The Hanged Man's Tale, page 25
But Paul Mazarelle had the constitution of an ox. And like an ox, he was determined to keep going. The doctor’s advice had been to use as much ibuprofen as necessary to keep him comfortable. If that didn’t do the trick, Jacobus had something else for him.
“What’s that? A billet-doux?” Mazarelle asked, taking the folded note.
“A prescription for something stronger just in case.”
Mazarelle waved goodbye. He had Angelique Vasseure as his ace in the hole to keep him in bon état de marche. And Angelique had never failed.
63
On the way back to his apartment with Maurice driving, Mazarelle wanted details. He asked what kind of leads they had on whoever was behind the attack on him. Maurice reported they had plenty of blood for testing from the crime scene, but the PS had come up with no DNA match for it.
“It has to be the same guy,” said Mazarelle.
Maurice nodded. “We’re getting close, and he’s getting twitchy.”
“I wish we were closer.”
“Well, chief, at least you’re still here.”
Maurice pulled the squad car up in front of Mazarelle’s turn-of-the-century apartment building. The weathered stone looked good. So did his battered boss.
“Really,” Maurice had to admit, “it’s all thanks to your concierge.”
“That old battle-ax?” Mazarelle was stunned. “What did she do?”
“Without her you might have died. She was the one who put in the call to get the ambulance here so fast. They got you to the emergency room just in time.”
By way of thanks, Mazarelle decided to give all the flowers he was bringing home from the hospital to Madame Paulette. She wasn’t the sweetest thing in the world, but she did her job. He recalled the list of emergency phone numbers she had hanging by tiny magnets on her refrigerator. When he knocked on her door and went in with his bouquets, she seemed flustered. She had a cat on her lap and it looked like the missing Michou.
“Where did you find her?” he asked.
“Oh no, no!” Madame Paulette quickly explained. “That’s my cat. That’s Fifi.”
Mazarelle knew better. He hadn’t lost all his brains in his fall. Her Fifi had died months ago. She was lying. But what the hell! Somehow it didn’t surprise him. She was what she was. Fifi, he seemed to recall, was an orange and brown animal with white paws. But not all that colorful or well-fed. Michou was a sleek, short-haired, elegant gray—just like this little beauty. Still, the other thing about his wife’s old cat—she never stayed anywhere if she didn’t want to. He wondered if Madame didn’t have a good nature after all.
Before going upstairs, he asked for his mail. While she went to get his letters, Mazarelle looked around the kitchen. He poked through the bookshelf behind her armchair. The books were mostly about cooking. Behind the foyer leading to her bedroom there were stacks of books that surprised him. Piles of paperback mystery stories.
And on the wall above the bookcases in the foyer was a small poster entitled “Les Durs”—Jean Gabin, Jean-Paul Belmondo, the villains with a heart of gold.
“I see you’ve got a soft spot for some of the tough guys too,” he called out.
Madame Paulette hurried back with an armful of letters and pointed upstairs to the new railing on the third floor.
“Do you see that? Brand-new and freshly painted,” she told him. “How do you like it?”
“Very nice. It seems to match. I’ll let you know when I see it up close.”
She understood. “Yes, of course. And I forgot to give you this.”
He opened the familiar envelope. Was it time for the rent already, he wondered. It turned out to be an extra bill from the owner for repairs on the railing. Of course…
“By the way,” Mazarelle said, “who was it that knocked on my door? What did he look like? The Fauchon messenger.”
“He said he had a gift for you from the store.”
“But what did he look like?”
She shrugged. “Tall. The one thing I remember is that he was tall and wearing a hooded sweatshirt. I only saw him for a few seconds. How should I know? He said he had a present from Fauchon. So that’s why I called upstairs and told you. And you said I should warn him about the minuterie not working, which I did. He gave me this weird smile and went up.”
“What kind of weird smile?”
“It was as if I’d told him some kind of a joke. But he wasn’t laughing. Nothing like that. Maybe it was a bad joke? We’d been having some trouble with our hall lights.”
“It was a bad joke,” Mazarelle agreed. As he walked into the courtyard, he looked up at the third-floor balustrade and thought about the distance of the fall he’d taken. A very bad joke.
64
That night, his pain-wracked body didn’t allow him much sleep. Popping up every few hours to take another pill. Still and all, it was good to be home. But in the morning, before he went into 36, he called Angelique to see if he could make an appointment. It turned out that she was coming in early and, according to her secretary, would be happy to see the commandant. He knew Angelique rarely came in early, but that’s what friends were for. And for that, she deserved to get a washed face from him as well as a combed mustache. The way he was feeling, it was about all he could do.
* * *
—
Angelique’s office was on the rue de l’Odéon in the Sixth. The concierge thought he was too early. She called upstairs and discovered that Commandant Mazarelle was expected. “Go right up,” she apologized.
Mazarelle sat down in the empty waiting room, which always had a soothing effect on him. The walls were beige, the shelves full of healing salves, powders, salts. The vitrine against the wall displayed lacquered ebony boxes of acupuncture needles, ampules of different colored liquids, tubes with massage creams from Shanghai and Hong Kong. On one wall were two large vertical posters of the male and female human body, both outlined with Chinese diagrams and symbols.
Angelique did not keep her old friend waiting long. Her office was extremely neat and carefully arranged. The doctor herself seemed to fit right in. She wore a custom-made white linen jacket with a mandarin collar. Her blond hair tied back in an immaculate chignon. All the rooms in her office were color coded. Her private reception room was a rose pink that made her fair complexion positively bloom. She’d told Mazarelle that the French blue of the exercise room was to emphasize the calm of the atmosphere, the reason of her methods, her serenity, the trust her clients could place in her. The green of the acupuncture room heightened balance, subtly reminding her patients once again of the importance of harmony, universal love, and peace. Why not? Mazarelle thought. He glanced around at the walls, then back at her smiling face. “Lovely,” he said. Leaving it open which one he was referring to.
With that, Angelique kissed him on both cheeks and asked about her friend, the soothsayer Mireille. Had she been of any help to him?
Mazarelle paused. “Well, she was…interesting.”
Angelique smiled. “That’s Madame Mireille.”
“I’m not quite sure about most of what she said,” Mazarelle explained. “She was a little vague. She mentioned contradictions a lot.”
He was trying to be nice.
“On the other hand when it came to the Hanged Man card our friend Alain Berthaud had drawn, she was quite categorical about two things. The first was that he faced a period of grave danger. That certainly was true. Second, she added that I did as well. And I guess she was right about that too.”
“There, you see! I told you she was remarkable.” Angelique smiled fetchingly. “So monsieur le commandant, tell me, how can I help you?”
He briefly explained what had happened, beginning with the knock at the door of his apartment, the fierce struggle in the darkness on the landing, the crashing through the balustrade, the three-story fall onto the courtyard’s stone floor, the ambulance, the doctors, the two weeks he’d spent in the hospital. He didn’t talk too much about the strangling itself. He didn’t want to shock her.
Angelique was stunned. And from the wince he gave when she touched his shoulder, it was clear how much he needed her help. She brought him into the green room and gave him a thorough examination. His ribs, his hip, his legs—each a kaleidoscope of bruised purple and yellow. Shaking her head, she couldn’t believe how much damage his flesh had endured. And this was someone she cared about. It seemed to hurt her personally.
Exasperated by his wounds, as if each one was a personal insult to her, she said, “Can’t you work with your mind instead of your body?”
“I do both,” Mazarelle said.
“That may be. But your body can’t take much more. You really need time off. A few months at least. Don’t be a hero, Mazarelle.”
She ran her fingers down his battered arm.
“Not everybody is worth saving. But you are.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
65
Even after Angelique’s gentle fingers, Mazarelle was still a bundle of bruises. But he was feeling a little more like himself, and it was time to get going. The link between the murders of Alain Berthaud, Guy Danglars, and the attack he himself had suffered seemed to him inescapable. Now he had to find the man responsible. And make him answer for his crimes.
And that was why, this late summer morning, Jeannot was driving him toward the Place de la Madeleine.
“Look, it’s got to be the same guy.” Mazarelle grimaced as he tried to find a comfortable position in the car seat. “But we don’t have his weapon—that garrote from the Legion. We don’t have any ID on the DNA from the blood. All we’ve got is the gift box.”
“Sure, I get it,” Jeannot said. “Fauchon. But how do you know which one? Don’t they have like thirteen shops in Paris alone?”
Mazarelle nodded. “Franchises from New York to Taiwan.”
“So what kind of a lead is that?”
“If you and Maurice spent more time on the important things, then you would know.” Mazarelle winced again as he turned in his seat. “Christophe Adam.”
Jeannot looked over, surprised.
“It was the contents of the box,” Mazarelle said, as if that made everything clear. “The Sicilian orange cake. That was special. The Megève ganache was also great—” Just remembering the attractive arrangement made Mazarelle’s mouth water. Too bad he hadn’t even had a few seconds to taste the cake. And too bad about the ugliness that followed. He was sorry the box had been trashed while he was in the hospital.
“But the éclairs…that’s the key. The ones with the flowers on top. They’re called the éclairs fleuris. Inspired by the cherry blossoms of Japan.”
Mazarelle followed the movements of pâtissiers the way sports fans followed player trades. Maurice and Jeannot could tell him all about Paris Saint-Germain’s latest midfield acquisitions. But Mazarelle knew that Fauchon’s pastry cook had recently come over from the Hôtel de Crillon. And anyone serious about pastry was aware of the impact of his new éclairs across the city. Éclairs only available, for now at least, at the main store of the famed market for gourmands.
Jeannot pulled the car into a handicapped spot in front of the store’s black-and-white logo-patterned awnings and glass entryway. Like any Parisian, even Jeannot knew the shop on the Place de la Madeleine. Fauchon had occupied the same site since its founding in 1886. And was still just as upscale and stuffy. Not Jeannot’s kind of place. Even Mazarelle rarely had occasion to go into the store. When he craved pastry, he usually shopped at one of the small patisseries in his own quartier.
Inside, the size of the bustling crowd of shoppers eyeing the displays surprised him. The pastry counter was especially busy, so Mazarelle waited impatiently for a salesperson. There were two women working the counter, one a redhead, the other a blonde, both really young girls, it seemed to him, both quite efficient. The redheaded sales clerk was a cute kid. The name on her ID was Nathalie. Mazarelle dwarfed her. Actually he dwarfed everyone. But it was Jeannot’s grin that drew her over.
Hurrying across to them, the curly-haired redhead, with her best shopgirl manners, politely asked if she could help the gentlemen.
“I hope so,” said Mazarelle. “I wonder if you can give me some information?”
Nathalie had a smile that lit up her display case.
“I’ll try,” she said.
Mazarelle described the contents of his gift box.
“Oooh—that’s so surprising!” gushed the salesgirl. “It’s not one of our usual ones. Actually that’s a really nice combo. But I’m afraid—” Nathalie’s face fell to the floor. “If you want the same today, we can’t do it—”
“No,” interrupted Mazarelle. “I’m wondering if it was bought here.”
“Well—do you have the receipt?”
“No. It was a gift. My question is—could it have been bought here?”
“That’s a little hard to answer. I know we always have those cherry éclairs available—and every other kind of éclair, too! So we can sell you that. And we have the Megève, too. But the Sicilian orange cake is a problem—”
“I should explain,” said Mazarelle. “I wouldn’t mind having a repeat of that box, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m looking for information about whether my gift was purchased in this shop. If so, I’m wondering if anyone here might remember the guy who bought it.”
“Well…I don’t know,” mumbled Nathalie. Then, suddenly, she perked up. “Look,” she said excitedly, “if you know the exact date, then I can check our records to see if we had those three items for sale on that day!”
“Great,” said Mazarelle, and gave Nathalie the date.
“I’ll have to ask our manager—so could you wait a bit?”
“Be glad to,” answered Mazarelle, already thinking that he’d fill the time by trying out one of the day’s special éclairs. In fact they all tempted him, but finally, he ordered a Paris-Brest éclair. He immediately began to eat it standing up at the end of the pastry counter, careful not to drip any of the mousseline cream or the almond and hazelnut praline filling onto his shirt. There was a delightful crunchiness to the slivers of roasted hazelnuts that topped the éclair. He offered a bite to Jeannot. Utterly delicious, they agreed.
Just as they were polishing it off, a tall, thin young man materialized behind the counter. He had a serious, officious expression, holding a large volume as gingerly as if it held the company finances. He beckoned the men over.
“I believe we’ve found what you asked for, Inspector.”
“Good,” said Mazarelle, wondering how the manager knew he was a cop. Was it really so obvious?
The manager flipped the volume open.
“On the date you mentioned, we did indeed have for sale the three items you received in your gift box, so it could well have been prepared in this shop.”
“Excellent. Then my next question is: Does anyone here remember putting it together for a tall guy—taller than you, and definitely much heftier.”
The young man shook his head.
“I’m sorry. You see how many customers we have?”
Jeannot wasn’t giving up. “You might remember his expression. They said he had a strange smile.”
“A smile? Gentlemen. We’re trying to help. But please…”
By now, the pastry counter crowd had diminished. As they spoke the blond salesgirl, no longer occupied, had come closer and was listening to their conversation.
“Pardon,” she interrupted. “But that gift box. I think I put it together myself! There was this guy who bought it. A méchant type—this guy in a hoodie. He had a face like a hatchet. He seemed to be sneering at me as I prepared the gift. And he never said a word of thanks!”
Jeannot turned to Mazarelle with a grin.
“Do you have a credit card receipt?” asked Mazarelle, hopefully.
“No—he used cash. I can still see him throwing it down on the counter.”
“Anything else you remember?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”
So close. But except for the Paris-Brest éclair, the trip was a bust.
“Too bad, boss,” Jeannot commiserated. “I liked the story about that pastry cook.”
As they turned to go, Mazarelle let his eyes run down the counter to take one last look at the latest chocolates.
“Except…”
The blond salesgirl was frowning.
“Well, it’s not all that interesting, but…”
Jeannot waved his hand to prompt her. “But what?”
“Well, you know…the tattoo.”
“Tattoo?”
“Right—it was one I’ve never seen before. When he lifted the box, his sweatshirt sleeve slid back. It was some kind of bird. Or maybe a dragon or something. On his forearm.”
Jeannot’s thanks made the salesgirl blush.
As they headed out, Mazarelle wasn’t sure whether they’d learned anything useful or not. But at least he had established the store where his assailant had gotten the gift. Maybe they could do something with that tattoo…
66
Back at the office, Mazarelle gathered his team.
They had a suspect—a big guy with a grip like a wrench, a flair for ropes, and an ability to set a trap. And possibly someone with inside information—tracking down Mazarelle at his own home suggested that. His athleticism and his choice of the loupe clearly pointed to an ex–special forces type from the Legion itself.
But while the Legion connection seemed likely, the killer—his attacker—would not be easy to find. He set Maurice and Jeannot on the job of tracking down the enrollment lists from the Legion. Meanwhile Mazarelle took to the phones.
“Sergeant Delapierre, so good to hear your voice.” Mazarelle grimaced as he tried to get comfortable in his office chair and imagined himself back into his role as a journalist.
