Treasure of Saint-Lazare
Read Treasure of Saint-Lazare Online
Authors: John Pearce
TREASURE of
SAINT-LAZARE
Treasure of Saint-Lazare
Copyright © 2012 by John Pearce.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher with the exception of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Other than easily recognizable historical figures, no character is intended to represent any person, living or dead.
Published by
:
Alesia Press
PO Box 51004
Sarasota, FL 34232
(941) 315-8304
[email protected]
www.alesiapress.com
eISBN: 978-0-9859626-0-9
1
Sarasota, June 2008
Roy Castor stepped reluctantly from the dark comfort of the restaurant into the blinding afternoon sun of Florida summer. His hands groped fruitlessly through his pockets in search of his sunglasses until, with a curse, he turned back to retrieve them.
In twenty years of afternoon coffee and conversation with friends it was not the first time he’d left something behind — most often the sunglasses, but sometimes his ancient porkpie hat. The friends talked mostly about foreign affairs with frequent detours into politics or their love lives, a topic shorter than any of them liked because their average age was close to 80.
The sunglasses waited on the shelf above the cash register. He turned to confront the heat once again and spotted his old commander Al Sommers waiting in his wheelchair. Al looked up, surprised, as he snapped his black phone shut. Roy waved the glasses in Al’s direction, pushed his way back through the door and set off up Main Street, scuttling from building to building in search of their patchy shade. The heavily tinted sunglasses made the walk easier, but not comfortable.
He stopped at a busy intersection to peer hopefully across at a tunnel of welcoming green shade. A young man sidled past, mumbling an apology. The crossing sign winked its invitation and Roy followed, then paused to wipe his forehead with a large white handkerchief, grateful to be out of the blazing sun.
About five more minutes, he told himself, and he could sit down with a cold Amstel. He could already taste the smooth beer, its sharp bubbles dancing on his tongue. He closed his eyes for an instant as he savored the thought.
There was only one witness, and he was not a good one. Arturo Ruiz, busboy at a new restaurant in the nearby arts colony, told the police he was walking back from the bank when he heard a sudden shout and wheeled just in time to see a large black car accelerate around the corner — “kind of a big SUV, but not as big as a Hummer, maybe a Lincoln” was what he told the patrol cop who first responded to his 911 call. “It hit the old man right in the center of the front end and sent him flying.” Roy had not been thrown far. His hat flew to the street’s grassy median and with luck he might have survived, but when he landed on the right side of the street his head struck the curb.
“Man, I dropped a melon on the kitchen floor last week and it sounded just like that,” Arturo said, adding his view that the old man was dead when he hit the curb. In fact Roy didn’t draw his final breath for another hour, in the cold and remarkably empty emergency room of Sarasota Memorial Hospital. His daughter Jen, weeping, arrived at his bedside fifteen minutes before. He never knew she was there.
“The dude went by real slow and looked at me, ” Arturo told the detective who arrived later. “I don’t think he saw me until after he hit the old man, then he just floored it and screamed around the corner to the right and he was gone. That’s when I ran down to the old man and called you guys.”
Thom Anderson, the Sarasota police detective who had drawn the case, thought it a straightforward hit-and-run. An overpaid and overeducated punk kid, Thom figured, with a job selling insurance or houses or stocks, had run over an old man crossing in the middle of the block, panicked, and fled. He would probably turn himself in the next morning, ashamed and completely lawyered up, maybe with his equally overpaid father beside him. His moment of panic would cost him a fine and a few months of probation and might cost him the fancy job. Thom had seen it more and more often as Sarasota had gentrified, and he didn’t like it any better this time than the last.
2
Paris, Ten D
ays Later
From Eddie Grant’s window seat the broad landscape of brilliant yellow flowers looked like an impressionist painting. The train’s great speed turned the near fields into a shimmering yellow mass, but at the crests of the hills rising in the background, his sharp eye could pick out small patches with their own personalities. A little more or less water, a subtle difference in direct sun, and the farmer’s colza crop outside of Paris became art. Eddie wished he could somehow hang it on his living room wall.
The monthly trip to Rennes was a family business duty he performed without enthusiasm, but June was his favorite. It was just before the yellow flowers began to dry, first step toward the mills that would press their seeds into uncounted gallons of rapeseed oil.
Eddie turned away from the window and put down the glass of Bordeaux he’d been nursing since Le Mans. The train curved around an old concrete water tower that disappeared as quickly as it had come into view, his signal that Gare Montparnasse was only a few minutes away. With luck, he’d be in his office near the old opera house in an hour, which would allow more than enough time to catch up on the day’s business and get ready for dinner with his mother. His seventy-five-year-old mother, he reminded himself. His seventy-five-year-old mother and her lover.
He stood to take his blue blazer from the hook behind him just as the conductor announced the train’s arrival at Gare Montparnasse in ten minutes. As she clicked off the microphone the iPhone chimed in his shirt pocket.
“Margaux. Nice to hear from you. Are we still on for dinner?” They spoke French, as always.
“Of course, Charles Edward. But that’s not why I called. I need your help.”
“Anything. Well, anything reasonable.”
“I — we — have a surprise visitor. Does the name Jennifer Wetzmuller ring a bell?”
His smile faded. He sat in silence for a moment. “I haven’t seen her for twenty years. Exactly twenty years, I think, when I got out of college. Artie wanted to see her father and I went to Florida with him.”
“Hmmm. Sadly, Jennifer’s father is dead. He was killed in an auto accident ten days ago, and in going through his things she found a letter from him to your father, with instructions to deliver it personally and immediately. She got on an airplane and arrived at my front door less than an hour ago.”
“Margaux, can you give me some idea of what the hell this is all about?”
“The work Artie and Roy Castor did just after the war, when they were hunting down looted artwork, but I don’t know any more than that. You must handle this, not me. I can’t go through that door again.”
Margaux had spent the war living on the run with her father, a Resistance leader, and as a result she feared nothing. But she did not want to reopen the story of her much-loved husband’s life. “What would you like me to do?”
“I’m giving a fund-raising reception for Senator Obama here in an hour and a half, and I have to get ready. Can you pick up Jennifer and talk to her at your place? You can bring her to dinner tonight. Paul can pick you up. He’s already on the way to Gare Montparnasse.”
“Confident, weren’t you? And why is it you’re raising money for American politicians? You can’t even vote.”
“I can’t even donate, but I give any help I can, and it seems my American friends like coming here for the view. Things aren’t in good shape over there. I hope you’re watching our money closely.”
Eddie thought for a few seconds as the train started to slow. “OK. I’ll come up to get her then we’ll go to my place while you politick. And yes, I’m watching out for us. We have almost no positions left in the American market, and zero in the housing or banking industries. We should be fine unless the entire world goes to hell.”
The best-known face of Gare Montparnasse is the north end, which o
pens onto the hulking brown Montparnasse Tower — one of the best vantage points for an inspiring city view despite the Parisians’ distaste for its dissonant presence in the harmonious skyline.
Most TGV passengers exit the other end of the station, near the striking Place de Catalogne and its modern fountain, an immense stone disk precisely engineered to allow an unbroken sheet of water to flow smoothly over it.
Eddie looked briefly at the fountain as he emerged blinking into the strong afternoon sunlight. Then he spotted his mother’s prized black Peugeot 607, the same model sometimes used by the French president, with his army buddy Paul Fitzhugh standing at the open driver’s door.
“
Ça va
?” Paul asked as Eddie settled into the passenger seat.
“
Ça va
,” Eddie responded, ending the only French exchange they would have. Paul was sensitive about his pronounced accent — he said if he was going to be taken for an American anyway he’d rather do it in English and be understood. He refused to speak French with anyone who spoke good English, which included just about everybody Margaux and Eddie knew.
“What do you know about the visitor?” Eddie asked as Paul took advantage of the Peugeot’s power to merge smoothly between a bus and a small delivery van. He was surprised to realize he was reluctant to use her name. Damned big mistake, he told himself. I’m sure Margaux knows all about the trip to Sarasota but I’d like it better if it doesn’t go much farther than that, so I’ll have to act normal.
“Only saw her for a minute,” Paul responded. “She’s about your age, blonde, nice looking, I can see she’s your type. A little taller than Margaux, long legs, good figure. A stunner.
“Margaux stepped right up and said her capable son Charles Edward would take care of the matter. That was the only time I saw her smile.”
I hope she did, Eddie said to himself. They had spent three luxurious days in bed together and then he left without another word and married his fiancée. It wasn’t his proudest memory.
“Well, let’s pick her up, then you can take us to my place. She can rest before dinner, then we’ll walk to the restaurant and I can show her a few of the sights around the opera. Will you and Margaux pick up Philippe?”
“Margaux says he’ll drive himself. He’s invited his daughter the history professor. You’ll be surrounded by your past.”
“Never mind that. Looks like you’ll be eating alone again.”
“Not a problem. I can keep a closer watch on the room, and Philippe sometimes brings a young officer along. Helps me practice my French, except these days they always want to practice their English.”
Paul’s role in the Grants’ world was murky by design. His business card said he was in charge of buildings and facilities for Eddie’s business, a chain of schools devoted mainly to teaching commercial English. Unofficially he was the family’s chief of security and trusted bodyguard, driver and confidential friend, a role that had assumed more importance after the mysterious deaths of Eddie’s father, and then his wife and son, seven years before. The police were never able to assemble enough evidence to file charges, and Paul had volunteered to spend more time on personal security.
Eddie had known Paul since 1991, when they served together in an infantry company during the first Gulf war. Eddie was a green company commander and Paul, the company’s senior sergeant, had proved to be a valuable source of fatherly advice. After Paul was badly wounded, Eddie followed his recovery and offered him the job in Paris after his wife divorced him. Within two years he had married the concierge in Margaux’s apartment building, a widow Eddie’s age, and settled comfortably into daily Parisian life. He’d even become a fair pétanque player, and met a group of men every Sunday afternoon to roll the boules and drink pastis. There he had no choice but to speak French.
“How does it feel to come from West Virginia to Paris?” Eddie had asked him one Saturday afternoon as they shared a drink down the street from Margaux’s home.
