Excerpt from 'Treasure of Saint-Lazare'
Excerpt from Treasure of Saint-Lazare
Sarasota, June 2008
There was only one witness, and he was not a good one — the busboy at a new restaurant in the nearby arts colony walking back from the bank. He heard a sudden shout and wheeled just in time to see a large black car accelerate around the corner – “kind of a big SUV, but not as big as a Hummer, maybe a Lincoln” was what he told the patrol cop who first responded to his 9-1-1 call. “It hit the old man right in the center of the front end and sent him flying.”
The old man, Roy Castor, had not been thrown far and with luck he might have survived if he’d been thrown the same direction as his hat, which flew left onto the grassy median. But the impact tossed him to the right like a broken stuffed toy and his head hit the curb with a sickening hollow thud.
“Man, I dropped a melon on the kitchen floor last week and it sounded just like that,” Arturo said, adding his view that the old man was dead when he hit the curb. In fact Roy didn’t draw his final breath for another hour, in the cold and remarkably empty emergency room of Sarasota Memorial Hospital.
“The dude went by real slow and looked at me, ” Arturo told the detective who arrived later. “I don’t think he saw me until after he hit the old man, then he just floored it and screamed around the corner to the right and he was gone. That’s when I ran down to the old man and called you guys.”
Thom Anderson, the Sarasota police detective who had drawn the case, thought it a straightforward hit-and-run. An overpaid and overeducated punk kid, Thom figured, with a job selling insurance or houses or stocks, had run over an old man crossing in the middle of the block, panicked, and fled. He would probably turn himself in the next morning, ashamed and completely lawyered up, maybe with his equally overpaid father beside him. His moment of panic would cost him a fine and a few months of probation and might cost him the fancy job. Thom had seen it more and more often as Sarasota had gentrified, and he didn’t like it any better this time than the last.
Paris, Ten Days Later
Eddie turned away from the window of the first-class TGV car and put down the glass of Bordeaux he’d been nursing since Le Mans. The train curved around an old concrete water tower that disappeared as quickly as it had come into view, his signal that Gare Montparnasse was only a few minutes away. With luck, he’d be in his office near the old opera house in an hour, which would allow more than enough time to catch up on the day’s business and get ready for dinner with his mother. His seventy-five-year-old mother, he reminded himself. His seventy-five-year-old mother and her lover.
He stood to take his blue blazer from the hook behind him just as the conductor announced the train’s arrival at Gare Montparnasse in ten minutes. As she clicked off the microphone the iPhone chimed in his shirt pocket.
“Margaux. Nice to hear from you. Are we still on for dinner?” They spoke French, as always.
“Of course, Charles Edward. But that’s not why I called. I need your help.”
“Anything. Well, anything reasonable.”
“I — we — have a surprise visitor. Does the name Jennifer Wetzmuller ring a bell?”
His smile faded. He sat in silence for a moment. “I haven’t seen her for twenty years. Exactly twenty years, I think, when I got out of college. Artie wanted to see her father and I went to Florida with him.”
“Hmmm. Sadly, Jennifer’s father is dead. He was killed in an auto accident ten days ago, and in going through his things she found a letter from him to your father, with instructions to deliver it personally and immediately. She got on an airplane and arrived at my front door less than an hour ago.”
“Margaux, can you give me some idea of what the hell this is all about?”
“The work Artie and Roy Castor did just after the war, when they were hunting down looted artwork, but I don’t know any more than that. You must handle this, not me. I can’t go through that door again.”
Margaux had spent the war living on the run with her father, a Resistance leader, and as a result she feared nothing. But she did not want to reopen the story of her much-loved husband’s life. “What would you like me to do?”
“I’m giving a fund-raising reception here in an hour and a half, and I have to get ready. Can you pick up Jennifer and talk to her at your place? You can bring her to dinner tonight. Paul can pick you up. He’s already on the way to Gare Montparnasse.”
“Confident, weren’t you? And why is it you’re raising money for American politicians? You can’t even vote.”
“I can’t even donate, but I give any help I can, and it seems my American friends like coming here for the view.”
Eddie thought for a few seconds as the train started to slow. “OK. I’ll come up to get her then we’ll go to my place while you politick.”
Gare Montparnasse
The best-known face of Gare Montparnasse is the north end, which opens onto the hulking brown Montparnasse Tower — one of the best vantage points for an inspiring city view despite the Parisians’ distaste for its dissonant presence in the harmonious skyline.
Most TGV passengers exit the other end of the station, near the striking Place de Catalogne and its modern fountain, an immense stone disk precisely engineered to allow an unbroken sheet of water to flow smoothly over it.
Eddie looked briefly at the fountain as he emerged blinking into the strong afternoon sunlight. Then he spotted his mother’s prized black Peugeot 607, the same model sometimes used by the French president, with his army buddy Paul Fitzhugh standing at the open driver’s door.
“Ça va?” Paul asked as Eddie settled into the passenger seat.
“Ça va,” Eddie responded, ending the only French exchange they would have. Paul was sensitive about his pronounced accent — he said if he was going to be taken for an American anyway he’d rather do it in English and be understood. He refused to speak French with anyone who spoke good English, which included just about everybody Margaux and Eddie knew.
“What do you know about our visitor?” Eddie asked as Paul took advantage of the Peugeot’s power to merge smoothly between a bus and a small delivery van. He was surprised to realize he was reluctant to use her name. Damned big mistake, he told himself. I’m sure Margaux knows all about the trip to Sarasota but I’d like it better if it doesn’t go much farther than that, so I’ll have to act normal.
“Only saw her for a minute,” Paul responded. “She’s about your age, blonde, nice looking, I can see she’s your type. A little taller than Margaux, long legs, good figure. A stunner.
“Margaux stepped right up and said her capable son Charles Edward would take care of the matter. That was the only time I saw her smile.”
I hope she did, Eddie said to himself. They had spent three luxurious days in bed together and then he left without another word and married his fiancée. It wasn’t his proudest memory.
“Well, let’s pick her up, then you can take us to my place. She can rest before dinner, then we’ll walk to the restaurant and I can show her a few of the sights around the opera. Will you and Margaux pick up Philippe?”
“Margaux says he’ll drive himself. He’s invited his daughter the history professor. You’ll be surrounded by your past.”
“Never mind that. Looks like you’ll be eating alone again.”
“Not a problem. I can keep a closer watch on the room, and Philippe sometimes brings a young officer along. Helps me practice my French, except these days they always want to practice their English.”
Paul’s role in the Grants’ world was vague by design. His business card said he was in charge of buildings and facilities for Eddie’s business, a chain of schools devoted mainly to teaching commercial English to the French and French to the Americans. Unofficially he was the family’s chief of security and trusted bodyguard, driver and confidential friend, a role that had assumed more importance after the mysterious deaths of Eddie’s father, and then his wife and son, seven years before. The police were never able to assemble enough evidence to file charges, and Paul had volunteered to spend more time on personal security.
Eddie had known Paul since 1991, when they served together in an infantry company during the first Gulf war. Eddie was a green company commander and Paul, the company’s senior sergeant, had proved to be a valuable source of fatherly advice. After Paul was badly wounded and his wife divorced him, Eddie followed his recovery and offered him the job in Paris. Within two years he had married the concierge in Margaux’s apartment building, a widow Eddie’s age, and settled comfortably into daily Parisian life. He’d even become a fair pétanque player, and met a group of men every Sunday afternoon to roll the boules and drink pastis. There he had no choice but to speak French.
“How does it feel to come from West Virginia to Paris?” Eddie had asked him one Saturday afternoon as they shared a drink down the street from Margaux’s home.
“I come from generations of Appalachian men, most of them farmers and almost all of them soldiers. But if my Scots ancestors had come here instead of to West Virginia, I guarantee every one of us would have been happy. I’m completely at home here, and here’s where I intend to stay.”
Hôtel Luxor
For more than a hundred years, the Hôtel Luxor had stood imperiously on the narrow sidewalk of Rue Saint-Roch. Its cut-stone façade and wrought-iron balconies reflected to perfection the austere design dictated by Baron Haussmann when he razed and then rebuilt whole sections of the city for his patron, Emperor Napoleon III. Its sole distinguishing feature, other than a discreet brass plaque bearing the hotel’s name over four stars, was an immense revolving door made of dark-stained oak highlighted with brass, which the hotel staff polished every day to a mirror finish. The single doors on either side of it stood open in the glorious late-spring weather that often settles over the city in mid June. Spring turning to summer is the time all the other Parisian seasons envy, and this June day was one of the best.
Late afternoon was a slow time for the reception manager — he was born to the hotel world and would stay at the Luxor until he died. His name was Monsieur Duval, and he believed he was at least partly responsible when the hotel received its coveted fourth star the year before. Monsieur Duval arrived at work each morning in casual dress — that is, he wore no tie with his starched white shirt, which his wife had carefully ironed that morning. In the small cloakroom behind the reception desk he changed to a dove-gray suit, adding a silk tie a few shades darker. Only Eddie and the payroll clerk knew his first name, so complete was his devotion to both his and his guests’ privacy.
He was peering suspiciously at a slightly loose button on the left sleeve of his jacket just as Eddie’s tall silhouette filled the open door. Jen Wetzmuller entered the lobby and Eddie followed, pulling her wheeled suitcase.
“Bonjour, Madame, bonjour, Monsieur Grant. Welcome back.” Monsieur Duval said seriously, no smile. His hand came from beneath the counter holding two envelopes, which he handed to Eddie. “You have a little mail today. Not much.”
“Thank you. Allow me to present Madame Wetzmuller, who is visiting me and my mother for a few days. Her father and mine were close associates during the war.”
“The Luxor is very pleased to have you as its guest, Madame,” Monsieur Duval said gravely. “Please ask for anything you need.” Surprised by his formality, she muttered a barely audible “merci,” then managed a tight smile and a dip of her head.
Eddie bypassed the large winding staircase he normally took to his apartment on the top floor, instead leading Jen toward the elevators to its left. He pressed the button marked 7 but the elevator did not move until he entered a code into the keypad above. “Remember the code, 6161,” he told her.
As they rose, he reflected that Jen had retained the fresh air of youth he’d admired in 1988. She wore a traveler’s outfit of white blouse and pleated blue skirt, and had coaxed her hair into a shape he had not seen in Paris for several years. With difficulty, he brought it back from his very small store of fashion knowledge — coupe à la Jeanne d’Arc — Pageboy cut, that had been its name, and it had been popular in the U.S. twenty years before. Despite the June warmth she had a sweater over her shoulders. The skirt fell precisely to the top of her knees, and her legs were as attractive as he remembered. She wore a delicate perfume he couldn’t identify, except to remember that it was different from the one she’d worn in 1988. Under the perfume there was the delicious woman smell he’d immersed himself in during their three days together.
She looked up at him and said gently, “It’s been a very long time. I never expected to see you again.”
“Nor did I. But I could never forget those three days in Sarasota.”
“They were memorable, weren’t they?” She smiled at him for the first time, a generous open smile that lighted her deep blue eyes and told him his disappearance was forgiven, if not forgotten. The weight of mortal sin lifted from him.
She broke the silence as they passed the fifth floor. “What happened after?”
“Pretty much as planned. I went into the Army, served in Desert Storm, then came home to Paris.”
“Did you ever marry?”
“Yes, once. You? My wife died.”
“That is sad. I married once, for three years. A big-time cardiologist who wanted a younger wife. It lasted until he found another blonde trophy.”
“Then you’ve stayed in Sarasota?”
“God knows why. It’s a beautiful town but no place for a single woman my age. It’s a huge, deep pool of blue-collar men looking for college-educated women and, surprisingly, finding them. I’m almost too old for that group now. I suppose I’ll sign up for the club of unhappy middle-aged divorcées and widows who understand deep down they’ll spend nights alone for the rest of their lives.
“You’re selling yourself short. We’re only forty and you still look like the girl I knew back then. It’s far too early to start wearing black and sitting in a rocker on your front porch.”
“Thanks for that. You haven’t done badly yourself. You still have all that black black hair I admired. And you still carry yourself like a West Pointer.” She smiled again.
They stood in silence until the elevator stopped. The door opened and she stepped out into a small lobby decorated in Second Empire style. A marble table held a large bouquet of yellow flowers, which complemented the blue walls.
“Just one door?”
“This floor was an afterthought some time after the building was built. It’s a little smaller than the others, which is the reason the city has winked at it. The French are pragmatic about that sort of thing. If it pushes a little over the edge of the law but doesn’t hurt anything, they generally close their eyes. It was a little risky, but I decided to turn the entire floor into my own apartment.”
“How did you work that?”
“I needed a place to live seven years ago. This old hotel needed a lot of work but the owners didn’t have the money to do it, so I bought it.”
He opened the door and with a sweep of his arm invited her inside, following with the suitcase. They walked down an entrance hall hung with bright oil paintings. She recognized one of them, a streetscape at dusk showing an early twentieth-century trolley passing the square of Châtelet, and stopped to look at it.
“Is that an Éduardo Cortès? I had one of them in my gallery. I hated to sell it.”
“I remember that painting, and this is one almost like it. My father gave it to me as a wedding present. It’s the only thing I kept from that part of my life.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
“Later. It’s not a pretty story.”
They continued into the living room, where he invited her to sit in a gray leather armchair to one side of a fireplace. He sat in its twin opposite her. A glass wall faced southeast over the city, with the spires of Notre Dame in the distance.
All the furniture was upholstered in muted shades of gray and beige except for one armchair on the opposite wall, which was a brilliant cardinal red. Jen first thought it was an error, but with a second look realized it was the bridge between the low-key furniture and the two dozen striking oil paintings that lined the wall from floor to ceiling.
“What a beautiful room. And you have a lovely view, like your mother’s.”
“Thanks. At Place Vauban she has Les Invalides and Napoleon’s Tomb across the street, I have Notre Dame on one side and the Champs-Elysées on the other. I’ll show you more of the sights a little later, but I think we should get business out of the way first.”
“You’re right.” A sigh. “Roy is dead. Killed ten days ago by a hit-and-run driver just a couple of blocks from home.”
“I was sorry to hear that. I remember him as a kind and interesting man.”
“The police think it may not have been an accident, but aren’t sure yet. I’m here because of something that was important to him. When I went to find his will, there was one other envelope in the bank vault – addressed to your father. It looks pretty old.”
She paused and took a deep breath, then drew a heavy beige envelope from her purse and handed it to Eddie. On it was written in blue ink, in a European script, “For Artie Grant. Please hand deliver to him as soon as possible.” It listed his mother’s address on the Place Vauban, where his parents had bought the penthouse apartment shortly after they were married in 1952. Eddie was born 16 years later and grew up there.
“I caught a flight from Tampa as soon as I could. I had only the address on the envelope, no telephone number, so when my plane arrived I took a taxi straight there and met your mother. She asked me to pass the letter directly on to you. She handled like it was radioactive.”
“Margaux believes in letting the past stay in the past.”
And in this case I agree with her, Eddie said to himself. Anything that involved Roy Castor was bound to deal ultimately with the immense quantities of art and other treasure the Nazis stole during the war, much of which had never been found. For a time it had been Artie’s holy grail as well, but he’d eventually turned his attention elsewhere.
Eddie dropped the envelope on his lap, willing it to disappear. When it did not, he picked it up like something distasteful he’d found on the street, touching it only with his thumb and forefinger.
“Was it sealed?”
“I wasn’t about to fly all night to deliver a dirty joke.”
“Tell me what’s in it.”
“A short letter, very cryptic, one paragraph. I don’t understand it, but I can tell it refers back to their work at the end of the war. It’s not exactly a code, but an outsider would have a hard time getting it – I certainly didn’t. I don’t know a lot of details about my father’s war duties, but I know that after the Germans surrendered he and your father worked in Munich helping find stolen paintings. I know there was one special painting that interested him more than any other. Maybe you’ll understand it better.”
“Or maybe Mother will.” Eddie unfolded the single sheet of rich beige stationery, heavy and stiff as though Roy had chosen it to last a long time. There was no date, but the paper had American dimensions, not European, so Eddie knew it had been written while Roy was in Florida. Just great, he thought. That narrows it down to the last thirty years or so.
“Dear Artie:
“The young fellow has disappeared into a dead end. I think the long-necked bastard planned to wind up in Paris and sent him there but he may also have used the underground railroad. Ask your round-heeled contact. Maybe you can find more than I could.
“Roy”
“What the hell does that mean?” Eddie asked, puzzled.
“I don’t know. But he thought it was important enough to make sure I’d find it and get it to you. And he didn’t want to give up the chase during his lifetime — otherwise he would have mailed it, maybe years ago. We have to find out.”
“We need to get on it right now. If your father was murdered there may be other things going on we need to know about. We’ll start with my mother. She’s the best one to fill you in on what your father and mine did together during the war, and she knows a lot more about the history of the time than I do. After all, she lived through it.”
The Germans
Eddie takes Jen to a family dinner with his mother; Philippe Cabillaud, a semi-retired police commissioner, and Philippe’s daughter Aurélie, a Sorbonne history professor.
Paris
Eddie stepped into the street to close the car door for Margaux and noticed two men who had left the restaurant just ahead of them waiting on the sidewalk a hundred yards away. An image of Mutt and Jeff, from the American comic strip his father read faithfully for years, flew through his mind as he turned to watch them climb hurriedly into the back of a large black Mercedes sedan as soon as it glided to a stop.
“Odd,” he said to himself as his mother’s car disappeared up the street and turned left.
The smile Aurélie had worn through the dinner changed to a look of concern. “We can figure out Roy’s letter. Margaux got us partway there tonight, and I’m confident my friends at the Sorbonne will help tomorrow. But we haven’t even started to think about what it really means.
“It could be the musings of an old man who had decided to give up, or it could have been a serious warning to Mr. Grant. And that probably means to you and Jen as well.”
Jen replied, “The police in Sarasota say officially Roy’s death was an accident, but the detective in charge thinks there’s something fishy about it, and so do I. It’s very unlike Roy to cut across a street in the middle of the block.
“The police are out looking for the car. They think it’ll turn up in a repair shop sooner or later.”
The black Mercedes pulled away from the curb and turned behind Paul and Margaux. The boulevard was brightly lighted and bustling with pedestrians and theatergoers as they crossed at a few minutes before 10:30.
Eddie reached for his telephone, intending to alert Paul to the possible tail, when the Mercedes stopped in front of the wax museum, Musée Grévin, a hundred yards from the corner. The right rear door opened and tall Mutt stepped out, followed by short Jeff, and then a city bus pulled out to avoid them, blocking his view. When the bus passed the two men had disappeared.
Aurélie was pleased to show off her Paris to a fascinated visitor and kept up a running commentary. Jen, no longer tired, asked question after question and suggested they stop for a last cup of coffee along the walk to Rue Saint-Roch.
Eddie half listened because his attention was focused on the Mercedes. It stood idling in a no-parking lane, rear door fully open. That wasn’t uncommon in this part of the city, where drivers often had to wait for their passengers to finish dinner or the theater, but to leave a door open in the June heat struck him as odd. The two men had disappeared, either into the alcove entrance of the Musée Grévin or Passage Jouffroy, one of the most charming of the city’s many covered shopping arcades.
He interrupted Aurélie’s explanation of the wax museum. “This whole thing feels strange. The two men who got out of that Mercedes up ahead were in the restaurant with us, and they left just as Margaux was paying the check -- but they were only there a half-hour, not nearly enough time to have even a quick dinner. And now they’re parked where we have to pass them.
“Just ahead of us is one of the old passages, a 19th-century mall where people could shop out of the weather, and halfway down it there is a hotel called the Chopin. My family lived there for a month while our apartment was being renovated. I was about 13 years old then, and bored, so I explored every inch of it. If they’re waiting for us now, we’ll go there.”
As they neared the Mercedes the two passengers walked briskly out of the museum alcove and stopped facing them. The taller one pulled his jacket open just enough to show the leather-wrapped hilt of a large knife protruding above his belt. A prominent scar on his left cheek showed he was no stranger to knives.
He lifted it partway out of the scabbard, just enough for Eddie to identify it as a World War II American Army bayonet – his father had told him it was the sharpest knife he had ever seen.
Mutt spoke roughly in hesitant French, with a strong German accent. “We want the painting, and you are going to tell us where it is. Now. Get in.” He gestured with his head toward the Mercedes.
He reached with his left hand for Aurélie’s shoulder, keeping his right on the hilt of the sheathed knife, but a sharp blast of the Mercedes’s horn distracted him for an instant. Without thinking, Eddie called on the close-combat training he’d received two decades before and grabbed the man’s right wrist with his left hand, preventing him from drawing the knife. With his right, he reached for the man’s other elbow and pulled it sharply to force him off balance. Turning to the left like a dancer leading a clumsy and untrained partner, Eddie pushed him forcefully toward the car. He staggered drunkenly across the curb, hit his head on the top of the car, and slumped into the back seat. The bayonet clattered to the pavement.
The smaller man tried to reach for Eddie just as he pushed Mutt away. Aurélie shouted a warning and kicked him hard in the shin. He didn’t appear to have a weapon, but Eddie took no chances. He hit the man hard in the jaw, backhand with his closed fist, then grasped both of his shoulders and spun him around to face the street. Taking him in a bear hug to immobilize his arms, Eddie pushed him toward the Mercedes and watched as he bounced off the rear fender and fell into the street, just missing the bumper of a city bus that missed him by inches as its driver furiously sounded his plangent warning chimes.
Eddie ran back to the two women and whispered, “Hotel Chopin. They’ll be closing the gate any minute.”
They sprinted the remaining few yards to the Passage Jouffroy entrance, arriving just as the night porter prepared to close the ornate iron gate, a 10:30 p.m. tradition. Aurélie told him quickly they were guests of the Chopin, and then they ran for its entrance fifty yards away, at a corner where the passage jogged to the left between two antique-book stores. Halfway there, they heard the night porter argue with the Germans, then give an angry shout as they pushed him roughly out of the way. “That guy’s gonna be pissed. Cops will be here before long,” Eddie said as the three approached the door.
The lobby was empty, as Eddie had hoped. They pushed the door open, then as it closed Eddie said, “Help me put this sofa against it. It’ll give us a little more time.” He piled two large green leather armchairs atop the sofa for good measure, then the three turned and dashed up the half-flight of stairs to the level of the breakfast room. They froze momentarily as the sound of a man’s scream came from the passage. A second scream, then the only sound was the Germans’ footsteps on the marble floor.
“I hope you know where we’re going.” Jen had been surprised at the quick burst of activity because she hadn’t seen the knife.
“This is where my misspent youth will work for us,” Eddie said with a lopsided grin. “I hope the goons will look for us upstairs. But we’re going down below. The back door leads into the service area for all the buildings around here. If we’re lucky, we’ll come out a long way from where they expect to find us. If not, we’ll have to think of something else. This way.”
They ran to the end of the hall and Eddie pulled an ornately painted door, which led to a gloomy utility stair. At the bottom they pushed open a gray metal door to reveal a service alley. Eddie found a wedge the hotel staff used to keep the door open and forced it tightly under the outside of the closed door. The doorstop should give them enough time to escape even if their followers figured out where they had gone.
All three stood with their backs against the old stone wall to catch their breath. “Well,” Aurélie said. “At least we know now what we’re chasing. And we know these salauds will stop at nothing to get it. Let’s go find the young fellow.”