We saw Marthe again. After thirty liters of white wine, she agreed to take us to the person in charge of her residence who, very kindly, began an inquiry among similar institutions. Nothing. There was no one in Paris or the surrounding area by the name of Marcel Girard living in a nursing home, senior housing, or the like. No one with an extended stay in a hospital either.
All this took us about two weeks. Two weeks during which we kept going forward despite the tiny spark of hope getting hit with more bad news, bad but not definitive. Perhaps he was now homeless, living in one of those camper tents that keep popping up on the banks of the Seine and the Saint-Martin canal.
Two weeks for our hearts to sink deeper and deeper, avoiding the thought of the old runner having passed away.
But a village is always a village, even inside a big city, even buried inside the City of Lights, that unavoidable city which people from all over the world come to admire, their eyes sparkling and smiles frozen on their faces by the blinking Eiffel Tower. In a village everyone knows everything about everything and the shutters are never closed. Bernard, the waiter at the Mousquetaires on the corner of rue Beautreillis, serves beer to all the fans of The Doors who come ogling the banal façade of the building where Jim Morrison kicked the bucket. He’s been hitting on the lady mail carrier who told him that the headquarters of the DAL — a leftist group that focuses on housing issues and has been battling the real estate sharks for years — is right near rue des Francs Bourgeois.
I got the job. They appointed me to sniff around in that direction. The lefties might know something about the number 12 rue Saint-Gilles scheme.
The activist was practically a grandma. Not the leader but a key person. Very interested in our story, even over the phone. I set up a meeting with her at Ma Bourgogne. As she settled down in the back of the room, slipping in behind the white tablecloths, she grew wide-eyed; no doubt the first time she’d ever dared enter this place reserved for the platinum card holders.
Full of fun, bubbly. A Pasionaria. Who was probably getting revenge for something, maybe her previous life. The DAL knew — those were her words — the monstrous, disgusting scandal of number 12 inside out. They had opposed it, tried everything, even a surprise occupation, quickly repelled by the cops, but nothing had done any good, the press had barely mentioned the scandal, a clear reflection of the new, cynical harshness of the ruling class. The white-collar gangsters of real estate capitalism were acting somewhat legally, but it was a legality that was infinitely variable, for they were protected by the government. This explained why the former residents, even though they knew they were being ripped off, had all, or almost all, accepted the skimpy bit of money. So they could leave as quickly as possible.
And one of the main reasons, according to this pugnacious old lady, was that the negotiating team was led by a retired police chief named Henri Portant, a sly and devious fellow, using a mix of kindness, threats, understanding, and harshness as he must have used throughout his career. For a fellow who’d spent thirty years getting the toughest of the tough to talk, dealing with scared old people with no support was a godsend.
She herself had met him once, only once, the day when the DAL had been alerted that he would turn up with his assessors to try and persuade the tenants in the back courtyard of number 12. She remembered him as a guy who breathed calm strength, very calm, incredibly calm, like someone with no scruples whatsoever, absolutely no reservations, doing a job that undoubtedly paid him twice as much as what he was offering his victims.
The rebellious grandma asked us to let her know if we were able to dig up anything. The story of number 12 was sticking in their throats. The DAL had legal resources. Any proof of embezzlement could be taken very far, no reason to give up. It’s not because the enemy wins every battle that the war is lost.
Our meeting at the Jean-Bart on the following Saturday was morose. We laid it all out. Bernard was the first to speak.
“It’s very simple. Zatopek doesn’t want to leave. He has no family. They see him as a crazy man and no one else at number 12 gives a shit.”
“Except Marthe.”
“But what can that old hag do? No, Zatopek doesn’t count. And that old wreck is certainly not the one who’s going to throw a monkey wrench into the system or even slow it down.”
“Time is money.”
“And who’s on the other side? Tough guys, handsomely paid to throw everyone out.”
“With a former cop in command.”
“We should find out more about this guy.”
“We already have. The quiet, kind Inspector Maigret fond-of-his-veal-stew type is gone.”
“Right. Cowboys now, that’s what they are...”
“So? Come on! What’re you thinking?”
“The old guy, he must have left in a truck, buried under rubble. Or he fell inside the foundation and they poured concrete on him. Who would know?”
Bernard had said it. He’d said what everyone was thinking. Once it had been said it seemed true. It was no longer a foolish thought. It became a plausible reality. Awfully plausible. An anonymous grave.
And now what? What were we supposed to do with this bitch of a quasi-certainty?
“We need to check it out.”
“Check what out?”
“Portant. The cop. We need to—”
“Torture him? So he’ll spill the beans? How do you expect to do that?”
“No. Meet with him. To find out more.”
“He’s a cop. We’re not cut out for that. Look at us: a bunch of bored waiters, nice guys crying over a poor old madman, not even a customer. The Cartier-Bresson type...”
“Still, we managed to dig up some shit.”
“Okay. But what are we up against, poor forty-year-old slobs with little potbellies that we are? The pigs. City Hall. Plenty of powerful guys whose arms are so long they could slap us from thirty kilometers away.”
We looked at each other. We knew Maurice was right. From start to finish. But we also knew that being right wasn’t good enough. That’s the way it was.
“It won’t cost us anything to find out a little more,” I said slowly.
We wasted no time. It was so obvious. The Internet. The phone book. There were several Portants. But only one Henri. He lived at 22 rue de l’Insurrection in Vernon-sur-Eure. I called him, claiming to be an employee of the CNAV Pension Fund. I talked about a file issued by the police department that was confusing me because the addressee was already retired.
He fell for it. He began to yell. There’s the administration for you! He wasn’t surprised, it’s a mess over there! He was yelling so much that when he asked for the file number so he could give them all hell, I hung up.
So now we knew where he lived.
So what?
So nothing.
Except that two days later Samir got a call from the lady at the Railroad Pension Fund. Marcel Girard had just reappeared. He had asked that his small pension be sent to his new address, 22 rue de l’Insurrection in Vernon-sur-Eure.
Saturday.
We were all there.
With the same findings, worthy of a detective story but one that’s hard to finish.
“On top of wasting him he’s now grabbing his money.”
“He buried Zatopek in the garden of his stupid house, for all we know.”
“Sounds like the Landru case. Or Petiot. That kind of shit isn’t new.”
And then we looked carefully at each other. Testing each other. Silently. For a long time. The time it took for two more glasses of kir. In an hour I’d have to be back at work at the Place des Vosges. To serve all those rich fucks who look at you as if you’re ectoplasm. An ectoplasm who never works fast enough. They call you by snapping their fingers. They bellow from beneath the archway: “Garçon!”