Coq au Vin (19 page)

“Yes,” Simard said. “In light of what your aunt said, Melon surely dispatched Lacroix to kill her. But as for the others? Open to question, I would say. With a little planning, Monsieur Melon might very well have personally carried out the murders of Mary Polk and Brainard. And he no doubt killed Lacroix. There is a very likely scenario based on what you reported to the police: The night of Gigi's death, Monsieur Melon was ill, or pretended to be ill with a hangover. He retired to his private office to sleep. But, while you and Andre and the others performed, he simply made the short walk to the metro, joined Lacroix in the square, sat quite close to him as they talked, and soundlessly drove the knife into his body. He returned to Bricktop's, slipped in by the back entrance, and no one was any the wiser.”

“Right. That is how I'd figure it.”

“As to why he felt he must get rid of Lacroix at that moment? We cannot be certain. Either Lacroix simply knew too much about his deeds, or Melon suspected that Lacroix was on the verge of trying to sell you some real information for a change—something that was much too dangerous for you to know.”

“The thing is, Inspector, what made him start down that road in the first place? All the way back to the scam with Ez, I mean. What kind of pressure could have caused Morris Melon to sell out his principles so completely?

“In fact, that's what I can't figure out about all the people in this singular group of—I don't know what to call them—displaced persons—expatriates. For the moment let's call them that. Why did they do those stupid, stupid things? What sort of forces, mysteries, were driving them?

“I asked my aunt a question as she was driving away. ‘What do you need that money for?' Viv knew she didn't have a chance of getting away after killing Melon. She didn't answer me then, and now those money orders have vanished. What did she do with them? What? God knows, I'd love to be able to answer that question when my mother asks it.

“As for Jerry Brainard, you know what I'm starting to believe about him, Inspector? Bad guy that he was? That he once cared for Vivian almost as much as she did for him. That he was a weak guy, always in trouble, always in debt, and he talked her into getting that money from Ez because right then it was the simplest way to get what he needed. I wonder if he didn't eventually realize he'd have been better off staying with Viv and working for a living like everybody else.”

Simard smiled ruefully. “And what about Haskins?” he said. “What was, in your estimation, his driving need?”

“His need was for Vivian, I suppose. Poor bastard.”

“Poor bastard,” the inspector echoed. “You've cast a very forgiving eye on all the players in your little drama, you know. Mysteries or no mysteries, I could never look at them with the kind of pity you do. But, tell me this: are you purposely leaving one character out of this complicated tale of expatriates?”

“Who would that be?”

“Yourself, my friend.”

Me? Sure, I could toss around some ideas about what drives me. But I did much better speculating, piecing together the motivations of four dead people. Who weren't around to tell me I was full of shit.

I merely shrugged.

We'd been lunching for three and a half hours. I had to get back to the rue Christine.

“I take it,” Monsieur Simard said as I walked him to his taxi, “that you and Andre…” He allowed his voice to simply drop off the cliff there.

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.

“Ah.” That was all he said. But the word seemed to come from his chest.

“Nanette,” he said a few minutes later. It startled me. It was the first time he had called me by my first name.

“Oui?”

“You loved your aunt, did you not? And you believe that, despite the unhappy turn her life took, she loved you as well?”

I nodded.

“I think, Nanette, you must accept that everyone is entitled to his mysteries. But perhaps there is a very practical answer to what Vivian did with the bulk of that ten thousand dollars.”

I looked at him expectantly.

“If Rube Haskins was so completely taken in by her, he probably told her who he really was. She may have known his real name, where he was born, everything.”

“Yes, that makes sense.”

“What was that phrase you used…payback? Too little, and too late. But a kind of payback.” He continued to look benignly at me.

“What is it you're not telling me, Monsieur Simard?”

“The clerk who sold postage to your aunt remembered her because she looked ill. As if she had a fever. After she left you and Andre standing in Cité Prost, your aunt Vivian sent a large envelope by air to the United States. That is all the young lady at the post office recalled.”

Ah. So maybe Vivian had made a last-ditch attempt to redress the wrong she had done Ez. She had sent her inheritance to his family.

I kissed the inspector then. I couldn't help myself. “I'll write to you,” I said.

“Excellent. I haven't had a good letter in ten years.”

“And will you?” I asked.

“The minute anything interesting occurs.”

I forgot the ice cream.

Just as well.

Andre was gone.

Nan:

Go. Leave keys downstairs. Go Go I won't come back till you do.

I packed in a hurry, to say the least, so I'm sure I must have left something behind. If so, I didn't do it on purpose. Believe me.

Yes, I thought, there was another cue I hadn't picked up on. Before I left the apartment to join Simard, Andre was playing around with that keyboard. He was playing at something kitschy—Viennese—something like “Fascination.” But, as I descended the stairs, I could have sworn I heard the opening notes to Gordon Jenkins's “Good-bye.”

CHAPTER 17

Parting Is Not Good-bye

I wrote a note, too. On the back of the one he'd left for me. But in the end I didn't leave it.

I had it in my purse.

What am I doing here?

I belonged with Andre, didn't I? He was the one who was so caught up with “belonging” to a place. Not me, not anymore. I was beginning to accept that I'd always be a little bit on the periphery. Fuck the
place
—it was Andre I belonged with, no? So what was I doing up above the world, heading back to America? Alone.

You're taking Vivian's body home. That's what you're doing. Her brother is going to bury her, and maybe you along with her
.

To repeat, I belonged with Andre, didn't I? Here was a man who had not only pledged the rest of his life to me. Not only could play “Billie's Bounce” on the violin. Not only showed a willingness to face down my shitty karma. He loved me enough to take a bullet that by all rights should have been mine.

“Madame?”
I heard a soft voice say.

The flight was only half full. The attendant with the chignon wouldn't leave me alone. I had already declined the game hen dinner, smoked salmon, honey peanuts, champagne, the current issue of
Paris Vogue
, and the in-flight Julia Roberts movie. With each offer I turned my puffy, ugly old face to her and tried to answer in the fewest polite French words possible.

I had downed an ocean of black coffee since boarding the plane.

The poison gas began to rise again in my stomach as I had another flashback of Vivian lying in that alley with the back of her head blown off.

I turned on the overhead light to help chase the image away.

I lived too much in the past. That was my trouble. That's what the music was about, when you really got down to it. It wasn't just what I did for a half-assed living, what I respected and loved. It was my escape from the world as presently constituted.

Worse, it wasn't even
my
past. All my life it seems I've been caught up with the people, the music, and the feel of life at another time, a time at least three generations removed from my own. Here you are, little Nanette, it's 1969 and here's the gift of life. Welcome to the world, dear. What are you going to be, a postal worker, a bank manager—you know, they let us do that kind of thing now—or a computer whiz?
Me? Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather be Mary Lou Williams. Ivy Anderson? Or, yeah, how about Sonny Rollins?
I could never get with the music I was supposed to like. Nor the kind of man I was supposed to like. Nor the kind of ambitions that were supposed to drive me forward. I don't give a damn about the things that excite or tie up the folks drinking shooters on the Upper West Side or hanging with Spike in Fort Greene.

Yes, through the music of the past I had, like Andre, found a way to honor my forefathers. But I knew there was something terribly dishonest about the way I lived. It wasn't just living in a fantasy world, it wasn't just being phony—it was wrong. It's wrong not to live in the here and now. It's cowardly and pious and arrogant and wrong.

And the other kids just don't like me.

If I played my cards right I could spend the whole flight beating up on myself. I think it must have been Ernestine, that voice in my ear, that was telling me:
If you feel this awful, you must deserve it
.

Pictures of Andre were now interspersed with the memories of Vivian. Those big feet of his, and the way he moved, and that hollow place in his lower back. The day he took me on that breathless guided tour, the same day we first went to Bricktop's. Teasing him then, I said he was crazy—that his devotion to the past had crazed him. Well, maybe that was no joke; maybe he
was
crazy, crazy for real. And, finally, those cold blue killer-for-hire shades that had obscured his eyes, hidden him, taken him from me during the last days we had together.

Belong with him?
said Ernestine scornfully.
You'll never see him again
.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair.

I dug a few paper napkins out of the seat-back pocket and dabbed at my eyes.

Would Andre continue to live and work in Paris, stay on in France forever? He sure had the talent and the determination. I had no doubt he would do our forebears proud, the obscure ones along with the famous. All those black people with a hyperdeveloped sense of the romantic which takes them to faraway places, out of the here and now they were born to endure in America. Maybe someday, as maturity softened his contempt, he'd be able to
view
Little Rube Haskins in a more sympathetic light. And Morris Melon. And me. All us permanent strangers.

Sure, Andre would distinguish himself in print or as a venerable lecturer or an acclaimed performer. He'd get—I made myself say it—get married, become a French citizen, like he wanted, and grow into his Inspector Simard role. A stone cottage in the provinces, two dogs—the whole bit.
Un homme français
.

The aircraft shimmied a little and then the pilot's reassuring baritone issued from the loudspeaker. In a nutshell:
Go back to sleep, it's going to be okay
.

Would I ever see Paris again? Probably. It was unbearable to think of dying without seeing those lights once more. Would I ever cry again as I drove past the Arc de Triomphe or walked in the Bois du Boulogne? Maybe. Would I ever again feel that the city belonged to me, and I to it? Like I wasn't just another savvy tourist, or even a starry-eyed expatriate, but the genuine article—
une femme française
.

No.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Nanette Hayes Mysteries

CHAPTER 1

'Tis Autumn

Who said something bad about Charlie Rouse?” I demanded, my voice slow, bullying, vile. “Goddammit, I will kill a motherfucker who says something bad about Charlie Rouse!”

A silence fell in the room.

“
Who?!”
I yelled, knocking over several drinks. I stood with my hand on my hip. I know I must've looked ferocious, because a couple of women on the sectional sofa started clawing at the coat sleeves of their men.

“Uh … Nan? I think we need to go home now.”

I looked at him—my little date—with supreme scorn. “Your hands off me, yutz. You go home if you want. Ima have another drink.”

“You've had enough, Nan. Let's get your coat.” He sounded like Richard Pryor doing his uptight white guy accent.

I won't recount what I said to him then. It would make me too ashamed. Just know it was filthy and cruel and utterly uncalled for. I didn't know I had that kind of poison in me until I heard it rolling off my tongue.

That guy shrank away from me, gasping like a Sunday school teacher in a Storyville whorehouse. I had humiliated his ass in front of his friends—well, I'm guessing they were his friends. Maybe, even worse, they were his colleagues from work, whatever work he did. The truth is, I don't remember what he did for a living; I don't remember what he looked like, except that he was a tall black man who wore nice shoes; and I don't remember whose apartment we were in, because, see, I was drinking pretty heavily then, and had been for months.