The truck driver poked René’s shoulder. “How do you know my name?”
“It’s stitched on your jacket lapel. And I’ll know where you live, your hobbies, and your bank balance in an hour or so.”
“That’s harassment,” the truck driver said. His eyes darkened. “What kind of freak are you?” He raised his fist and took a swipe at René.
René jumped back into a puddle and slipped. Pain shot up to his knee. Even though he was a black belt, with his leg pinned behind him at this angle no kick could save him. He clutched the bumper, made himself get up. He tried to will down his fear. A fight in the rain on the shoulder of the wet highway—no way could he win with his leg already throbbing in pain. Right now he couldn’t afford an injury: the Fontainebleau contract, Stella. . . .
He darted a look at the truck’s windshield and saw pictures of children hanging from the visor. Since childhood he’d had to learn how to deal with bullies. Now he fought back the only other way he knew.
“Alphonse, I’ll find out your children’s names, their school, the teachers you have parent conferences with,” he said. “Computers, Alphonse, I work with computers and it’s all there, if you know where to find it.”
For the first time the driver looked unsure. Cars passing them in the next lane rolled down their windows. “A giant and the petit making a big jam,” someone laughed. A siren wailed from the other side of the road, red lights from a police car reflecting in the puddles as it slowed down.
The truck driver hesitated. “Hey, let’s talk this over. No need to get them involved.”
René knew any trucker involved in an accident lost his job. Zero tolerance.
“So, Alphonse, I waited six weeks for this customized bumper. You want to hand over the eighteen hundred francs that I paid for it and call it quits?”
“What do you mean?” Alphonse’s eyes narrowed at the mention of money. Scratch the surface and no doubt he was just one generation removed from the land belonging to a frugal farm household.
“Make it nineteen hundred, so it ships faster. Cash.” René pulled out his dead cell phone. “Or I’ll make a report.”
The truck driver reached under his rain slicker, pulled out a wad of francs. “That’s all I have.”
“Not enough, Alphonse,” René said, thumbing the wet bills.
“I’ll check what I have in the truck.”
René climbed back into his car with fifteen hundred francs in cash and four hundred francs’ worth of ticket de resto restaurant coupons. Not bad; he’d eat out more often.
He took off his wet shoes and blasted the heater and defroster. At least he hadn’t had to resort to a punch to Alphonse’s middle. As if he could have managed it with his throbbing leg.
He tried his cell phone again. Still no reception. He’d canceled drinks twice this week on Magali, his sometime girlfriend and clubbing companion. He didn’t think she’d understand why he’d rather change a diaper than go to a rave. He couldn’t understand it himself.
Traffic moved, then halted. He turned off the radio and, to keep his mind off the pain in his legs, switched on the alphanumeric police scanner under the dashboard. A birthday gift from Aimée, only installed last weekend. He hadn’t yet had time to crack the scrambled frequencies used for high alerts and terrorist attacks. So far, all he could decipher was the coded flic lingo on the unscrambled channel. They all watched American télé and liked to throw in veiled Columbostyle references. Or what they figured were Columbo style.
Horns blared behind him. A big space had opened up between him and the car ahead. He brightened up when he saw the cars on the off-ramp moving.
“ . . . bleeder . . . units in the area, respond 41 Quai d’Anjou . . . refresh that sir, victim . . .” came from the police scanner.
René let in the clutch, shifted into first.
“ . . . scene secured . . . awaiting the Big E.”
The medical examiner, of course. He leaned over to turn up the volume.
“ID intact . . . Édouard Vavin, 32 rue Rocher in the ninth . . .”
Vavin . . . could it be their Vavin who lived in the now-gentrified old Jewish district near the Freemasons lodge?
“ . . . work address, according to ID, 6 rue des Chantiers . . .”
René’s clutch ground, and the car jerked and stalled. Aimée had met Vavin there. That was Regnault’s office address.
Wednesday Early Evening
“BONJOUR, ALLÔ?” AIMÉE said, stamping her feet inside the doorway. She shut the door to the secondhand shop, feeling as if she’d been ridden hard and put away wet. Sodden feathers stuck to her black dress and glitter dust sprinkled her damp red high-tops.
This had to be the place Morbier had mentioned. She’d spied it from across the street. Vavin’s keys jingled in her pocket. She pulled out her phone and dialed Regnault’s number. A message told her that the offices had closed for the day. So she might have some time. She hoped so.
She’d dry off and question the shopkeeper until the flics left and she could grab a taxi to Regnault’s.
In the dim shop, she made out a hand-lettered sign: ESTATES PURCHASED AND CONSIGNMENTS WELCOMED—JEAN CAPLAN, PROPRIETOR. An old man was sorting through the contents of a cardboard box. Piles of yellowed newspapers tied in bundles with rotting twine, shelves of dust-covered salt shakers and the odd marble bust, old colored-glass liquor bottles, and a warped eighteenth-century desk. A pewter-tinged suit of armor stood in the corner, a collection of swords mounted on the wall behind it. A mixture of junk and treasure if one was to sift through it, she thought.
“Monsieur Caplan?”
“I’m closed, Mademoiselle,” the man said. His voice was curiously high pitched for someone his age. White hair curled over his shoulders. A half-full glass of red wine sat on a small table next to an uncorked decanter. “Forgot to put the sign up. Come back tomorrow.”
She recalled Morbier’s conversation.
“I’d like to ask you something, Monsieur,” she said, walking toward him and wishing he’d turn on the sagging chandelier. The gaslight fixtures and ocher-patinaed walls looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned since the last century. A framed Honoré Daumier print of a laundress with her child on the Quai d’Anjou steps met her eyes.
“What’s that . . . alors, Mademoiselle, I’m busy right now,” he said turning around. “I’ve got this consignment to sort.”
To sort and leave in the dust. She wondered how he did business.
“I’ll make it quick.” She summoned a smile. Sirens sounded outside on the street. She couldn’t go out there yet.
He set down a packet of crumbling violet envelopes addressed in faded ink to “Commandant Sillot, Arsenal.” Old love letters. Amazing the things people find in their attics.”
Great-granny’s hots for a regimental officer didn’t interest her.
“In your conversation with Commissaire Morbier, you mentioned . . .”
“Who?”
“You reported to the Commissariat that an old clochard—” His eyes flashed. “Her name is Hélène. I spoke with a young flic who treated me like a senile fool. Whether or not I am, I pay their salaries with my taxes and I demand to be treated with courtesy.”
He took a swig of wine. She needed him to keep calm so he would recount the information that he’d reported.