Coq au Vin (11 page)

Try we did. None of the arcane, or nutty, sources panned out. But, as I had speculated, there was mention of Little Rube Haskins's death in the police blotter sections of the conventional press. The only report of any length turned up as an ordinary news item in a Paris paper that had long ago ceased publishing. Minimal information emerged on Haskins's career and background—not even where he was born. He was referred to as a black American folk singer who lived at a modest hotel in the 11th arrondissement. In the last report on file (the story had run for two days) Inspector Pascal Simard declared that police were still looking for the vicious killer who had left Monsieur Haskins's mangled body in the one-way street where he resided.

I kind of enjoyed playing the puppet master, dispatching Andre to do this or that spadework. While he was following up one potential lead, I gigged on the street all by myself, which was kind of scary but thrilling. But then the rest of my afternoon was shot, as I had to go hunting for pantyhose long enough for my endless legs. I finally found my size at a little lingerie store where only nuns shopped.

Controlling my other operative, Gigi Lacroix, was a tad trickier. It was tough getting an appointment with him before sundown. He kept hours similar to my friend Aubrey's—the vampire schedule. Daylight must have been rough on his sensitive skin. He finally agreed to meet me at what he daintily referred to as tea time.

Gigi was waiting for me at a sedate “lady food” sort of café near the Louvre. The place was one of those unfortunate pissy hybrids of French and British culture where the waitress sneers at you if your shoes weren't made in Belgium. No trouble spotting Gigi among all the newly coifed girlfriends in that joint. But at least, thank the baby Jesus, the lovely Martine was not in attendance.

“I have a little news for you,” he said, using his napkin to wipe a spray of powdered sugar from his mustache. “Don't get your hopes up too high though.”

“What is it?”

“A friend who works the Eiffel Tower says he thinks he knows Tante Vivian.”

“What!”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean he works the Eiffel Tower? What kind of work?”

“He's a pickpocket. I'm going to see him tomorrow. Chances are he's full of shit and just looking to make a few francs for nothing. But I'll give you a report.”

“You won't have to. I'm coming with you.”

“No, no, my friend.”

“Yes, yes, my friend.”

“I said no!” he snarled, without a trace of his usual rueful charm. “It's no fucking place for you, where I'm meeting him. You'll only be in the way. Besides, you'll attract attention to yourself—and me. The last thing I need.”

“Well, what about what I need, buster? What the hell kind of place is this where you're meeting?”

“No more questions. You're better off just letting me do what you asked me to do. Anything could happen—
entendu?
You're a Yank, remember. No matter how fancy your French accent is. How would you like to end up deported? Who'll rescue your sweet old aunt then?”

“Why do you put it like that—my ‘sweet old aunt'? What are you trying to say, Gigi?”

His laugh was almost as nasty as one of Martine's. “I'm not so sure. But my friend says if this aunt of yours is the same woman he's thinking of, she's up to her old tricks again.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Hey! Don't break my balls, '
pute
. Those are not my words. They're his. Like I said, he may just be giving me the runaround, anyway. I'll call you. Here…try one of these.” He proffered his plate, which was crowded with cream-filled delicacies. “A girl with an ass like yours doesn't have to watch her weight. Am I right,
petite?”

“Gigi,” I said in exasperation, “get the fuck back into your coffin.”

CHAPTER 8

Mountain Greenery

There it was. Etched in stone: LE PALAIS DU JUSTICE. The palace of justice, eh? I'd be the judge of that.

Actually, police headquarters, which is where I was headed, is next door to the
palais du justice
. The lettering on the police building didn't say a damn thing about justice.

If I'm not mistaken, a number of famous French people—real and fictional—have been associated with the Quai des Orfèvres. The quai was where Inspector Maigret was based, of course. At the urging of my high school French teacher I had read all those George Simenon novels about the eccentric detective. And quite near police headquarters, someone had told me, Simone Signoret and Yves Montand had for years maintained an apartment, in the place Dauphine.

Gigi's news had set me off; although he'd told me to keep cool, that his friend's information might turn out to be bullshit, I couldn't just sit and wait. The more I thought about it the more agitated I became.

Yes, I was standing on the sidewalk looking up at the rather forbidding grandeur of the huge building, the uniformed
flics
buzzing and circling in their evil-looking capes like so many gossiping wasps. But no, I had not decided to throw in the towel and seek police help in finding Vivian. Not yet—not exactly.

I presented my valid passport and an old NYU identification, and I told the liaison officer my story: how I was an American law student doing a paper on police procedure in New York as compared to Paris. I would not presume to take up the time of any of the hardworking detectives on the force today, but I was wondering if he could put me in touch with an Inspector Pascal Simard, whose name I had come across in some old newspaper reportage. Surely the inspector was getting on in years now? and mightn't he have a little time on his hands these days?

Just enough of the truth, mixed with a few Nanette-type whoppers, to be believable. Or so I hoped. My reluctance to involve the authorities stemmed in part from the fear they'd discover Vivian was doing something not on the up-and-up, and the last thing I wanted to do was bring any heat down on her. On the other hand, if they embarked on some kind of investigation of
me
—so what? I had my passport, airline ticket, and ample spending money. I was staying with a nice young man in a borrowed apartment in a nice part of town and we had done nothing wrong.

The French had invented bureaucracy. Were they proud of it, or embarrassed? I didn't know. But at least their red tape appeared to work, sometimes with remarkable efficiency. After the requisite number of phone calls and hours spent waiting in this queue or that anteroom—and the inevitable break for lunch—I was told that Inspector Simard, who had retired to his home in the Loire Valley, had agreed to speak to me. I was given his address and phone number in a town near Amboise, some two hundred kilometers southwest of Paris.

Andre had never actually been outside the city limits and I was letting him know how unParisian I thought that was. After all, you have to spend time in the provinces before you decide you hate them, right? So, wary as he was of my latest plan, he agreed to make the trip with me. First of all, Andre put no faith in anything Gigi or Martine said. He didn't believe I'd ever get that “report” on the Eiffel Tower pickpocket's tip. And second, he probably would have insisted on going with me to Simard's place anyway, to prevent me from doing anything
too
dumb. We had not been together very long, but already he had taken on the role of fool catcher: grabbing me by the shirttails and pulling me back to safety whenever my enthusiasm had me stepping off into the abyss.

We caught an early morning train at the Gare d'Austerlitz and in about two hours we were in Amboise. A local bus took us to the edge of Inspector Simard's village. We made a call to him from the
tabac
, and from there, following the good inspector's directions to the letter, we walked the velvet-plush paths until we arrived at his home.

Monsieur Simard had a full head of silky white hair under the panama hat he tipped to us when we found him in his garden. He must have been in his early seventies but there was no suggestion of a stoop in his bearing. He was as tall and upright as Andre.

Before inviting us inside he turned to me with a questioning look on his face. “I wonder if you know any gardening secrets, mademoiselle.”

“Me? Less than nothing.”

“Pity,” he said. “I have the feeling these flowers need more water. But then again one doesn't want to risk drowning them, you know. I've always liked the garden so much, but it was really my wife who tended to it. I've been slowly killing off one of her prized bushes after another ever since she died ten years ago.”

As he invited us inside I thought I saw a mischievous little smile at the corner of Inspector Simard's mouth, but I couldn't be sure. So I just nodded my head in sympathetic understanding.

In less than twenty minutes I had come clean with the inspector. Simard, retired or not, had not lost his touch for eliciting confessions. I told him first about our interest in the Rube Haskins case, and this led inevitably to the saga of Aunt Vivian and my reluctance to involve the authorities. The only thing I left out was the Gigi Lacroix angle. It might be okay for me to make a clean breast of things, but I knew I had no business implicating anybody who'd been in trouble with the law.

After listening attentively to my tale, in a confession of his own he admitted, “The Haskins case is one that still occupies my mind. Even to this day.”

“Because you never caught the murderer, you mean,” said Andre.

“Yes, of course,” answered Simard. “Of course because of that. But I also thought every other element of the case was, well, strange, for lack of a better word. The newspapers—and many of my colleagues, alas—either ignored this poor man's tragic death or dismissed it as a seamy sort of thing—as though Monsieur Haskins had probably lived the violent, dissipated life as a barroom performer and could expect no more than to die terribly.”

“Just how terribly did he die?” I asked. “I remember one article referring to a ‘mangled' body.”

“Oh, believe me, it was a vicious murder. The hatred behind it—the passion, if you will—was quite apparent. But as for your acquaintance—the old gentleman who told you that Monsieur Haskins was involved in a drunken brawl—I'm afraid he has the story all wrong.

“Monsieur Haskins, who probably
was
a bit drunk at the time of his death, was cornered late at night in a little cul-de-sac and struck with a car. But that was not enough for the killer. He or she ran over the body repeatedly, deliberately. It made for a revolting sight.”

The inspector sniffed at the air a bit and then lit a cigarette.

My God, I found myself thinking, are you French! I was captivated by the old man. Andre was, too, apparently. He couldn't seem to take his eyes off the inspector. I wondered fleetingly whether Andre would grow into a version of this kind of elderly gentleman—part De Gaulle, part Jackson (Milt, that is, the one from the MJQ).

“No,” Inspector Simard continued, “there was no evidence that Monsieur Haskins had seduced anyone's wife or been involved in anything the least bit scandalous. He had no enemies as far as I could determine. He seemed to have been a decent man who was serious about his music and happy to be able to make a living out of it. Happy to have found a home in Paris, where he had a decidedly small but loyal following. The whole thing was not only a mystery but a pity. I've always liked and respected artists, you know.”

“Don't tell me,” Andre said, incredulous, “that you were a fan of Little Rube's.”

“No,” the inspector said, “I never heard of the man until he showed up as a file on my desk. I don't know a great deal about the American blues genre. Though I quite enjoyed the jazz I heard in New York years ago, when I was posted for a year with an anti-terrorist mission to the United Nations. I particularly enjoyed hearing Monsieur Getz at the Café Au Go Go. Tell me, is it still there?”

Andre and I exchanged amused glances. The pileup of musical coincidences was getting surreal: just last night we had discovered a cache of old vinyl in the apartment and we'd listened to Getz recorded live at the Au Go Go in 1964.

I related the story to the old gentleman, adding “Sometimes, the world seems a little too small for comfort, Inspector Simard. If you know what I mean.”

French shrug. “But of course.”

“Let me ask you this,” I said to the inspector. “As I told you, we're sure that Haskins was the man whose picture we found in my aunt's book. Only she called him Ez.”

“Yes.”

“All right. Number two: Haskins was born in America. This thing about his being an escapee from a chain gang in the South may be true or may be mythological. But suppose—whatever he did or was back in the States—suppose the person who killed him was somebody from his past in America. Could be that he tracked him here. Could have been someone who had no idea Haskins was here, but he finds himself in Paris on business or vacation. And then he discovers that his old enemy Rube is living in Paris and singing at a local club. Whatever wrong Haskins did to this person is still fresh in his mind. So he rents a car—or steals a car—or hires someone—whatever—and kills Rube Haskins and then goes sight-seeing and washes his hands of it. You never find the car that was used to commit the murder. The guy gets away scot free.”

Simard smiled upon me. “All true, mademoiselle. Sound thinking.”

Andre gave my hand a quick, strong squeeze.

“At the time, my thoughts turned in pretty much the same direction,” Simard went on. “But there was a limit to how much could be done about all that. Monsieur Haskins held a Canadian passport, and the authorities there said he had no criminal record and no living relatives. Perhaps he obtained the passport with false documents—who knows? My inquiries to the United States never turned up any record of a Rube or Rubin Haskins as an escaped prisoner. But then, I never knew about this possible alias of his—Ez. And of course it was impossible to check on the whereabouts and background of every American tourist in town at the time of Monsieur Haskins's death. It was highly frustrating, you see. All those dead ends.”