Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Those remaining in their seats glanced at one another. One after another they shrugged and then rose. By the end of the last chorus, nearly half the people in the terminal were singing. The rest sat rigid in their seats, jaws set, eyes locked forward.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Since God is marching on.
“We’ve got massive unemployment,” the priest said, “people dying in earthquakes and floods, and their answer is a damn loyalty test.” He then shook his head and walked away. “That son of a bitch.”
CHAPTER 26
Grayed by the swirling low clouds edging the Mediterranean, the hotels and casinos of Monaco and Monte Carlo that Gage observed out of the plane window appeared to have turned in on themselves. The thin breakwaters defining the harbors seemed to lie like broken picture frames on the water and the yachts in their slips seemed like discarded toys.
The cities soon gave way to coast roads and tiled mansions, and then to rocky shores separated by points and peninsulas, until the plane descended over Nice and the tires bucked on the runway.
As Gage emerged from the arrivals hall, Batkoun Benaroun climbed out of his car in the “Kiss and Fly” short- term parking lot across the traffic lane from the terminal. He pointed at the sign over the lot entrance, then held his palm toward Gage.
“Don’t take it literally,” Benaroun said, his angular North African face rounding into a smile. “My wife wouldn’t understand.” “After forty years of marriage,” Gage said, smiling back, “I suspect she’s done more than her share of understanding.” He reached out and shook Benaroun’s hand. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“No problem. There were a few things I wanted to talk to you about anyway, and I’d been thinking that it would be better that we did it in person.”
Benaroun opened the trunk of his Citroen sedan, and Gage slid in his Rollaboard.
“What happened to the little Fiat?” Gage asked.
“My back couldn’t take the jolting anymore so I gave it to my nephew.”
He pointed at the passenger door, then climbed in on the driver’s side.
“His father was no more thrilled with that than with Tabari following me into the Police Nationale. My brother the great rabbi has always found it a little embarrassing that I was a cop. Even becoming an actual detective didn’t make up for it. He prefers Maigret and Poirot”-Benaroun flashed another smile-“even Clouseau.”
A gendarme vested in fluorescent green walked by the car and glanced inside. His eyes locked on Benaroun’s face, and then frowned like he’d sniffed into a wineglass only to discover that it contained vinegar.
Benaroun waited until the guard passed by, then turned the ignition and said in a grim whisper to himself, “Fascist.” He glanced at Gage. “His ancestors were still counting on their fingers and toes while mine were inventing calculus, and this idiot makes himself out to be the fortress of French civilization standing against the swarms of brown people.” He slapped the steering wheel. “Who else will they get to shovel their shit?”
Benaroun stared ahead for a moment, then shook his head, backed out of his space, and drove toward the exit.
Gage watched him hand the attendant three euros for parking beyond the five-minute limit, and then said, “You sound like you’re being squeezed every which way.”
He didn’t need to articulate which ways they were: An Algerian-Jew. A failing economy that led the white ancestral French to turn on the immigrants, no matter how many generations earlier their families had arrived. And brown-skinned young men, less striking back against a defined target than just flailing with bricks.
“It’s like living in a vise,” Benaroun said as he waited for the gate arm to rise. “I’m not sure it’s been this bad since the German occupation. Just different uniforms. These Muslim kids rioting in Marseilles are burning Jewish businesses, not realizing that the French hate Jews just as much as they hate the kids.”
Benaroun glanced over his shoulder at the gendarme watching them drive out of the lot.
“I’ll bet his grandfather was a Nazi collaborator,” Benaroun said, then he looked over at Gage. “You know the real reason I spent my career in fraud and money laundering investigations?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Because most of the commissioners believe that Jews are good with money. Even Algerian ones. And shrewd and devious enough to understand the financial criminal’s mind.”
“You seem to be getting bitter in your old age,” Gage said.
“It’s not bitterness. It’s realism. We’re internally colonized. All the colored minorities are, whatever their shade.” He emitted a sarcastic laugh. “Maybe God should add some bleach to the floodwaters in Paris to decolorize the city.”
Benaroun fell silent, then gave Gage a puckish look.
“Sixty-six isn’t old,” Benaroun said, then he reached for the beginnings of a wattle under his jaw. “Appearances notwithstanding.”
As they drove west along the freeway away from the center of Nice and toward Benaroun’s foothill home, he pointed toward the storm front that had just crested the bluff.
“God may not want us all white,” Benaroun said, “but he sure wants us all wet.”
By the time they’d turned north and headed into the suburb of Cagnes-sur-Mer, a curtain of rain had closed against the hillside. It looked to Gage as though they could drive through it and emerge on the other side, but as they traveled the curved roads they found more of the same, the weather seeming as heavy and solid as the brick house in front of which they pulled to a stop.
Benaroun turned off the ignition, but left the wipers on and squinted up through the windshield, trying to see past the splattering rain.
“Let’s wait a minute,” Benaroun said. “Maybe we’ll get a break long enough to run to the door.”
Benaroun settled back in his seat and looked at Gage.
“I saw something on the news,” Benaroun said. “Is the whole U.S. really going to come to a standstill to recite the Pledge of Allegiance? Manton Roberts sounded like an Islamic imam calling everyone to prayer. Scary as hell.”
Gage shrugged. “We’ll see, but I suspect that Americans’ sense of rugged independence will limit the turnout. The real implication of his filling his mega-church with twenty thousand people every Sunday is that the surrounding ten million didn’t show up. I suspect it will be the same with National Pledge Day.”
“I don’t know,” Benaroun said. “Just watching the announcement on the news almost brought the whole of France to a stop. The English word ‘hysteria’ is what we call a collective noun in French, and it makes us nervous.”
A gust of wind drove the rain hard against the side of the car, then there was a moment of quiet. Benaroun raised a finger. He waited for a few seconds after a second gust swept over them, and then said, “Let’s go.”
By the time they’d grabbed Gage’s Rollaboard from the trunk, the rain hit again and they ran through it toward the door thirty feet across the courtyard. It swung open as their shoes hit the slate porch, and Gage followed Benaroun past his nephew and into the foyer.
“Bonjour, Mr. Gage,” Tabari said, swinging the door closed and handing Gage a towel. “My uncle suffers from the delusion that he can time the rain.”
“He did pretty well,” Gage said, drying off his hair. “It’s not his fault if I’ve slowed a step or two.”
“Come on,” Benaroun said, heading off toward the kitchen. “Let’s get a drink. Since he got promoted to detective in the Police Judiciaire he’s become a know-it-all.”
Tabari grabbed Gage’s arm as he turned to follow, then whispered, “Has he told you exactly what he wants to talk to you about? ”
Gage shook his head.
“Talk to me before you encourage him to pursue his theory about the platinum smuggling from South Africa. I think he’s going way beyond what Transparency Watch wants or needs. He may have the brain of a thirty-year-old, but he doesn’t have the body of one, and I don’t want him to get hurt.”
