The funicular train, two cars long, rolled up the dark tunnel and pulled into the underground station at Flon. Rochat made himself ready, and when the doors slid open he jumped quickly onboard and took his favorite seat near the big window. Two old ladies stepped onboard a few seconds later. Rochat stood, pulled off his hat, and bowed.
“Bonjour, mesdames, and welcome aboard La Ficelle!”
The ladies took seats at the far end of the car and searched through their handbags so as not to notice him. Rochat saw his reflection in the window. Hair still growing sideways from his head, smudges of dirt on his face, pigeon droppings on his black overcoat. He looked like a tramp who’d slept in a gutter. Rochat was sure his appearance must be a great shock to the little old ladies. There were no tramps in Lausanne. Besides, the gutters were spotless.
“Excuse my appearance, mesdames. I was cleaning the bells.”
The old ladies cringed at the unwelcome information. Rochat sat, scratched his head, and found a feather in his hair at the precise moment the ladies were eyeing him to make sure he was keeping to his seat.
“You see, it’s my day off, but I was confused, because last night…”
His words were lost in the whirring of motors as the funicular rolled back down the tunnel toward Ouchy. Rochat tugged his floppy hat down on his head to hide his messy hair, thinking what a strange night it had been.
He saw himself in beforetimes, in the belfry, looking through the binoculars at a man standing on Pont Bessières and thinking the man must be a detectiveman because…because…He couldn’t remember why.
Then raising the binoculars and seeing a woman appear in the window above Rue Caroline. She was surrounded by the brightest light and brushing her long blond hair. Not seeing her face, just the gentle line of her profile. And remembering he wished she’d turn just a little so he could see her face. But she didn’t turn around, and the light went black and she disappeared. And then, hurrying back into the loge and pulling one of his sketchbooks from the shelf, grabbing a pencil and drawing quickly, as if chasing imagination. And stopping, feeling the drawing wasn’t right, turning the page, trying again and again, till finally his hand slowed and his fingers smoothed the lead streaks and lines, and the most beautiful face he’d ever seen was looking back at him.
He stared at her, quietly, for the longest time, afraid to move lest she disappear from the page. And finally hearing his voice in the quiet.
“She looks like an angel.”
The funicular jolted to a stop at Gare Simplon. Rochat blinked and found himself in nowtimes. He watched a crowd of people climb onboard with suitcases and backpacks. Two more stops, a few people got off, more people got on. None of the passengers chose to take the empty seat next to Rochat. They huddled in groups and pretended not to see him.
At Ouchy, the end of the line, Rochat remained seated. His crooked leg and twisted foot made it difficult to move through crowds. Passengers going up the hill to Flon were boarding by the time Rochat disembarked. They gave him plenty of room to pass. He shuffled out of the station and into the cold wind ripping off Lac Léman.
“Home again, home again, jiggity-jig.”
Rochat crossed Rue du Lac to the corniche where waves crashed into the stone jetty. He felt icy spray on his face. He looked at the fog hovering over the lake like something fluffy. He hurried along a stone path through tall evergreen trees to where the weather-teller lived in a glass dome. It had lots of brass wheels and dials and arrows. Rochat studied the numbers. He shuffled to the kiosk to see Madame Chopra and give her the weather report, as he did every Sunday. She had brown skin and a red dot on her forehead.
“Bonjour, Marc. You are very late today. Where have you been?”
“I forgot to come home last night, madame, because I imagined I saw an angel above Rue Caroline.”
“An angel, how nice for you. You have such an exciting life, Marc. I always think of you in the cathedral at night and say what an exciting life that Marc Rochat must have. I saved you the London Sunday Times; would you like it now?”
“Oui, merci. And could I have my bag of popcorn, too?”
“Of course, Marc. What do you think of this fog? Very strange, don’t you think?”
“The weather-teller says the fog will go away this afternoon, but it’s going to stay cold for a few days, and snow is coming soon.”
“Thank you for telling me, Marc, I was wondering. I always count on you to give me the weather report on Sundays. Here are your things. I’ll see you next Sunday. I am worrying to not see you at the usual time. I am always telling people, you can set your clock by Marc Rochat.”
“Oui, madame.”
“And I hope Monsieur Booty enjoys the Sunday Times.”
“He will, madame, because it lasts all week at the bottom of his kitty litter.”
Madame Chopra laughed. “That will make Mr. Murdoch very happy.”
Rochat laughed, too, even though he didn’t know who Mr. Murdoch was. But Rochat was sure he must be very nice if he was a friend of Madame Chopra. He tucked the newspaper in his overcoat so it wouldn’t get wet. He shuffled to the small harbor of bobbing sailboats, sat on a low concrete wall, and dangled his boots over the side. He watched masts sway back and forth in the wind. They made clanging sounds, like tiny bells. He fed popcorn to the ducks and swans sheltering amid the boats.
“Well, Rochat, another very busy week comes to an end.”
“Excusez-moi.”
Rochat turned to a man standing behind him. The man’s face had wrinkles and lines but didn’t look old, and he was staring at the top of Rochat’s head as he spoke. He spoke with a British accent.
“Pardon. Où est le terminus pour le…le…”
“I speak English, monsieur.”
“Actually, I wanted to practice my French. It’s rather bad.”
“It isn’t that bad.”
“No, I’m pulling your leg.”
Rochat looked at his misshapen foot; so did the man.
“Crap, sorry. Listen, the ferry to Évian, it’s down here somewhere, isn’t it?”
“Oui, monsieur. Through the trees and past the weather-teller.”
“Is it working today?”
“Oui, and it says the fog is going away by this afternoon, but it’s going to stay cold all day and snow is coming.”
“No, the ferry, I mean. Is it working today? Looks choppy as hell out on the lake.”
“The ferry works all the time, monsieur. Except when there’s a bad thunderstorm. Then orange warning lights flash everywhere on the lake. One long, three short.”
“Warning lights. One long, three short.”
“Everywhere on the lake, but not today. Only in summer.”
The wind snapped. The man pulled at the collar of his coat and then shoved his hands in his pockets. “Nippy, isn’t it?”
Rochat watched the man, the way he tied the belt around his long brown coat and shoved his hands in the pockets; a coat with straps on the shoulders. It was him, the detectiveman he saw in the night, standing on Pont Bessières.
“I know you, monsieur. I’ve seen you before.”
“Doubt it. I’m new to Lausanne, and it’s my first time to this part of town.”
Rochat looked at the man’s coat again. “Non, I’m very sure it was you. You were trying to solve a mysterious mystery, but you were looking the wrong way.”
Rochat watched the detectiveman smile.
“I was, was I? Not the first time, I’m sure. So, that way to the ferry?”
“Past the weather-teller, monsieur.”
“Past the weather-teller, got it.” The detectiveman watched the birds bobbing for popcorn in the water, circling under Rochat’s boots, waiting for more. “Those ducks look like they’re freezing their feathers off.”
“Non, monsieur, I watch them every Sunday and they keep their feathers on all year, especially when it’s cold. Would you like to feed them some of my popcorn? It’s fun.”
“I’m sure it is, but I’d best be going. Thanks for the information. Nice talking to you.”
“Au revoir, monsieur. Bonne journée.”
The detectiveman turned and walked toward the trees. He turned back, pointed to the top of his own head. “Mate, you’ve got something up here, on your hat. I think it belongs to one of your friends.”
Rochat reached up, found a feather and a small glob of pigeon poop.
“Oh dear, Rochat, your hat needs a bath, and so does the rest of you. And your coat, too. Allez.”
He rinsed his fingers in the lake and shuffled across the road to the Hôtel de Léman. It was a funny building, half hotel and half flats, and it sat over the funicular station. There was a small clock tower on top. And there was a plaque near the building’s entrance that said a man who wrote books once lived there, but he was dead now.
Rochat punched in a secret code and shuffled into a lobby of tall mirrors. He checked his hat for feathers and pigeon poop. He opened his mailbox and found a postcard from his doctors in Vevey reminding him of his appointment on Monday, a small newspaper from Migros with pictures of food and lots of numbers, and an official notice from the Canton de Vaud regarding new rules for sorting rubbish. Rochat studied the notice carefully. There were lots of pictures showing what trash went where. Fines would be enacted to ensure C-O-M-P-L-I-A-N-C-E. Those in violation would have their personal details registered. Rochat wasn’t sure about some of the words, but others meant “write names down.” Swiss police did that on buses and trains in Lausanne to people who didn’t have tickets.
He rang for the elevator, waited for it to come down in its iron cage. It was very old, from nineteens of centuries, Madame Rolle told him when he moved in. When the elevator stopped, he pulled an iron grate to the side and stepped into a gilded compartment with a small crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. He pressed the button marked R-O-C-H-A-T.
“Montez, s’il vous plaît.”
The elevator obeyed and rose four floors and clunked to a stop.
“Merci beaucoup.”
He slid open the gate and shuffled into a small hall of two doors. One door went into the hotel, the other to his flat. He heard the scratching of a fat cat’s feet on polished wood beyond his door.
“Hello, it’s only me, you miserable beast. And stop scratching the floors.”
He opened the door locks and jumped in his flat. There was a big sign on the back of the door: “LOCK UP!” But sometimes he forgot, and sometimes he found strangers from the hotel who had gotten lost and walked straight into his flat. Sometimes they were standing at the big windows of the sitting room, admiring the view of the dungeon tower of Château d’Ouchy from one window, or the corniche and Lac Léman all the way to the Alps above Montreux from another. Sometimes he even found strangers unpacking their bags or looking in his icebox machine. Rochat was always polite, telling the strangers he was very sorry, but this wasn’t their room, it was his house. He thought it important to be polite. The funny building with the hotel and flats was his, given to him by his grandmother and father before they died.
“Monsieur Booty! Where are you, miserable beast?”
And each month on number-fifteen day, Monsieur Gübeli, the man with the bald head and glasses on his nose who’d brought him to Switzerland, came to the flat and sat at the kitchen table for a cup of tea. He’d open his briefcase and there’d be lots of papers to sign. The papers were confusing, but Rochat’s father told him to always trust Monsieur Gübeli, so he did. On the day he learned he owned the building atop the funicular station, Rochat asked Monsieur Gübeli if signing so many papers all the time meant he was rich.
“You know the château in Vufflens, Marc. The family fortune is substantial, indeed, but you are not part of that fortune. However, your grandmother put aside this property with all its revenues for you and you alone. If there is anything you want, anything you need, you only have to tell me, or my assistant, Madame Borel. Do you understand?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Is there anything you need, Marc, anything you want?”
Rochat thought about it. He had a big sitting room, two bedrooms, two large bathtubs with catlike feet. He had a dining room overlooking the lake with lots of light and a big round table he used for drawing things he saw from the windows. He had two fireplaces and the plaster walls were covered with his drawings and the handmade marionettes his father brought from Venice: Harlequin, Pinocchio, Baron Münchausen in the drawing-pictures room; a Venetian plague doctor, Peter Pan, and Napoleon in the sitting room. Next to his bed he had the photograph of his mother and father standing on the Plains of Abraham. And Teresa came three times a week to scrub the floors and clean the flat. Teresa was from Portugal and did the ironing and cooked lunches and stored them in the icebox. Rochat did his own laundry because he liked to watch the clothes go around in the washing machine. He had a TV that had sixty-seven channels but was always tuned to Cartoon Network so he could watch Tom and Jerry because they were funny. If he wasn’t drawing or watching cartoons or his clothes in the washing machine, he’d take Napoleon from his hook on the wall and chase Monsieur Booty around the flat shouting, “Charge!” Other than that, he spent most of his time at the cathedral.
“Non, I can’t think of anything.”
But just now, standing in the foyer of his flat, Rochat had another thought. If there was nothing he wanted or needed, why did his flat, full of things, feel so empty? A fat gray cat curled around Rochat’s boots.
“And how are you this afternoon, Monsieur Booty?”
Mew.
“Yes, yes, I am very late and you’re hungry. And I had a very busy night. I forgot to get some bread on the way home. Can I have some of your cat food?”
Monsieur Booty dug his claws into Rochat’s overcoat and began to climb.
Mew.
“Never mind, I’ll see what Teresa left me in the icebox machine. Alors, I’ll feed you, clean my coat and hat and the rest of me. Then I’ll go for fresh bread for my lunch.”
He was soaking his head when he remembered there would be no fresh bread today. He remembered when the bell in the clock tower above the building rang for three o’clock. It was Sunday. Switzerland was closed.
Thirty-five minutes shore to shore. Two hundred and twenty-seven thousand tons of bateau powered by twin diesel motors belowdecks. Champagne and fondue Thursday evenings, weather permitting.
So read the tourist pamphlet Harper received with his ticket. He was trying to read the damn thing and drink at the same time. Wasn’t easy. Bit of a rough crossing with two-meter swells. On a bloody lake. Better than the ride over: That was like drifting near the end of the world. Come out of the fog into a patch of nowhere. Gray water, gray sky, thin gray line on the horizon marking the place you fell off and never came back. He set the pamphlet on the next seat, took a swig of Coca-Cola. His diet so far today: three aspirin, packet of potato chips, one Chinese lunch, three Chinese beers, one Coke.
He looked off the stern, his eyes hijacked by the Swiss flag hooked to the rail, flapping in the wind as if waving good-bye to France. He looked about the cabin. A few working stiffs from Évian crossing to Lausanne for some extra odd-job cash on the night shift. Harper thought he fit right in. Another odd-jobber entering Switzerland through the tradesmen’s entrance. He pulled the file from his coat, sifted through it.
The gospel of Yuriev’s life according to Google.
Poor orphan boy from a village outside Arkhangelsk. Gets a pair of ice skates from a kindly old priest passing through the village. The boy has talent. He doesn’t skate over the ice; he flies. Grows up winning every race he enters. Breaks every world record standing on his way to seven gold medals at Innsbruck. Hero of the Soviet Union at nineteen years old. Glasnost comes to Mother Russia, country falls apart. Yuriev goes pro hockey in North America, makes a bloody fortune. Plays with the Maple Leafs in Toronto. Garners the nickname “Slapshot Sasha” for his aggressive style of play. Copies of his number 9 jersey worn by every schoolkid in Canada. His face smiles from boxes of breakfast cereal. Leads his club to three successive Stanley Cups. Scores hat tricks in all three. Rumors. Slapshot Sasha likes to drink. More rumors. Canadian tabloids suggest Slapshot is missing shots in season four to settle gambling debts. Then gambling chits with his signature turn up, courtesy of a mobster on his way to prison, looking for a get-out-of-jail-free card.
The press smells blood, hammers away for more.
Hockey commissioner under pressure, suspends Yuriev for the rest of the season. End of endorsements. Yuriev hits the bottle for real. Begins the long fall from hero to drunken clown. Press can’t get enough of the flameout. He’s chased by tabloids and TV crews. Yuriev shows up pissed at a championship match, jumps out on the ice, demands to play. Punches out a referee, sends him skidding into the net like a hockey puck. And the crowd goes wild.
End of career.
Starts gambling big, loses bigger.
Word is he owes bags of money to the wrong people. Then comes the car wreck. Lets a hooker drive his SUV. She’s whacked on crystal meth; Yuriev’s blind drunk. SUV crosses the median at two hundred klicks per hour, smashes head-on into a Volkswagen Golf. The woman and her three kids in the Golf are crushed to death. Eight-year-old boy next to Mommy wearing Yuriev’s number 9 jersey.
Spends the last of his fortune on a high-priced lawyer. Lawyer gets him off with six months’ probation. Not enough for the Canadian press; they want Yuriev crucified.
Heads back to Russia. Selected as coach to the Russian national Olympic hockey team. Holy row in the press one more time. USA gets in on the act and threatens to pull out of the next winter games, citing “our moral imperative to protect family values.” Doctor Schwarzenberg bans Yuriev from any contact with the Olympic movement. He drops out of sight for twenty years, then turns up in Switzerland. A matter of life and death, wants to give something to the doctor, drops from sight again.
Find him before the goddamn press does.
Where to start?
Check in with the Port Royal in Montreux. Another clerk, another accent, same message. Yuriev still as gone as he was yesterday, still hasn’t called in for messages.
“By the way, would there be a casino anywhere near your hotel?”
“A casino? Are you kidding?”
Casino Barrière. Slots, roulette, blackjack, a slapshot from Yuriev’s hotel.
Flashback from Friday.
Harper stopped into LP’s Bar at the Palace Hotel for a few drinks before the Yuriev meet. A woman was at the bar with some friends. She walked over, said he looked as if he could use a friend. Turned out she’s a Londoner living across the lake in Évian. She had auburn hair and nice legs, wore black kid gloves on her hands. Said she worked in Casino Barrière, came to LP’s now and then, but she’d be coming more often, if he did, too. Wrote her number in a matchbook.
Harper dug through the deep pockets of his coat. Fags, lighter, scraps of paper, matchbook from LP’s Bar. Lucy Clarke and a number with a French dialing code written inside. He punched the number into his mobile.
“Who?”
“Jay Harper. I met you in LP’s…”
“I remember. Moody sort at the bar. You work at the IOC. I tried to pick you up but you turned me down. You were nice about it, though. Did you find who you were looking for?”
“That was your excuse: You were looking for someone.”
“Still at it. Good memory, though.”
“I never forget a face. So, Jay Harper, where are you?”
“In Lausanne, staring at the fog, thinking about what to do next.”
“Clearing up this side of the lake. Look, I was just on my way to a late lunch. It’s Sunday, so it must be Chinese.”
“Sorry, don’t mean to keep you from your mates. Could I ring you later? Something I’d like to ask you.”
“As a matter of fact, I was going alone. Why don’t you hop on the ferry and come over? When you get to Évian, ask anyone to point you to Jardin des Thés.”
Kid gloves on her hands again, light blue this time. They ordered Tsingtao beers, talked about the weather over sweet and sour soup. Progressed to her current situation over steamed dumplings.
“I made pit boss three months ago. Two more years, then I’m off to Monte Carlo, if I’m lucky.”
“Such a thing as luck in a casino?”
“Sure, just ask Santa Claus. He’s one of our best customers.”
“You like living on the French side of the lake?”
“Liking France and affording Switzerland are two different things. But, yeah, I like it over here. Switzerland’s a bit too planet fucking perfect for my taste.”
After the dumplings, Harper took out a photo and laid it on the table with the moo goo gai pan.
“Ever seen this chap?”
“The man I’m looking for. Was wondering if he’d surfaced in the casino.”
“You mean you didn’t come over to sweep me off my feet?”
“Afraid not.”
“Well, in that case, croupiers are like Swiss bankers: We don’t discuss clients. And since when did the IOC become a detective agency?”
“Just asking a simple question.”
“No such thing. And there’s more than one casino on the lake, Jay. There’re bags. There’s one a few steps from that steamed dumpling on your plate. You planning to finish it?”
“Help yourself. He was staying in a hotel near the casino. He has a gambling problem.”
“Anyone walking through the door of a casino has a gambling problem, it’s just a matter of degree. So who is he? Is he a problem? Another crooked Olympic delegate on the take, scamming property options at the next venue?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Well, I haven’t seen him. But I’m not in the casino twenty-four/seven.”
“Right. End of discussion.”
“That’s it? Not even an attempt at any chitchat that doesn’t include the weather?”
“Chitchat?”
“Come on, Jay, give it a go.”
“All right. How’s a girl from east London end up dealing cards in Montreux?”
“Sure.”
“Three years on a Sainsbury’s checkout in fucking Copers Cope, Bromley. You’re not big in the chitchat aisle, are you, Jay?”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Look, since you came all this way I’ll tell you this: If your Russian friend in that photo was counting cards, marking cards, or cheating the dice in any casino anywhere on the planet, his face would be known in every casino in the world. Casinos live in the land of Big Brother. Cameras in the ceilings, cameras in the walls, cameras you’d never find if your life depended on it. All connected to computers scanning faces from a worldwide network of known problems. There are microphones at the tables listening to conversations, scanners listening to phone calls, eagle-eyed spotters on the floor. And there are very scary men in a back room keeping tabs on everyone who comes and goes, with particular interest in what they do in between. Believe me, problems are dealt with quickly. And those very scary men are always on the lookout for new problems. So I’ll ask you again, is he a problem?”
“How did you know he was Russian?”
“See, you are a detective.” She leaned forward, tapped Yuriev’s photo with a kid-gloved finger. “First lesson in dealing cards is reading faces. No way this guy could be anything but Russian, not with that mug.”
“You get many Russians in the casino?”
“Loads. Montreux’s a bloody Moscow suburb. That’s why they both begin with the letter M.”
Harper rolled up the photo, stuffed it in his coat. “He was an Olympic champion ages ago. One of the greats. His life became something of a nightmare. Booze, drugs, gambling. We heard he was in town, that he might’ve fallen off the wagon. IOC likes to help its own.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “You’re utter crap at telling porkies, Jay. Stick to chitchat. Where’d you go to detective school, anyway?”
“I didn’t.”
“You should.”
“When I get back to Lausanne, I’ll look one up.”
“Or you could sail over again sometime. I give private lessons in reading faces, especially to cute guys with nice green eyes.”
He checked his watch; almost six. “I should head back. Need to send a report to the boss.”
“Too bad.”
The ferry’s horn whistled twice as the twin diesel motors belowdecks reversed and the 227,000 tons of bateau shuddered and slowed. Another winter’s night spreading its shadow over Port d’Ouchy like a woven thing. The lights of Lausanne flickering above the port, marking the seven hills of planet fucking perfect. All topped with one drab excuse for a cathedral, even in the bright light of floodlights. Harper picked up the tourist pamphlet. Picture of Lausanne Cathedral on the cover. Set in the quaint charm of the old city blah blah blah. Overlooking Europe’s largest and most beautiful lake blah blah blah. Open to tourists in the daylight hours with special tours of the belfry in the afternoons. Wonderful views from one hundred meters above the ground.
Harper felt a blast of vertigo.
He tossed the pamphlet in the bin.
Rochat finished his dinner of roast chicken and sat at the kitchen table with a purring Monsieur Booty on his lap. He thought about things. Besides himself, Monsieur Booty, Monsieur Gübeli, and Teresa, no one had ever come to his home. Except the occasional hotel guests who lost their way, but Rochat was very sure they didn’t count. He scratched Monsieur Booty behind the ears.
“Monsieur Buhlmann came to visit the tower last night and we made raclette. He says I need a girl in my life. Someone to take care of me. Someone for me to take care of, too.”
Monsieur Booty fluttered his ears and shook his head and sneezed.
“Bless you. So what do you think, you miserable beast? Would a girl want to come here for dinner with us sometime?”
Monsieur Booty looked up to Rochat with a questioning tilt of the head.
“You see, the doctors say I’ve grown as tall as I can. Which isn’t that tall, but they say they can begin operating on my leg and foot now and make them straighter. I might be very handsome.”
Mew.
“You only want le sot-l’y-laisse, don’t you?”
Mew.
“I thought so.”
He scooped out the two bits of meat from the chicken’s back, dropped them on the floor. Monsieur Booty quickly abandoned Rochat’s lap to gobble the juicy morsels.
“I wonder if the operation would make my brain more handsome. But I suppose my feet are a long way from my brain. What do you think?”
Monsieur Booty licked his paws. Rochat picked through the bones for more scraps to toss to the floor.
“Here I am, bribing a fat cat to listen to me. It’s worse than talking to Marie-Madeleine.”
Monsieur Booty proceeded to lick his bottom.
“And this is what happens when you talk to cats instead of bells.”
Mew.
He gave the beast a gentle shove with his twisted foot. Monsieur Booty shot out of the room and down the hall. Rochat cleared the table, placing the plates in the dishwashing machine the way Teresa had shown him. He shuffled down the hall to the drawing table. He played with his pencils, but couldn’t think of anything to draw.
Then he remembered something.
He shuffled back to the hall, saw his freshly scrubbed overcoat and hat hanging on a hook next to the door. He searched through the inside pocket of the coat for a folded paper, a paper torn from his sketchbook. He took a thumbtack from a box and went back to the kitchen. He carefully unfolded the paper, pressing it flat. He pinned the paper to the top of a chair, sat in the chair opposite, and stared at the face of the angel he imagined in the night.