Back at it? When had I ever been off it?
I settled in more comfortably to give it some deeper contemplation.
At 6:20 the telephone rang. I got it to my ear without opening my eyes.
'Hey, Chris-'
'Calvin, why are you always waking me up?'
'Why are you always asleep?'
I yawned and swung my feet over the side of the bed. 'L'Atelier Saint-Jean,' Calvin said, '89 Rue de Rivoli, proprietaire M. Gibeault.'
I finished my yawn. 'Hm. French, nest-ce pas?'
'It's the junk shop, Chris.'
That opened my eyes. 'The-you mean where he said he bought the Rembrandt? Pepin actually gave it to you?'
'Are you kidding me? Not that I didn't ask him, but he claims he doesn't know anything about the Rembrandt. Apparently, there were a lot of things that Vachey kept close to his vest, and this was one.'
'So then, who told you-'
'I got it from Madame Guyot.' He coughed modestly. 'She sort of took a shine to me.'
'Calvin, that's great,' I said. 'I can catch a train to Paris tomorrow-'
'I found out some other interesting stuff too. If you think this whole thing is already as weird as it's going to get, think again. You had your dinner yet?'
'I've been asleep. I'm not terrifically hungry.'
'There's a brasserie at the foot of the Rue de la Liberte, practically across the street from you. We can get an omelet or something. Meet you there in five minutes.'
'Guess,' Calvin said, smugly watching me over his glass of white wine, 'who Pepin is.'
'What do you mean, who he is? Vachey's secretary, his security head, whatever.'
'Ho-ho, there's more to it than that, my man.'
I poured most of my tiny bottle of Badoit mineral water (I wasn't feeling up to wine yet) into my glass. 'Calvin, this is very entertaining, but how about just telling me?'
'Well, you know that heist that Vachey pulled off at the Barillot ten years ago?'
'It wasn't a 'heist,' ' I said irritably. 'He was making a point. They got their paintings back, and more.'
Calvin's eyes widened. I was surprised myself. When had I gone so far over into Vachey's camp that I would defend the theft of art, whatever the reason behind it? I quickly corrected myself. 'All right, yes, it was a heist. Sorry. But what about it?'
'And how Froger fired his security chief over the lapse in precautions? Well, you want to guess the name of that fired security chief?'
'You're telling me it was Pepin?'
'You got it. Vachey gave him a job the next week, and Pepin's been there ever since.' He grinned. 'You don't suppose that might explain why he's a teeny bit paranoid about anybody getting within arm's length of anything in the Galerie Vachey?'
I nodded. Once burned, twice shy. 'You know, it also might…'
The waiter set down our orders. A ham omelet for Calvin, a cheese omelet for me, each served alongside two minuscule tomato wedges on a miniature lettuce leaf. With them came a basket of rolls, a tray with bottles of vinegar and oil on it, and-as with almost everything else in this town-a pot of Dijon mustard.
'It also might what?' Calvin asked when my sentence died away.
Frowning, I broke open a roll. 'I was just thinking… Let's say that happened to you. That Vachey hired you to work for him after Froger fired you. How would you feel?'
Calvin hunched his shoulders. 'Relieved, I guess. There couldn't have been too many places that would have been willing to take a chance on him after that.'
'How would you feel toward Vachey?'
'I don't know-grateful?'
'Even though he's the one that got you fired in the first place? Even though you'd never be able to get a job in the field with anybody else?'
'Oh, I see what you mean. You'd have sort of mixed feelings, wouldn't you? You'd be grateful-but you'd also hate his guts every time you looked at him.'
'Exactly,' I said. 'I was just wondering if he might have hated him enough to kill him.'
'But why right at this particular time? All that happened years ago.'
'For one thing, to make it look as if it had something to do with the exhibition, or those charges in Les Echos Quotidiens, or any of the other things that are going on right now.'
Calvin was shaking his head. 'Maybe, but it sounds kind of far-out to me, Chris. A lot of people probably hated Vachey enough to kill him. Jeez, we know about twenty of them ourselves.'
'Like who?'
'Like Gisele Gremonde.'
'You mean because of the Duchamp? But he gave it to her before he died.'
'Yeah, but she didn't find that out until this morning, after he was already dead.'
'Well, yes, but-'
'And what about that sleazeball son, Christian? You see how shocked he was to hear about the new will? Maybe he thought Vachey was only planning to change his will, and he murdered him to head him off. And then he finds out this morning he was too late by a year or so. Didn't you catch that oh-shit look on his face?'
'That's true, I guess-'
'Don't forget Mann either. Talk about an ax to grind. For all we know he's been hunting Vachey all these years and just found out where he lived.'
I sighed. They didn't add up to twenty, but they were enough. 'You're right. I guess I was just thinking out loud.'
'And don't forget all the people we don't know who probably hated his guts.'
I started on the omelet, and for a minute or two we ate in silence.
'Guess who Clotilde Guyot is,' Calvin said. I looked up, fork in hand.
'You're full of surprises, aren't you? Who?'
'This is something you probably know more about than I do. You know what Aryanization was?'
Yes, I knew. During World War II, early in the Occupation, Jewish businesses had been declared ownerless. The Nazi logic was unassailable: Jews had been made technically stateless by German decree, and how could stateless people have property rights? Jewish firms were therefore commandeered by the authorities. The owners were trucked off to the death camps in the East, or interned in France, or if they were lucky, they bought their way out of Europe or otherwise managed to disappear from sight.
There was some local outrage over this, of course, but the French were in no position to pursue complaints with vigor; besides, a number of influential citizens were beneficiaries of the policy. Confiscated Jewish firms were turned over, lock, stock, and barrel, to local businessmen of indisputably Aryan descent. Once cleansed of non- Aryan pollution, the firms were soon back in business. The conversion process was referred to by the Germans as 'Aryanization.'
'Well, that's how Vachey got his first gallery,' Calvin told me. 'The Nazis handed it to him. It was the Galerie Royale in Paris-you know, the one Vachey owned in 1942. Well, before that, it'd belonged to Clotilde's uncle.'
I put down my fork. My appetite, not very hearty to start with, was gone. 'Oh, hell, Calvin,' I said quietly.
He looked surprised. 'Why oh hell? I mean, look, it was a lousy deal, but it's not as if Vachey personally stole it from the guy. He probably didn't have any choice in the matter either.'
'No, Calvin, it wasn't like that. Who do you think the Nazis gave these businesses to? The people they already loved doing business with, that's who. The toadies, the stooges, the collaborators, the parasites.' And whether I wanted to believe it or not, it was starting to look as if Rene Vachey had been one, or even all, of the
