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| That ain't a Mercedes, Boss. |
Louis Shalako
It was Monday morning, and any resultant hangovers
from Saturday night had hopefully run their course.
A half a dozen of them, at their desks, on the phones,
at the coffee machine, and now there was a knock at the door. No one ever
knocked, so this could only be—
Roger.
“Ah, Gilles, people.” He grinned, almost as if he were
happy to see them.
He might have caught a guilty look from one or another
of them.
Gilles picked up his pen, sighed and looked at Joseph,
who was on the phone. Joseph looked back, one eyebrow raised.
“Uh, huh.”
“Well, Gilles. It’s just that Cariveau, or at least
his passport, and a face that is a reasonable facsimile of the photo therein,
has arrived in Valparaiso.”
“Okay.”
“It gets weirder from here, ah, Gilles.”
“So.”
“Gilles. None of the young men, quite a few of them,
have returned to their homes, their jobs, or the usual haunts.” This included
Baille, as he said.
This included the one in holy orders…a half a dozen
other missing young males, about the right age group if nothing else. Those
ones had at least stayed missing.
“Think about it, Gilles, None of them has been killed,
none of them is really a suspect, not in any sense, in spite of their political
activities. The relationships seem fairly tame if not entirely innocent. None
of them in any sort of money problems, girl problems, stuff like that.” The
room was very quiet, in spite of them all appearing to be doing something else.
“It’s a list of names, and four anonymous dead bodies.”
“Er.” Joseph cleared his throat.
“Yes?” Roger turned, regarding the little man.
“Gilles thought he saw that Schleicher character. At
the, er, party, sir. Yeah, other than that, and, uh, other than that, if the truth be told, we all had a
really good time.” He cleared his throat. “So. Thanks for the tickets.”
And the overtime—
.jpg) |
| Jesus. All that overtime: Roger. |
Maintenon explained. One problem, was the angle and
the distance—Gilles couldn’t really be sure, as to whether the person had
entered the men’s or the ladies…it had been kind of a dark corner back there,
and worse, there was a back door—a fire exit onto an alley.
Roger turned back from LeBref for a better look. He
couldn’t help but laugh, but this was a serious business. He shook his head.
“I mean.” Gilles began to darken in the face. “I mean,
considering Alphonse’s, ah, Amazon.”
For all he knew, it might just have been an unusually
tall woman in odd-ball clothes, going in to powder the nose. They might, have gone into the ladies room.
Interestingly, all of the officers present had mingled, thoroughly, and no one
recalled seeing such a person. Negative evidence, and he was already doubting
his own sanity. Gilles was as fallible as any other witness.
Roger nodded.
“Sir?”
Roger uncrossed his arms.
“It might be better if we could talk in private. I
really am trying to help, you know.”
It’s not like he wasn’t the chief of police, or
something. Maybe Roger was going insane as well.
***
The meeting went on, with the air filling with smoke,
someone in the background making a fresh pot of fairly bad coffee, and the
phones ringing here and there, and it was the usual mess.
“So, of our young men, Saulnier, or a facsimile, has
reappeared at least once. Cariveau, for all intents and purposes, has safely
arrived in Valparaiso, ostensibly to join the family business of a great uncle
according to our inquiries, all very confidential of course…”
The authorities were cooperative, and would follow up
in due time. Valparaiso was a port of entry, the actual family business was in
another, much smaller town in the interior.
Way, way up in the interior…
Nothing real fast was going to happen there.
“Baille, at least, isn’t dead yet, at least the last
time you saw him…”
Roger went on.
“…of the ladies. Yes, this part is really interesting.
Madame Daniau, Rosine…hasn’t paid the rent. Mailbox overflowing…maid let go
some weeks ago, and no one knows her name anyways…” The people next door were
new, hadn’t really spoken to too many people. “…they say the maid was shy, kept
to herself and didn’t talk too much.”
She hadn’t received any personal mail. One room might
have been occupied by a servant…
Hmn.
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| One could theorize endlessly. |
New neighbours. Just getting to know the place.
Uniformed officers were making routine inquiries, just curious, as it were. Chat them up, see what they might spill, sort
of thing.
“If she was going on a world cruise or something, she
would have made proper arrangements…” One must assume.
As far as had been determined, she hadn’t been killed,
knocked over by a bus or whatever. No one of that name had been recently
admitted to hospital. Authorities had red-flagged the name, and if anything—or
any one, turned up, the cops, would be the first to know.
“Wasn’t that the one who came in and showed the
passport, ah, sort of first thing, Gilles?”
Gilles nodded, sighed, made notes…yes, this was all
very suggestive.
“Madame Bernier. Interestingly, she’s disappeared as
well. Oh, both apartments are still furnished, and in good repair, and with a
bit of rotten food and all of that. The landlords are cooperating…” Roger
looked up.
“Just going on the notes, none of them seems to have
owned a pet…other than a certain archetype, of, uh, young man…” Pets
complicated matters when you wanted to pull up stakes in a hurry.
Young men, of a certain age and type were disposable,
as he sort of saw it…
“Argh.”
“Yes, I understand.”
Roger flipped a page.
“Then there is—or was, Mademoiselle Robert. Er, the
male was, theoretically, one Jules Lalonde. Who has not reappeared, neither has
any dead body, or the remains thereof, been positively identified as him, well,
now she seems to be rather scarce, and at this point, one begins to wonder if
she ever existed at all.” The rent was good until the end of the month.
Paid by cheque, a whole year’s worth at once according
to the landlord, and officers were inquiring. The cheques hadn’t bounced. Not
yet, anyways.
“Hmn.”
“Here’s one, Gilles. D’Aubreuil. Never returned to his
monastic cell. Never returned home, never had a phone or an address or a bank
account, what with being destined for Holy Orders. That’s an enigma, for all we
know he’s joined a fucking pirate ship in the South Seas…”
And it went on. And on. And on, and on, and on.
Roger flipped through the notes.
“Oh, yes, what was that other lady’s name…”
Claire Laurent, and he seemed to have missed one
somewhere in there. He had too many pages. The fingertips were too dry to
separate the pages. It was like Maintenon said. It was all just bullshit after
a while, one that might eventually take up an entire filing cabinet, or more
likely, a whole bank of them.
Argh.
There was a pause and this seemed like a good time.
“Speaking of
Alphonse.”
Now it was Roger’s time to blink, owlishly, looking up
from his own voluminous files.
It was a bit of a story all on its own.
***
Gilles had not been hungover in the classic sense,
although he’d had a lot to drink the night before. It was more a kind of buzz,
even now, first thing in the morning. The alcohol hadn’t quite worn off yet,
not completely. Perhaps a little dehydrated, but nothing more. Other than that,
he’d suffered a bit of dry-retching, when brushing his teeth. He’d lit up, and
suffered a hacking cough that resulted in a fair bit of phlegm, but they’d been
up very late the night before…way too much tobacco for one day.
It was perhaps for that reason, what with a slight
fuzzy feeling and a bit of pain in the lower right rear of the skull, it had
taken some little time to realize that Alphonse was taking all the wrong turns,
leading in all the wrong directions.
As it turned out, Alphonse had been reading the
reports, looking at the maps, and they were clearly going somewhere else.
“Okay, sir. Now. Take a look at this.” Down low, the
radio slung under the dashboard squawked and muttered and he reached over and
turned it down even further.
He handed over a map.
“It’s not exactly a cul-de-sac, not quite. You can get
out the back way, following down an alley, all light industry and bins
overflowing with stuff. All too easy to get a puncture, right.” A roofing
company, light industry, mechanical services, and machine shops, all strung out
in a line.
The alley just led to more industrial areas, bisected
by railroad tracks, and there were only limited places to cross the tracks.
Alphonse built up a picture in words.
Gilles looked at the fairly large scale map, folded
just so, to show this part of the city, an industrial section in the
southeastern suburbs.
After an initial pinch-point, turning in off the
actual street, there was a kind of plaza, lined on each side with small
store-fronts, some with fading signs and some with a different kind of sign, activity, an open door, a vehicle parked
with engine idling out in front as someone came and went.
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| Wrong car, and yet here it is, right in the right place. |
And then there was this one, where Alphonse and Gilles
and their vehicle also idled. No one looked, no one cared. No one gave a damn—it
was all pretty anonymous.
“Anyhow, sir. I asked around. My guess is, that the
big black car is sitting right behind…door number four.”
Gilles snorted; it was a good a guess as any.
Those tired old eyes, big and brown and beautiful,
like some sad old hound-dog, regarded Gilles over the right shoulder.
“So. How much do you want to bet?”
Gilles shook his head.
“Nope.”
Alphonse nodded.
He had a pair of bolt-cutters in the trunk.
This would be just a little bit unorthodox, as he put
it.
END
Louis an
audiobook, Speak Softly My Love. That’s free with a trial membership.
See his art on Fine Art
America.
Thank you for reading.
