All Cry Chaos (34 page)

    "You're wrong," she said. "We were in Europe, but Randal was dying. What was the date of your bombing?"

    "April 12
^th
."

    "You're certain?"

    "I was there."

    "Then you've wasted a trip. We traveled in mid-March to try one last treatment for his cancer. There's a clinic in Garmisch-Partenkirchen that had had some success with an extract of tree bark from South America. The treatment didn't work, and we returned to the States in time for him to collapse in the airport before we ever caught our connecting flight home. He didn't make it out of JFK. But you're Interpol. You knew this."

    Poincaré regretted what he was about to do.

    "The man could barely lift his head off a pillow," she said. She leaned heavily against a pile of boxes marked P
ots and Counter Stuff
. "We've met, Inspector. The dates don't work. I've got work to do."

    "Where did you go besides Garmisch?"

    "We landed in Munich, we took the train to Garmisch, we stayed the week for the infusions, and when the blood profile didn't change we returned home."

    "You were gone for ten days."

    "
Three w
eeks before your bombing. After the infusions, we stayed nearby and waited to see if the medicine would help. Two days later, the clinic gave us bad news. We came home."

    As he looked through a window to the San Gabriel Mountains, Poincaré recalled Garmisch-Partenkirchen. "The Alps would have reminded you of home, I suppose. And the air would certainly have restored your spirits, if nothing else. Where did you spend those two days, Mrs. Young? Perhaps one of the nearby villages?" Two days would have been enough time to travel to Amsterdam and back.

    She studied the kitchen floor, lost in thought. "He loved the mountains," she said. "We would have taken a last-ditch chance on a clinic anywhere. But the fact that it was in the Alps? Randal wanted to see them before he died. We stayed in a village near the clinic."

    "In Garmisch?"

    "It could hardly matter."

    Sometimes, Poincaré felt like a butcher surgeon paid to remove shrapnel without anesthesia. "In fact, it matters," he said. "If you want to remove your husband from a working list of suspects, you'll tell me where you stayed. If you don't, I'll call the clinic and discover that for myself—and assume you have something to hide. If you do, I'll call the clinic and also the inn and speak with everyone he spoke with—to the extent possible. If he was as weak as you say, and there's no reason to doubt that, we'll be able to settle this and I'll leave you alone. I'll extend my apologies and cross him off my list. So, please: where did you stay between his release from the clinic and the final blood tests?"

    She was shaking.

    Poincaré waited; he needed answers.

    "Scharnitz," she said.

    "Just over the border in Austria? I know it—on the rail line between Munich and Innsbruck. You stayed at an inn?"

    "Yes."

    "What's the name of the inn?"

    "I don't remember."

    "Please," said Poincaré. "It's a small village, and there can't be many inns. I'll call them all, if need be. I could also e-mail your photo and Randal's."

    She looked at him, disbelieving. "You would do that?"

    "What was the name of the inn, Mrs. Young?"

    "We didn't stay at an inn."

    "Where, then?"

    "With Randal's parents. I took him to say goodbye."

    
Reasonable
, he thought, but odd. "Your husband was an American citizen. His parents lived in Austria?"

    "His father was a career diplomat for the State Department. He was stationed in Munich for about eight years from the time Randal was nine or so. The parts of his childhood he remembered most fondly were there. He skied, climbed, hiked—they loved the mountains enough to buy a cottage, which was a kind of base camp to get to the Alps. Lewis and Francine retired in Scharnitz, and Randy visited when he could. It was more his home than Pasadena. If you move six times in your first eighteen years, you can't really point to a place on the map and say,
This is where I belong
. Randy came out here for school—he wanted to work in mining, anything to be around the mountains. We met at Cal Tech, when he was finishing a Masters degree."

    "And you were doing what at the time?"

    "Also studying chemistry. We met as teaching assistants in an Organics lab."

    "I see. And is there much work for chemists in Colorado?"

    "No, not where I'm moving."

    "And you're going there to—"

    "To concentrate on my boys for a few years. My family has a ranch, and I thought it might be good for the children to have cousins and uncles around—if that's alright with you."

    "Why didn't you say so at first—about his parents?"

    "Because I respect my husband's privacy—and his parents' grief. And now you'll be calling them." Her eyes watered.

    "I will call them," he said. "There's a chemical mix in circulation that could do a great deal of harm in the wrong hands—that's already done harm. A man died."

    "M
y
man died!"

    "I know that, and I'm very—"

    "Don't you
dare."

    She was folding in on herself, but he pushed harder: "One more thing." He reached into a pocket and produced James Fenster's passport photo. "Have you seen this man?"

    "Go away."

    "Or these women?" He placed the photographs of Dana Chambi and Madeleine Rainier before her and watched closely. Her eyes were already red, her chest heaving. It would be difficult to catch a change in expression. She stared in the direction of the photos but did not appear to focus.

    "Forgive my intrusion," he said, collecting his things. "I know your husband had no criminal record. He didn't even have parking tickets. I'm sure he was the man you and others say he was. But I've brought a potential bomber and a bombing this close." He showed a thin space between his thumb and forefinger. "There's something I'm not understanding, Mrs. Young. Was your husband a religious man—a devout Christian by any chance?"

    
"What?"

    "The End Times—did he believe the world was about to end?"

    "Are you
mad
?"

    Poincaré took a half-step toward the door. "Last night," he said, "I ran a credit report on your husband and you. This is a fine home, with a grand view. In any event, I saw that the mortgage on the house—some $1,250,000—was paid off on the 24 of March.
Life insurance
, I thought. But Mrs. Young, you didn't return to the United States and your husband didn't die until March 20
^th
. You couldn't have gotten a certificate of death to the insurance company that quickly, and in any event these companies don't pay claims of this size in three or four days. On large payouts, they routinely check for fraud. These things usually take—"

    "G
et out!
" she screamed. She grabbed a dinner plate, and Poincaré prepared to duck. But instead of throwing the plate, Julie Young set it on a square of newspaper. Eyes glazed, she wrapped it and began humming a tune.

Suitcase in hand, standing before the Paris Hotel and Casino, Poincaré heard a familiar baritone and felt the clap of Serge Laurent's bear paw on his shoulder. "And you thought nothing could beat the Old World for charm. Viva Las Vegas, Henri!" Poincaré turned to embrace a friend but instead found a ghost. Laurent sipped from a cup of green liquid that smelled of rubbing alcohol and raised a finger. "Shh," he said. "If we don't talk about it, it goes away."

    Poincaré dropped his bag. "Have you seen a doctor?" Laurent coughed, and Poincaré realized that no further medical opinions would be needed. "I'm leaving for France tomorrow," he said. "Come home with me."

    "Sorry," said Laurent. "I'm submitting my reports on schedule, and the stuffed shirts think I'm functioning at an acceptable level. What they don't know isn't hurting them."

    "But it's killing you. How much weight have you lost?"

    "Enough. And the work's keeping me alive, if anything. Relax."

    Poincaré handed his bag to an attendant. "Find us a bar, for pity's sake."

    He followed Laurent through the casino—a windowless, Parisianthemed playground designed, Poincaré supposed, to evoke memories of a stroll along the Seine for those who had never visited. Gaming tables sat beneath verdigris grillwork reminiscent of Paris métro stations. On the ceiling stretched a painted summer sky. And poking through the room like some robotic Godzilla were two massive, girdered legs of a half-scale Eiffel Tower—the casino's signature landmark. The total effect was in turns preposterous and mesmerizing. It was a movie set with actual people spending actual money, laughing and drinking, enjoying themselves thoroughly. Management had to be pleased if what Poincaré saw at a blackjack table was any indication. A bored-looking woman in a midnight blue dress and diamonds lost thousands when the dealer flipped a jack instead of a long-shot deuce. Gone in an instant, the equivalent of four overdue mortgage payments on his vineyard. Was it possible? She casually slipped another tall stack of chips into three betting lanes. The dealer scooped spent cards and chips in one practiced motion and dealt again. Above the din of slot machines and craps players hollering for sevens floated the music of Édith Piaf.

    Laurent found an elevator. When the doors opened into a second floor lounge, Poincaré read the marquis and said: "You're joking."

    "
Risqué,
" said Laurent. It's a perfectly good name for a bar. Just shut up long enough for me to buy us a beverage. They have a surprisingly good wine list." They spoke in French, and a young woman showing a good deal of cleavage approached with a hearty "Bonjour!"

    Poincaré checked his watch. "Bon soir," he said. "Est-ce qu'on peut s'asseoir sur le divan près de la fenêtre?"

    The woman stared, helpless.

    "The windows," said Laurent, grinning. "May we sit there?"

    They crossed the lounge to a panoramic view of the Las Vegas Strip as salsa music pulsed at a volume that was nearly visible. Poincaré reached for a laminated card that promised patrons
a convergence
of elegance and energy . . . for a myriad of appetites
. "What does this even mean?" he yelled over the music. Laurent—winded, his eyes closed—hadn't heard a word. Poincaré shook his arm. "Why are you still here?"

    "Two guesses."

    "Serge, I'm not playing."

    "Neither am I. My assignment was to report on the Soldiers of Rapture. In case you hadn't noticed, there are more souls in need of saving in Las Vegas than anywhere in the world—except, possibly, Los Angeles. Las Vegas is Rapturian central, Henri." He began to cough. "Wait until you see the rest of this place. They've got La Boutique for your shopping pleasure, La Cave for overpriced wines, La Vogue to accessorize the ladies. Only in America—it's a highlights reel, Henri, a comic book. But I'll tell you this, you won't get your pocket picked on Le Boulevard. The security in this casino is unbelievable." He perused the wine list. "You should sell them a few dozen cases. They'll go for anything French, no matter how awful."

    All the joy was gone from the insult. Poincaré stared across the boulevard to the Bellagio, where the fountain display had just come on. Addressing the colored jets of water, he recounted for Laurent the present state of chaos in his life: Claire was lost, with one foot in this world and the other in a place he could not enter; Etienne had recently walked a whole thirty paces before collapsing in pain; Lucille's latest skin graft had left her with an infection; Georges, making progress with his new leg, continued to cry for his brother; and Émile, in and out of a now lighter coma, had squeezed his mother's hand before drifting away once more. "And the doctors are calling this progress," said Poincaré. "Etienne won't speak to me or let me near the children." He put a hand to his forehead, checking for a fever.

    "You did your job," said Laurent. "It's not reasonable to expect a demented fuck like Banović to sic his dogs on you. . . . Henri, you'd already left for the States when I heard about Chloe. I'm so—"

    Poincaré stopped him. "We're not discussing your cancer, and we're not discussing my granddaughter."

    Laurent nodded. "Waitress! A bottle of Lynch Bages, 1982."

    "What the hell, Serge! That's six hundred U.S."

    Laurent smiled as the woman retreated.

    "What's so funny?"

    "What's so funny is that after thirty years you still can't stand to lose yourself in a bottle of good wine. Really, in the last quarter-century how many times have I seen you just sit back and
stop
for one goddamned minute?" Laurent stretched and leaned into the couch. "I remember your father predicting you wouldn't last in this job. Or that if you did, the work wouldn't put your God-given talents to use. He was a tough nut, I'll grant you. What was the man thinking, naming you Henri?"

    "He wanted a mathematician," said Poincaré. "Someone to keep the family business alive since he didn't get the gene. But I was no Jules Henri either. I'm sure I disappointed him."

    "Like hell! I may be the one living person who paid attention to the 'Heroes of France' lesson when we were kids. Tell me when I misremember: your great-grandfather began as a mining engineer who investigated an accident that baffled everyone else. He walked straight into a collapsed mine, deduced causes, wrote a report—and later became the Inspector General of the Corps de Mines
while
he was the world's mathematical darling. Chaos theory. Relativity. Topology. Henri: the man dug for a living. You dig. Different mines is all. You
are
in the family business. Your father didn't see it—but Jules Henri would have been proud."