Corsican Honor

by William Heffernan

  Alex said nothing. They sat and he waited for Antoine to continue.

  “It seems your man met this woman at a party, or he met her somewhere else and went to the party with her.” Antoine shrugged, indicating the sequence was not important. “My men get varying stories about that, depending on who they talk to.” He shrugged again. “Anyway, this party, it was all students who were there, and all of a group who consider themselves poets and philosophers and communists and radicals and revolutionaries. All of that.” Again he shrugged. “The truth is, the only revolt they have in them is in their manners. And if the money ever stopped coming from home, they would all rush out and begin taking advantage of the working classes, just as they have been raised to do all their lives.”

  Alex nodded, trying to hide his impatience. He appreciated the background Antoine was giving him, knew it was necessary. But he wished he’d get to the meat of the story and back to the lesser details later.

  Antoine slipped an arm around Alex’s shoulder, then looked up at the altar, as if hoping to find solace there. “These students,” he continued, making a circular gesture with his hands indicating that no one, even he, could really understand them, “they say this man the woman was with was a terrorist.” He snorted. “Although some are now saying it was really a SDECE* officer posing as a terrorist.”

  “What made them think he was a terrorist?” Alex asked.

  “The woman,” Antoine said. “She kept talking about it, asking him about it.” He shook his head. “If it was true, it’s a wonder her mouth didn’t make him leave a bomb at the party.”

  “If he’d had one, he probably would have,” Alex said. “What description were your men able to get?”

  “The usual. A different one from everyone who saw him. But there is one I trust more than the others. It was from another woman who was somewhat taken by him, although my men say they never spoke.”

  “Just worshiping a killer from afar, I’d guess,” Alex said.

  Antoine nodded. “According to her, he’s slightly above average height—about five-ten, I’d guess—slim, with long blond hair and blue eyes. Handsome, she said. Sounds like he looks very German to me,” Antoine added. There was a derogatory tone in his voice, a carryover from a war he had fought thirty-five years earlier.

  “How was he dressed?”

  “The woman said he could have passed for one of their younger teachers. Very casual. Sports jacket, jeans. About the right age too—thirty to thirty-five.” Antoine shook his head. “My man said she talked about him as though she regretted not having had the chance to fuck him.” He glanced quickly to either side, as though afraid someone might have heard the profanity. “If I had been there, I would have grabbed her by the hair and dragged her down to the morgue to see just what she missed.”

  Alex sighed inwardly. He knew Antoine was going to tell it all in his own way, and only then get to the pertinent information. “What did he do to the woman?” Alex asked, knowing now it had to be discussed first.

  Antoine leaned forward, heavy forearms resting on even heavier thighs, and bowed his head as if he were about to pray. “He cut her throat from ear to ear,” he began. “And right after she had given him pleasure.” He hesitated, as though struggling to find phrasing suitable for church. It amused Alex that his uncle would even try. Antoine shook his head. “Her mouth and throat, they were filled with him.” He stared at the younger man. “You understand what I mean?”

  “I understand,” Alex said.

  “And then he fucked her,” Antoine said, either forgetting to be delicate or abandoning the attempt. “And he did it either as she was dying, or after she was dead.”

  Alex grimaced. “How do they know that?”

  Antoine shook his head, uncertain. “Something about his sperm droppings being on top of the blood instead of underneath it.” He shrugged. “And some other things. Scientific things I don’t understand. But it’s what he did. They’re certain of it.” He shook his head again, forcefully this time. “A disgusting animal!” He looked at the altar again. “A man who doesn’t deserve to live.”

  “We’ll see what we can do about that,” Alex said. “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  Antoine nodded. “A general area. The woman had an unused book of matches in her purse. It was from a cafe on La Canebière. Two of my men went there. She was there yesterday afternoon with some other students, and later they were joined by an older man who had been sitting alone.” Antoine made a face. “She picked him up, and now her throat’s cut. Anyway, the waiters say he matches the description we have of our man. And, if he’s in hiding as you say, I think he’s living in that area.”

  “I do too,” Alex said.

  “We will know soon,” Antoine said. “My men are checking even now. Anyone new—especially someone who looks like a boche—will have French tongues wagging.” He made an alligator-like mouth with his fingers and thumb and began snapping it open and closed. “La Marseillaise. Yap, yap, yap,” he said. “A Corsican who talked like they do would be buried before the sun was down.”

  Antoine sat back, his broad, barrel-like body seeming to swallow the pew. “Anyway, I have all the information for you. The names of the people we talked to, their addresses, all of that. You can have your men talk to them. Perhaps they will learn even more.”

  Alex smiled at the note of gentle accusation in Antoine’s voice. Antoine knew he would do exactly that—have his men double-check the information provided by the Corsicans. And he knew Alex’s men would learn nothing new, perhaps even a great deal less. But it would be done anyway. Alex, they both knew, would not blindly accept the word of gangsters. Even those who worked for men he had known and loved since childhood. It was a fact they both accepted with varying degrees of regret.

  Alex stood. “Will your men continue to look?”

  “For as long as you wish.” Antoine heaved himself up. “You would still prefer this man alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is a shame,” Antoine said. “It would be a pleasure to see him killed.” He shrugged, indicating life could not always be as it should, then circled Alex’s shoulders with one massive arm, and began walking him back up the aisle. “You should pray while you are here,” he said. “A man should always pray.” He received only a nod and a grunt in reply. “And how goes it with Stephanie?” he asked gently.

  Alex glanced at him, then lowered his eyes. He offered a wan smile. “Not well,” he said.

  Antoine leaned forward, his large head and silver mane even more leonine than usual. “Are the problems that serious?” he asked.

  “About as serious as they can get, Uncle.”

  Alex could feel the cavernous cathedral about him, hear his words against the massive, domed ceiling. He could almost see the quiet, the solemnity with the light filtering through the stained glass windows, the flickering of the altar candles. He wasn’t certain why, probably never would be, but once the initial confession was made, the flow came, and kept coming, more easily than he had thought possible.

  Antoine’s eyes were a mixture of anger and pain. His stomach knotted, feeling a fraction of the betrayal he knew Alex now carried. “What would you have done with this man? The one who has been with her?” he asked when Alex had finished.

  “Nothing. He only took what was offered to him. I don’t know who he is, and I doubt we’ve ever met.”

  “He took what was not his to take,” Antoine said.

  Alex looked at the stone floor and smiled weakly. “If he were my friend—if I had given him my trust—then I would agree.” He looked up, the weak smile becoming a painful grimace. “What she gave was hers to give. She had promised it only to me, and I trusted the honor of that promise, relied on the honor of the person who gave it. That’s where the trust was broken.”

  He could tell Antoine did not agree. To him the debt was larger than merely an unfaithful wife. But Alex knew the man would never challenge an expressed belief. To do so would be unworthy of a fr
iendship.

  “So now it’s simply a question of whether I can put this aside and try to go on with her.” His face sagged, and he hated the weakness he felt showing in it. “I still love her very much,” he added, knowing it was only intensifying the weakness; hating that too.

  Antoine steepled his fingers in front of his broad, flat nose. “A man can love a dog even after it bites him,” he said at length. “But he must accept the fact that this dog is capable of biting him again.” He tilted his head to one side and offered a sad smile. “And probably will.”

  Alex could feel his stomach twisting. “So you would just walk away.” He smiled, thinking of what Antoine probably would do. It was another weak smile. “Or something to that effect,” he added.

  Antoine gestured with his hands, trying to find the right words, to express them as inoffensively as possible. “Loyalty,” he began, “at least in the mind of the person who believes he has it, can never be recaptured once it is lost.” He stared at Alex, his eyes sad. “Leaving her will cause you pain. But that pain will go away in time. The pain of her unfaithfulness will never go away. But at least you won’t have to look it in the eye and remember it each day.” He shrugged. “We Corsicans say that vengeance soothes pain. I believe this is true. But I don’t know for sure, because I’ve never tried without it.”

  “Vengeance is not something I want,” Alex said.

  Antoine nodded. “That is your choice. I’m an old man, and you are my adopted nephew, and I love you and will always love you. But you are still very young. And one of the few things I have learned in life is that almost anything can be replaced. Anything except honor and self-respect.” He encircled Alex’s shoulders again and continued back toward the door of the cathedral.

  “Now we will help you find this Ludwig, this other pig of a man. And then, when you are finished with him, I hope you let me cut his throat.”

  They stopped at the door, the quiet solemnity of the cathedral behind them, and Alex turned to the older man. “Thank you, Uncle,” he said.

  Antoine watched Alex step through the door, and thought how he must now go and tell his brother what he had learned. The thought of even speaking the words offended him.

  The cunt, he thought. He wished Alex would go home and cut her heart out.

  The morgue attendant pulled back the sheet that covered the woman’s body and exposed the pale gray flesh. The Sûreté inspector who had accompanied Alex turned his head away, his long, broad nose wrinkling with distaste. He was a liaison officer, not an investigator, and human butchery was not part of his daily diet. Alex, like the morgue attendant, seemed oblivious to what lay before them. Unlike the French policeman, he had been told what to expect. The woman Ludwig had known only as Justine was no longer beautiful. Aside from the cranial and abdominal wounds of the autopsy, the cut in her throat, encrusted now with dried blood and puckered tissue, yawned up at them like a second, larger mouth. He looked past the wound, concentrating on her face. Her eyes were wide and staring, and had the irises not already faded and filmed over, he was certain he would see a look of horrified surprise imprinted there. Her mouth was slightly parted, the tips of her teeth showing through, and he knew it had been thoroughly swabbed, forced to surrender its sexual secrets. He looked away. But, of course, there were no secrets when one’s death became the interest of strangers. Not even those that deserved to remain private. He looked back at the slack gray face. The nose, obviously once straight and slender, now seemed to have a faint curve to it. He reached out, allowing one finger to lightly trace it.

  “You have a good eye,” a voice behind him said in French. “The nose was broken. We believe when she fell. It often happens that way. The victim hits a table or chair on the way down. But it doesn’t appear to be from a blow administered by someone else. But, of course, we could be wrong.”

  Alex turned to meet the round, smiling countenance of Gaston LeBrec, the city’s chief medical examiner, a man he had dealt with numerous times in the past. LeBrec had the reputation of being something of a fool, and definitely a political hack. He was a distant relative of some sort to the city’s mayor, a man who had been in office for twenty-seven years and had earned an unequaled reputation for political patronage. But Alex had found him to be highly competent, with a well-concealed but sharp, analytical mind. Now, oblivious to the corpse spread out before him, he was happily chewing on a sausage sandwich, giving full credence to his detractors.

  “Good morning, Gaston,” Alex said.

  LeBrec inclined his head toward the body. “This is something involving one of your spies or terrorists?” he asked.

  “A terrorist, we think,” Alex said.

  “She didn’t know what she was dealing with?” LeBrec asked,

  “We think she did. Or at least suspected.”

  LeBrec shook his head. “The snake charmer who believes he cannot be bitten,” he said.

  LeBrec turned and began to waddle away. “Come to my office,” he said. “We will go over my findings in comfort.”

  Alex followed him down a long tiled hall, the Sûreté inspector trailing behind. LeBrec was short and fat, more round than pear-shaped, and his body seemed to roll rather than walk. He had short, nearly white hair with a round bald spot at the back of his head, almost identical to those of certain monks, and a cherubic face dominated by thick, wide lips.

  When they reached his large office, he seated himself behind an oversized desk littered with individual papers and bound reports. A wide bookcase behind the desk was interspersed with medical volumes and bottles containing various human viscera floating in alcohol, and a human skull served as a paperweight for another sheaf of papers crammed into one corner.

  “A vile business,” he began, placing his sandwich on one corner of the desk. “The killer had expended himself in her mouth, and then killed her almost immediately afterward.”

  “How do you know that?” Alex asked.

  “Because the semen was still there in quantity. There had been no time for swallowing or spitting out. And the cutting was so deep, there could be none afterward.” He shook his head. “This must have aroused him, because he entered her again, undoubtedly as she was dying.” He tightened his shoulders, fighting off a shiver. “None of that flow traveled into the ovarian canal. She was already dead before it could happen, and the traces of semen that fell onto her body as he exited lay atop the blood that had run down her body.” He shook his head again. “He must have been covered in her blood.”

  Alex nodded. “The police forensic report indicated he took a shower.”

  LeBrec picked up his sandwich, took a large bite, and talked around it while he continued. “We know his blood type. B negative. Unusual, rare even. And he has blond pubic hair. A bite mark on her shoulder shows he has wide, even teeth. The bite was postmortem, by the way. Probably administered while he was taking her that last time. The man belongs in a cage.”

  The Sûreté inspector, whose name was Auguste Miro, gave an involuntary grunt which seemed to embarrass him. He was young, no more than mid-twenties, Alex guessed, and in some ways he reminded him of his own new man, Blount.

  LeBrec smiled at the inspector. “The act of love, my friend. It is not always beautiful, eh?”

  The younger man ignored him, turning instead to Alex. “Why would he do this?” he asked.

  “We can only guess,” Alex said. “No one knows much about him, other than what he leaves behind. And that almost always involves killing. The best guess is that she said something, or he did, that made him think he’d been compromised. Based on his history, that’s usually enough to make him kill.”

  “But to have her this way first and then to kill her.” Miro shook his head. “The man must think he’s untouchable. He must believe he can do anything and escape capture.”

  Alex glanced at LeBrec and raised an eyebrow. Whether Miro had intended it or not, he had placed his finger on the one common denominator of everyone who wantonly killed. Perhaps the Sûreté should
get him out of public relations and into the field.

  LeBrec smiled. “Our killer,” he said, “has the tragic flaw of all psychopaths, and their cousin sociopaths. He takes himself too seriously.” He stretched his round body, dismissing his own observation, then turned back to Alex. “Would you like my views as an amateur psychiatrist?”

  Alex smiled. “You took courses in it in medical school, didn’t you?”

  “But, of course.”

  “Then go ahead. You’re the closest thing to an expert I have.”

  LeBrec leaned forward and raised a lecturing finger. “I believe what he did excited him to such an extent that he will seek to be with another woman soon.” He wagged the finger, “Not necessarily to kill her.” He glanced at Miro and gave him an approving nod. “But to show he can do this.”

  “Show whom?” Alex asked.

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” LeBrec said. “Show no one. The fact that he does this shows everyone, don’t you see?”

  Alex handed the list across his desk. Stan Kolshak took it and grunted.

  “Our Corsican friends have done a lot of spade work on this, and they’re usually pretty good,” Alex said.

  “They’re usually very good,” Kolshak corrected. He held the list in one meaty hand. “How do you want the men divided up?” he asked.

  “However you think best. You keep Blount with you. Don’t let him get too enthusiastic. Maybe he should concentrate on the cafes around La Canebière. He’ll pass more easily as a student.”

  Kolshak ran a hand over his balding head, then pulled on his oversized nose. “He is enthusiastic,” he said, restraining a smile. “You want everybody armed?”

  “To the teeth,” Alex said. “Just be quiet about it. We don’t want to give our French friends any palpitations.”

  Kolshak flexed his heavy shoulders. “I hope we get this bastard. I saw the photos of his handiwork.”

  Alex knew Kolshak had two daughters in college back in the States, both about the same age as the woman Ludwig had butchered. “I do too,” he said. “I just don’t want to lose anyone in the process. Let’s just do this quickly and quietly, and let’s use the Corsicans wherever we can. They’re better at this than we are.”