it, and another between his nostrils and upper lip. He was a minor functionary in Bernard Salamite’s organization, responsible for some of the contraband that came and went by ship.

  He had told me Christian Gardier’s closest friend, the third engineer on the Stella Fortia, had helped Gardier sign on for this trip with forged oiler’s papers. Gardier was supposed to get a package of uncut heroin in Naples and bring it to Marseilles. Seamen coming off cargo ships are seldom searched. Partly because cops in the dock areas are bribed, but mostly because of sheer impossibility. There are too many sailors leaving and boarding ships every day for all of them to be checked.

  A man strode toward me out of the fog: stocky, wearing the dark cap of a merchant marine officer without insignia. He stopped when he reached me and said softly, “Joseph’s man?” His face was badly pockmarked. His nose had been smashed long ago and never fixed.

  I nodded and said what he was waiting for: “Sawyer.”

  He took my elbow and steered me away with him, not looking left or right. We went down the steps of another steep alley and turned into a blank-walled passageway. It ended at the roofless ruin of an old hospital. The building had been dynamited by an SS demolition team in the war because the hospital was suspected of hiding fugitive Jewish families and other anti-Nazi criminals.

  We went through a hole in the wall and crunched across the rubble of shattered bricks, plaster, and tiles until we were between two fallen, fire-scorched roof beams. He let go of my elbow and made a short tour behind the remnants of inner walls around us. When he was sure nobody else was there he came back to me.

  “Lepec says I should tell you anything you want to know. So ask.”

  “You’re not Christian Gardier.”

  “I’m a friend of his from the Stella Fortia. Second engineer. My name’s Jean-Luc.”

  “His best friend, according to Lepec.”

  “I guess so. Christian and me did time together in Les Baumettes. T
hree years in the same cell. I’m the one who got him into dealing drugs when he came out and moved in with me awhile. Better dough than what he did before.” Jean-Luc wore a disgusted expression. “And safer, for anybody with the brains to be careful.”

  Les Baumettes is the maximum security prison outside Marseilles. I asked, “Where’s Gardier?”

  “In jail. In Naples.”

  If I flew down to Naples and pulled the right strings, I just might be allowed to see Gardier there. But not under conditions where he would talk freely. I asked Jean-Luc, “What happened?”

  “Cops caught him with that bundle of heroin on him. Day we were supposed to sail.” Jean-Luc shrugged. “His old problem. Christian was always too reckless, took too many chances. Got worse that way after his girlfriend dropped him.”

  “Which girlfriend?”

  “Someone he used to go see in Nice. Anne-Marie something. I don’t know her last name or I’d tell you. Lepec said not to hold back with you. But Christian never mentioned any last name.”

  “Tell me what Gardier did say about her.”

  “She was his girlfriend way back. They were from the same town. He talked a lot about her in Les Baumettes. At first just to pass time. Just remembering anything nice to cheer himself up, the way you do in prison. But by the time he finished the stretch he’d convinced himself he was still crazy about her.”

  Jean-Luc got out a small cigar and lit it. I recognized the acrid smell of the smoke that hung in the fog between us. Toscanelli—a cheap cigar imported from Italy. Even cheaper when smuggled in, avoiding customs duties.

  “After Christian got out and I helped him start making money again,” he told me, “he went off to look for this Anne-Marie. Found her in Nice. And the old fire was still there, according to him. He started going off to spend time with her whenever he could get away.”

  “Do you know where they got together?”

  “Some hotel around Nice is all I know. He never mentioned the name. Just that he’d register under a fake name and she’d come join him in the room. They’d have food and drinks sent up, and—big romance.”

  Jean-Luc took a drag on his cigar and found it had gone out. That’s one of the troubles with Toscanellis. He relit it and blew smoke my way. “Only trouble was, she was always nervous about it. Seems she was married now and had a kid. She was scared if anybody found out she was involved with Christian—a guy with his record—her husband would divorce her and be able to take the kid away from her.”

  His Toscanelli had gone out again. He cursed and flicked it away. It bounced off a broken wall and fell into the rubble. He said, “Christian told me she started getting almost hysterical about that, too worked up to make love right. So finally he began calming her down by teaching her to snort a little coke with him first.”

  “In the hotel room,” I said.

  “I guess so. Where else? That’s where they screwed after they snorted. Right?”

  I said, “Tell me why she dropped him.”

  “Christian called her one day to arrange to meet her in Nice, like usual. She told him no. Told him to please stay away from her. Never come see her anymore. Well, he went to Nice anyway. Naturally. Picked her up somewhere out on the street and asked her what the hell was the matter. She almost screamed at him. She told him somebody had found out about them.”

  “Who?”

  “Christian doesn’t know. She wouldn’t tell him—didn’t want to talk to him at all. She just begged him to leave her alone. Never come see her again. She swore if he did—and she lost her kid because of him—she’d kill herself.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh…about a year ago, I guess. Thing is, Christian believed what she said—that she’d kill herself. So he never saw her again. And after that’s when he started getting more careless than before.”

  * * * *

  I went back to the hotel. I’d checked out but had left my overnight bag at the desk. Using the phone booth behind the lobby, I called Marignane Airport outside Marseilles. Flights between there and Nice were still grounded, because of the fog now. My railroad schedule said the next train to Nice wasn’t until six that evening. I put through a phone call to Laurent Soumagnac’s apartment in Cap D’Ail.

  His wife, Domiti, told me he was still sleeping.

  “When do you expect him to get up?”

  “I’m supposed to wake him before five. We’ve got a babysitter coming so we can go out for dinner before he goes to work tonight.”

  “I’ll call again at five,” I said, and I went for another walk.

  When I phoned at five Soumagnac answered. He was more relaxed than the last time we’d talked on the phone.

  “Sure I checked on the Dhalsten. I told you I would as soon as I got some free time. That’s some hotel, you know. We’re not supposed to poke our noses into anything that goes on there. Heavy government protection. I guess because so many government people use it. Ours and foreigners. Paris doesn’t want them bothered—and the mayor’s office in Nice passes the same instructions to their local police.”

  The Dhalsten was getting curiouser and curiouser.

  Government pressure strong enough to keep out both the cops and the crooks.

  From both national and local authorities.

  “Did you find anybody with a contact to its head of security?” I asked Soumagnac.

  “Jacques Morel—yes, but it wasn’t easy. He’s not local, and he doesn’t fraternize with any of our men. Cagey, secretive character. His main police contact is with the Gendarmerie Nationale. Captain Rinaldi. He doesn’t know much about this Morel either. Except that he came down from Paris to run security for the Dhalsten right after it was renovated. And Rinaldi has orders to cooperate with him—whatever Morel wants.”

  “Orders from where?”

  “They came down the chain of command. You know how that is. By the time something like that reaches us there’s no way of knowing where it originated.”

  I said, “And that’s all Rinaldi knows about Morel.”

  “Just about. Funny thing. When I told Rinaldi it was you asking about Morel he said Morel had just been to see him about you.”

  “That is funny,” I said.

  “But Morel didn’t ask for you by name, which is funnier. He showed Rinaldi a couple pictures of you and asked if he knew who you were.”

  * * * *

  Captain Rinaldi did know me. And I knew him. I phoned him at the Gendarmerie Nationale.

  “When this Jacques Morel asked you who I was,” I said, “did he tell you why he wanted to know?”

  “No,” Rinaldi told me. “And I didn’t ask. Those are my orders. Cooperate. Answer anything Morel puts to me, don’t ask him anything.”

  “What kind of pictures of me did Morel show you?”

  “Ordinary photographs. A little fuzzy, but I didn’t have any trouble recognizing you.”

  “Do you remember what was around me in either of them?” I asked Rinaldi. “Any special background?”

  He thought for a bit. “Couldn’t see anything in one of them. In the other, you’re at a bar. Looking straight up at the camera.”

  “Up,” I repeated.

  “That’s right. As though the photographer was shooting down at you from the top of a ladder or something. You’re looking up at the camera, and you’ve got a drink in your hand. Looked like a brandy glass.”

  My spine was already too tight. It got tighter.

  I said, “Tell me what Jacques Morel looks like.” Rinaldi told me.

  It didn’t come as a complete surprise by then. I remembered giving part of that description to the clerk and barman in the Hotel Dhalsten.

  * * * *

  My last call before going to catch my train was to Arlette’s office.

  As soon as she heard my voice she began talking and didn’t give me a chance to say anything for a while.

  “I talked to Frank Crowley’s partner, Gilbert Promice. He has nothing to gain out of Crowley being in prison.
He has to continue paying him the same amount every year for ten years, no matter what. And he needs Crowley. There are areas of the business he doesn’t know so well. Part of their agreement is that Crowley will continue to act as a consultant. Promice even gave me a list of important questions to ask Crowley next time I visit him in prison. I’m positive he didn’t have anything to do with framing him.”

  “So am I,” I told her. “I want you to book me a hotel room in Nice for tonight. The Napoleon would be good. It’s near your office, and nobody there knows me. Go sign in and say your husband will be using it. So I don’t have to show my own papers when I get there.”

  “What’s going on?” Arlette asked me.

  “About now some people may be deciding it would be a good idea to kill me,” I said. “So far their killing record is impressive. I don’t want to go home tonight and give them a chance to improve that record.”

  Chapter 21

  “Let me see if I have your thinking straight,” Arlette said. “You believe every room in the Dhalsten probably has bugs and hidden video cameras. Which recorded Anne-Marie going to bed with her drug-pusher boyfriend over a longish period—as well as using illegal narcotics with him.”

  She had picked me up at the Nice railroad station and was driving me to the airport to get my car. It was raining again, but lightly. The wind had changed. Now it was a Mistral, blowing down the Rhone Valley and swinging east along the coast, scattering clouds. It would probably be clear by morning.

  “You further think,” she said, “that this planting of listening devices and video was done when the Hotel Dhalsten was renovated—by an intelligence service of the government. Which service are you talking about? DST? DGSE?”

  The Interior Ministry’s DST—Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire—bears some resemblance to the FBI, but it is supposed to concentrate entirely on counterintelligence within the boundaries of France. The Defense Ministry’s DGSE—Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure—is much like the CIA, conducting espionage and counterespionage operations abroad. In theory, they’re not allowed to encroach on each other’s territories. In fact, they often do.