Security at the police substation was rigorous. While our papers were scrutinized, we were led to a small bench in a corridor and told to sit and not move. We did just that. I scanned the bustle of activity, finding patterns recognizable from home. My gaze brought me to a square-built man with ruffled gray hair. He leaned against a pillar two dozen feet away and studied us from beneath a frown. I looked away, locked my fingers behind my head and enjoyed the show until a beefy French cop told Danbury whoever she’d spoken to from Mobile wasn’t in and we’d have to say au revoir.
He escorted us toward the door as Danbury argued the point with little success. Just when it seemed the street was inevitable - how many places could we be booted from in one day? - a gruff voice behind us made our escort disappear without a word.
I turned to see the man who had been studying me from across the room. He gestured us back into the station and led us to a small, glassed-in office awash with files and papers. He sat, nodded toward two chairs. He looked at me.
“You are a gend—, a policeman.”
I was surprised. “How do you know?”
“I watched you walk in the door. You studied the room and relaxed. There are few people who relax while in a department of police: hardened criminals, and, of course, other police.”
“What makes you think we’re not hardened criminals; jewel thieves or the like?”
He paused a moment, as if finding the precise English before he spoke.
“I saw you smile before; it was real, a smile using both eyes and mouth. Criminals can’t smile: the eyes never perfectly synchronize with the mouth. The smile is the first item a life of dishonesty steals.” He nodded toward Danbury. “Plus, criminals do not generally travel in such lovely company.”
“Who are you, sir?” I asked.
It turned out that we were in the presence of Deputy Inspector Bernard Latrelle, which explained our sudden acceptance into the heart of the department. We introduced ourselves and I handled the major business first.
“We have a strange story, Inspector Latrelle,” I said. “But first I have to say, ‘smuggling.’”
A raised eyebrow. “Your strange story is about smuggling, Detective Ryder?”
“No. But now that we’ve discussed smuggling, the government will pay for my trip.”
Latrelle had a rich laugh, and it punctuated my explanation of the payment plan for my journey. As a cop, he’d seen it before, bureaucracy having no borders. I shifted subjects. Latrelle was fascinated by my story of Marsden Hexcamp. “The art of the final moment?” he asked at one point.
“Yes,” I said.
Latrelle shook his head and kept writing. My telling took ten minutes and he reviewed the notes carefully.
“I will look back through the records for any crimes corresponding to yours. Are there any other questions before you leave?”
On a whim, I handed him a copy of the art with the Eiffel Tower in the background. He studied it, looking between my face and the drawing. “And?”
I said, “Is there a location from which such a drawing could be made?”
He looked at me. “You don’t know?”
“It’s a puzzle, sort of.”
He looked around the file-blanketed office. “You have paperwork, do you not? At your police department in Mobile.”
I held my palm a meter off the floor.
“As you’ve noticed, so do I,” he said. “You’ve given me a reason to escape it for a few moments.”
We followed him to a large black Renault parked outside by a hydrant. I gestured for Danbury to take the front and I sat in back. We whisked through the streets of Paris, me studying everything from the corner of my eye, trying to seem jaded, just another day in the City of Light. Not Danbury. She pointed at everything, asking rapid-fire questions in two languages. Latrelle enjoyed her enthusiasm.
I had but one question: Would Monsieur Latrelle be so kind as to engage the siren for a moment? He did, and it performed a satisfying wah-hunh, wah-hunh.
Ten minutes later, Latrelle parked on a narrow boulevard studded with trees. He pointed to a cluster of rectangular brick buildings with gray mantels beneath the windows. A small courtyard separated the buildings and young men and women sat on benches or sprawled on the green lawn. Most were conversing, others drawing in tablets. A young man sat against a tree and strummed a water-blue guitar.
“Formerly l’Académie d’Art Graphique,” Latrelle said, “now l’École d’Art et de Conception - the School of Art and Design. Paris is always changing, never changed.”
We walked past the buildings and up a rise to a small park overlooking the city. There were a dozen empty benches and the requisite bronze statue. Several large and stately trees were in attendance, a species of oak, it appeared, ringed at their bases with yellow flowers. A sense of tranquility suffused the place.
Latrelle led us to a small brick circle at the edge of the overlook. An iron fence denoted the perimeter. A spreading tree stood twenty yards beyond, down the incline. In the distance, over rooftops and between buildings, was the Eiffel Tower. Latrelle bade me lean against the fence.
“Here is where you stood,” the old gendarme said, tapping the photo with his finger. “Now do you remember?”
“I’ve never been here. There’s speculation the drawing might have been made thirty-five years ago.”
“A relative?” he asked, glancing between me and the picture.
“No one in my family has ever been to France.”
He studied the picture again, then raised a world-weary eyebrow.
“Someone is lying,” he said. “You or time.”
Latrelle dropped us on the opposite side of the wide boulevard from the hotel. We crossed it in a scattering of pigeons, our steps quiet in the grass. A trio of young mothers sat on a bench and watched toddlers play with an orange ball. For a moment I recalled the shotgunned woman in the Mobile alley, her body in the street and the orange in the nearby grass. I wondered if Roy Trent had nailed it shut.
Surely, I thought; it’s been two weeks.
“Over there,” Danbury said, touching my arm and pointing. On a park bench opposite the entrance to our hotel sat the lone figure of Mimi Badentier. She looked frightened, her white hands clasping and releasing on her dress.
“What do you think she wants?” Danbury said.
I had thought Mimi’s guardianship of her brother excessive, overwrought, like she had a personal stake in our questions.
“Maybe she needs to tell us secrets,” I said.