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| Getting older, can't be bothered to shave anymore... |
Louis Shalako
“…here’s an interesting one, Gilles.”
“What? Ha. What is.” His feet dropped to the floor from the corner of the desk.
“This one.” Andre indicated the pile of Missing Persons reports, several piles in fact, lined up along the front edge of his desk. “D’Aubrueil.”
“What about him?”
“Well. We sort of skipped over this one—we have this huge mess of files. He doesn’t really fit the profile, right. But—but.”
“But what?” The tone indicated that Maintenon was in a patient mood.
“But, assuming those bodies had to come from somewhere, perhaps not always, ah, from our original three reports, then this one might fit the bill as well as anyone.” For at least one of their killings.
Rising, he tossed the file on Maintenon’s desk. Levain moved around, massaging the lower back area, and lifting his knees in an exaggerated manner.
“Agh.” His feet were absolutely numb, and legs wooden with too much desk-time.
Gilles picked it up and began to skim the highlights…
“Hmn.” About the right age, size and height…poor, working class definitely…judging by the address.
One line caught his eye.
Studying for examination for Holy Orders. Plans to enter the priesthood.
He’d been gone about the right length of time.
“Hmn.” He thought about it. “So, you’re suggesting, at the very least, that the Saulnier body had to come from somewhere...er, somewhere else. If not any of the others, at least, not yet...”
Andre Levain nodded.
“Very much. Hmn.” Andre went on. “The hands. The hair. The fingernails—all point to a certain kind of person, a certain kind of young man. Yet it doesn’t necessarily mean a privileged background. Or even any real money. It’s just not always that obvious. Your typical seminary student is anything but unkempt—”
They were representatives, ambassadors, of the Church, after all—cleanliness is next to Godliness. They weren’t athletes, or dock-workers. Hence the muscle tone, or the lack of it.
Maintenon nodded.
The actual body is the actual victim, after all.
“Exactly. But where does this lead us?”
“Well. We can check on those next of kin, ask a few questions. It’s such a long shot, we’d be going way out on a limb to ask for anyone to come down to the morgue for an ID. But—we could. Assuming we had anything, anything at all, ah, other than a lot of doubts. If we had a face, for example. Uh—then there’s the warrants. That’s going to take a few people as well.” He sighed. “Of course, when you introduce another wrinkle…well, there may be other motivations after all. The actual body is the actual victim, after all.”
He cleared his throat.
“Not some guy that ain’t even dead yet, right?”
He saw that Maintenon got it—he got it, all right.
“Oh, God.” Better yet, merde.
That was the whole problem, wasn’t it? They had three unidentified bodies and a whole pile of missing-person reports.
More bullshit—more smokescreen.
Someone out there really knew what they were doing.
***
It was time to bite the bullet.
Home after a long day, Maintenon had studied the want ads in the daily newspaper for a day or two. Ads that, in some cases, went away almost as quickly as they had appeared. Surely, some of them must have been successful. Now, at least, he had some idea of what to say.
Taking a pen and a sheet of paper, he began.
Wanted. A sturdy girl…sighing, he scratched that out. Someone fairly strong and healthy, he thought, recalling Madame Lefebvre, up on a small kitchen ladder and pulling some pretty heavy stacks of bowls and such out of an upper cupboard. Sacks of flour, and potatoes, moving furniture to get at the dust. A good cook—someone trustworthy, someone with a key, and access to the household accounts. Madame Lefebvre had always been very good with the small metal box of cash, high up on the back of a shelf in the deep, narrow little pantry…there had been times when he hadn’t been home for days, and yet the household still had to go on. If nothing else, there was the cat to consider.
Someone able to work long hours alone, someone able and competent to manage the household of an elderly—was he elderly? He scratched that out and substituted ‘respectable’. Whatever the hell that meant. All that was left was the phone number, which he dutifully added in at the bottom. It would be better not to use his full name. ‘Call Gilles’, after six. It would have to do.
With a bit of luck, he could drop that off downtown sometime in the morning. He took a fresh sheet of paper and started again, writing as neatly as possible.
The only real problem, was when would he ever find the time to interview? He had this mental picture of a long line of completely unsuitable women, perhaps even a man or two, all lined up at his door, down the hall and down several flights of steps onto the street.
But perhaps it wouldn’t be that bad after all.
***
It looked like they were about ready to go.
“So. Hubert. What’s the key to a successful raid of a political organization? Or, for that matter, almost any business or organization, criminal or otherwise?”
Hubert sighed.
He’d never really done a big one before.
“Ah. Boxes. Lots and lots of boxes—”
LeBref laughed. It was true enough. A whole stack of boxes, pre-cut, all creased and pressed and tabbed and marked ‘evidence’, but not otherwise yet folded into shape. He stood by the back door of the first of a pair of tall black police vans. The department ordered them by the pallet.
“Oh—and tape.” Lots and lots of tape.
Boxes. Lots and lots of tape...
Envelopes. Labels, pens. Photographers, laden with their equipment…
“All right, boys and girls. All aboard.” There were benches along the sides, and this huge pile of stuff in the middle.
Maintenon and a few others would be coming along in regular police cars, but it was time for this little lot to get moving.
Having drafted in a dozen people from other units, there were more vans, more vehicles pulling into the curb, and that bunch would be visiting their friendly neighbourhood fascist party headquarters…they had their shit-load of splinter groups too. Then there were the communists, and then the anarchists, and then, the nihilists…after that, the idealists, and then, perhaps the nudists.
The papers would make much of all this, with the present government teetering on the edge of an abyss as it seemed. They would be reading all the wrong things into it, but what were the police to do? Sometimes there were no good choices. They had three young men, dead, and that was the only fact that mattered.
Times like these…it was enough to make you weep, almost.
***
“Sit down. Shut up and relax, ladies and gentlemen. We aren’t going anywhere, and neither are you. So just be patient, cooperate like good citizens, and we will get through this as quickly as possible.”
They just couldn’t do it, of course.
None of them were sitting down, and for the most part, all of them were talking or yelling at once as a line of troopers bore through the office, bearing batons, boxes and towering over them with no-nonsense looks on their faces.
“You can’t do this!”
Prideaux. Not happy.
“We’re doing it. Who are you, anyways?”
“I am Marcel Prideaux. I’m the deputy-director of the Paris Chapter of the—”
“All right, Monsieur Prideaux. Please ask your people to sit down, shut up and cooperate. Otherwise they will be arrested and charged with interference. Do you understand, sir?”
“Yes, no. Why the hell should I—”
Levain nodded at a hulking figure at the man’s shoulder, a very large officer with an imposing handlebar mustache.
“All right. Take him in.”
“What? No! But this is outrageous!”
“Yes. It is outrageous. But we do things my way this morning. Now. Calm your people down or we start breaking heads. Do you understand me, sir?”
“Er—er. Yes, of course. Of course.”
There was a long and negative look, eye-to-eye between two men who didn’t like each other very much.
“Yes. Of course.” He turned, and voice raised. “People. People.”
It took a long moment, and his voice cracked out again. Oh, yes. This is the one that makes the speeches, reckoned Levain. He’s modeled himself after Der Fuhrer, although he never would have admitted it.
What with being a socialist, after all.
“People!” Arms in the air like Moses parting the waters. “People.”
Finally, the idiots began to settle down.
END
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Images. From somewhere or other.
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