In Philadelphia, it was almost midnight, and I left a message for Dr. Vance Harston, the chief medical examiner. I gave him the number to the fax machine in my room and left the do not disturb sign on the door. Marino met me in the hall, and I said nothing to him but an inaudible good morning.
Downstairs, dishes clattered as the buffet was set up and a man cleaned glass doors with a brush and a cloth. There was no coffee this early, and the only other guest awake was a woman with a mink coat draped over a chair. In front of the hotel, another Mercedes taxi awaited us.
Our driver this day was sullen and in a hurry. I rubbed my temples as motorcycles sped past in lanes of their imagination, weaving between cars and roaring through many narrow tunnels. I was depressed by reminders of the car crash that killed Princess Diana.
I remembered waking up and hearing about it on the news, and my first thought was we tended to disbelieve that mundane, random deaths can happen to our gods. There is no glory or nobility in being killed by a drunk driver. Death is the great equalizer. It doesn’t give a damn who you are.
The sky was dusky blue. Sidewalks were wet from washing and green garbage cans had been set out along the streets. We bumped over cobblestones at the Place de la Concorde and drove along the Seine, which we could not see most of the time because of a wall. A digital clock outside the Gare de Lyon let us know it was seven-twenty, and inside feet shuffled and people hurried into Relais Hachette to buy papers.
I waited behind a woman with a poodle at the ticket counter, and a sharp-featured, well-dressed man with silver hair jolted me. He looked like Benton from a distance. I could not help but scan the crowd as if I might find him, my heart throbbing as if it couldn’t survive much more of this.
“Coffee,” I told Marino.
We sat at a counter inside L’Embarcadére and were served espresso in tiny brown cups.
“What the hell is this?” Marino grumbled. “I just wanted regular coffee. How ’bout handing me some sugar,” he said to the woman behind the counter.
She dropped several packs on the counter.
“I think he’d rather have a café crème,” I told her.
She nodded. He drank four of them and ate two ham baguettes and smoked three cigarettes in less than twenty minutes.
“You know,” I said to him as we boarded a train à grande vitesse, or TGV, “I really don’t want you to kill yourself.”
“Hey, not to worry,” he replied, taking a seat across from me. “If I tried to clean up my act, the stress would do me in.”
Our car was barely a third full, and those passengers seemed interested only in their newspapers. The silence prompted Marino and me to speak in very low voices, and the bullet train made no sound as it suddenly lurched forward. We glided out of the station, then blue sky and trees were flying by. I felt flushed and very thirsty. I tried to sleep, sunlight flashing over my shut eyes.
I came to when an Englishwoman two rows back began talking on a portable phone. An old man across the aisle was working a crossword puzzle, his mechanical pencil clicking. Air buffeted our car as another train sped by, and near Lyon, the sky turned milky and it began to snow.
Marino’s mood was getting increasingly curdled as he stared out the window, and he was rude when we disembarked in the Lyon Part-Dieu. He had nothing to say during our taxi ride, and I got angrier with him as I replayed the words he had recklessly thrown at me last night.
We neared the old part of the city where the Rhône and Saône rivers joined, and apartments and ancient walls built into the hillside reminded me of Rome. I felt awful. My soul was bruised. I felt as alone as I’d ever felt in my life, as if I didn’t exist, as if I were part of another person’s bad dream.
“I don’t hope nothing,” Marino finally spoke apropos of nothing. “I might say what if, but I don’t hope. There’s no point. My wife left me a long time ago and I’ve still never found anybody that fits. Now I’m suspended and thinking about working for you. I did that? You wouldn’t respect me anymore.”
“Of course I would.”
“Bullshit. Working for someone changes everything and you know it.”
He looked dejected and exhausted, his face and slumped posture showing the strain of the life he’d lived. He’d spilled coffee on his rumpled denim shirt, and his khakis were ridiculously baggy. I’d noticed that the bigger he got, the larger the size of the pants he bought, as if he fooled himself or anyone else.
“You know, Marino, it’s not very nice to imply that working for me would be the worst thing that ever happened to you.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing. But pretty close,” he said.
33
Interpol’s headquarters stood alone on the Parc de la Tête d’Or. It was a fortress of reflective pools and glass and did not look like what it was. I was certain the subtle signs of what went on inside were missed by virtually all who drove past. The name of the plantain tree–lined street where it was located wasn’t posted, so if you didn’t know where you were going, you quite likely would never get there. There was no sign out front announcing Interpol. In fact, there were no signs anywhere.
Satellite dishes, antennas, concrete barricades and cameras were very hard to see, and the razor wire–topped green metal fence was well disguised by landscaping. The secretariat for the only international police organization in the world silently emanated enlightenment and peace, appropriately allowing those who worked inside to look out and no one to look in. On this overcast, cold morning, a small Christmas tree on the roof ironically tipped its hat to the holidays.
I saw no one when I pressed the intercom button on the front gate to say we had arrived. Then a voice asked us to identify ourselves and when we did, a lock clicked free. Marino and I followed a sidewalk to an outbuilding, where another lock released, and we were met by a guard in suit and tie who looked strong enough to snatch up Marino and hurl him back to Paris. Another guard sat behind bulletproof glass and slid out a drawer to exchange our passports for visitor badges.
A belt carried our personal effects through an X-ray machine, and the guard who had greeted us gave us instructions with gestures rather than words to step, one at a time, inside what looked like a floor-to-ceiling transparent pneumatic tube. I complied, halfway expecting to be sucked up somewhere, and a curved Plexiglas door shut. Another one released me on the other side, every molecule of me scanned.
“What the hell is this? Star Trek?” Marino said to me after he’d been scanned, too. “How you know something like that can’t give you cancer? Or if you’re a man, give you other problems.”
“Be quiet,” I said.
It seemed we waited a very long time before a man appeared on a breezeway connecting the secure area to the main building, and he was not at all what I expected. He walked with the easy spring of a youthful athlete, and an expensive charcoal flannel suit draped elegantly over what was clearly a sculpted body. He wore a crisp white shirt and a rich Hermès tie in maroon, green and blue, and when he firmly shook our hands I noticed a gold watch, too.
“Jay Talley. Sorry to make you wait,” he said.
His hazel eyes were so penetrating I felt violated by them, his dark good looks so striking I instantly knew his type, because men that beautiful are all alike. I could tell Marino had no use for him, either.
“We spoke on the phone,” he said to me, as if I didn’t remember.
“And I haven’t slept since,” I said, unable to take my eyes off him, no matter how hard I tried.
“Please. If you’ll come with me.”
Marino gave me a look and wiggled his fingers behind Talley’s back, the way he did when he decided on the spot that someone was gay. Talley’s shoulders were broad. He had no waist. His profile had the perfect slope of a Roman god, and his lips were full and his jaw was flared.
I concentrated on being puzzled by his age. Usually, overseas posts were much coveted and were awarded to agents with seniority and rank, yet Talley looked barely thirty. He led
us into a marble atrium four stories high that was centered by a brilliant mosaic of the world and washed in light. Even the elevators were glass.
After a series of electronic locks and buzzers and combinations and cameras that cared about our every move, we got off on the third floor. I felt as if I were inside cut crystal. Talley seemed to blaze. I felt dazed and resentful because it hadn’t been my idea to come here, and I didn’t feel in charge.
“So what’s up there?” Marino, the model of politeness, pointed.
“The fourth floor,” Talley impassively said.
“Well, the button don’t have a number and it looks like you have to key yourself up,” Marino went on, staring at the elevator ceiling. “I was just wondering if that’s where you keep all your computers.”
“The secretary-general lives up there,” Talley matter-of-factly stated, as if there were nothing unusual about this.
“No shit?”
“For security reasons. He and his family live in the building,” Talley said as we passed normal-looking offices with normal-looking people inside them. “We’re meeting him now.”
“Good. Maybe he won’t mind telling us what the hell we’re doing here,” Marino replied.
Talley opened another door, this one made of rich, dark wood, and we were politely greeted by a man with a British accent who identified himself as the director of communication. He took orders for coffee and let Secretary-General George Mirot know we had arrived. Minutes later he showed us into Mirot’s private office, where we found an imposing gray-haired man seated behind a black leather desk amid walls of antique guns and medals and gifts from other countries. Mirot got up and shook our hands.
“Let’s be comfortable,” he said.
He showed us to a sitting area before a window overlooking the Rhône while Talley collected a thick accordion file from a table.
“I know this has been quite an ordeal and I’m sure you must be exhausted,” he said in precise English. “I can’t thank you enough for coming. Especially on such short notice.”
His inscrutable face and military bearing revealed nothing, and his presence seemed to make everything around him smaller. He settled into a wing chair and crossed his legs. Marino and I chose the couch and Talley sat across from me, setting the file on the rug.
“Agent Talley,” Mirot said, “I’ll let you start. You’ll excuse me if I get right to the point?” He directed this at us. “We have very little time.”
“First, I want to explain why ATF’s involved in your unidentified case,” Talley said to Marino and me. “You’re familiar with HIDTA. Because of your niece Lucy, perhaps?”
“This has nothing to do with her,” I assumed uneasily.
“As you probably know, HIDTA has violent crimes–fugitive task forces,” he said instead of answering my question. “FBI, DEA, local law enforcement, and of course ATF, combining resources in high priority, especially difficult cases.”
He pulled up a chair and sat across from me.
“About a year ago,” he went on, “we formed a squad to work murders in Paris we believed are being committed by the same individual.”
“I’m not aware of any serial murders in Paris,” I said.
“In France, we control the media better than you do,” the secretary-general commented. “You must understand, the murders have been in the news, Dr. Scarpetta, but in very little detail, no sensationalizing. Parisians know there’s a murderer out there, and women have been warned not to open their doors to strangers, and so on. But that’s all. We believe it serves no good purpose to reveal the gore, the shattered bones, torn clothes, bite marks, sexual deviations.”
“Where did the name Loup-Garou come from?” I asked.
“From him,” Talley said as his eyes almost touched my body and flew off like a bird.
“From the killer?” I asked. “You mean, he calls himself a werewolf?”
“Yes.”
“How the hell can you know something like that?” Marino elbowed his way in, and I knew by his body language that he was about to cause trouble.
Talley hesitated and glanced at Mirot.
“What’s the son of a bitch been doing?” Marino continued. “Leaving his nickname on little notes at the scenes? Maybe he pins them to the bodies like in the movies, huh? That’s what I hate about big organizations getting involved in crap like this.
“The best people to work crimes is the schmucks like me out there walking around getting our boots muddy. Once you get these big-shot task forces and computer systems involved, the whole thing gets off in the ozone. It gets too smart, when what started the whole ball rolling ain’t smart in the college sense of the word . . .”
“That’s where you’re quite mistaken,” Mirot cut him off. “Loup-Garou is very smart. He had his self-serving reasons to let us know his name in a letter.”
“A letter to who?” Marino wanted to know.
“To me,” Talley said.
“When was this?” I asked.
“About a year ago. After his fourth murder.”
He untied the file and pulled out a letter protected by plastic. He handed it to me, his fingers brushing against mine. The letter was in French. I recognized the handwriting as the same strange boxlike style I’d found on the carton inside the container. The stationery was engraved with a woman’s name, the paper smeared with blood.
“It says,” Talley translated, “For the sins of one shall they all die. The werewolf. The stationery belonged to the victim and it’s her blood. But what mystified me at the time was how he knew I was involved in the investigation. And this all moves us closer to a theory that’s the root of why you’re here. We have ample reason to believe the killer is from a powerful family, the son of people who know exactly what he’s doing and have made certain he doesn’t get caught. Not necessarily because they give a damn about him, but because they must do whatever’s necessary to protect themselves.”
“Including shipping him off in a container?” I asked. “Dead and unidentified, thousands of miles from Paris because they’ve had enough?”
Mirot studied me, leather creaking as he shifted his position in his chair and stroked a silver pen.
“Probably not,” Talley said to me. “At first, yes. That’s what we thought, because every indicator pointed to the dead man in Richmond as this killer: Loup-Garou written on the carton, the physical description as best you could tell, considering the state the body was in. The expensive way he was dressed. But when you supplied us with further information about the tattoo with, quote, yellow eyes that might have been altered in an attempt to make them smaller . . .”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Marino cut in. “You saying this Garou guy’s got a tattoo with yellow eyes?”
“No,” Talley replied. “We’re saying his brother did.”
“Did?” I asked.
“We’ll get to that, and maybe you’ll begin to pick up on why what happened to your niece is tangentially connected with all this,” Talley said, filling me with torment again. “Are you familiar with an international criminal cartel we’ve come to call the One-Sixty-Fivers?”
“Oh, God,” I said.
“Named such because they seem to be very fond of one-sixty-five-grain Speer Gold Dot ammo,” Talley explained. “They smuggle the stuff. They use it exclusively in their own guns and we can generally tell their hits because Gold Dot’s going to be the bullet recovered.”
I thought of the Gold Dot cartridge case recovered from the Quik Cary.
“When you sent us information about Kim Luong’s murder—and thank God you did—pieces began to fit together,” Talley said.
Then Mirot spoke. “All members of this cartel are tattooed with two bright yellow dots.”
He drew them on a legal pad. They were the size of dimes.
“A symbol of membership in a powerful, violent club, and a reminder that once in, you’re in for life, because tattoos don’t come off. The only way out of the One-Sixty-Fiver cartel is death.” br />
“Unless you are able to make the gold dots smaller and turn them into eyes. A small owl’s eyes—so simple and so quick. Then escape to someplace where nobody will think to look for you.”
“Like a niche port in the unlikely city of Richmond, Virginia,” Talley added.
Mirot nodded. “Exactly.”
“What for?” Marino asked. “Why suddenly does this guy freak out and run? What’s he done?”
“He’s crossed the cartel,” Talley replied. “He’d betrayed his family, in other words. We believe this dead man in your morgue,” he said to me, “is Thomas Chandonne. His father is the godfather, for lack of a better term, of the One-Sixty-Fivers. Thomas made the small mistake of deciding to make his own dope and do his own gun trafficking and cheat the family.”
“Mind you,” Mirot said, “the Chandonne family has lived on the Île Saint-Louis since the seventeenth century, one of the oldest, wealthiest parts of Paris. The people there call themselves Louisiens, and are very proud, very elitist. Many don’t consider the island part of Paris, even though it’s in the middle of the Seine in the heart of the city.
“Balzac, Voltaire, Baudelaire, Cézanne,” he said. “Just a few of its better-known residents. And it is where the Chandonne family has been hiding behind their noblesse facade, their visible philanthropy and high place in politics while they run one of the biggest, bloodiest organized crime cartels in the world.”
“We’ve never been able to get enough on them to nail them,” Talley said. “With your help, we might have a chance.”
“How?” I asked, although I wanted nothing to do with a murderous family like that.
“Verification, to start with. We need to prove the body is Thomas. I have no doubt. But there are those little legal nuisances we law enforcers have to put up with.” He smiled at me.
“DNA, fingerprints, films? Do we have anything for comparison?” I asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.