“I saw nothing.” She looked over her shoulder at him, and her tone softened. “I am old, monsieur, old and tired. And my memory is as bad as my eyesight, probably worse. I am sorry.”
“Even an old woman would have seen that Max was kidnapped,” Hugo urged. “Please, I need you to tell me what you saw.”
All he got was a sad smile.
“D'accord, I understand,” he said, softening his tone. “I'm Hugo Marston, by the way. What's your name?” Her eyes narrowed again. For some reason she was afraid. Hugo reached into his pocket and pulled out his credentials, and the shiny State Department badge seemed to reassure her.
“I thought perhaps you…” She pulled a glove off and offered a cracked hand, her grip surprisingly strong. “I am Francoise Benoit.”
“Is there something going on with les bouquinistes, Madame Benoit?”
She looked up and down the street, but their only company was a family of frosted leaves that scuttled along the sidewalk, propelled by the wind. “I mind my own business. You might want to do the same.”
“Max was my friend, which means his disappearance is my business.”
“Your friend.” She said it quietly, as if she finally believed it. She straightened and turned to him, glancing up and down the quai again. “It's supposed to be confidential, but we have been offered money for our stalls.”
“Who has? All the bouquinistes?”
“Oui.”
“By whom?”
“I don't know. Not exactly.” She went back to placing books on the metal shelves, talking to him with twitches of the head and sidelong glances down the street. “About a month ago Bruno Gravois, the head of the SBP, called a meeting of all members. Most of us were there. Gravois told us that the Chambre de Commerce et Industrie in Paris, along with the Office du Tourisme, wanted to give the Seine un ravalement.” A facelift. “You know how it is, Monsieur Marston. A year ago we got a new government, which means we got a new crop of bureaucrats with bright ideas. Monsieur Gravois said we would get severance packages for signing over our stalls to him.”
“And what was he going to do with them?”
“He said he was working with the Chambre and the Office du Tourisme to update them and put in new bouquinistes.”
“‘He said,'” Hugo repeated. “You don't believe him.”
Her laugh was more of a cackle and her breath hit him from fully six feet away. The mint she was sucking did little to hide the distinctive, sweet tang of alcohol. “Did you see that weasel Chabot? If that's his idea of attracting tourists, then Paris might as well fall into the Seine and float away. The man doesn't know which side of a postcard to write on, let alone anything about books.” She looked up and down the sidewalk again. “I don't know what is happening, monsieur, but I know it's not being done for the good of Paris.”
“But they can't force you out, can they?”
“No?” She snorted.
“If you're frightened and think they'll force you out, why not take the severance?”
She cackled again and reached under a folding wooden chair. She pulled an almost-empty bottle out of a brown paper bag and shook it. Vodka. “See this? You give me a lump of money and I'll stick it straight into my liver. At least when I work I am forced to drink myself to death slowly. If I am still alive when the money is gone, what then? What else can I do to make a living?”
Fair enough, Hugo thought. “Do you have any idea why he's replacing all the bouquinistes?”
“I assume he's putting his friends in place and takinga cut. Why else?”
Why indeed. Easy enough to make that kind of agreement with friends and acquaintances. Legal too, if you papered it right. Certainly a lot easier and more legit than extorting it from hundreds of unwilling sellers. But replacing all those bouquinistes was expensive and a lot of trouble, even assuming most were happy to take the money and get out of the cold. And what about the others, like Madame Benoit? And Max?
“That man you were arguing with last week,” Hugo said, “who was he?”
“Him?” She spat. “That salaud. One of Gravois's capitaines.”
“Capitaines?”
“That's what he calls them. He has three or four men who keep an eye on us to make sure we're not selling more postcards than books, telling us when our stalls are too untidy. They are men like Chabot who know nothing of the tradition of les bouquinistes, and they don't care. They are like Chabot, but with strong arms and angry faces.”
“Why was he harassing you?”
“Why? Because I'm still here. I don't make trouble for them and I try to do what they say. But that isn't always enough, monsieur, because at the end of each working day, I am still here.”
“I see.” Hugo offered his hand again. “Is one of those capitaines called Nica?”
“I don't know their names.”
“The one I'm thinking of, he's tall like me, with a face like it's carved out of rock.”
“Maybe. I turn the other way when I see them coming monsieur, so ‘maybe’ is all I can say.”
“OK. Thank you for your time, Madame Benoit.” He turned to leave.
“Monsieur Mouton—”
“Marston,” he corrected gently. “But please, call me Hugo.”
“Oui, oui, Hugo. Have you thought—” she blew her nose into an enormous handkerchief, “have you talked to Ceci?”
“Who?”
“She was the last chief of the SBP.”
“Before Gravois?”
“Oui. I think perhaps she was the first to be removed. She is a good woman and very wise. If something is going on, she might know.”
“Might?” Good enough. “Where do I find her?”
She frowned and shook her head. “I think your badge might help you find her.”
“Her last name at least?” The look on her face told Hugo that Ceci had never had a last name to her bouquinistes, that the idea of her with a last name was an oddity. He replaced his hat and smiled. “Never mind, I'll find her.”
Hugo walked away from the stall, ambling slowly beside the river. He stopped occasionally to stare into its depths, but the surface slid beneath him, a lid of impenetrable steel protecting its secrets with no hope that it would hand out answers, or even comfort, today.
As he walked, he thought about coincidences. To him, life was too chaotic and random for them not to pop up now and again. Put differently, as he'd once explained to the church-going Christine, he did not believe in fate. Fate and religion, he'd said, were for those who didn't want to take control of their own lives — or weren't able to. Much easier to believe in fate or a slew of gods than to accept a universe of chaos. With a god or fate behind you, you could place your future in someone else's hands, let them be responsible, and when it went wrong you had a convenient patsy. Christine had argued with him, of course, blue eyes blazing at his heresy, but he always suspected her anger was to cover her own fear that she agreed with him. She certainly couldn't change his mind. No, those oddities that people ascribed to God and fate, the chance meetings with old friends or the car that swerved off the road and narrowly missed the little boy, they were nothing but coincidence and luck. Coincidence and luck were real, and if you didn't recognize their existence then you were looking for meaning where it didn't exist.
This meant that Max's disappearance immediately after selling him a book worth hundreds of thousands of dollars could be nothing more than chance.