CHAPTER ONE
Paris, France
December 31, 1940
5:17 A.M.
The tall man turned onto rue Jacob and moved silently along the sidewalk toward the building, and the specific apartment, detailed in the letter tucked into the breast pocket of his heavy wool coat. He clicked a flashlight on every few seconds to illuminate his path in the darkness; he didn’t want to trip and thereby make noise to alert people he was coming.
He didn’t mind the blackout, though; in fact, quite the opposite. Flitting around Paris doing a dirty job for the Germans was a despised but lucrative endeavor, so the fewer people who saw him the better. That was the best reason to do this at night, or early before the sun rose, but he’d discovered another good reason to go first thing in the morning: to catch his suspects unaware, to surprise them when they were too groggy or hungover to lie. Or to lie well, anyway.
It wasn’t that he liked his new job, not that exactly. But he’d lost his old one at the bank when the Germans took over the city, and he had no other way to provide for himself and his aging mother.
And it was challenging in a way his bank job wasn’t, he had to admit that, because he’d never thought of himself as an intimidating man, despite his height. He was too thin, and his mother had always described him as baby-faced. She still did even though he was almost fifty. He wasn’t scary-looking, no, but he had the sandy hair and blue eyes that the Germans liked.
Of course, the gun and black leather wallet with official credentials dosed him up with a lot more confidence to knock on doors, to ask questions. To get aggressive. One aspect of the job he did enjoy was the look of respect in the eyes of the people he visited. Or maybe it was fear, which was even better.
These people deserved to be afraid. They looked down on him, but those he talked to were the worst of the worst. Writing letters to the police and to the Germans, snitching on their neighbors, their friends. Even their own family members sometimes.
He’s violating curfew every night.
She’s having sex for money.
That illegitimate child is Jewish.
They’re both buying and selling on the black market.
In school they called it tattling. On the streets it was called snitching. In Paris these days it was at a new level, people taking out their petty jealousies, exorcising resentments that had built up for years. People were using the strict German regime to get their neighbors fined, beaten, or jailed for years of grievances, real or imagined.
That’s why he was stalking down rue Jacob before dawn, to investigate one such claim. A neighbor had written to the authorities about a woman buying food and clothing over and above her allotted rations. The snitch claimed she was some kind of princess, which could make it interesting, the man thought.
He’d never met a princess.
He wondered if she’d be intimidated when he confronted her. He needed a few more details from the snitch, but then he’d go straight to her—
Ah, wait, here’s the building, he thought. He was there already. And who is this coming toward me? It’s still curfew, so I will make a note of that!
“Do you live in this building?” the tall man demanded of the stranger, in his most authoritative tone.
“Who are you?” the stranger replied.
“My name is Guy Remillon, and I’m asking the questions.” He adjusted his new hat, which was still a little tight. “Do you live here?”
“None of your business.”
“If I’m the police it is.”
Remillon didn’t like the look of disdain he was getting, and liked even less the rude response he got.
“You’re not police, of that I’m sure. Now leave me alone.”
He was about to reply, and forcefully, when the door swung open and a man stepped out.
“Who are you, and what are you doing at this hour?” Remillon asked.
“I would like to know the same from you,” the other man replied. “Don’t tell me you’re here on official business.”
“Oh yes, most definitely.” Remillon straightened to his full height. “A very serious allegation against a woman in this building.”
“Is that so? What allegation?”
“Black marketeering. She could be transported for that.”
“Yes. She could.”
Remillon looked past the other man and into the lobby of the building, which was why he didn’t see the gun until the last second. Didn’t see it until it was too late. Remillon’s eyes opened wide, then his mouth did the same, and he felt a punch to the chest before staggering backward into the middle of the street. He was confused for no more than a second, then his already-dead body crumpled to the cobbles. The new hat that he’d bought with his first paycheck from the Germans rolled away as his head hit the ground, making three wobbly revolutions before coming to rest upside down in the gutter.
CHAPTER TWO
December 31, 1940
10:17 A.M.
Chief Louis Proulx barged into my office without so much as a knock on the door, which would have given me a moment to swing my feet off my desk and maybe even open my eyes.
“Detective Lefort?” he said, emphasizing the word “detective.” “It is Homicide Detective Henri Lefort, isn’t it?”
“You know perfectly well—”
“Are you seriously telling me you didn’t hear a thing this morning?” He slapped my report, which was a blank piece of paper jammed into a manila folder, onto the desk where my feet had just been. “No shouting, no screaming? How about the shot itself, for God’s sake?”
“I’m a heavy sleeper.”
“You were drunk.”
“Someone can be both drunk and asleep,” I pointed out. “But either way I was off duty, and when I’m off duty, my liver is none of your business.”
He shook his head, apparently not wishing to debate either philosophy or my off-duty prerogatives. “What are you working on?”
“A bottle of Irish whiskey.”
“Here, Henri, for Christ’s sake. At your job.”
“Ah. Not so much, as it happens. When the Germans corralled most of our young men for war or work, they also removed the majority of our criminal population. I hope that’s going terribly for them, by the way. They should employ their own criminals.”
“Their own criminals are wearing military uniforms and are busy stinking up our city,” he said, but I noticed he lowered his voice. Sensible, too; it was starting to seem like you couldn’t trust the people that you used to.
“The truest words you’ve ever spoken.”
“Right, then.” He perched himself on the edge of my desk. “Since you didn’t see or hear a damn thing, you’re not any kind of witness.”
“Oh, is that how that works?”
“Funny. How it works is that if you’re not a witness, you can be the lead detective.”
“And by lead you mean only, right?” He started to speak but I cut him off, knowing what he was going to say. “Resources don’t allow for more than one … I get it.”
“Correct.” He stood and smiled. “At least you won’t have to travel far to the crime scene.”
“Who was the mec?”
“The dead man? No idea. But he had a gun and some German credentials on him, so either a thief, an informer, or … something else.”
“Any idea why he was at my building?”
“Did you just want me to solve the whole thing so you can sit here with your feet on your desk snoozing?”
“Can’t say I’d mind, honestly. Cold and dangerous out there, much nicer in here.”
“Sorry to disappoint, but I’ll be the one staying warm and dry. Maybe our dead man had something more on him that will tell his story.” He opened the door and flashed that insincere smile at me again. “If not, I’m sure you’ll figure it all out. Have fun at the morgue.”
“And by morgue, you mean…?”
I was asking because the authorities had taken to using the jail cells in our building, the Préfecture, as the morgue. The combination of a high death rate since they’d come to town and some faulty ancient plumbing at the actual morgue had required the sausage-eaters to find extra space. They’d settled on the dank, cold jail beneath us, figuring that we’d want victims of murder close by for our investigations. I didn’t see the logic, myself, since in my experience the absolute worst witnesses were dead people.
He pointed downward. “I do, yes.”
“So no autopsy, or are they doing those here now, too?”
“They are not, but he was shot once in the heart. We don’t need a medical professional to tell us that.”
“Did someone at least dig the bullet out for me to look at?”
“You’re assuming there’s one inside him.”
I couldn’t tell if he was irritating me on purpose. “Well now, I wouldn’t have to assume if someone had done a goddamn autopsy, would I?”
“Very true.”
“Well, maybe next time.” But my sarcasm was lost on him.
“Probably not, if the cause of death is obvious.”
“Great. Back to my bullet, can you get someone to have a look at least?”
“I suppose we could arrange that, if they didn’t find one at the scene.”
“Well, did they?”
“There you go again, asking me to do your job. Have fun in the morgue.” He gave me a cheery wave and didn’t wait for my reply before shutting the door.
“You already said that,” I muttered, for no one’s benefit but my own.
Copyright © 2024 by Mark Pryor