The Golem of Paris

Chapter seventeen

PARIS

The cold that had preserved the bodies made the pathologist reluctant to fix a date of death. Based on weather reports, he gave a range of one to seven days.

Hoping to buy time, Breton attempted to steer him toward the lower end of the estimate, but the fellow was oblivious to subtlety, adding with disappointment that there was no evidence of sexual assault to either victim. The mutilation of the eyelids had caused minimal bleeding, indicating that it had taken place postmortem.

Leaving the morgue, Breton made the obligatory call to Lambert to relay the findings. He didn’t much feel like talking to him but neither did he want to give the procureur any excuse, procedural or otherwise, to snatch the case away.

Breton asked if they should continue to treat it as en flagrance.

Lambert waffled. He had to think about it. In the meantime: how was it working out with Odette Pelletier? Did Breton find her perspective useful?

“I can’t thank you enough,” Breton said.

“Don’t be childish, Théo. We’re searching for the truth, not fighting over a bone.”

The truth was that Pelletier had vanished. Breton hadn’t seen her since batting her away in the park. If she was as smart as the prosecutor claimed, she’d know when she was not needed or wanted. Probably she was out getting a manicure.

Breton had bigger problems. DNA confirmed that the victims were mother and son, but further identification proved difficult. Dédé Vallot was camped out at his desk, sifting through missing persons reports, his search radius bloated beyond Paris proper. Berline hit nightclubs, bars, restaurants, shops; Sibony and Martinez focused on schools. They started in the Sixteenth and worked outward from there, the Fifteenth, the Seventeenth, the Seventh. When that failed to pan out, Breton sent them over the river. The woman was dressed for service; maybe she worked for a bourgeois family in Neuilly-sur-Seine or Nanterre.

A brief item in Le Figaro brought a tidal wave of dud tips.

Each dead end had to be written up in triplicate and added to the quickly swelling dossier. Ordinarily, a fat file buoyed Breton’s spirits. Now he regarded the thing on his desk as a malicious parasite, feasting on his ignorance. It filled him with disgust and despair, and he stalled as long as he could before sending it to Lambert.

It could not be helped, though. Ten days in, they had yet to name a viable suspect. The office of the juge d’instruction called, summoning Breton to the Palais de Justice on a Monday morning.

He climbed up to the fifth floor, pausing at the top to catch his breath and prepare excuses. Juge Félix could be a bit of a prig, and Breton expected a mild dressing-down.

He didn’t expect an ambush.

“Théo. How nice to see you.”

Félix was in his early fifties, with lank hair and eyes perched distressingly wide, giving the impression that he was endeavoring mightily to look backward, and succeeding to a frightening degree.

“Come in,” he said. “Sit down.”

Breton lingered in the doorway before taking the open chair, between Lambert, flapping his necktie like an obscene sensory organ, and Odette Pelletier, coiffed, sharp, a magazine rolled in her lap, like she was on vacation, getting ready to head down to the pool.

He should’ve known. He hadn’t, and he felt foolish.

The juge himself was in shirtsleeves, a beautiful powder blue rolled up to the elbows, his wrists resting on two worn spots in the desk leather. Flanked by imposing stacks of files, overhung by a glittering wall of commendations, lit by a fine Art Nouveau lamp, he presented the very picture of bureaucratic noblesse oblige.

“I apologize that it’s so stuffy,” Félix said. “Caroline has complained, but I fear that we are shouting into the ether. Make yourself comfortable, we’re not formal.”

Breton smiled stiffly, shifting in his bulky sweater, bulky coat. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“We were just starting to hear about your excellent progress. Odette?”

Pelletier opened the magazine on the desk, turned pages. “As I was saying, we felt that the victim’s uniform might be relevant. The name of the brand is Dur et Doux. Nine shops in Paris carry it. Although we can’t discount the possibility that it came from elsewhere or was ordered directly from the manufacturer.”

“Or that it was acquired secondhand,” Félix said.

“Yes, monsieur juge.”

The magazine was in fact a catalog. Pelletier had stopped on a two-page spread of maid’s outfits and was pointing to a black dress and frilly white apron. Her nails were slick and red, Breton noted. He’d been right about the manicure, at least.

“Unfortunately, most of the managers I spoke to indicated that it’s one of their bestselling items.” Pelletier smiled. “Apparently, it’s popular with housewives, too. I’m told that’s a fantasy some men have.”

“A hooker dressed like a maid?” Lambert said. “Or a maid dressed like a hooker?”

The magistrats turned to Breton.

“The capitaine prefers not to speculate,” Pelletier said.

Speaking for him. As if he was a deaf-mute.

“What about the boy?” Lambert said.

Breton found his voice. “It seems he may not have been enrolled in school.”

“If they’re Gypsies, he probably wasn’t,” Lambert said.

“There’s a group camped at the southern end of the park,” Pelletier said. “They couldn’t recognize either victim from photos.”

“You know as well as I do that Gypsies are incapable of talking to police without lying,” Lambert said. “It’s part of their culture.”

As the discussion turned to the victims’ ethnicity, Breton tuned out. He now knew what Pelletier had been up to in her absence. Why she’d share credit was harder to fathom.

“Considering the obstacles you’re facing, I’m pleased.”

Breton realized Félix was speaking to him. “Thank you, monsieur le juge.”

What else could he say? He was being commended for his fine work. Only he and Pelletier knew how little he’d contributed.

He had to admire her cleverness. She could’ve mounted a frontal assault, complaining he’d sidelined her, insulted her status as a member of the Brigade Criminelle, et cetera. That would only give the impression of a territorial squabble.

Much more destructive, Breton decided, to undo a person from the inside out.

Yes, he admired her.

A shock of cold hit him.

“Théo?” Félix asked. “Are you all right?”

Breton shoved his trembling hands in his pockets. “Too much caffeine.”

“I can imagine you haven’t been getting a lot of sleep. Well, look, I’m not going to step on your toes. Unless there’s something you need from me?”

“We’ll want the invoices from the uniform shops,” Pelletier said.

“Right,” Félix said. “Caroline?”

The secretary finished typing out the commission rogatoire.

“Anything else that occurs to you,” Félix said, signing it, “please let me know. Jean-Marc, if you can remain behind a moment?”

“Certainly,” Lambert said. “Keep it up, you two.”

“Capitaine. Wait.”

The crowded corridor made it socially unacceptable for Breton to ignore her. He allowed her to catch up, then humped down the stairs, Pelletier close behind.

“You can’t seriously be angry,” she said. “I didn’t have to play it that way.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Is it so incredible that I might be trying to help you?”

He said, “I’d already asked Dédé to check into the uniform.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“He hasn’t had a free moment.”

“I’m sure he hasn’t. I have. Otherwise, tell me what you’d like me to do instead.”

“I have an appointment,” he said. “I’m going to be late.”

They reached the boomy marble lobby, polished with gray winter light. Breton dodged robed avocats.

“What’s your appointment?” Pelletier asked.

“I’m visiting my father.”

“Can you give me a lift back to the commissariat?”

“It’s in the other direction.” He waved at her fitness tracker. “Anyway I wouldn’t want to deprive you of steps.”

Traffic was going to be horrible, he ought to leave the car and leg it himself. The walk to the Institut was less than two kilometers. He felt so tired, he was winded, fuzzy around the edges. He hadn’t eaten in hours. He had no appetite. He needed a fucking joint.

He stopped, rubbed his sweaty forehead.

“Follow up with the uniform suppliers,” he said to her. “After that, start calling domestic service agencies.” He paused. “Unless you’ve already done that, too.”

“Next on my list,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Take Dédé with you,” he said. “He could use the fresh air.”

At home the next evening, he put on Friday Night in San Francisco and boiled spaghetti, wrestling with a jar of tomato sauce amid applause and warring guitars. He wiped his clammy hands on a towel but the lid refused to turn, and he swore and threw the jar into the sink, hoping it would shatter and provide some sort of catharsis.

It thudded dully against the plastic, intact.

He sank down, his head a loose pile.

Each time he finished a treatment, some nice pretty nurse would offer to wheel him to the elevator, help him flag a cab. No need, he said; his girlfriend was meeting him in the lobby. The nurses did not press. They understood that he wanted to walk out of the clinic alone, under his own power. Or perhaps they assumed it was the notion of the girlfriend, that prideful fiction, that mattered to him.

At one point it had been true: during his first go-round, five years ago, Hélène would hold his head in her lap while they rode back to his place in Belleville. She would prepare plain pasta with a sliver of butter, a light salad without dressing, no meat or cheese because he couldn’t keep them down.

One day she announced she couldn’t take the stress anymore. The awful joke was that his latest scans had shown no trace of relapse. She’d survived the worst of it, they both had, now she could stay and they could be happy. But she’d made up her mind. Within days, she’d moved in with a guy who sold high-end stereo systems.

She and Breton still kept in touch. The set of speakers through which he was listening to Paco de Lucia had been last year’s Christmas present. She’d sent them along with a card that said she was grateful to have him around. He knew what she meant but found her choice of words macabre and amusing.

They were really nice speakers. Breton had looked them up on the Internet. They retailed for eight hundred euros, about half his monthly salary. Obviously Hélène hadn’t paid that much, if she’d paid for them at all. Knowing their value, Breton made a sincere effort to keep them in perfect condition, so that when he died she could take them back to her boyfriend and he could resell them without a problem.

Slumped on the kitchenette floor, he watched steam rising from the pot. The energy required to stand, lift it, tip it into the colander... He could not begin to think.

“Frevo Rasgado” came on, his favorite of the album’s five cuts. He felt his stomach starting to rebel and leaned sideways to avoid vomiting on himself.

Since he had eaten nothing, next to nothing came up. In a way that made it worse: whatever did come up was part of him.

The battery-operated pump attached to his venous catheter came loose of his belt. The pump looked like an alien grenade. He was perpetually anxious about rolling over in his sleep, accidentally kinking the line and giving himself an aneurysm. They told him it wasn’t possible, but he knew impossible things happened every day. The first two cycles, he’d sat up until the morning nurse came to remove the pump and flush the line.

He supposed he would do the same tonight. Then he would go to work, dressed in a bulky sweater and bulky coat to cover the lump of the catheter through his shirt. It was a good thing he was always cold, he could leave his layers on indoors and no one would be the wiser. To forestall the question of why he was so cold, he’d pried the cover off the thermostat in his office and stabbed it in the guts with a screwdriver until it bleeped surrender. Now the office was a polar ice cave.

Nobody asked why he couldn’t get the thermostat fixed. The answer to that was self-evident. They couldn’t afford paper clips.

Three cycles, nine to go.

The present regimen was far more intense than its predecessor, five medications in combination instead of one. His oncologist said they couldn’t take chances at this stage, they had to be aggressive. Studies showed a doubling of the median survival rate. Breton asked what the median survival rate was and learned it was five and a half months. Leaving him with less than a year.

With luck, he would have found the killer of the mother and child by then.

Nausea rose again, and he crawled from the kitchenette to shut off the music. He was thinking of that scene from A Clockwork Orange. He didn’t want to develop an association between the song, which he loved, and the sickness. The stereo was next to the futon mattress, both on the floor. He’d moved everything important to the floor.

He hit the power button and collapsed on his belly.

Knocks came through the sudden silence.

“Théo. Are you there?”

It was Odette Pelletier.

“Fuck off,” he said.

“Théo. Open up.”

“Fuck off,” he said again, louder.

Hearing him, she began to pound. It felt like she was punching him in the eyes and ears.

“Open the door or I’m going to kick it in.”

Her tone threatened that she might actually do it. He crawled over to the door.

Out in the hallway, she stood with hip cocked. She peered down at him, clucked her tongue. “Pauvre chou.”

She stepped over him and shut the door; crouched, hooked her hands under his armpits, and dragged him to the mattress, flopping him into the nest of rank sheets.

“Have you eaten?” she asked.

“Go away.”

In his blurry periphery, he saw her mopping up vomit, draining the pasta.

“Where do you keep your olive oil? I won’t put in too much. Never mind, got it.”

She eased down beside him, propping him up with one arm while she twirled spaghetti on a fork. “Eat,” she said.

“You don’t exist,” he said.

“Eat.”

He choked down a few bites before vomiting again, avoiding the mattress but speckling her shoes.

He croaked a laugh.

“Don’t be an asshole,” she said.

“I give the orders,” he said.

“You weren’t in today,” she said. “Someone had to take charge.”

“Go to hell.”

“I thought about it. I said to myself, ‘Something’s up, here. He doesn’t seem like one of those lazy shits you so often find running the show at DPJ.’ Then I thought about your father, who you went to visit yesterday. And I wondered, ‘Why would he do that? It must be serious, if he’s going to run off in the middle of a busy investigation.’ I asked Dédé. I figured he’d know. He loves you, you know; you’re like a father to him.”

Breton felt sick again in a different way.

“‘What’s wrong with Capitaine Breton’s father? Is he ill?’ ‘No, no, you must be mistaken, his father died years ago.’

“Then I thought about your bloody nose and how you reek of pot. I thought maybe there was harder stuff, too. Nobody is going to tell me that, of course, they don’t trust me, certainly not Dédé Vallot. I can only guess what you’ve been saying about me behind my back. I poked around in your records. Surprise! You’re clean as a choirboy. I wondered if you had been in treatment but managed to keep it quiet. I called my partner at the BC and had him ping you in the CPAM database,” she said. “Voilà.”

With a groan, he pushed away the forkful of spaghetti headed his way, detaching himself from her embrace and rolling over, mindful of the pump.

“At least I don’t have to arrest you,” she said.

She got up and began walking around the room, toeing sodden clothes. “Although I should do it anyway, you live like a pig. What do you pay for this shithole? Not more than six hundred, I hope.”

She knelt beside him. “They really don’t know? Nobody on the whole team? How did you keep it from them for so long?”

“You should be looking for the killer,” he said. “Not harassing me.”

“The only explanation I can come up with is that they must be very dense. I met you two weeks ago and I knew immediately something was off. But if you ask me, it’s not fair of you to lie to them. They deserve better. Beurk, it stinks like a reggae concert in here.”

She pried up a window. Cold air howled in. Breton gasped.

“Fuck off,” he shouted, or tried to shout. He sounded so small.

“Poor Théo,” she said. “Do you want to know my good news? Maybe you’ll feel better after you hear it. I spoke to a uniform supplier in Oberkampf. Six months ago, they sold a batch of those very maid’s outfits to the Russian embassy. Do you know where that is?”

He knew.

“It’s on Boulevard Lannes,” she said. “Right over the road from the Bois de Boulogne. Under a kilometer from where the bodies were found.”

She bent over, stroked his shoulder. “You really should stay in bed tomorrow. You’re not well enough to come in. Don’t worry. I have everything under control.”