19 Purchase Street (29 page)

Ponsard checked the signature of Mrs. L. G. Crawford, folded the bill of sale and put it in the desk drawer, locked the drawer and made a tight possessive fist around the key. Done, he thought, done! He was so elated he felt like having Astrid use her mouth on him again, and would as soon as these Americans were gone. Meanwhile, he'd throw them a couple of tidbits. He felt expansive. “You know, of course, Monet lived in this area.”

“Did he really?”

“In Giverny, just a few kilometers from here. Lived there for thirty-six years, died there.”

“He's probably still there,” Leslie said.

Ponsard gave her the benefit of not having said what he'd heard.

“In spirit,” Leslie explained with a quick little smile.

“As a matter of fact,” Ponsard told her, “Monet's house and gardens have been restored to the way they were in his time.”

“All the more reason for him to be around.”

Ponsard lowered his head and sneaked a look at her through his eyebrows. “The place has been declared a national site,” he said.

“Oh, I'd love to see it!”

Ponsard felt himself saved by the day. “It's Tuesday,” he said. “It is closed on Tuesday.” The last thing he wanted to do with the afternoon was play personal guide-to-Monet for these two.

“Won't someone be there?” Leslie asked.

“No one.”

“Wonderful! We'll have the whole place to ourselves.”

“But—”

“Surely you can arrange for it, Monsieur Ponsard. After all, you are an expert.”

Ten minutes later they were in the green Bentley headed for Giverny.

The problem was still Astrid. No matter how pointedly Leslie and Gainer told her she'd be bored, she would not be left behind. For one thing, she wanted to experience the green Bentley, so that she wouldn't have to make a total lie to the other girls. She'd already thought up for them an elaborate memoir of the lurid things she'd been required to do in the car. Even more important, however, was her practical reason for going along. Madame Brossolette, the woman who ran the rendezvous at 12 Rue de la Cerisaie, had taught her never, under any circumstances, to allow a client to leave without first settling his account. The client in this instance, of course, being Ponsard.

So, there was Astrid in the rear seat. And Gainer in the rear with her. Ponsard had thought it best that he sit in front where he could more easily give directions. Leslie had the window all the way down on her side and sat so close to it she was nearly sideways to the steering wheel. Because Ponsard smelled of Gauloise cigarettes and roses. His clothing was permeated with smoke, and before leaving the house he had splashed his cheeks and neck with a heavy cologne. So heavy, it made Leslie's eyes water.

They drove through town. Ponsard pointed out puncturelike indentations on the walls of some of the buildings where bullets had struck. “The Germans wounded Vernon badly when they came in 1940, and I must say the Americans did worse to it in 1944,” Ponsard said and, as though it was the most important thing that had happened since the ninth century when Rollo established the town, Ponsard added, “I was born here.”

He's about to die here, Norma, Gainer thought.

They crossed over the Seine to the satellite village of Veronette and stopped there at the house of the government-appointed Monet estate caretaker. Ponsard went inside. Across the way was a pâtisserie with its door open and wonderful baking fragrances wafting out. Leslie's mouth watered. Astrid stuck her head out and inhaled through her nose several times. They could see the reds of things raspberry and the yellows of things lemon and the white of sprinkled powdered sugar on the tops of things on display in the pâtisserie window. Leslie sent a strong mental message to Gainer, urging him to jump out and get some. But just then, Ponsard returned, jangling a ring of keys, holding them up rather victoriously to convey that he had been able to make the necessary special arrangements.

Leslie expressed her frustration by pressing the engine up to nearly 5000 RPMs and leaving black traction marks on the cobbles of the street. The road to Giverny had the Seine and a single set of railroad tracks running beside it. Here and there were the lighter green droops of willows or the higher spears of poplars. Wild bushes grew dense along the way, competing for the sunlight that was somewhat demure now, hiding behind a haze. Leslie drove the road as though she knew it, at high speed with no letup for any dip or turn.

She was doing nicely until a curve deceived her, and the Bentley swerved around it, momentarily out of control. The centrifugal force sent Astrid flying over onto Gainer. It could not have been more opportune as far as she was concerned. Her right hand braced on his crotch, grasped it, and while the sensation of that overwhelmed him, her left hand went in under his jacket to remove a leather case from his inside pocket. Recovering, she slipped the case beneath her right buttock, sat on it for a while and, when no one was looking, dropped it out of sight down the front of her dress. She'd done it almost instinctively, as though only her hands were responsible. It was something she'd learned early from her mother, a whore in Hamburg. Any day she picked a pocket she didn't have to go to school—those had been her mother's terms. At the moment, however, Astrid almost regretted her behavior. The wallet hadn't felt fat, felt thin in fact. Still,
maybe
it contained brand new hundreds, or even better. She knew that certain people carried only new money because they were afraid of germs. She glanced over to Gainer and said the word
fuck
to herself. This one didn't look as though he was afraid of anything, let alone germs.

Leslie parked the car on the Chemin du Roy, right at Monet's front gate. Ponsard made a minor ritual out of unlocking the gate and, acting as host, stood aside for them to enter.

The house was situated on the north side of the road, set back about two hundred feet. It was on three acres, rectangularly shaped and walled all around. In the far right corner of the grounds was Monet's main studio, high-peaked with much more skylight than roof. In the opposite corner was his second studio overlooking the thousands of panes of his greenhouse. Between the two studios was the house itself, a long, two and one half story structure somewhat resembling the architectural personality of an army barracks. It was saved, to some extent, by the creeper vines that overgrew its rough pink-cast surface, softly disguising corners, obscuring most of the repetitive eaves and sills.

From the porch of the house all the way to the road was garden—as true as possible to the way Monet had originally laid it out. The trellises that spanned the wide center path were climbed upon by pink and crimson roses, and bordering that path were creeping nasturtiums, daisies, white, pink and violet asters, delphiniums, dahlias and anemones. Although there was a certain symmetry to the spacing of the beds and walkways, the attitude was by no means formal, a far cry from Le Notre, this garden of Monet's, where mats of nasturtium were allowed to spread beyond their territories and wild geraniums, abrietta and pink saxifrage were disciplined as little as possible. One had to walk with care not to step on them.

Irises stood up with their tongues out.

Gladiolas looked as though if shook they would ring.

Hollyhocks were attentive, listening in all colors.

Gainer and Leslie had expected a pretty garden but not this. They were struck to the point of near-reverence.

Ponsard suggested that they begin their tour on the other side of the road. A passageway tunnel ran beneath the road and the railroad tracks, and when they were in it Ponsard's echoing voice told them this convenience had recently been installed with the money of some wealthy American. Monet, he was certain, would have detested it.

Gainer didn't think so. From what he'd read, Monet had appreciated advantages when he could finally afford them. Monet had owned a motor car in 1901, a Panhard-Levassor, and had had a chauffeur. He had eaten his share of
foie gras
from Alsace and truffles from Perigord, had worn suits made for him of fine English wool, the trousers fastened at the ankles by three bone or gray pearl buttons. His boots were of the best leather, made especially for his feet, his shirts were of intricately pleated cambric with ample elaborate cuffs.

Emerging from the tunnel, the first thing Gainer's eyes came on was the Japanese bridge, the same that Monet had rendered on canvas so many times in so many different moods of light. The bridge spanned about thirty feet over the narrower end of Monet's pond. The pond was about two hundred feet long and at its widest point fifty feet. It was the soul of that piece of land. On its bank was a mirror forest of bamboo, enormous ferns, masses of rhododendrons and azaleas, tall blades of iris guarding soft purple blossoms half in and half out of the water all along the edge. And water lilies, great gatherings of them with their white faces wide open at this time of day, their leaves like flat, floating hearts.

Leslie recalled having seen some of Monet's water lily series years ago at the Louvre. She had been entranced by the nuances Monet had caught, the simple qualities, and had thought at the time the man must have been blessed with special, unusual eyesight that enabled him to see the aura of the blossoms.
Des Nymphéas
, the water lilies, had been Monet's subject for thirty years and were the last thing he painted. There, on the bank of his pond, on the very spot where Leslie now stood, was where he had set up several easels in a row and worked on canvases in sequence according to the changes in the light.

It seemed to Leslie she could feel Monet's presence. She turned her head slowly, and would not have been surprised if there had stood Monet with his white Santa beard and round crowned straw fedora. Instead, she saw Ponsard, who was urging them to press on.

They walked along the path that duplicated the pond all around.

Gainer was not so caught up in the esthetics of the place. He had at least an eye and a half out for a good spot to kill Monsieur Ponsard, the
expert
. At one point, when he and Leslie were far enough from the others, he whispered, “Get the girl away from here.” Leslie kissed him near his ear and told him she'd try. They went back through the tunnel and up the center path to the porch of the house. Ponsard was relating a piece of trivia about Monet when Astrid interrupted: “I have to pee,” and she went into the house.

Ponsard started to go on with what he had been saying, then left the sentence unfinished and also went inside. He did not know Astrid well, had been with her only twice before, but he knew her well enough not to let her wander alone among precious things. He could too well imagine her lack of resistance to an irreplaceable Monet memento, such as the Japanese ceramic in the glass cabinet in the drawing room. Ponsard called out for her.

No reply.

Aha, she was up to something! He went from the entrance hallway, through the main salon to the drawing room at the extreme east end of the house.

There was Astrid. But she was not paying any attention to the glass cabinet or anything else in the room. She was reaching up in under her skirt past the sash that she had knotted at her waist. On seeing Ponsard she immediately let her skirt drop, sat in one of the wicker chairs, her hands laced in her lap and with a slight, innocent upturn to the corners of her mouth.

“What were you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You have something inside your dress.”

“I had an itch you know where.”

“Let me feel.”

She expected him to go up between her bare legs, but he frisked her above her waist, found the leather case she had concealed there.

She resorted to the truth, only because lying was now useless, and told him how she had lifted Gainer's wallet, hoped that Ponsard would see the justice of poor her having done that to a rich American.

What Ponsard saw was a possible threat to the transaction he had just made for the two paintings. Astrid's petty thievery might cast suspicion on his own honesty, and although he had the bill of sale all tidy and tight, the two Americans could make a legal fuss.

He grabbed Astrid by her hair, pulled her head up by it and slapped her with a forehand and a backhand, sharp, powerful slaps that caused her cheeks to blotch red.

She didn't cry out or struggle. She had been slapped as hard and more on other occasions. Slaps didn't last so long.

Ponsard shoved his hand down the front of her dress, so harshly he ripped the neckline. He brought out the leather case.

It was not a wallet.

Ponsard flipped it open, saw the photograph it contained. A man and a woman with an obvious family resemblance. The man was this American, Crawford. The woman was … the order in Zurich. It was her, no mistaking it.

It wasn't a coincidence.

Becque, the careless son of a bitch—Becque was somehow to blame, Ponsard was sure.

His mind rapidly replayed the day, and he now realized that all the while these Americans had been looking down his throat. Well, he thought, Astrid, the undeveloped whore with the practiced mouth had inadvertently shifted the advantage in his favor. Instead of expressing his gratitude he told her he wasn't going to pay her—unless she did exactly as he said. She was to take the leather case and, unnoticed, place it on the floor of the rear seat of the green Bentley. In the event it was missed it would be found there and he would still have the edge.

Astrid agreed, took the case, deposited it again down her neckline and ran from the rooms as though reprieved.

Ponsard stayed there. He reached in under his suit jacket, around the back of his trousers to where the seam of the seat met the waistband. Located there was a concealed pocket, tailored to hold what Ponsard called his
bébé doux
, his sweet baby.

A .25 caliber Browning automatic. Made in Belgium, so compact Ponsard could practically palm it. It actually had the word
Baby
trade-marked on its grip.