Who Murdered Garson Talmadge (12 page)

“But Garson was supposedly no longer doing weapons deals. What kind of work were the children doing at that point?”

“Search me,” she said with a shrug. “After waiting a year without contacting my sister, that worthless man wanted the divorce and fast, so he went along with whatever my sister wanted in return. She got enough money on the front end to allow her to buy our last condo. She left it to me. I sold it a while back and bought this smaller one. When there was only me I didn’t need all the space. He also sends money for food and utilities and whatever. I make do with that and what little I get elsewhere. Now that he is dead, I don’t know what will happen to me. But I am still happy he is dead. I hope someday to spit on his grave.”

“His will,” I explained, “includes a provision for continuing your assistance even if he were to die before Chantal or you. Susan is the personal representative named in his will. I expect she will see that whatever is necessary for you continues.”

“Thank you for telling me, sir.” She raised her glass in my direction, took a drink, and then refilled hers and topped off mine. “I hate taking that worthless man’s money. But it allows me to live. I remain alive to curse his remains.”

“Was it Garson who came up with the names Sappho and Charaxus?”

“Yes,” she said, stretching the word as if it were a pull on soft taffy. “Sappho was always a bright girl with a good heart and a warm smile. Charaxus is a bore. Nasty. I never liked him.”

“You’ll be pleased to know that Susan, the name now used by Sappho, is still a bright, good-hearted woman with a wonderful smile.”

“And the boy?”

“He is still a bore. Nasty. I don’t like him either. But I was asking about the story behind Garson’s choice of names for the children.”

Camille nodded slightly, and then licked chocolate residue from her fingers. She leaned across the space between us, her house dress creeping up far enough to expose nylons rolled down to just below her knee. We clinked glasses and shared agreeable smiles. “I have no idea,” she said. “They were odd names, but why I don’t know.”

“Was Chantal the mother?”

“No. No.” She took another jagged chunk of chocolate. “Chantal could not have children. That is why my sister went along with the arrangement.”

“The arrangement?” I asked. “It is my understanding that Garson Talmadge had an affair with an Iraqi woman who gave birth to his children. That is what the children believe as well, as least I think they do.”

“That worthless man never told the truth about anything in his life. Not only was my sister not the mother of those children, that man was not the children’s father.”

My thoughts went into overdrive. Could Brad Fisher use this woman’s statement to get a court order for DNA testing to prove Garson was not the father? Might a jury more easily believe that children might kill their father when their father is not their father? And that’s a lot of fathers in one sentence, but you get the idea.

“Camille, do Susan and Charles know that Garson is not their father?”

“I do not think so. Or maybe I should have said they did not when they left here for America. Now,” she shrugged, “who knows.”

“Garson Talmadge never impressed me as a man who would raise another man’s children. Why would he do it?”

Camille drained her glass and reached for the bottle with a practiced knowledge of its whereabouts. “For the only reason that worthless man did anything, money.”

“Who was the father?”

She refilled her drink far enough for it to show in the glass above her fist. “Chantal never knew the father’s name. He was some big shot in the weapons business.” After another finger lick, she picked up the last piece of broken chocolate.

I didn’t give a rip about Camille’s chocolate fetish. I needed to get the rest of the story before she passed out. Although, her speech remained amazingly clear despite what she had drunk already. I fought down my impatience and casually asked, “Tell me what your sister told you about the Frenchman who fathered Susan and Charles.”

She emptied the bottle, refilling her glass and what little would fit into mine. “All this talk keeps a girl thirsty.” Then she told more of her story, well, her sister’s story. “It happened on one of that worthless man’s visits to Iraq. The Frenchman went along, and while they were there the government provided them with women, Shiite women. Saddam was Sunni. The woman the Frenchman had been with became pregnant and died giving birth to twins. With the mother dead, the story was that Saddam planned to have the children killed. To his credit, when the Frenchman learned of it, he contacted Hussein and said he did not want the children put to death. But he could not bring them home to his French family. So, that worthless man brought the children back to Paris for my sister to raise.”

“How do you know this?”

“Chantal had always wanted children, but she could not have them. At first, he told her the children were his hoping that way she would be more likely to accept them. Chantal forgave him and went along. Later, he admitted the truth about the Frenchman being the father. He also told her that the Frenchman had not wanted them killed. The Frenchman gave the worthless man a great deal of money to raise them as his children, and brought him in on a bunch more weapons deals. They are not his children. That I am sure of.”

“Camille, isn’t it possible that what Garson first told your sister was the truth, that he was the father?”

She reached into the cabinet and brought out a second bottle. “My last one,” she said while breaking the seal. “I think they’re making these bottles smaller nowadays.” When she had loosened the cap, she said, “That could not be true.”

“Why?”

“Chantal always said she could not have children, but it was that man who could not. They had both been checked by the doctor before he went to Iraq with the Frenchman. The results came in while he was gone. Chantal went to the doctor alone where she learned she was fertile, but that worthless man was sterile. She had known all along that her worthless man was lying about fathering those two. Chantal always said it was she who could not conceive because she believed that should he know the truth, he would feel less virile. It was many years later that he finally told Chantal the truth about someone else being the father and paying him to raise the children. My sister would do anything for that worthless man. He was the only thing we did not agree about.”

I asked the next question after reminding myself to keep the tone conversational. “Do you know the identity of the father?”

“Chantal never knew, so she could never tell me. That worthless man kept the Frenchman’s secret all those years, and now it has apparently died with him. After Chantal died I tried to find out who he was, but there are no records kept on these illegal deals.”

After calling Pierre, I talked further with Camille Trenet, but she knew nothing more. Twenty-five minutes later, Pierre dropped me off in front of my hotel. On the way he had pointed out the Sorbonne, a place known for the arts and humanities, but my attention was not on the sights of Paris.

Chapter 17

The man I had first seen through the open door passing behind Agents Smith and Jones at the airport, and later saw again in my hotel lobby, had left me uncertain about the phone in my hotel room. I had switched rooms, but by now he could have moved his surveillance equipment to my new room. I wandered outside, found a bench and called Brad Fisher on my cell phone.

Brad’s amazement over what I had encountered since arriving in France matched my own. This had become something more than the quick, quiet visit to France we had anticipated. If Garson Talmadge had stopped moving weapons for profit nearly fifteen years ago, what had happened to stir up the interest of the FBI? We didn’t know, but we needed to.

We discussed having a French lawyer take Camille’s sworn statement. Brad could then use it to support an attempt to obtain a court order for Susan’s and her brother’s DNA, if they refused to do so voluntarily. If they knew they were not his children, they might not want that known so we could expect them to fight it all the way. At least that was our reasoning.

Brad insisted I get Camille to sign such an affidavit before I left and to agree she would come to Long Beach to testify. In return, we would offer her all expenses paid, a case of whiskey and a case of chocolate bars, and the opportunity to spit on Garson’s grave. I figured the last item would seal the deal.

After Brad hung up, I returned to my hotel and took a hot shower. The chocolate that had been in my stomach the past several hours pickling in Seagram’s Seven had begun the second French Revolution. I wished I was an astronaut in outer space where the absence of gravity prevented the separation of liquids and gas necessary for the production of belches and farts.

After showering, I went back onto the streets desperate for something to eat, found a café and ordered a Salade Nicoise, a Croque Monsieur, which the menu described as a baked ham sandwich with garlic cream sauce and Swiss cheese, and topped it all off with Strawberries Romanoff.

While sipping coffee, my mind reworked what I had learned and my discussion with Brad Fisher. The chances of directing the jury to the theory that Susan and Charles might have killed Garson Talmadge had improved with the prospect they were not his children, at least according to Chantal’s sister, Camille. Had Susan and Charles learned that Garson was not their father, they would likely have confronted Garson to learn the identity of their real father. My reasoning said that he refused to tell them. Under this scenario Charles and Susan may have killed him; if so, I hoped it had only been Charles.

We also had to face the possibility that Charles was telling the truth, that Garson had called him to say he was dropping Clarice from his will. That Garson had told Clarice of his plan during one of their arguments, so Clarice killed him before he could change his will. Then she could claim she knew nothing of his desire to change his will in any manner and, therefore, no motive to kill him.

The scenario I favored, and which had the most external support, remained that people in France and the Middle East who had been the sellers and buyers of the weapons Garson had brokered, had killed him. This, they would hope, would stonewall the authorities who were digging into those transactions. Maybe this all started because of documents found in Iraq. Why else would the FBI corner me at the airport? Why else would they want to know what brought me to France? Even more basic: why else would the FBI even be aware I was in France? This scenario had legs, but walking this pile of conjecture into court would be an entirely different matter.

All this was what I loved and hated about investigative work, the endless combination of twists and turns that denied sleep and the freedom to think about much of anything else.

After finishing the Strawberries Romanoff, I walked back to the Hotel Saint Christophe. Having had the wrong address for Chantal had been a minor irritant. The kind of inconvenience one expects in an investigation. Chantal being dead, however, was a major wrinkle. Her sister had been helpful, but it made everything she knew secondhand. Camille’s testimony with respect to things her sister told her might even be challenged, as inadmissible hearsay because Chantal would not be in the court to be cross examined. But that would be Brad Fisher’s battle to fight another day. My job remained to bring Brad information related to Garson Talmadge.

I didn’t like the attempt by the FBI to intimidate me off the case, or at least out of France. But all things considered, the trip was proving to be worth the effort. On the whole, things had gone well. At least they had until someone fired a shot at me.

Anyone who has survived a tour of duty in a war zone or been a cop on the street would instinctively recognize the sound and know what to do. The bullet whizzed by and struck the wall of a shop where I had just paused to look at their window display. I dove into the sidewalk, a literal effort denied by aged cobblestones. I rolled sideways tightening myself to a parked car, my right foot dropping into gutter water.

The shot had come from across the street. The sound reported the bullet struck low on the shop wall. That meant the shooter had fired from higher up. A window? The rooftop? If the shooter had been lower, the shot would have been blocked by one of the parked cars, and never reached the building wall.

I stayed where I was, well, I did, other than lifting my foot back out of the dank water. The next minute passed with no more shots coming, then two minutes. I held my position and listened for the violent sound of a speeding car arriving or departing the scene. But I heard nothing. Not even the commotion of feet running across the cobblestones. Nothing that said they were closing in for the kill.

I stayed low and scooted to the end of the car. There were no pedestrians within a block on my side of the street. Across, on the other side, one couple had stopped and looked around, then apparently unable to identify the noise, they walked on. From my crouch I glanced at the rooftop. Then studied the windows of the building one by one, from left to right, floor by floor, but saw nothing that seemed to relate to the shot that had been fired. After five minutes, I rose slowly and continued back toward my hotel.

By the end of the next block, I had decided the objective of the shooter was not to murder me. There had been no additional shots. No one had moved in to finish me off. This had been a warning. A message: Yankee, go home! Stop asking questions and leave France.

I wasn’t going to stop asking questions, so I could only hope the warning shot was as far as they were prepared to take it. Of course, that might change if I continued to crowd the truth, which is exactly what I planned to do.

I detoured into a bar about a block from the hotel and ordered a straight shot of whiskey. They didn’t have Irish, so I settled for Scotch, threw it back without bothering to sit down, dropped a five, U.S., on the bar and walked out. I would not report the shooting, doing that would not tell me who had fired the shot. A formal report would be a distraction, resulting in the French police pressing me to learn why I had come to France. Unlike with the FBI, given a shooting within their jurisdiction, this would be a legitimate question I would likely need to answer. I didn’t wish to do that.

My adrenaline was still surging when I got back to the hotel so I walked past the elevator and took the stairs. When I entered my room, I knew my night was not over.