Babayaga: A Novel (27 page)

After a while, the old woman finally calmed down. She sat on a chair, staring glumly at the floor as Maroc explained the next steps, how they would wait a bit longer to be sure, and then, if no better news arrived, there would be a small ceremony at the station. The mayor would come, of course, and her son would be posthumously awarded many honors and medals. She would also receive standard insurance compensation, and her son’s pension would help her weather this great loss. When Maroc finally began to make his excuses to leave, and he and Lecan started for the door, she watched them go with a desperate, silent sadness. Her eyes looked like spoons brimming over, ready to spill again. Maroc could not get out of there fast enough.

Vidot’s apartment was not too far away, but by the time they got there the light drizzle had grown into a deluge and they had to jump over swelling gutters to reach the building’s front door. Luckily, they did not have to wait out in the rain as they were buzzed in right away. They climbed the stairs to the flat and when they knocked at the apartment door, a woman quickly answered. Her bright smile faded instantly at the sight of them. “Yes, can I help you?”

“Are you Madame Vidot?” asked Maroc.

“I am.”

“I am Superintendent Maroc. This is Detective Lecan. I am afraid—”

The loud buzz of the downstairs doorbell interrupted him. She did not answer it.

“I am afraid we have some unfortunate news,” Maroc continued.

“Oh?” she said, her face turning white. “Is this about my husband?”

Again, the doorbell buzzed, and again she did not answer it.

“I’m sorry.” Maroc smiled politely. “Are you expecting company?”

“It is nothing, no one,” she stammered. “Please, go on.”

Maroc was about to continue with his speech when Lecan stepped forward. “Madame, perhaps you should invite us in. The news we have is serious and inappropriate for hallway conversation. And please, let up whoever is waiting. The weather is terrible and we would not want to be the cause of their inconvenience.”

“Yes, I’m sorry, please come in.” She opened the door for them. As they entered the modest apartment, Lecan gave Maroc a knowing look. “But I am sure,” she said, “whoever is outside will go—” The buzzer rang a third time, its duration implying a certain impatience.

“Please,” said Lecan, “invite him up.”

Blushing, Madam Vidot pushed the front door button. The three of them waited in the silent apartment, listening to the rain against the window and the footsteps climbing the stairs. When the knock came at the door, Adèle went to open it. Before she could say a word, the man burst in and immediately started removing his soaked hat and coat. “My God, it’s terrible out! Were you napping? Oh, my little dove, I can’t wait to get out of these wet clothes and—”

It was only then that he looked up and saw the two policemen.

“Good evening,” said Maroc with a grin. “I am Superintendent Maroc, and this is my colleague, Detective Lecan. And may I ask who might you be?”

Less than an hour later the two policemen headed back to the station, huddled beneath their two umbrellas and engrossed in a rigorous debate. Maroc was convinced that Madame Vidot and this Alberto Perruci, who was undoubtedly her paramour, were now the primary suspects in the case. Clearly they had murdered her husband and probably Bemm too, perhaps as an unintended consequence. Lecan insisted this was not necessarily so. Maroc pointed to the statistics, how in most murder cases involving married couples, it almost always turned out that the spouse had done it. Lecan agreed that history supported Maroc, but also pointed out that this was France, where, if adultery led inevitably to murder, then piles of new corpses would be lining the streets every morning. Lecan told Maroc that he suspected a more sinister end, perhaps related to the case Vidot had been investigating. By the time they reached the station, Maroc had agreed with Lecan that while infidelity did not necessarily lead to homicide (if it did, he agreed, most Frenchmen would be dead), he still needed answers, and this pair was the closest thing he had to a lead. The death of Leon Vallet was proving to be a dead end, with no clear leads to follow. But these two were acting suspicious right under their noses. Therefore he would put the wife and her lover under surveillance, as it was the only constructive thing he could think of to do.

“Of course, maybe in the end we will find that Vidot simply ran away with a lover of his own,” suggested Lecan.

“Yes, maybe he ran away with Bemm,” Maroc said, and they shared a good laugh at that.

II

Tumbling down toward the street from Billy and Dottie’s apartment, Vidot realized that his whole life would not, as the cliché put it, flash before his eyes. In fact, he had abundant time for regrets, second thoughts, and even philosophical ruminations, for, thanks to the air pressure and the updraft, what would have been a plunge of mere seconds for a heavier mortal man took substantially longer for a falling flea: it was as if he had tumbled off a tall cliff perched above a kilometers-deep canyon and it would now take considerable time for him to cover the vast distance before he reached the bottom. So, as he fell, he could contemplate all the many lapses in judgment that had brought him to this grim and unfortunate end.

Then, unexpectedly, a brisk breeze picked up from below. This gentle but firm wind, buffeting off the side of the building, completely ceased his descent and began forcing him up and aloft. In fact, as it quickly billowed him out over the rooftop, he found himself at an altitude of such atmospheric activity that it quickly became evident that he would not be returning to earth anytime soon. In surprising bursts and swirling currents, curious eddies, and elliptical wafts, he proceeded to spin and sail up across the high terraces, tiles, and chimneys of Paris, his soul now laughing in a nervous ecstasy of relief as he sailed over the spires of churches and soared past garret windows and bright tin peaks. In absolute amazement, he glided over the spiderwebbed alleyways of the Marais and then out past the Hôtel de Ville. Cars and pedestrians clogged the streets beneath him. He was high up now, gazing across to where Montmartre itself gazed out over the city. He was swept along in the wind, admiring the twin steeples of Notre-Dame as he passed, along with the dogged, devilish gargoyles of St. Jacques.

Relaxing in his good fortune, he began to figure out how to surf the wind’s current. By twisting, turning, and balling himself up while extending his long legs out into the air, he found a way to achieve some slight control. Aiming himself down the length of the Avenue Montaigne, he rode a buffeting gust and was shot clear across the river. Then, gleefully aiming himself again, he floated between the iron latticework of the Eiffel Tower. He soared out, up along Haussmann’s grand boulevards all the way to Montparnasse. There the spinning wind’s pressure changed and took him swooping down so that he found himself dancing along only meters above the black and gray hats of a small crowd of people. The breeze sped up again, and as he sailed over the street he caught a glimpse of a pretty blond girl selling newspapers, followed by a man pushing a movie camera in a baby carriage. What a marvelous city, he thought, captivating and mesmerizing even in its most pedestrian moments, those scenes composed of singular beauty that were almost camouflaged and lost amid its myriad wonders.

The gusting wind now shifted direction as it shot him up once more, blowing him back hundreds of meters above the Champ de Mars to where a lonely red balloon floated by. The sight reminded him of those first heroes of flight, his countrymen, who, long before the airplane, rose from crowded and cheering Parisian courtyards in their gilded and satin hot-air palaces. Filled with delight, and flying now back over the river, he passed the Tuileries. He tossed and turned in the cool breeze. He was beginning to think he could happily spend days up above Paris, riding high and repeatedly crisscrossing the Seine, a tiny observing angel keeping a keen, watchful eye on his fair city and its sweet and sinful inhabitants, when suddenly, as he was passing over the courtyard of the grand Hôtel de Crillon, the capricious winds absolutely died and Vidot found himself falling once again, straight down until he landed smack in the middle of an overflowing garbage can.

Stunned, quite happy to be alive, and, as far as he could tell, miraculously uninjured, Vidot rousted himself up from the piled debris and hopped out onto the base of a nearby drainpipe. He had barely time to catch his breath before he saw a large, lumbering shadow passing by, and, without any hesitation, he leapt onto it, wholly intent on resuming the journey to the station he had been pursuing before he was waylaid by Billy and Dottie.

Quickly determining that he was riding the rear end of a common rat, Vidot scurried below to the safety of the belly. There, the warmth of the rodent’s flesh struck another intuitive nerve. Vidot realized that, amid all the drama, he had not eaten in a couple of days. Without pause, he sank his teeth in and sucked deeply, filling his abdomen with warm blood, which caused him to slip into the familiar rich ecstasy of semiconsciousness that often accompanied his more gluttonous meals. In his daze, he failed to notice that his rat was not, in fact, carrying him down the streets but instead had ducked through a sewer grate and crawled up though a small hidden hole that led directly into the side of the building. Slipping behind plaster walls and climbing up the frame of the service-elevator shaft, the rat made its way steadily along the narrow warrens, finally emerging from behind a radiator inside a sumptuous hotel suite.

Coming out of his dazed stupor, Vidot was entirely shocked to hear a familiar voice in the room, one he had never expected he would ever hear again. “Ah, there you are,” said Elga. “Been out playing in the gutters, eh? You are such the little man, Max, you go out for your evening stroll and you come home smelling funny.”

III

Guizot was weeping, his head down on the conference room desk, banging his fist against its polished surface. Will tried to offer him his handkerchief, but Guizot ignored the gesture. It was fine with Will, he was happy to wait. At that moment, Brandon was on his way over to Will’s office from the embassy, and so Will was happy to kill time listening to Guizot’s hysterical theatrics, knowing that this meeting was going to be better than the next one.

“I am the destroyer, Will, the destroyer!” Guizot wept.

“I honestly think you’re being a little dramatic,” Will said.

When Will had left his apartment, hours before, Zoya had still been sleeping. After showering, shaving, and putting on his gray suit, he had left a short note on the bedside asking her to call him when she woke. He drew a heart on the note and then kissed her cheek before grabbing his hat and heading out the door. The minute he reached the street, he had regretted leaving her side.

It wasn’t only the physical intimacy he had enjoyed, though they had fit together like perfect puzzle pieces and the passion had charged and thrilled him in a way it had not for a long while. But the conversation they shared at the restaurant had made him feel better too. He was a little foggy on exactly how much of his story he had shared with her (he had lost count how many vodka shots they’d put down), but, walking down the street, he felt relaxed and unburdened for the first time in weeks. He remembered the good-humored way she listened to him, a sly smile crossing her lips as he talked (what
had
he said, exactly?). Continuing along the avenue, a part of him longed to turn around and race back to his bed. He wanted to crawl between the warm sheets again, to feel her skin, to slide between her legs, to flutter her eyes awake.

He wondered how many men found such intensity in a woman’s arms. Most of them thought they did, no doubt, that was the spark that drove lust onward. But did they really, or was it usually some thinner, cheaper version? And when it was good like this, how long did the feeling last? Is this how married men felt? Did those husbands still ache and pine to roll in their wives’ embrace as they went through their tedious days, and when they were out with their wives, did they inch closer so that their fingers were never far from touching? He had felt he was being a little ridiculous, like a daydreaming character out of some silly romantic movie, but these were refreshing emotions for him, so he savored their rawness, sucking at them as one does a candy, wondering if he should give in to his desire and rush back to her side. If he turned around now, in five minutes’ time he could be naked, holding her in his arms, kissing that perfect soft spot below her collarbone and still only be an hour or so late for work. But as tempted as he was, practical realities held him in check. He had already wasted the previous day gallivanting about town on Oliver’s wild adventure. He needed to get back on top of things.

Thinking of Oliver reminded him that Zoya had not clarified much there. Was she seeing both of them now? Or had she smoothly switched over like a busy traveler changing trains? What would Oliver think, or say? And should Will even care? After all, the man had been nothing but a whirlwind of distractions and destruction since they first crossed paths, and now he had managed to tangle himself up in both Will’s professional and personal life. No, Will decided, he wouldn’t worry about Oliver.

Once Will had arrived at the office, he immediately buried himself in the distraction of work. Since he was not responsible for much these days, it didn’t take long to catch up with his reports. The media buying for Guizot had been completed in his absence, and the first-quarter estimates had all been done; still, he gave all the work a thorough review and then attended a pair of brief meetings with his colleagues in which they were all given updates on their clients’ general health. Then it was lunchtime.

As was often his ritual, he sat alone at his desk, eating the ham-and-brie his assistant had brought in for him. Most of the office went out at lunch; many would not return till it was almost three. Will had long ago come to terms with the fact that the French did not embrace his same slavish devotion to office hours that Americans did. Looking out at the empty desks, Will was of two minds: on the one hand, he was happy that Americans like him worked so hard, clearly it allowed his country to remain at the vanguard of industrial leadership, the captains of capitalism, stewards of the modern, civilized world. On the other hand, he envied the French their serenity. After all, they too had, at one time, ruled much of the world like their American cousins did now, but it seemed they had abdicated that role with only a little regret, finding more than enough consolation in the various pleasures that could be found in a nice, long lunch.