by Tim Davys
“That was Lamb,” Pedersen replied.
“I mean Llama,” said Ècu, his cheeks turning bright pink.
“Llama is the same. He says he was in his car the greater part of the morning, on his way out to the workshop in Lanceheim to repair a lawn mower. Then he drove back again, and the errand took until lunch. But we didn’t manage to get that confirmed by the workshop. I’ll try to reach them again this morning.”
Pedersen sat down.
“Thanks,” said Bloodhound.
“Perhaps we should do a summary of the overall situation, for the captain’s sake?” Falcon suggested.
“That’s a good idea,” Anna hurried to agree, simply to rescue her colleague from enduring Bloodhound’s wrath afterward alone.
The superintendent glared bitterly at his inspectors.
“I don’t know if Jan feels any need for a sum—” he began.
“That would be excellent,” Jan Buck anticipated. “Go ahead, Larry.”
“I see.”
Superintendent Larry Bloodhound stuffed the rest of the Danish into his mouth. It had been lying there on the table, waiting for him, and now he suddenly felt a need for sugar. Perhaps he could skip lunch instead? He chewed slowly, with all gazes directed toward him.
“Last Monday,” he said, although he hadn’t swallowed yet, “Oswald Vulture was murdered.”
“Good,” said Buck enthusiastically. “Take it from the beginning.”
“In other words,” Bloodhound growled, “it looked like a classic twister. A room with one door. The deed happens without anyone seeing the murderer go in or out. Then it appears that the secretary, Cobra, who sits outside the door, was actually gone for fifteen minutes. And the time agrees with what the stuck-up Tapir states as the time of the decapitation. The murder weapon is found at the scene of the crime. The head, on the other hand, is still gone, no leads. There are tons of stuffed animals who had reason to cut the head off of Vulture, who apparently was an unsympathetic devil. And rich. The widow will inherit a fortune.”
“Do we believe the widow did it?” asked Buck.
“We don’t believe anything about the widow,” Bloodhound replied. “I only state facts. She had the most to gain from his death, and at the same time she thought she was married to a real pile of shit. We ought to question her again, that’s what I believe.”
“Good,” said Falcon, taking notes.
Bloodhound looked at his inspector as if he had a contagious disease.
“Rather quickly suspicion fell upon an inventor, Oleg Earwig, who was the last one to see Vulture alive. He had the motive and the opportunity. He was there. We thought. Then we wasted half a damn week on that repulsive insect, despite the fact that we could simply have dismissed him by double-checking his alibi . . .”
The color on Falcon’s cheeks intensified, but Anna could not keep from smiling. This was Bloodhound’s immediate revenge for Ècu having suggested this idiotic summary.
“And the secretary?” asked Buck.
“Cobra. That she had something to do with the matter is . . . probable. But she’s not our murderer. The oracle at place St.-Fargeau has told us that. And Tapir is intolerable in many ways, but he’s always right. The murderer had arms.”
Anna noticed that Bloodhound chose not to say anything about the tipster and the phone booth. Captain Jan Buck had, anyway, received more information than he could handle.
“And now?”
“We still don’t know how the murderer made his way into the office. There is a rather advanced alarm system. We think that possibly he may have disguised himself as an electrician in order to get in and out. There were repairs going on that morning. We’re still checking the stuffed animals in Vulture’s will. As you heard, Jan, we’ve gone through the majority of the ones who are named, and . . . well . . . I saved a favorite until last. Jasmine Squirrel. Anna did a background check yesterday.”
“Together with Falcon,” said Anna. “Perhaps you’d like to do the honors?”
Falcon Ècu not only wanted to, he was looking forward to it. After the conversation with Cobra he had returned to rue de Cadix and worked until long after midnight. He hadn’t even had time to tell Anna what he had found. He leafed through his papers.
“Perhaps you can relay the background first?” he said loyally.
Anna recounted briefly what they knew about Jasmine Squirrel’s cubdom and youth. This gave Falcon a foundation on which to construct his presentation, and he took over.
“Thus,” he said authoritatively, “there were two matters we could continue working on yesterday evening. One was that Squirrel was not found in any registry, apart from two recorded hospital visits. And, second, that Domaine d’Or Logistics paid her health insurance, despite the fact that she never listed them as an employer in her personal tax returns.”
“Domaine d’Or Logistics?” Bloodhound repeated with surprise.
“Are you familiar with that company, Superintendent?”
“No,” Bloodhound replied, “but in Vulture’s laptop there was a locked folder. It contained accounting for Domaine d’Or Logistics.”
“Did Jasmine Squirrel work for Vulture?” asked Anna.
“She said to me that she worked at that loathsome fast-food chain . . . whatever it’s called,” Bloodhound growled.
“A complete lie,” Ècu dismissed firmly.
“Yet another,” Bloodhound growled.
“And?” Anna reminded.
“This is exciting,” said Falcon, smiling slyly. “I started looking for Domaine d’Or Logistics yesterday. I thought they ought to have information about Squirrel that might lead us further.”
“Otherwise there’s tax cheating going on,” Buck pointed out.
“Captain, it’s better than that. Domaine d’Or Logistics, the company that has paid health insurance for Jasmine Squirrel for eighteen years, does not exist.”
“Doesn’t exist?” Anna exclaimed.
“No. Well, that depends on what you mean. There is no company where tangible goods or services are actually produced, where there are employees and, well, you understand? All that exists are minutes from a corporate meeting held every year that approves a balance sheet that is submitted to the Ministry of Finance. The representative for all shareholders, likewise the CEO of the company and the keeper of the minutes at the annual meeting, is one Alfredo Wasp.”
Falcon Ècu made a stage pause. No one in the room had ever heard of Alfredo Wasp and therefore the pause made no great impression.
“Wasp has a lot of experience with company meetings,” Falcon continued. “He keeps the minutes for Nova Park’s board meetings and shareholder meetings.”
Pedersen whistled.
“So it’s Vulture behind Domaine d’Or, then,” Anna concluded.
“It gets better,” said Falcon.
Bloodhound still looked angry, but he could not conceal the fact that he was interested.
“I took a closer look at that health insurance coverage,” said Ècu. “It seems that Squirrel isn’t the only one who has medical care paid for by Domaine d’Or. There are between four and eight names per year. A total of fifteen individuals. Certain names only appear a couple of years, others recur almost as often as Squirrel. One of the names is . . . Emanuelle Cobra.”
“What?” Buck exclaimed. “The secretary? The one you just said was a suspect but who didn’t do it?”
“The same,” Ècu nodded. “And of the other names—you’re not going to believe this—of the other fifteen names on the list, six of them have been convicted of sex offenses. I checked with GL, and they knew about another three.”
“What are you saying?” asked Anna.
“They’re hookers,” Bloodhound clarified brutally.
Field Mouse Pedersen struck the table with his paw.
“But . . . now I get it,” he said. “Logistics . . . get it? Procurement? Someone’s trying to be funny. Domaine d’Or is an escort service.”
“Jasmine Squir
rel and Emanuelle Cobra are escort animals,” said Falcon. “And if it’s as the superintendent says, that Oswald Vulture had information about Domaine d’Or’s business transactions in his computer—”
“Vulture is running some kind of brothel operation!” Anna exclaimed. “And his colleagues at Nova Park who testified that Vulture would never do anything criminal?”
Ècu had to smile.
“Okay,” said Bloodhound, standing up. “Damn good, Falcon, I have to say. Damn good.”
Ècu straightened up.
“Pedersen,” Bloodhound continued. “Get the final story on Llama and Lamb. And Falcon and Anna, see about finding the auditor, Wasp. If you don’t find him, bring in Cobra. Get her to tell everything she knows about Squirrel. Hell. This may loosen things up a little. Was there anything else, Jan?”
Buck shook his head. He was just as impressed as the others at Falcon’s nighttime detective work.
6.2
Alfredo Wasp was in the phone book, and he had nothing against them coming by and asking their questions. He was waiting at his office on emerald green rue Primatice, one of Tourquai’s many dark, gloomy backstreets that were neglected in order to keep up all the grandiose avenues. Wasp worked alone, the office more or less resembled a living room, and apart from a failed attempt to create a sort of ficus jungle in the little alcove toward the street, the result was pleasant.
Anna Lynx and Falcon Ècu were shown to a worn couch, where they sat down. Wasp, dressed in a stained but well-ironed suit and a hard-knotted bow tie around his neck, offered them coffee, which they both refused.
“We would like to ask a few questions,” Ècu began, “about a company that you’ve audited. Domaine d’Or Logistics.”
“That rings a bell,” Wasp replied, smiling.
“It’s a company that . . . doesn’t have any business operations,” Falcon said in order to help refresh his memory.
“I have lots of those,” Wasp chuckled contentedly. “You might say it’s somewhat of a specialty for me.”
“Companies without operations?”
“That’s right,” Wasp nodded. “You have no idea how many large companies and organizations there are that, instead of liquidating some small subsidiary, let it lie fallow. Someday perhaps it will be activated again, and until then I take care of the formalities.”
“How many such . . . fallow companies do you take care of?” asked Anna.
“A couple thousand,” Wasp replied. “It varies.”
“A couple thousand?” Anna repeated.
“It sounds like a lot, and it is quite a lot, I guess, but if you’re careful, and I am, it’s not hard.”
“But Nova Park . . . ?” asked Falcon.
“A typical example,” Wasp answered. “Venture capitalists start and close down operations at a furious pace. They let their companies go in rotation.”
“And Domaine d’Or . . . ?” asked Falcon.
Wasp nodded, asking the police officers to remain seated while he disappeared into something that resembled a broom closet by the outside door. After only a few minutes he came back with a binder under his wing.
“Here,” he said. “Domaine d’Or.”
He folded back a half-dried palm leaf, sat down in the armchair, and leafed through the binder, stopped here and there and scrutinized something a little more carefully, but then quickly went forward. This went on for several minutes.
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. Nothing. The most remarkable thing is that the company has existed for so many years.”
“And these payments of payroll taxes and health insurance premiums?”
“There have been employees in the company. Nothing strange about that.”
“But no income?” Falcon pointed out.
“No. Only personnel expenses. That may seem strange, but it’s not unusual. There may be legal reasons for choosing to allocate expenses and income. Later, when you look at the operation organizationally, you bring the various entries together.”
“Did Vulture go in for a lot of this type of shadow games?”
“Vulture? You mean Oswald Vulture, who was killed last Monday?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Vulture wasn’t born yesterday exactly. But he kept to the rules most of the time.”
“And the operation that was run in Domaine d’Or?” asked Anna.
“But Inspector,” Wasp replied in an impatient tone, “that’s just the point. No operation was being run. Here, you can see for yourselves.”
Wasp pushed the binder over to the police officers, who leafed through the formal questionnaires filled out with a typewriter.
“We’ll borrow these,” said Falcon, shutting the binder. “As evidence.”
“That’s fine,” Wasp nodded, getting up. “Although I really wonder what it’s supposed to prove.”
The police officers were on their way out to the street again when Anna couldn’t refrain from slowing down her steps and asking the question that still lingered.
“Excuse me,” she called back. “But why were you surprised when we asked about Vulture? Wasn’t it at his request that you managed Domaine d’Or Logistics?”
“No. No, not at all,” Wasp replied. “True, Nova Park paid my fees, but it wasn’t Vulture who was my contact with respect to Domaine d’Or.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No, not at all,” said Wasp. “It’s all in the binder. The owner of all the shares in the company is a Jasmine Squirrel.”
“Squirrel?” said Falcon. “Is it Squirrel who is behind Domaine d’Or? But what about Vulture?”
“As far as I know he has absolutely nothing to do with this,” Wasp replied.
6.3
There were two interview rooms connected directly to the jail on the bottom floor at rue de Cadix. They were generally called the “north” room and the “south” room, and they were furnished identically. A short table with two chairs on either side, a mirror along the wall—which could be seen through from the other side—and a single lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling, the room’s only illumination. On the table was a small tape recorder to which a microphone, fastened to a small tabletop tripod, was connected. The equipment looked old-fashioned.
They were sitting in the north room. Without knowing why, Anna Lynx preferred the north room. She glanced at Falcon, who was sitting next to her. He was making a few quick notations.
They had picked up Emanuelle Cobra on the way back from questioning Alfredo Wasp. When they came into her office, she had sighed heavily.
“What do you want?”
The feeling that first time they stepped into the massive office had been slightly absurd, the sexy, glistening black secretary misplaced in a modernistic office chair behind a small desk in front of the overwhelming view of Tourquai’s futuristic skyline. Today the magic had disappeared. The situation was different, they knew more than they had known then, and besides, Cobra was apparently exactly what she appeared to be.
“Only a few short questions,” said Falcon.
“But not here, down at the station,” said Lynx.
Now they were sitting in the north room. Falcon was noticeably nervous, aware of the fact that both Buck and Bloodhound were watching from outside. He started, stumbled through the formalities, stated, to the tape recorder, the date and time, who was present, and what it concerned. But when he was about to begin the interview itself, Anna took over.
“We know you’ve answered a number of questions before,” she said. “Forget about that. Now we want you to tell us about Domaine d’Or Logistics.”
“Tell about what?”
“The company paid your health insurance and workmen’s comp. Is that correct?”
“And salary,” said Cobra nonchalantly. “I got a salary, too.”
“Excuse me, but weren’t you paid by Nova Park?” asked Falcon.
“Listen, on that pitiful secretary salary you don’t get far,” Cobra smiled scornfully.
“And to get a
salary from Domaine d’Or required that you performed what services?”
“The way it usually works.”
“Would you like to tell us about these services?”
“I’ve already done that. For your blushing colleague here,” Cobra answered, nodding toward Falcon, who blushed again as if he were programmed.
“I would really appreciate it if you’d tell us again,” said Anna.
“I went with males, most often older males, up to their anonymous but rather luxurious hotel rooms and did what they asked me to,” Cobra replied.
“You were paid by Domaine d’Or to prostitute yourself?” asked Anna.
“Little lady,” Cobra replied, giving Lynx an inexpressibly tired look, “I’ve been at it a little too long to think that sort of thing is hard work. You can call me what you want—”
“And with whom did you negotiate your pay?” said Anna.
Cobra showed interest in the question, but she did not answer immediately.
“What do you mean?”
“The compensation from Domaine d’Or,” said Anna. “How was it decided? Who decided how much you would get paid?”
“Is this still about Oswald?” Cobra asked, turning directly toward Falcon. “Or is it about something else?”
“Answer the question,” said Falcon, looking down at the table.
“Jasmine Squirrel,” said Cobra, meeting Anna Lynx’s gaze. “Jasmine paid me.”
“Jasmine Squirrel?” Anna Lynx repeated, articulating every syllable, so that the substandard tape recorder on the table would not mistake it.
“Yes.”
“Domaine d’Or is an escort service,” Anna stated. “Why does Nova Park pay administrative fees to run an escort service? Why does Nova Park pay Squirrel’s bills?”
“You must be joking,” said Cobra, and she turned toward Falcon again. “If she hasn’t figured it out yet, she probably shouldn’t be a cop. But she’s pretty. Maybe I can arrange a job for you, lady?”
“We’d like to hear you tell us,” said Falcon politely.
He felt that he was forced to take over the interview from Anna. The bosses were watching, and until now he had made a pale impression, he realized that. Now he leaned across the table, the very image of attentiveness.