PROLOGUE
Death on the Rue Tonton
Paris 1989
Paris languished in the August heat, the streets deserted except for the usual tourists and a few remaining Parisians plodding slowly along their routine paths. Pet owners dragged unhappy dogs to the corner and back indoors, where fans whirred behind shuttered windows until night fell and a breeze cooled things down. In the evening, when the holdouts on the upper floors watered the flowers in their window boxes, the cool water dripped onto the hot pavement, where it lay in warm puddles and was gone by morning.
The Rue Tonton, even more deserted than most given its obscurity (it figured on only the most detailed maps of the 6th arrondissement), snoozed away like a tightly packed herd of sheep in the sweltering sun. It was certainly not the best time and place for a medical emergency, seeing that ambulance drivers and doctors were all on holiday at the beach, but whoever plans that sort of thing? Having lived on the street since time immemorial, the old lady was undoubtedly thinking if she could just make it home and out of the killer heat, the malaise would pass. Sadly, she got as far as the antique store, only a few steps from the entrance to her apartment building, let out a faint cry and fell to her knees, toppling an Empire chair and a gilded Italian frame that the antique dealer had set out on the sidewalk to attract business, such as it was. There was no little irony in the fact that the only one who heard her cry and came rushing to her side was the antique dealer himself, who, only days before, had publicly vowed in a very loud voice to smoke her out of her home with his newly installed pizza oven, the exhaust of which happened to be the most recent bone of contention between the two. His acrimonious relationship with the woman on the third floor sometimes took on the flavor of an old married couple who could neither live with or without each other—an opinion, or you might say piece of propaganda, put forth by the owner of the Russian bookstore across the street.
Vladimir watched the scene from the shop window, suspicion lurking in his pinpricked blue eyes. With few to no customers, he spent a lot of time at the window fabricating things to be suspicious about.
“He’s finally done it,” he murmured to the young salesclerk at his elbow.
“Done what?”
“Murdered her.”
The girl, a student of Slavic studies at the Sorbonne, pressed closer to the window. “It looks to me like he’s trying to help.”
“It’s a ruse,” Vladimir said with a grimness that carried a note of glee. “How convenient he happened to be open today, so he could pretend to come to her rescue.”
It was true that no one took the antique store very seriously, since the only hours the dealer kept were his own, which were a mystery to everyone, himself included. He was forever accumulating more antiques and rarely sold a thing. With his dense crown of silver hair concealing a missing ear, and his powerful rolling stride, the fellow resembled a hulking mad scientist. He was a contradiction in terms, a sociable hermit who opened his shop only when the mood seized him. On his more affable days he might sit down at the battered Pleyel at the back of his store and perform a lightly improvised Erik Satie for no one in particular, and when he was deep in his cups, he’d invite a customer to pull up a chair and entertain them with tales of his misadventures, which, if not exactly illegal, certainly implied a thorough contempt for the law.
“Do you think she’s dead? She isn’t moving.”
Vladimir shrugged.
“Should we call an ambulance?”
“We mustn’t get involved,” he warned in a low voice.
“But how could he have murdered her? He was inside when she collapsed.”
“There are ways,” he replied with a hint of a smirk.
They watched as the antique dealer gathered the woman into his arms and carried her inside.
“Wow,” the girl said. “He’s strong.”
“I tell you, he murdered her.”
“You’re so paranoid.”
“How do you think he lost that ear?”
There were all sorts of rumors to answer that—most of them floated by the antique dealer himself, all of them very colorful.
“You’re always saying they used to be lovers,” the girl said.
“All the more reason for murder.”
They were distracted by a phone call from a customer inquiring about a very particular translation of Maxim Gorky’s novel Mother, which had to be looked up in the catalog and then ordered, and by the time they had finished the business, an ambulance had already pulled up in the street and a sheet-shrouded body was being maneuvered into the back on a stretcher. The burly antique dealer looked on with a childish helplessness, then, after a few words with the medics, he quickly moved the Empire chair inside, drew down the rattling metal shutter over the storefront, fastened the lock and climbed into the back of the ambulance.
“I can’t believe it,” the girl declared in astonishment. “She died. Just like that. How awful.”
“The deed has been done,” Vladimir said with finality. “Now get back to work.”
Vladimir went home a few hours later, leaving the girl to lock up. The incident had left her shaken. As a student of Russian literature, she was familiar with dark, nihilistic stories and tortured characters, but this was the first time anyone had died right under her nose. As she crossed the street on her way home, she noticed the lady’s sunglasses lying on the sidewalk. She thought she should retrieve them and return them to the antique dealer, but what would be the point of that? The woman certainly wouldn’t be coming back for them. With a long glance she took in the narrow street. Not a soul stirred; the bakery on the corner shuttered, the café terrace of Le Petit Verlaine deserted. A fan whirred in one of the apartments overhead. A sudden movement caught her eye when a man sporting a white clerical collar stepped out of the café at the corner, took a swift look around and then retreated back inside again. Finally, at a loss as to what to do with the sunglasses, which were very stylish, she slipped them on. If she were in a Russian novel, she knew this moment would have great significance, but for the life of her she couldn’t think what it might be.
