19 Purchase Street (25 page)

Leslie said he didn't look so tough. She indicated the various ways inside the lower half of the cemetery, the
chemins
and
allées
and
circulaires
. “It's like a cross-section, and those are veins.”

“Grocock hasn't called.”

“He will.” Leslie pointed to an area marked Number 89. “Oscar Wilde is buried there.”

Altogether the map showed ninety-seven numbered divisions. An accompanying list indicated by division where the most notable were buried.

“Sarah Bernhardt is in 44. Where's 44?”

Gainer found it for her, told her, “Balzac is in 48.”

“Know what happened to Oscar Wilde's monument?” She took a quick gulp of wine, spilled a drop on the linen sheet that spread like a live pink sea creature. “I read about it. His monument is a sculpting of a nude winged sphinx. Two very proper English ladies became so indignant when they saw it, they found a stone and knocked its balls off.”

“You believe that?”

“Sounds likely. Seems they were a sizable pair.”

“The English ladies.”

“Uh uh. The
conservateur
of Père-Lachaise retrieved them and used them as a paperweight.”

“Everything you say is true.” He kissed her as he hadn't kissed her since Martha's Vineyard. But he stopped there.

CHAPTER TEN

A
T
eleven Monday morning Gainer and Leslie were at Père-Lachaise.

They had not heard from Grocock, but rather than wait on edge for his call Gainer decided he might as well follow through on this lead.

Leslie was more sanguine about it. She was dressed for a cemetery, in a black Giorgio Armani suit, black stockings and black Frizon low-heeled pumps, a white blouse with a high neckline and a square of white silk chiffon flowing from her breast pocket. The jacket of the suit was amply cut and easily accommodated her holstered ASP automatic. The silencer went inside the waistband of her skirt, where the concavity of her backbone left a little room. It was taped there.

Gainer was also very conservatively dressed and had his ASP harnessed on underneath. For an extra touch Leslie urged him to wear one of Rodger's hats. A black homburg. Gainer never wore a hat and he especially didn't want to put his head under one belonging to Rodger—even if it did fit. But he went along with it.

He brought along the shiny metal container that held the ashes of what had been Norma. With the metal container in the crook of one arm and Leslie holding onto his other, they went in through the main gate of Père-Lachaise and down a wide, smoothly cobbled way. On both sides tall trees stood between impressive-looking private mausoleums that Gainer thought looked like miniature versions of solid old bank buildings. Other people were walking along there with guide maps in hand. Evidently tourists come to hover over fame in its ultimate impotence.

A sedate sign directed Gainer and Leslie to the
Bureau de la Conservateur
, which was a small building in keeping with the funerary monuments around it. Inside, a varnished oak counter ran the entire length of the main room. No chairs and a gritty marble floor. Behind the counter was a clerk, a man with a rodentlike face and overgrown sideburns to make up for the absence of hair from his forehead to crown. At the moment he was impatiently explaining to a Polish couple how they could locate the grave of Frederic Chopin.

Aside, in a low tone, Leslie told Gainer: “Only most of Chopin is buried here. His heart is in Warsaw.”

Finally, the Polish couple departed.

Gainer and Leslie faced the clerk, who said the automatic: “Monsieur, madame.”

“I want to inquire about a place for my sister,” Gainer told him, tapping the crematory container.

“
C'est impossible
.”

The common French reaction. Everything was first of all impossible and, if one accepted that, for the French it avoided all the bother that might otherwise follow.

“She always wanted to be here, at Père-Lachaise.”

The clerk shook his head no.

“Surely—”

Another no headshake from the clerk, so emphatic it made his mouth flap.

“Money's not a concern,” Gainer said.

The clerk cocked his head, quickly took in the black homburg and the size of the diamond on Leslie's wedding finger and said: “You must see the conservateur.” He went into an inner office for a moment, returned, lifted away a section of the counter and showed them in.

The conservateur was standing behind a municipal desk. He was tall, gaunt-featured, about forty. Had sunken eye sockets and a dry, merciless mouth. A very pronounced Adam's apple.

Gainer knew immediately that this was one of them. The man locked right into the description. More, Gainer sensed it, as though his hate provided a special antenna. He had the urge to draw the ASP and blow the fucker away. He might have done that if Leslie hadn't been along, no need to incriminate her to that extent.

The conservateur introduced himself as Eugene Becque.

Gainer introduced himself as Mr. Douglas and Leslie as his wife. He placed the can containing Norma's ashes on Becque's desk, indicated it with a nod. “My sister.”

“My condolences,” Becque said.

Gainer looked at Becque's hands, and thought what they had done.

“You wish her remains to be placed here at Père-Lachaise?”

“Yes.”

“Your family has a plot here, perhaps?”

“No.”

“We have not been accepting ordinary internments for twenty years. It is a matter of space—”

“James Morrison was buried here in 1971,” Leslie put in.

“Who?”

“James Morrison, the musician, one of The Doors.”

“There are always exceptions, naturally.”

“This is an exception.”

“Exceptions are determined by committee.”

Gainer tried to look past Becque's eyes, to see the perverse quirk that had brought him to killing Norma.

What Becque saw in Gainer and Norma was a pair of wealthy foreigners who could provide money for many enjoyable days at Long-champ. He also had another “order” coming up. In London. Between the two he would be able to bet and win heavily. “How much … do you wish your sister here?” he asked.

“Five thousand. Dollars, of course.”

Becque shrugged as though he had just been paid a small insult.

On the wall above his desk was a huge map of Père-Lachaise, showing by name each grave site. A few were marked with red stick-pins.

“There are certain plots that have gone into default.” Becque removed one of the red stick-pins. “Fees for upkeep have not been paid for as long as ten to twelve years. Most often the reason is a family has ended, there are no survivors to continue a line. It happens.” He replaced the stick-pin.

Gainer waited.

“As conservateur, only I know which sites are delinquent. Not even the
comptabilité
knows, because out of sympathy, of course, I see that the required fees are paid. From my own pocket.”

Big-hearted son of a bitch, Gainer thought.

Becque told him: “It would be a most unusual exception, but perhaps it could be arranged for you to assume responsibility of one of those neglected sites for your sister.”

“How much?”

“The site I have in mind is in arrears ten thousand. Cash dollars, of course.”

“Let's go have a look at it.”

“At closing time,” Becque said. “We will have more privacy then. Come back at six o'clock. With the money.”

T
HE
ten thousand.

It took Leslie three minutes to withdraw it from the Pickering personal account at the Paris branch of Morgan Guaranty Trust. Gainer was hesitant about her doing that. After all, it was his affair, not hers, and certainly not Rodger's. Leslie counterreasoned that such a small amount wouldn't be missed and it could, if Gainer's conscience was so sensitive, be put back—afterward.

While there at Place Vendôme they had lunch at the Ritz, did their best not to discuss Becque. By then, it was three o'clock. They drove back to Boulevard de Menilmontant, where they sat at an outside table of a bistro opposite the cemetery. Drank
citron pressés
. The bistro was called,
Mieux Ici Qu'en Face
(Better Here Than Across the Way).

At four they decided to go over into Père-Lachaise and walk around. For one thing, Leslie had learned that Alain Kardec was entombed there and she wanted to see the spot.

Gainer had never heard of him.

Kardec, Leslie explained on the way, was practically the pope of spiritualism. He'd done more than anyone to make people realize there were things beyond normal consciousness, such as reincarnation. Also bilocation and contacting those on the other side and all sorts of divining.

“What's bilocation?” Gainer asked.

“Being in two places at the same time.” Said as though he should have known.

Now that they were deeper in Père-Lachaise they realized what an incredible place it was. The major walkways and most of the small
allées
that ran from them were vaulted by mature trees. Black walnuts, elms and beeches, chestnuts, sycamores, and cherries transformed the sun into a Pointillism. High, thick hiding places for birds that chattered and sang.

An idyllic atmosphere.

Had it not been for the tombs and crypts that lined each way. Side by side, close to touching, they stood like competitors in a morbid architectural contest. Inert, lifelessly asking for attention: canopied altars, sarcarphogi, basilicas, pyramids, obelisks rendered with every sort of column, gable and frieze. No two alike, yet so identical in purpose.

The statuary was most impressive. A bronze man lay fully clothed and rumpled exactly as he had fallen, top hat tumbled off. Another bronze man was partially out of a sepulcher, in the act of rising, pushing up a thick granite lid. A bronze life-size mother was breast feeding. A carved young woman lay as though contentedly sleeping, nude but modestly arranged, her long hair falling over the tomb's edge. In marble, granite and basalt there were nymphs and dogs and owls as accessories to statues kneeling, prone, akimbo and some just striding nowhere.

The more well-known had the simpler graves. Marcel Proust was just a plain horizontal slab. Sarah Bernhardt had only a little arched niche for flowers. Gertrude Stein was a purely linear headstone overlooking a rectangle of bare earth. Apollinaire was a shaft of ordinary raw stone.

Colette was there. And Piaf and Balzac and Loie Fuller.

“Who was Loie Fuller?” Leslie asked.

“The rage of Paris in the 1890s, danced with veils. Toulouse-Lautrec did her.”

“You're trying to impress me with a fib.”

He didn't answer.

“Want me to carry it for a while?” The container with Norma's ashes in it.

“No.” She's not very heavy, Gainer thought.

The map they had studied the night before helped them now. The labyrinth of
allées
was not as confusing as it otherwise would have been, and they located division 44 with only a little difficulty.

Kardec's tomb was situated in a corner of that division. It gave the impression of a primitive shelter made up of rough granite chunks a foot thick on three sides and overhead. Within it was a life-size bust of Kardec done in black, polished bronze and placed at a height so that it gazed out at eye level.

After a reverent moment Leslie whispered, “They say he has more visitors than anyone.” Kardec was surrounded by fresh flower tributes, a garland of camellias on his right shoulder. “They also say that on certain nights he acknowledges certain people by blinking,” Leslie added.

Gainer limited his skepticism to a short grunt and the next instant was startled by a brushing around his lower legs.

A ginger and white cat.

It dipped its head and rubbed its shoulder above Gainer's ankles, stared up at him for a long moment and closed and opened its amber eyes several times.

“Poor thing's starved,” Leslie said.

“Doesn't look it.” Indeed, a fat cat.

“I mean, for attention.”

Leslie squatted and gave the cat several firm strokes. In appreciative response it raised its hind end, stiffened and slowly snaked its tail.

Another cat approached.

A huge dark brown tabby torn, striped like a tiger with dense black markings on an agouti background. It didn't come directly to them, stalked back and forth with an air of indifference, as though reluctant to admit it needed anything, but with each move came closer and finally within reach. The moment Gainer extended his hand, the tabby collapsed, rolled over and gave in completely to having its chest and belly rubbed.

Along the cemetery ways Gainer and Leslie had noticed quite a number of cats. One in particular that they had encountered, a white with a gray-patched face and paws, had sat in the middle of a walkway making sure the birds kept to the trees, refused to budge, so Gainer and Leslie had to walk around it. Now they became aware of how many more cats were in this vicinity, seemed to be concentrated around Kardec's tomb.

On the peak of every crypt and mausoleum in sight there was a cat. Or two or even three. Sprawled or sitting. Others were settled on the uprights and transverses of crosses, lolling, so relaxed in impossible positions on the top edges of tombstones it seemed miraculous they didn't fall off. All shades and mixtures of cats. Tri-colors, calicos, blacks and nearly all blacks, nearly all whites, slate grays and gingers. Spontaneous mutations. The one that sat on the roof of Kardec's tomb was the most striking. Its dun-colored fur was sleek, and its points, ears, tail and paws, were of blackest black. It had a stronger, more elegant body with a longer neck and smaller wedge-shaped head. Leather black nose. Orange, almond-shaped eyes. A frayed silky ribbon around its neck held a tiny gold bell.

Someone's darling gone astray, Leslie thought.

The cat sat there on the upper edge of the tomb so still it seemed a part of it. It got Gainer by the eyes. Those lustrous orange eyes gazed deep, held him.