A Stranger In Paris. Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #9. Pt. 1. Louis Shalako.

 

Louis Shalako

After a brief swell of applause, the silence was deafening.

Maintenon looked out over a sea of bright, eager, and freshly-scrubbed faces. Many of them were in brand new uniforms, their friends and relations were in their Sunday best. He resisted the urge to tap the microphone. Someone coughed, as someone always did, and then he plunged right in.

“Gentlemen—and ladies.” There were a few, a very small number, the most prominent being a rather spectacular redhead, front row, left side, right on the end beside the aisle leading up the middle.

He hadn’t seen a head of hair like that in years. For this occasion she had it brushed up to the maximum; the hat faintly ridiculous. She could hardly work like that.

While the civilians, the media, the dignitaries would listen, this speech was for the students.

It was the graduating class of cadets, class of 1937. Twelve full months of training, including a couple of short, on-the-job stints in the real world, including written character assessments from the working officers they’d been teamed with. All unpaid, of course—somehow, they had found the resources to make it through.

He had a little talk, more or less the same one he’d given a couple of years previously, or the last time he’d been accorded this signal honour. He supposed the waiting was the worst. 

There was the usual drip of cold sweat in the armpits. The odd little flurry in the guts. As soon as he began to speak, it would all go away and he would be fine—just fine.

 

Hell, he might even be good at it. For all he knew.

There were a dozen or so, more senior officers, more politically oriented officers, who were routinely tapped for this duty. He had wondered where they had all run off to on this fine weekend.

Clearly, they had better things to do on a Friday evening.

They all knew his name, of course.

Every damned one of them knew him from the newspapers, and so, he had their full and undivided attention.

***

“You are the best and the brightest. After a long, hard crunch, you are all that is left.”

He waited for the appreciative murmur to diminish. He’d been through the program, of course.

That, as the saying went, was ancient history—

He waited for the second round of chuckles to subside.

The physical training was enough to wash many out of the program, people who had once thought they were strong. There were those who would quit because they didn’t like a particular class or instructor, or, facing the first criticism, the first failures in their own young lives, honestly thought that the instructor didn’t like them. It really didn’t work that way—their instructors were like nature, in that they were completely indifferent. They really didn’t care either way, (more chuckles), but it indicated some small problem of maturity. They were in the wrong place, apparently. There were those who signed up, those who were accepted, and then they simply didn’t do the work. There were those who were accepted, and somehow, unaccountably, they never even showed up on day one. There were those who were washed out for other, less savory reasons. It was always sad when someone, a real slugger, made it through all of the courses, right up until the bitter end and then they didn’t quite make it.

Maintenon, voice calm and cool, told them all of that.

His voice rose.

“Many are called. Few are chosen. Even fewer succeed, in terms of rising up through the ranks, to any great degree, and even fewer of those, over the course of their careers, can completely resist the temptations that go along with success as an officer of the Surete.”

There were a few more coughs, and a long silence. It was about as close to a political statement, and one about the force, as he could comfortably make in this context. Too many of them were just putting in their time—putting in their time.

All of those eyes bored into his…he took a careful sip of water, holding them.

Always, holding them—

He didn’t get too deeply into that, but the newspapers had their fair share of stories of officers gone bad, officers in trouble, officers disgraced, replaced or retired…officers found dead in their sordid little apartments. There would be a pile of unpaid bills and monthly demands for alimony, a bottle of a liquid something and a bottle of another something, pills or poison of one sort of another, right there on the bedside table.

No one laughed.

That was a good thing.

No note, as often as not…that one had been just last week. Sometimes, there was not much left to be said—

“Do not lie to yourselves. It can happen to you—but then, it can happen to any one of us.”

The silence was uncanny as they hung on his words. Those at the back, watching his face and straining to hear—

“Respect is earned, and it is never given easily. You have chosen to take the bullshit of your peers—many of whom laughed at you for choosing this profession. You had the guts to stand up to your friends, or in many cases, your own fathers—your own mothers, who might have chosen otherwise. They might have chosen something better for you. But no. No. Not you. You know what you want. No one else has the right to choose this or that for you. Otherwise, you would not be here. As members of this graduating class, the newest and greenest members of this profession, you have proven, at least, that you have earned the right to a place, and the right to try. You have the right to do your best. I suppose on some level, we also have the right to fail. For we all fail once in a while. Still, it is not good to make it a habit.” He cleared his throat. “There are dark clouds, for this country, for this continent. For this world. They are looming on the horizon. There are none who can say what is to come, not for this city, nor for this great nation. The people of France need you. See that you do not fail them in their time of need. Other than that, let me offer my congratulations to all of you, and to wish you success in your duties. The Surete needs you. Some of you report for duty in as early as two or three days. We are looking for excellence, which is, as often as not, eventually rewarded. There is nothing more that can usefully be said. There is only so much anyone can tell you. Your instructors have given you the basics of police work. The very best of you will learn on the job. Or you will be gone—and if you are really that bad, for the sake of all concerned, the sooner you are gone, the better. To all of you, good luck.”

One of the tall oaken doors at the far end opened up and a stocky male figure in civilian clothes entered. He closed the door with a careful click. Stepping around the flag display, off to one side, he put his back to the wall and waited.

No one else seemed to be aware.

Even at this distance, even with these tired old eyes, those shoulders and the mop of blond hair were unmistakable.

Maintenon’s pulse quickened.

He had a car and a ride, it was waiting just outside—this portended something different.

“Thank you. Thank you very much—”

More dutiful applause, all the more sincere as he was the last speaker. A thirty-second wrap by Monsieur Sakarek didn’t count for much, and then they were up and streaming for the door.

They could loosen their ties, take it outside with their admiring friends and family, and snap away madly with their cheap little cameras. They were all the rage for this year, and it looked like being a good Christmas for the department stores.

He could have lived without the sight of all these young idiots throwing their hats in the air…a thought only partially belied by the small and bitter grin that crossed his face. They were young, they were just starting out, with all the idealism and the energy of youth. They would soon know better—

The smarter ones would have a little tag with their names sewn inside the brim. The real dummies would, as often as not, be going home with someone else’s sweaty old hat. That was just the beginning, for some, it was all downhill from there. Thankfully, they were in the minority, and most of them would work out, for better or worse. Given enough time, they would mostly work out.

It was just a question of manpower and teamwork, he thought—that one was right out of the manual.

In some odd sense, they didn’t even have to be that good.

***

As for the weather. It was holding fine, but it was a sky full of broken clouds, tops whipped and tufted, with suspiciously dark bottoms…this time of year, the light was already failing.

“For God’s sakes, Gilles, stop it.”

Arrested, his hand stopped halfway to his beard, which one inevitably took to stroking at a thoughtful moment—like when presented with a question one hadn’t been quite expecting.

“Holy, shit, Gilles. When is that thing going to go?” That scruffy little beard was worrisome—it really wasn’t like him.

“Yes, okay. Fine. I'm getting tired of the little grey beard. The only trouble is, when you go to shave it off, you lose a pretty good chin and that massive upper lip is glaring at you in the mirror like the sun rising out of the highway on a sunny spring morning...”

His companion grinned. It was like they could read each other’s minds, sometimes.

“Oh, come on Gilles. I don’t mean the mustache. It’s a part of your persona—” That mustache is you, Boss.

One had to assume some kind of a lip under there, although he’d never seen it himself.

It was the beard he couldn’t quite fathom, or was Gilles having some sort of identity crisis?

It was laughable, but the beard was there, after all.

“So. What is this alleged case, then?” The original question, how busy are we right now, seemingly ignored.

More of a case of the decision being made and it was time to move on. There was always room for one more.

Andre waved at another vehicle waiting a few spots back at the curb. Another fresh young face, a white oval behind a dusty windscreen, gave an exaggerated nod and began checking the mirrors before pulling out into traffic. Bored out of his skull, most likely, and yet it was a sought-after duty.

What they called a cop-out. Not everyone had the ability to walk a beat, dealing with the civilians and all of their shit all shift long, and you needed seniority to move up. Pool driver was a bit of a side-step, career-wise. Inevitably, sooner or later, some other lazy cunt with more seniority would come along and bump them off to some other fate—records, or personnel, one of the technical branches, something out of the front lines and the public eye.

Levain held the door and Maintenon dropped in.

“Thank you.”

Levain took the front seat and Alphonse, pock-faced veteran of a hundred battles on the Western front, and a couple of subsequent decades on the force, put out his cigarette. He lowered the evening paper and looked inquiringly at the sergeant. His eyes crossed Maintenon’s in the mirror.

“Gentlemen. So. Where may I have the honour of conveying you?” With less than a year to his obligatory retirement age, Alphonse had seen it all, and apparently, no longer cared much what his superiors thought.

The funny thing was, some of them thought quite a lot of old Alphonse. Alphonse, with his battered old vacuum-bottle of coffee and the brown paper bag with its pair of half-stale bologna sandwiches with their thin swipe of mustard, and on a good day, a lonely-looking bit of pale lettuce sticking out...

Men like that, were not to be underestimated, no matter how unpromising the first impression.

Yes, and when he retired, there’d be a half a million francs in the bank, a habitual overtime-hog if there ever was one.

***

“So. Andre. What’s the big deal?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just the usual. Just another unsolvable case, just another dead body. Just another set of mysterious circumstances—”

“Yes. Yes. Just so.” The boss wasn’t fuming, not yet anyways. “Merde. No, Andre, the question is, why me?”

“Oh, God. I don’t know why, Gilles. Just the luck of the draw, I guess.” Andre probably knew better, yet the good-natured needling, that never-ending back and forth, went back too many years to have any hope of stopping it now.

This was not the time to quote Sartre, although it was tempting.

END

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