3

“My god, Arthur! Are you okay? What happened here?” Benjamin swept some broken glass aside with the tip of his John Lobb and squatted down next to his friend.

“Benjamin Cooker? Is that you? What are you doing here?” the wine merchant asked. His words were barely audible.

“Don’t talk. Help will be here shortly.”

As they waited for the paramedics, the young man in the hoodie paced the shop and watched. Benjamin stayed near Arthur.

When they had met years earlier, Arthur Solacroup’s eyes struck Benjamin right away. They were hard—steely even. Maybe it was the twelve years spent with the Foreign Legion in the sands of Djibouti. Or was it the deserts of Ethiopia? Paradoxically, Arthur had a soft and relaxed voice and confident bearing that Benjamin—and doubtless his customers—found reassuring. His demeanor, coupled with his expertise, had been instrumental in the success of his modest shop in Montmartre. In addition to attracting Parisians from other arrondissements and tourists, he had established a solid following of regulars from the neighborhood who wouldn’t dream of doing business with anyone but Arthur Solacroup.

Arthur, in fact, was the best-known wine merchant in Montmartre. Since his inclusion in the Cooker Guide, his shop had never gone without customers. His advice was always judicious. His prices were never steep, and wine lovers valued his carefully chosen bottles. Arthur could raise and lower the metal shutters whenever he felt like it.

That said, Arthur was something of an iconoclast. He extolled exceptional but little-known selections and dismissed the crus classés praised by those who chose their wine according to label. At Le Chai de la Vigne-Rhône, a customer had to be willing to abandon his opinions and surrender to the advice of the shop’s owner.

Decked out in his black apron, Arthur would typically size up his thirsty customer and listen without saying a word. Then he would turn around and scan the wine racks, where bottles awaited deflowering. With one sure and efficient sweep of his arm, he would grab the perfect bottle and bring it to the counter for the customer’s inspection.

“At this price you won’t find anything better,” he would say.

The wine merchant, with a shaved head and an accent that betrayed his southern roots but not his precise origins, had made a clean break from his past. Benjamin knew very little about his previous life. He didn’t even know how old he was. Benjamin suspected that he had enjoyed some amorous adventures and had probably overindulged at one or more points in his life. But Arthur wasn’t one to tell stories or give explanations. Why, for example, was he so passionate about wines from the Rhône Valley?

Arriving within minutes, the police asked Benjamin and the young man in the hoodie some questions. They both described what they could about the person they had seen leaving but neither had anything further to add. Finally, the officers told them they were no longer needed. The paramedics got Arthur on the gurney and into the ambulance.

Benjamin and the young man left the store together and watched the flashing lights of the ambulance disappear down the Rue Lepic. Shaking his head, Benjamin turned to his companion, who was clearly distraught. His hands were shaking, and his face was ghost white. Benjamin expected him to take off, but he didn’t.

“Have you known Arthur long?” Benjamin ventured, hoping the young man could provide even a shred of information that would explain why someone would want to shoot the wine merchant.

Getting no response, he pressed on.

“Why don’t we find a café and sit down for a few minutes. I’m freezing. Aren’t you? Let me buy you a cup of coffee or tea.”

The boy shoved his hands into his shallow pockets and nodded. “I could use some coffee. My name’s Karim.”

~ ~ ~

The front window of the café was foggy with condensation, and the small room was warm and cozy. Benjamin chose a booth in the back where they could talk privately. They placed their orders, and the winemaker watched as Karim began to relax.

“So you’re Benjamin Cooker,” Karim said. “The famous Benjamin Cooker. Arthur talked about you all the time. He was so proud of being in your guide. He said you were one of the few people he trusted.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Benjamin said. “I’ve been acquainted with Arthur for a while now. What about you?”

“I can’t say I’ve known him that long, but I probably know him better than most folks around here.”

“How is that?”

He gave Benjamin a nervous look, eying him carefully, and said, “You can blame my hookah for that.”

Benjamin put on his most nonjudgmental expression and sipped his tea, hoping to keep his new friend relaxed.

“Oh? And why would I blame the hookah?”

“Arthur and I met last summer. He was visiting a friend who has an apartment down the hall in the building where I live. It was late and hot. I was hanging out by myself outside the building. Arthur was leaving, and he recognized me. I work part time at a shop in the neighborhood and run errands for some other shop owners, and he’d seen me around. Anyway, we started talking. Who’d have thought we’d have so much in common? We hit it off, probably because I’m from the part of the world where Arthur spent so much time. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get home. After a while I asked him if he wanted to come inside for a smoke.”

Benjamin imagined Karim leading Arthur to a small attic apartment, pulling out a hookah, and dropping a small lump of hashish in the bowl. He envisioned the two of them sharing memories of an incandescent Africa, where the desert sizzled under the glare of the sun, and in the towns, the aromas of turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, and cloves wafted through the air.

“He told me he joined the Foreign Legion when he was teenager. He lied about his age to get in. I don’t know why anyone would do that.”

“Son, people have a romantic vision of the French Foreign Legion. Recruits take on a new name when they join, so it’s like starting over again.”

“Yeah, he said he did something stupid he wanted to forget. He didn’t tell me what it was. Do you think he did something bad?”

“The legion does have a reputation for taking crooks and fugitives, but I understand they now do detailed background checks via Interpol, for what that’s worth. I don’t know Arthur all that well, but he seems like an upright fellow.”

“In any case, he told me a lot about his time as a soldier.”

In a flood of words, Karim recounted Arthur’s stories of the Legion as if they were his own: the daytime heat, the nights, the prostitutes infected with AIDS, his too-brief leave at a Red Sea resort, and the training camp on a Gulf of Aden island surrounded by great white sharks.

“He told me the chief warrant officer was a guy named Boulard, and the captain of the camp was a tough dude named Kyriel. Arthur liked him.”

Benjamin pictured Arthur and Karim watching the bubbles dance in the water as they smoked.

“More coffee?” he asked Karim, signaling to the waiter. “Did he talk about his life before the Legion?”

“He told me he liked to pull the legs off insects. He’d done it ever since he started walking. He liked the way it annoyed his mom, who used to hover over his baby brother. Grasshoppers and spiders were his favorites. He told me about chasing rats just to cut off their tails. He cut up lizards and snakes too. Then he asked if I did it too, like mutilating animals was the most normal thing in the world.”

“How did you answer?” Benjamin asked, feeling a bit odd getting so much information about Arthur, but curious just the same.

Karim grinned. “Oh, I said yes, but really I never even thought about doing things like that.”

“I guess the military was a good fit for Arthur,” Benjamin said.

“That’s what he thought. I never could have survived it: training in the sand, the fist fights and knife brawls, his warrant officer’s humiliations, the scorpions in the bunkers, the filthy dives in Djibouti, the fornicating with one woman after another... He always called it fornicating, not screwing, or banging, or fucking.”

Benjamin tried to imagine the Arthur he knew talking about fornication, and a smile crossed his lips.

“Did you know he has a seahorse tattoo on his left arm?” Karim asked.

“No, I’ll admit I didn’t.”

“You may have guessed by now that he’s quite the lady’s man. The chicks love his eyes, especially the way they’re two different colors.”

Karim stopped talking and played with his spoon.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Benjamin asked.

Karim drank the last drops of coffee from the cup and didn’t say anything.

“Did he tell you why he left the Foreign Legion?” Benjamin asked.

“When I asked him, I remember he sat straight up and said, ‘I left the day Boulard blew his brains out. They blamed Kyriel. The Legion’s just a bunch of batshit crazy guys. I had to get out of there and fast!’”

Benjamin wondered how much of the tale was true and how much was fiction. He looked at his watch. “Karim, did you see Arthur earlier today?”

“The day started out normal. I was supposed to run some errands for him and he showed up late, like usual. When he did get in, he took a delivery from the Chapoutier estate in Tain l’Hermitage. He’s been teaching me about wines.”

“That is a fine wine. A family business—seven generations of vintners. And now, all their wines are biodynamic. But I’m getting off the point. Did anything else happen?”

“Just when Arthur stamped the receipt from the delivery man, a couple of tourists came in.”

“How did you know they were tourists?”

“They were weighed down with Vuitton bags and had a portrait sketched at the Place du Tertre. They wanted a bottle of Saint-Amour wine. “

“Yes, one of the ten Beaujolais crus.”

“Well, of course, Arthur gave them something else. He pulled out a 2000 white Châteauneuf-du-Pape and told them to try it. He said they’d like the aromas of citrus, spice, jasmine, and honey. His words exactly. They also bought a 1999 Cheval Blanc from Saint Émilion, and didn’t even blink at the price of that grand cru classé.”

“That was a good year. A keeper. Did they leave then?”

“Arthur rang up the sale, but instead of turning around and leaving the shop, they leaned over the counter, as if they were asking him to divulge a secret, and asked where they could find Henri Désiré Landru’s residence.”

“Whose?”

“You know—Bluebeard. They also wanted to know where Buffalo Bill performed and the names of the cafés where Edith Piaf sang.”

“Oh,” Benjamin said, disappointed. They were after Montmartre tourist lore, nothing that could explain why Arthur was shot. “And then?”

“It was funny. Arthur pointed them in the wrong direction. I know more about this neighborhood than he does, and I’m from Morocco.”

“So it was more or less a normal day. Nothing out of the ordinary happened?”

“No, there was something. When the tourists left, the mailman dropped off a package. Arthur opened it and found a bottle in a cardboard box. It wasn’t just any bottle. It was embossed, like a Châteauneuf-du-Pape bottle, except there wasn’t any wine in it, just a folded piece of paper.”

“How odd.”

“Arthur pulled out the cork but couldn’t get the message out. He used a piece of wire he found in the backroom. I wanted to help, but he was going at it with his usual stubborn, do-it-yourself, I’m-a-soldier attitude. He grabbed the bottle by the neck and smashed it against the marble countertop. A glass shard nicked his right hand. He unfolded the paper, but then handed it to me to read.”

“Well? What did it say?”

You may be a filthy wine star

But now I know where you are

Soon the vine will bleed,

And you too should take heed.