Murder Without Pity (28 page)

Swinging left onto the bridge, Stanislas glimpsed lines of women, three deep either side of Pont du Bercy. Many waved banners of support, while men raised their hands high in applause.

Now looming ahead in the distance, Bercy Stadium off to his right, looking as if some cataclysm had heaved it up from the earth’s depths. Arc lights in the mid-distance caught in their beams hundreds of blue, white, and red balloons bobbing in the fog. Approaching the intersection, he could see vans with satellite dishes. Hidden somewhere in the mist behind them, loudspeakers roused the crowd with the “Marseillaise.” Some clapped to the anthem’s brassy patriotism. A bereted man swung his finger in sync to the music’s strut. In front of him at the curb, a reception of three Teutonic-looking girls, blond hair braided, clutched flowers to present at the appropriate moment.

The first motorcycle escorts and two limos roared past the children and onto the boulevard ahead and the parking bay beyond. The Citroën slowed as it approached them. The crowd pressed forward to catch the reception’s drama. The children raised their bouquets, smiling to bestow. A sashed dignitary reviewed his prepared remarks for the welcoming. A journalist hoisted his camera onto his shoulder like a weapon of war, sighting through it as he pivoted toward the Citroën. Next to him a photographer in dark glasses and baseball cap reversed, jostled forward as he frantically screwed in another lens.

“Go!” Stanislas yelled and slapped the blue flasher on the Fiat’s roof.

The klaxon blared. Leclair rammed his foot down. Tires shrieked. The Fiat lurched, swerved left, he wheeled sharply right, regained control, now past the rear motorcycle escorts, now the two remaining limos, now past the Citroën, now screeching sideways to a halt.

The Citroën heaved and braked violently, missing the Fiat by a foot.

His door kicked open, Leclair was running toward the driver’s side along with three plainclothesmen. His door punched open, Stanislas hobbled quickly, ignoring the pain, the moment too important, the crowd to his right a blur. The chauffeur’s eyes bulged with shock. The rotund man’s mouth caved open. Leclair yanked open the left rear passenger door. Stanislas wrenched open the passenger door on his side. The plainclothes behind Leclair ducked into the back seat and muscled out Streible and Fuchs. Then Leclair slid in while Stanislas, panting, did the same on his side.

“What’s this? You’re not in that hospital?” Dray demanded and immediately regained his poise. “I assume this isn’t a social call this time.”

“Whatever this concerns, André, stand your ground,” Fuchs yelled as a plainclothes hustled him toward the Fiat.

“We know nothing whatsoever about anything,” Streible shouted as another plainclothes pushed him in the same direction amid surprised gasps from the crowd at their appearance.

Riot controllers, flaring clubs, trotted up to both sides of the Citroën. Together, they formed a shield around the car. One jerked open the chauffeur’s door and pulled him out; another did the same with the rotund man.

Leclair smacked Dray in the chest with a citation. “This is a Summons to Appear,” he said.

“No social call,” Stanislas said. “I’m ordering you to testify in a criminal investigation.”

“For what? Smuggling kilos of gold bars into Switzerland?” His smile at Cassel tweaked into smugness.

“For being complicit in a murder,” Stanislas said. “That’s how your citation reads.”

Dray puckered his lips into a low whistle. “And who did I help murder, please?”

“A Monsieur Léon Pincus. A pensioner in the tenth district.”

“And when did this poor soul die, please?”

“On 13 September of last year.”

“On that date, my dear Monsieur Cassel, I believe I was elsewhere. In Lille, giving a speech at a metallurgy corporation to factory workers, just fired by their new patron, headquartered in London. If I am right about my whereabouts, and I think I am, you’re saying what? That I took time off from my hectic schedule to plan a pensioner’s murder?”

“Two Pan-European aides, Messieurs Luc Bressard and Hans Rauter, killed him with your tacit approval.”

“As Monsieur Fuchs explained when you barged into the Le Brune mansion, we do employ a low-level staffer named Monsieur Bressard. And Monsieur Rauter’s a chauffeur and bodyguard I and others there occasionally use. Because of their employment with us and because one or both might have been in some way involved in a man’s death, therefore
I’m
implicated? You’re a reckless adventurist.”

“Monsieur Bressard’s confession. He was also running a drugs-for-arms operation, incidentally…a Serb furnishing him heroin for rifles. And the Police Scientific’s findings. That’s part of the dossier’s logic along with your version, attorney-assisted, of course, that I’ll present to the Public Prosecutor’s Office for its opinions. After that, the Indictment Review Committee. If it finds nothing wrong with my case, my findings go to court at which time your attorney can again present your side.”

More police cars arrived, engulfing the Citroën in the bluish light of state power. Stanislas glanced away from them and toward Dray. “My findings: You wanted independence from Monsieur Streible’s heavy-handed leadership of the Pan-European Council. You wanted to leave at a time of your choosing. As peacefully as possible. With as many supporters as possible. That rupture would probably sever a major backer, Madame Le Brune and her fortune. To take up that slack, you needed your own source of money to run your French campaign and to contest Streible and his Council. You knew a Monsieur Louis Boucher, a retired financier, who agreed to seek funds for you.

“You had a slight problem with your benefactor, however. You didn’t trust him and for good reason. He had a history of folding. He had betrayed his countrymen during the Occupation, selling them out to the Germans. He betrayed his collabo friends after the Liberation, selling them out in return for hope-for leniency at his purge trial. You feared he’d betray again.

“You put him under twenty-four hour surveillance. Nice. Biarritz. St-Tropez. Nothing, not even resorts, was innocuous in your paranoid mind. Wherever he went, your men followed. You had to know how reliable he was.

“Then one morning on their shift, who should Hans and Luc spot at Boucher’s apartment gate arguing with him? The same man who they’d shortly sweat for answers, though he suffered heart problems. The same man who’d die terrified to death, Monsieur Léon Pincus. And all because in your paranoia you feared he might be a blackmailer.”

Dray gave an indulgent chuckle. “One man’s paranoia is another man’s truth. But in some respects, you have me. I confess you have your villain. I admit Franz and I aren’t exactly drinking buddies. We disagreed over tactics to a new society. ‘Five ticks before the hour’—his favorite expression. Except that the great man had grown impatient with the Movement’s progress. Slippage in the polls. Lost elections. A vicious press. He talked more and more of violence. At least a healthy dose of it to wake people from their lethargy. To galvanize society with bodies and broken bones. To make them understand the dangers from immigration. That warehouse explosion in the tenth district awhile back? The backlash against Arabs in some quarters? I wouldn’t put that ploy past him. I wouldn’t put anything past him. I wanted no part of any heavy-handed schemes. I believe in the responsible Right.

“I sought out Louis Boucher—another confession. We’d met years before, you see, at a reunion of World War II veterans. We saw eye to eye and kept in touch. Later he did become a major backer, who I, nevertheless, kept in the background because of his youthful mistakes.”

A scuffle erupted between a riot controller and protestor, who clubbed him on his shoulder with his placard. Two other beefy police yanked him back by his arms and dragged him, kicking and shouting to a van.

“See how they love me?” He enjoyed the scene a moment longer before turning back to Stanislas. “And of course, I did put him under surveillance and why not?”

“You admit that?”

“I’ve nothing to hide. We suspected someone had something on Monsieur Boucher and was bleeding him.”

“Why did you suspect blackmail?”

“A nonsmoking friend starts chain-smoking again. He stashes liquor bottles in his apartment. He nervously paces while you’re discussing strategy. You see? You begin to wonder. That is, if you’re in politics and have survival instincts. I had him tracked—nothing more than that—to discover if he’d compromised anything. Whatever happened after their tailing rests with Hans and Luc, not me.” He glanced out again to his supporters.

In the last few minutes they must have passed word by cell phone, Stanislas guessed. Supporters inside the stadium had crushed by the hundreds around the Citroën. Their numbers seemed to have given Dray strength; what surprise he had initially shown had disappeared, replaced by his customary assurance.

“You thought you understood Monsieur Boucher,” Stanislas said. “You really were familiar only with his public collaborationist past. His service on the Economic Inspection Board.

“You were unaware he had another history, this one hidden for over fifty years. He knew Léon Pincus’s family as well as thousands of other Jews in Paris during the Occupation. At least, their home addresses. And where they worked, if they could find work. The essentials our police would need to locate them.”

Dray calmly blinked back.

“From a cache of documents discovered, I suspect Monsieur Boucher helped plot the major roundup of Jews, including that man’s family, of the sixteenth and seventeenth of July 1942. I also suspect Monsieur Pincus went to confront him the day he was murdered. He had to boast he had found him out, thanks to those documents. He had to brag he was going to sue him for complicity in crimes against humanity. Occupation scholars have located enough evidence in that cache to conclude he probably was involved. No wonder Boucher was nervous.”

“No, no. You’re wrong. You can’t trick me. I know how you investigating magistrates work. Lie, if you must, to confuse. He confronted Boucher over money. I’m certain he was an extortionist. He had something on the man. The signs were there. Why a blind man could read them. Especially that confrontation that morning. Luc and Hans swore they saw them argue, saw Boucher knock him down. It definitely was something over money.”

“In the hundreds of hours on this case, we’ve uncovered no blackmailer. Monsieur Pincus wanted only justice.”

“Nonsense. For a crime like that, Boucher would have fled.”

“Him, flee? He had fooled every journalist, every lawyer, every Occupation historian for decades. What was an accusation from a ragged-looking man? Any blackmail was strictly in your imagination. A French Nazi
as a friend. Complicity in murder. Complicity in an assault against an examining magistrate—your Luc’s confessed to attacking me, by the way. Good luck with your speech. It might be your last.” He stared at Dray, searching for any subtle, nervous flutter of guilt from his charges. The man’s lips remained firm in conviction of his innocence. His eyes stayed hard with defiance.

He gazed moments longer, his stomach tight with anger, waiting for some sign of the man’s culpability to justify his suspicions. A nervous tick. A glance away. Any hint of unease. But all he saw was the glare of the injured, and finally he unclenched his fists in resignation. The man would reveal nothing except rectitude. He would maintain that against his good judgment he had let himself get entangled with the unsavory.

Discouraged and feeling tired, Stanislas leaned toward the passenger door, when he realized his agitation had almost made him forget. He glanced back for one final attempt to find a soft spot. “Project Janus mean anything to you?”

Dray kept his inscrutable calm. “More desperation charges.”

“Monsieur Bressard must have confused you with someone else. Someone who, thanks to Monsieur Boucher as go-between, used a shady Russian financier for his political funding.”

A photographer jammed his camera against the window. He clicked away.

A policeman shoved him back into the crowd.

“That can’t be you,” Stanislas continued. “You’re too much of a patriot. I’m sure Monsieur Hans Rauter will say the same when we catch him.”

“I’m not responsible for anyone Boucher might have sought out. And I’m not responsible for whatever errand boys, Hans and Luc, might have done. You have nothing on me! Nothing except a druggie’s word!”

Stanislas held his stare. Just for a moment, Dray had lost his composure. What had he caught in the man’s sudden outburst at the end? Anger from a harassed innocent? Panic from the guilty? Contempt from an egocentric? He wasn’t sure. The jarring tone and look had passed in seconds.

Dray shifted away from Stanislas, toward the swelling, howling crowd. He had terminated their face-to-face. He would say nothing more until his interrogation.

Anger? Panic? Contempt? Stanislas gave up trying to guess and slammed shut the Citroën’s door. From every direction, the mob pushed toward him. They understood at last, he realized. Something had gone wrong. Against Dray or Fuchs or Streible, they didn’t know. But something had gone wrong, and he was a thief, come to steal away their dreams of salvation. Now he was their marked man.

A woman shook fists at him. “What have you done to them, Monsieur Cassel?”

A man jabbed his placard like an axe over her shoulder. “We’ll find where you live.”

A policewoman shoved her aside. A policeman ripped the man’s overcoat open and slapped him down for weapons.

The mob, bug-eyed with rage, seethed against the rope barrier the police had rigged.

Many booed.

Many shouted.

“Get him!”

“Hit him!”

“Kill him!”

More police jogged up, chunky, booted, eager to club. They escorted Stanislas ahead to the Fiat that looked like it’d collapse if the supporters stampeded. The chauffeur and the rotund man, Streible and Fuchs, each under a policeman’s direction, passed the opposite way, back towards the Citroën. Fuchs gazed around, stunned, a pinched expression on his face over the unexpected chaos. Streible glanced at Stanislas with a faint smile, as though pleased the law might rid him of a rival to direct the Pan-European Council.