The Paris Directive (42 page)

She fled, scurrying away while she still had the chance.

When the inspector came out the other side of the arcade, the lights were on up and down the Champs Élysée. Despite the drizzle and open umbrellas, the boulevard was crowded with window-shoppers. Traffic was a nightmare. Though he suspected that back in the apartment Michou was already sitting on her favorite windowsill, her nose pressed up against the cool glass, watching for him, she was going to have to wait a little longer for dinner. Caught in the current of the crowd, he passed Franklin Roosevelt and walked on toward Clemenceau. Enjoying the fresh air, the smell of the drizzle. He wanted to stay outside just a little longer before going down into the Métro.

As he walked, Mazarelle mulled over the case of the late Pellerin and Blond, their shadowy doings. Their official visitors today seemed to confirm that the two of them were engaged in some illicit political scheme. Probably freelancing for a client who needed deniability. As a form of risk management, Pellerin and Blond would necessarily have kept their distance from anything French. He supposed that was why they went to Germany for their killer. But who was their client? And why did that client want Phillips dead? These were the questions that haunted him. The unfinished business he’d brought with him from Taziac. Murders outsourced to private contractors could be shrouded in multiple layers of obscurity. Impenetrable by normal police work. Difficult, maybe impossible to resolve. But Mazarelle was an optimist. Eventually drowned corpses rose to the surface. The inspector hoped he’d be there to get the answers, that one day he’d discover who green-lighted the Taziac murders. The real name of Klaus Reiner.

Coincidentally it was then he heard it, the loud, hysterical laughter that he’d never forget. Like the wild, thrilling soprano saxophone of Sidney Bechet. Amid the blaring horns, the barking dogs, the piercing sound seemed to come from a rowdy group of young people on the other side of the avenue. A sudden knife-edged gust of wind swirled around and through him, chilling his bones, and the
rain began to come down in sheets. Mazarelle turned up the collar on his jacket. What he needed was a raincoat, a glass of whiskey, a dry pair of socks. He wasn’t very far now from the Clemenceau station. Clenching his empty pipe in his teeth and stuffing his hands in his pockets, the inspector—head down and buffeted by the rain—limped hurriedly along the boulevard. Pulse normal, lungs clear, heartbeat a steady clip-clop.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is a work of fiction, and all of the characters in it are fictions or, if in any way similar to actual individuals with familiar names, are treated as fictions. Though the picturesque village of Taziac is imaginary, it resembles many found in southwestern France in the vicinity of the Dordogne River. Several events, such as the U.N. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, actually did occur, as did the memorable UEFA Champions League Final soccer game in Barcelona between Manchester United and Bayern Münich—the bombing in early May 1999 and the game later that month. I’ve taken the liberty of setting the game in July of the same year. Unhappily for my ardent German fan, Klaus Reiner, the score remained exactly the same in art as in life—Manchester United 2, Bayern Münich 1. Georges Braque’s small cubist portrait of Gertrude Stein exists, as far as I know, exclusively in this novel.

My thanks to all of the following for their help with the manuscript, which I greatly appreciate: Cal Bedient, Georges and Anne Borchardt, Jerome Charyn, Arnaud Desjardins, Ronit Feldman, Rob Goldberg, Michael Lopez, Nancy Marmer, members of the Gendarmerie d’Issigeac, Jörg-Michael Schwarz, Cork Smith, and Nan Talese.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gerald Jay is a nom de plume. He lives in New York City, and is at work on a second Mazarelle novel.