spoons brimming over, ready to spill again. Maroc could not get out of there fast enough.
Vidot’s apartment was not too far away, but by the time they got there the light drizzle had grown into a deluge and they had to jump over swelling gutters to reach the building’s front door. Luckily, they did not have to wait out in the rain as they were buzzed in right away. They climbed the stairs to the flat and when they knocked at the apartment door, a woman quickly answered. Her bright smile faded instantly at the sight of them. “Yes, can I help you?”
“Are you Madame Vidot?” asked Maroc.
“I am.”
“I am Superintendent Maroc. This is Detective Lecan. I am afraid—”
The loud buzz of the downstairs doorbell interrupted him. She did not answer it.
“I am afraid we have some unfortunate news,” Maroc continued.
“Oh?” she said, her face turning white. “Is this about my husband?”
Again, the doorbell buzzed, and again she did not answer it.
“I’m sorry.” Maroc smiled politely. “Are you expecting company?”
“It is nothing, no one,” she stammered. “Please, go on.”
Maroc was about to continue with his speech when Lecan stepped forward. “Madame, perhaps you should invite us in. The news we have is serious and inappropriate for hallway conversation. And please, let up whoever is waiting. The weather is terrible and we would not want to be the cause of their inconvenience.”
“Yes, I’m sorry, please come in.” She opened the door for them. As they entered the modest apartment, Lecan gave Maroc a knowing look. “But I am sure,” she said, “whoever is outside will go—” The buzzer rang a third time, its duration implying a certain impatience.
“Please,” said Lecan, “invite him up.”
Blushing, Madam Vidot pushed the front door button. The three of them waited in the silent apartment, listening to the rain against the window and the footsteps climbing the stairs. When the knock came at the door, Adele went to open it. Before she could say a word, the man burst in and immediately started removing his soaked hat and coat. “My God, it’s terrible out! Were you napping? Oh, my little dove, I can’t wait to get out of these wet clothes and—”
It was only then that he looked up and saw the two policemen.
“Good evening,” said Maroc with a grin. “I am Superintendent Maroc, and this is my colleague, Detective Lecan. And may I ask who might you be?”
Less than an hour later the two policemen headed back to the station, huddled beneath their two umbrellas and engrossed in a rigorous debate. Maroc was convinced that Madame Vidot and this Alberto Perruci, who was undoubtedly her paramour, were now the primary suspects in the case. Clearly they had murdered her husband and probably Bemm too, perhaps as an unintended consequence. Lecan insisted this was not necessarily so. Maroc pointed to the statistics, how in most murder cases involving married couples, it almost always turned out that the spouse had done it. Lecan agreed that history supported Maroc, but also pointed out that this was France, where, if adultery led inevitably to murder, then piles of new corpses would be lining the streets every morning. Lecan told Maroc that he suspected a more sinister end, perhaps related to the case Vidot had been investigating. By the time they reached the station, Maroc had agreed with Lecan that while infidelity did not necessarily lead to homicide (if it did, he agreed, most Frenchmen would be dead), he still needed answers, and this pair was the closest thing he had to a lead. The death of Leon Vallet was proving to be a dead end, with no clear leads to follow. But these two were acting suspicious right under their noses. Therefore he would put the wife and her lover under surveillance, as it was the only constructive thing he could think of to do.
“Of course, maybe in the end we will find that Vidot simply ran away with a lover of his own,” suggested Lecan.
“Yes, maybe he ran away with Bemm,” Maroc said, and they shared a good laugh at that.
II
Tumbling down toward the street from Billy and Dottie’s apartment, Vidot realized that his whole life would not, as the cliche put it, flash before his eyes. In fact, he had abundant time for regrets, second thoughts, and even philosophical ruminations, for, thanks to the air pressure and the updraft, what would have been a plunge of mere seconds for a heavier mortal man took substantially longer for a falling flea: it was as if he had tumbled off a tall cliff perched above a kilometers-deep canyon and it would now take considerable time for him to cover the vast distance before he reached the bottom. So, as he fell, he could contemplate all the many lapses in judgment that had brought him to this grim and unfortunate end.
Then, unexpectedly, a brisk breeze picked up from below. This gentle but firm wind, buffeting off the side of the building, completely ceased his descent and began forcing him up and aloft. In fact, as it quickly billowed him out over the rooftop, he found himself at an altitude of such atmospheric activity that it quickly became evident that he would not be returning to earth anytime soon. In surprising bursts and swirling currents, curious eddies, and elliptical wafts, he proceeded to spin and sail up across the high terraces, tiles, and chimneys of Paris, his soul now laughing in a nervous ecstasy of relief as he sailed over the spires of churches and soared past garret windows and bright tin peaks. In absolute amazement, he glided over the spiderwebbed alleyways of the Marais and then out past the Hotel de Ville. Cars and pedestrians clogged the streets beneath him. He was high up now, gazing across to where Montmartre itself gazed out over the city. He was swept along in the wind, admiring the twin steeples of Notre-Dame as he passed, along with the dogged, devilish gargoyles of St. Jacques.
Relaxing in his good fortune, he began to figure out how to surf the wind’s current. By twisting, turning, and balling himself up while extending his long legs out into the air, he found a way to achieve some slight control. Aiming himself down the length of the Avenue Montaigne, he rode a buffeting gust and was shot clear across the river. Then, gleefully aiming himself again, he floated between the iron latticework of the Eiffel Tower. He soared out, up along Haussmann’s grand boulevards all the way to Montparnasse. There the spinning wind’s pressure changed and took him swooping down so that he found himself dancing along only meters above the black and gray hats of a small crowd of people. The breeze sped up again, and as he sailed over the street he caught a glimpse of a pretty blond girl selling newspapers, followed by a man pushing a movie camera in a baby carriage. What a marvelous city, he thought, captivating and mesmerizing even in its most pedestrian moments, those scenes composed of singular beauty that were almost camouflaged and lost amid its myriad wonders.
The gusting wind now shifted direction as it shot him up once more, blowing him back hundreds of meters above the Champ de Mars to where a lonely red balloon floated by. The sight reminded him of those first heroes of flight, his countrymen, who, long before the airplane, rose from crowded and cheering Parisian courtyards in their gilded and satin hot-air palaces. Filled with delight, and flying now back over the river, he passed the Tuileries. He tossed and turned in the cool breeze. He was beginning to think he could happily spend days up above Paris, riding high and repeatedly crisscrossing the Seine, a tiny observing angel keeping a keen, watchful eye on his fair city and its sweet and sinful inhabitants, when suddenly, as he was passing over the courtyard of the grand Hotel de Crillon, the capricious winds absolutely died and Vidot found himself falling once again, straight down until he landed smack in the middle of an overflowing garbage can.
Stunned, quite happy to be alive, and, as far as he could tell, miraculously uninjured, Vidot rousted himself up from the piled debris and hopped out onto the base of a nearby drainpipe. He had barely time to catch his breath before he saw a large, lumbering shadow passing by, and, without any hesitation, he leapt onto it, wholly intent on resuming the journey to the station he had been pursuing before he was waylaid by Billy and Dottie.
Quickly determining that he was riding the rear end of a common rat, Vidot scurried below to the safety of the belly. There, the warmth of the rodent’s flesh struck another intuitive nerve. Vidot realized that, amid all the drama, he had not eaten in a couple of days. Without pause, he sank his teeth in and sucked deeply, filling his abdomen with warm blood, which caused him to slip into the familiar rich ecstasy of semiconsciousness that often accompanied his more gluttonous meals. In his daze, he failed to notice that his rat was not, in fact, carrying him down the streets but instead had ducked through a sewer grate and crawled up though a small hidden hole that led directly into the side of the building. Slipping behind plaster walls and climbing up the frame of the service- elevator shaft, the rat made its way steadily along the narrow warrens, finally emerging from behind a radiator
