by Morris West
“It’s a service I hesitate to ask.”
“Please, Mr. Strassberger, we have a wide variety of clients, with a wide variety of needs!”
“My brother-in-law, Larry Lucas, has disappeared. His family and his colleagues are all concerned for his health and safety. My father and my sister have asked me to trace him if I can. I ask whether you, who served him over a period of many months, can give me any information about his habits, his associations, his places of resort during his stay in Paris.”
Delaunay’s ruddy cherub face expressed concern and regret. His limpid eyes were wary.
“You have, of course, informed the police?” he asked blandly.
“We have not. No crime is involved. Mr. Lucas is as free to come and go as you are; but there is an element of personal and family tragedy. His physician describes him as in a state of fugue—a brilliant man in a manic flight from reality. That state will inevitably shift to deep depression, in which suicide is a constant possibility.”
He picked up a letter opener from his desk and began toying with it like a dagger, testing its point against the ball of his thumb.
“I have a real problem with this,” he said gently. “I serve thousands of people in a year. All of them rely in some fashion on my professional discretion. Mr. Lucas has no less right to his own privacy than anyone else.”
“I understand.”
“I need time to reflect on this and check back through my records. There may, of course, be nothing to tell you.”
“Of course; but I’m sure you understand the urgency of the matter. A man’s life may be at stake here.”
“All the more reason to make careful inquiries first. Yes? I’ll be in touch with you before nine tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you. This envelope contains a small expression of my gratitude.”
“You are very kind. Mr. Lucas also was very kind. He merits any service I can offer. Until tomorrow, then!”
He ushered me out with ceremony, the perfect servant attending the distinguished client. I was so impressed that I forgot to ask him to have Larry Lucas’s clothes and effects taken out of storage and delivered to my room. No matter. I still had a busy afternoon ahead of me. Morning would be soon enough.
Before I left the hotel, I called my father in New York. I told him of my meetings with Vianney and with the concierge and how I proposed to address myself to the staff. He objected strongly: The staff were servants of the corporation; they were directed, they didn’t dictate. I disagreed. An unhappy staff was a threat. He had to leave the job to me. He bristled for a moment and then gave me a grudging assent.
“Do what you want; but make it clear that you will not be manipulated. Vianney is a good man but he has a stiff neck and a certain vanity. As to the concierge fellow, I do not wish you to demean yourself by these inquiries. Now that the word is out, you might consider employing a private investigator; I am sure the Corsec people can offer you someone suitable.”
I didn’t tell him that I had certain doubts about the Corsec people. I promised to think about his suggestion and act upon it when the time seemed right. Then—true to form, God bless the man!—he suggested I might take the opportunity to make myself familiar with the workings of the Paris office. He didn’t want, of course, to preempt any decision I might later make, but it was a good opportunity to extend my experience. There was a protest on the tip of my tongue but I swallowed it.
“First things first, Father,” I told him. “I’m trying to cover a lot of ground in a short time. Besides, the last thing they need is a junior Strassberger trampling through their melon patch.”
Once again, he gave me a grudging agreement. Once again, I felt a pang of guilt. His need for support was very great. My need for personal liberty was great too. I began to wonder whether Larry’s flight might not have been prompted by the need for liberty rather than by illness. The thought nagged at me through the jolting taxi ride from the hotel to the offices of Strassberger et Cie. It inserted itself into the litany of names and titles which Vianney recited as he introduced me to the staff and which were instantly erased from my unstable memory. It lingered like an uneasy counterpoint to the words I spoke to the small assembly.
“I beg you not to be offended by the sudden and unexplained invasion of the Corsec audit team. My father sends his apologies, to which I add mine. I trust you will understand that his prime concern was to protect the good name of the company and everyone connected with it. You didn’t like the Corsec style. I didn’t like it much myself. However, they have signed a clean bill of health, which puts you all in line for a healthy bonus on the recent Suez deal.
“That’s the good news. The bad news is that Larry Lucas has disappeared. He is a sick man. The symptoms of his illness include wild risk-taking and a detachment from the norms of daily conduct, followed usually by a plunge into deep depression where the danger of suicide is always present.
“I have to find him and try to persuade him back to the care of his physician and to treatments which can help him, as they have helped in the past. I don’t know where he is. He could be in Patagonia or Tokyo. All I have to work on is one fact: He was here in Paris long enough to prepare for his flight, to supply himself with documents, to make friends or contacts on a number of levels in a very mixed society. For the rest, I’m working by guess and by God. All of you had some association with him. Some of you obviously were closer to him than others. He may, at some moment, have offered you a confidence about his attitudes, plans, or tastes. Please don’t withhold it and please don’t delay in coming forward. Understand that time is against Larry and against me.
“Finally, let me emphasize: There are no crimes involved here. We are concerned with one man under threat from himself. At this moment I feel very inadequate and very afraid. Larry Lucas has two small children. He is part of my family. Please, help us, if you can. I’ll be available here or at Le Diplomate.”
As I walked from the room with Vianney I felt strangely shaken. For the first time in my life I understood what it meant to be totally dependent on the goodwill of strangers. At that moment they were indeed strangers, their faces blank, their eyes averted in embarrassment, their emotions masked. When I sat down at Larry’s desk, my face was clammy and my hands were trembling. Vianney opened a cabinet, brought out a bottle of whiskey, and poured me a generous dose.
“That wasn’t easy, but you did well. You cleared the air for me. You touched them with your appeal for help. Now you can only wait.”
“Thanks for preparing them. Thanks for the drink.”
“The least I could do. I have another piece of news for you.”
“Good or bad?”
“Good, I think. Delaunay, the concierge, called me from Le Diplomate.”
“The hell he did!”
“I didn’t know you were going to talk to him, otherwise I could have warned you. He’s a client of ours, a reasonably substantial client. He was checking up on you and, incidentally, on the stability of his banker! He told me you were quizzing him about Larry’s off-duty habits.”
“And you told him—?”
“He could trust you and believe you.”
“Thank you again.”
I raised the glass in a silent toast and took a long, grateful swallow. Delaunay’s call was a small but significant incident. It reminded me that, like Larry himself, I was now the stranger, blundering around in territories with whose customs and relationships I was totally unfamiliar. I had to depend on spontaneous understanding and spontaneous kindness. I had to depend also on my own tact and instincts, in both of which, like my father, I lacked a certain delicacy of perception.
“I’ll see you before I go home,” Vianney told me quietly. “Best I leave the approaches to you open and clear.”
His hand was already on the doorknob when I stayed him.
“This was Larry’s office?”
“Yes.”
“Has anything been changed or taken away since he left Paris?”
“You’re a bastard, Vianney—but I could get to like you.”
“Take your time,” said Marc Antoine Vianney. “There’s a proverb I seem to remember about making love to a porcupine. One has to be slow and careful!”
He walked out, closing the door behind him. The sudden silence in a strange room troubled me. Caught in a moment of poignant melancholy, I was aware of the picture I should present, slumped behind a desk with a glass of liquor in my hands. I had again the curious sensation of being in another man’s skin and contemplating myself through a glass screen. My father’s warning hovered at the fringes of memory like a haunting refrain. You’re a huntsman now, trying to raise a fox. Just be warned: You may raise a wolf instead.
I tossed off the lees of the drink and began to move about the room, opening drawers and cabinets, flipping through the desk diary, as if the simple contact might provide a psychic link to Larry himself. Once again I found myself contemplating what I was doing and telling myself at the same time that it was a pointless and foolish exercise.
A knock at the door jolted me back to reality. When I opened it I was confronted by a young woman I had seen in the front row of my audience. At first glance, she looked to be in her late twenties, a perfect model of the new-age Gallic woman: trim, tailored in black with a white lace jabot, hair cut pageboy style, and olive skin molded over a classic bone structure. Her manner was relaxed.
“You’ve probably forgotten all our names. I’m Claudine Parmentier. Mr. Vianney has appointed me to assist you during your stay. If you’d prefer someone else, don’t be afraid to say so.”
“On the contrary, you’re probably the person I need most at this moment. Please come in. Sit down and let’s talk.”
She sat. She waited.
“Do you prefer that we speak French or English?”
She gave me a shrug and the hint of a smile.
“The choice is yours, Mr. Strassberger. I’m comfortable with either.”
“English, then. You understand all our concerns about Larry Lucas?”
“You expressed them very clearly.”
“So, after working with him all these months, what can you tell me about him?”
“He was brilliant at his job. I admired that. He drove himself like a racing car. He drove us too. One sensed always a certain…” —she hesitated over the phrase—“a certain fragility, which fits your description of his illness.”
“Did he ever discuss his illness with you?”
“Not immediately. At first—how shall I say it?—he tried to preempt friction. It was as if he wanted to apologize in advance for any sharpness or anger. He asked me several times to explain him and his requirements to other staff. ‘Put out the fenders so we don’t scrape the paint.’ I would try to do that. You understand that he had someone other than myself for routine secretarial duties.”
“What sort of work did he demand of you?”
“I translated for him at conferences. His French was adequate but he tired quickly in conversation. He insisted that I check all his correspondence and all documents that came back from our legal department. He wanted to understand every nuance. It was exhausting work but, again, I admired his stubborn attention.”
“Did you have any relationship outside the office?”
“When he gave business dinners he would ask me to act as hostess. At cocktail parties I was his escort and, as I told you, his interpreter.”
“You were comfortable with that?”
“Most of the time, yes.”
“Most of the time?”
“Occasionally Larry would want to play on, go nightclubbing with colleagues, that sort of thing. I did it once. After that I declined.”
“It was an unpleasant experience?’
“No, a boring one. Most businessmen at play are boring anyway. I explained to Larry that I live with my lover. She is a senior official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We both have busy careers. We try to reserve as much time as we can for our private lives.”
“How did Larry react?”
“Much as you are reacting, Mr. Strassberger. He was obviously surprised. He assured me he understood perfectly—and he made no more demands.”
“And how did that affect your working relationship?”
“It removed a barrier. It gave us the chance to be friends. He asked me to bring Anne-Louise to dinner with him. The encounter was a success. We invited him to our apartment. We found we could be comfortable together. We began to exchange confidences. Larry talked about his illness and the sense of alienation it produced. He asked us how we coped with what he called our ‘difference.’ Anne-Louise didn’t like the word. She gave him a fairly cryptic answer: ‘On s’arrange…’ He accepted it with a smile; but he had the wit to turn the phrase about: ‘It’s simple to make an arrangement: one has very little control over a derangement.’ Anne-Louise said there was a warning in that for all of us: we should not make ourselves too vulnerable to the derangements of other lives. She scored that point; but afterward there was always a certain caution in his friendship with her.”
“But not with you?”
“No. Anne-Louise is inclined to be jealous. I am less dependent than she. I have had other lovers, not all of them women.”
“And you told Larry that?”
“Of course, but he had already guessed. With him you didn’t have to spell the words. What he found hardest to accept was himself, but he had much pride and on his bad days he tried hard to mask his depression.”
“And you? How much did you understand of his condition?”
“Not nearly as much as I do now. I regret that. I might have been able to reduce some of the pressures.”
“Did he ever ask for help with his personal problems?”
“I think he was trying to ask…” For the first time she faltered over her answer. “One day, in a quiet moment, he asked me how Anne-Louise and I ran our lives before we decided to settle down together. I had to explain about the Sapphic sisterhood, about lesbian clubs, certain resorts where we could be ourselves. Anne-Louise has always been reticent about that part of our experience. She calls it the auction ring and she has painful memories of it. It doesn’t bother me in the same way, though I’m glad I don’t have to depend on it anymore. Larry’s comment touched me deeply: ‘Like you, I’ve arrived at love. I give it and I get it in my marriage, but I’ve got to find someplace where I can close the door on my doppelgänger.’”
The words were like cold water dashed in my face. I was suddenly at a loss for words.
“It shocked me too, when I heard it first,” Claudine Parmentier said. “I asked him to explain it to me. He turned it into a black joke. When I went home that night I looked up the word. It refers originally to the ‘double,’ the image of a person which is said to present itself just before or just after death…So, when you spoke today of the possibility of Larry’s suicide, I felt I had to tell you…”
Once again I had to prompt her.
“Tell me what?”
“Larry did come back to Paris from New York.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“I’m sure.”
“When?”
“Three days ago. He called me from Orly and asked me to pick up the clothes he had left at the hotel and take them back to my apartment.”
“Why didn’t he pick them up himself?”
“He said he didn’t want anyone else to know he was in Paris. He came to the apartment later that night. He stayed only long enough to say good-bye and thank us for our friendship. Then he left.”
“How was he traveling?”
“He arrived in a black Peugeot. The driver was a woman.”
“Did he tell you what brought him back, where he was going?”
�
��I asked. He said he was going on a long vacation—and this time even the doppelgänger wouldn’t find him. He kissed me good-bye and went out loaded with hotel hanging bags and a cardboard box full of clean laundry. The woman got out of the car to help him stow the stuff in the trunk. Then they drove off.”
“Did you get the number of the car?”
“No. The thought didn’t enter my head.”
“The woman?”
“I wondered who she was. I admit I was piqued that Larry hadn’t taken me into his confidence. But then, why should he? We were office friends, not lovers. I suppose what upset me more was that Anne-Louise underlined the incident in red ink. We quarreled about it…Now I’ll have my own small victory. One needs those from time to time in any partnership, yes?”
“I guess so.”
“Obviously you’re not married.”
“Does it show?”
“In this place, the history of the Strassberger family is an open book, much discussed, variously interpreted by senior staff.”
At that moment, the telephone rang. I asked Claudine to answer it. After a brief dialogue she passed the instrument to me.
“Your father, calling from New York. I’ll wait in my office.”
Then she was gone and my father was demanding to know what had happened in the last two hours. I was annoyed and told him so.
“You’ve broken into my first important interview.”
“I apologize. There’s something I felt you should know. The Corsec people called. They were responding to your proposal about extending their inquiries on a handshake arrangement with a contingent fee.”
“And?”
“They want us to increase our offer to half a million, plus operational expenses—and an indemnity against any suits for breach of privacy or trespass in the U.S. or in Europe.”
“Tell ’em to go to hell! And tell Andrescu their current contract is in jeopardy because of their crass handling of the Paris assignment.”
I gave him a short account of my meeting with the staff and my unfinished interview with Claudine Parmentier. He was skeptical as always.
“You’ll check her story, of course. She could be colluding with Larry.”