Fortune's Deadly Descent (24 page)

I’m already out of the chair, shoving shoes on my feet.

Moreau is carrying the phone to the door. “Stay inside with Seraphina, Oliver,” Moreau says. “Do not go
anywhere
, for any reason. This is very, very important.”

“We’ll call you back, Oliver,” I yell from across the room, and Moreau shuts down the phone and hands it to me.

I reach for the gun, his gun. There’s a moment when we freeze and gaze at one another. We both know he should tell me to hand it over—at the very least, he should say to put it down. We both know how much trouble he’ll be in. Not to mention what will happen to me when the truth emerges.

“You’re familiar with the model?” he asks.

I nod.

“Don’t fire unless I tell you to,” he says.

The man who drew the sketch is Gaston Dubois. Moreau has known him since childhood. We follow him now into his kitchen, where a series of small family sketches, along with watercolors of rolling hills, line the walls. A sliced baguette lies across a cutting board next to a deflated triangle of Brie and, near that, a white bowl of grapes. The lace curtain is closed, but the tiny holes allow Moreau and me a clear view of the house directly across the street. Moreau drags a stool over and puts a compact spotting scope to his eye.

Gaston points to an upstairs window, rimmed in baby-blue shutters. “There,” he says, in English, for my benefit. “That is where I saw the boy.” I notice, again, the stain beneath his fingernails.

I study the window,
all
the windows, the front door, the cars parked along the curb. Everything about the street is lovely, quintessential Provence, and yet the air is charged with tension, a spookiness I can’t identify. If Benicio were here he’d say, “You’re
projecting
, Celia.”

“He is the boy from the train?” Gaston asks.

Moreau snaps his head around, answers him in French, and Gaston quickly shuts his mouth.

“How did he know?” I ask.

“Town gossip,” Moreau says. “Putting two and two together.”

I rub my head and neck, pace in place, stretch my thighs by drawing up my ankles behind me, one at a time, until it burns. I tell myself to be patient, to wait for a sign from Moreau.

“How did the boy look?” I finally ask Gaston. “Did he seem all right?”

Gaston glances at the back of Moreau’s head, as if for permission to speak. Moreau continues peering through the lens.

“He was,” Gaston says, “like a child from his sleep, or perhaps preparing for his bed.”

“Do you mean
tired
? Sleepy?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“You think so?”

“It is not so close to see perfectly.”

“Could you see his
expression
?”

Without turning around Moreau says, “
D’expression
.” Same word, different pronunciation.

Gaston shifts his weight, stalling.

Moreau turns to hear Gaston’s answer.

“Sorrow?” Gaston says. “But, as I say, the distance…”

I should
not
have asked.

“I thought,
Maybe it’s a different boy
. But the hair, the grand eyes. I had studied his photograph for my drawing—one does not forget so easily. Then I went to look at the photograph again, but it was not in my box. Strange.”

I touch Gaston on the shoulder and say, “We took it, my other boy and I,” and even in light of everything else, I feel the need of his forgiveness, which he understands and grants with his eyes.

I turn and squint through the lace. The street is empty, static. Even the air looks like it could be a solid block of Lucite.

But then I’m back to the photo, nailing down the details again.

Gaston says yes, he found it as he walked toward the market, a few streets from here.

“Just lying on the ground?”

“Yes, on the ground, looking up at me.”

I nod.

After another moment, I ask Moreau if I can look through the scope and he puts it in my hand.

It’s midafternoon. The window shade is drawn. Not a speck of light shows around the edges. I give Moreau back the scope.

I ask Gaston, “And this was the only time you saw the boy?”

“I’ve already asked him these questions,” Moreau says.

“Was it the only time?” I repeat.

“Yes.”

“Why were you looking there in the first place?”

“It was by chance—I was checking whether the clouds had come back. Then the—” He looks to Moreau and says,
store enrouleur
? Moreau shrugs, then imitates a window blind rolling up. Gaston goes on, “It flew up very quick and there was the boy. Then the grandmother—”

“She is
not
his grandmother,” I say, and Moreau gently pats my arm.

“The old woman took him away and closed the blind. This is all.”

I take Gaston’s hand, hold up his fingers. “What’s this stain under your nails?”

“From the vineyard. Grapes.”

“I see.” Moreau’s brother must work in a vineyard…

I drive my own hands, shaky and sweating, through my hair. It’s impossible to remain still. Moreau, on the other hand, is like a statue, a bird dog on point.

“Why is the street so…
vacant
?” I ask.

“The houses were falling down,” Gaston says. “They were bought to fix and sell…now the work is finished. Some have new owners but I don’t know them. Some are still empty—the one next to the one with the boy, on the far side.”

Gaston offers us a beer. We decline, but he goes ahead and pours himself a foamy dark ale, picks up a television guide, and flips through it at the round kitchen table, where he sits by himself. The moment has an uncanny similarity to the hours I spent at home surrounded by “the authorities,” waiting, waiting. I am desperately sick of wasting time in this way.

“I see movement inside the house, the lower front window near the door,” Moreau says without lowering the scope. “A larger figure strolling past. I’m guessing a man.”

A side window flanks Gaston’s front door and allows a view of the street Moreau doesn’t have in the kitchen. I wander in and glance at the house, see nothing in the window Moreau mentioned, but then I peer up the street and see a figure on the corner at the end of the block.

A man, smoking, wearing the same jacket he wore when he pinioned my throat.

I return to the kitchen, but before I can open my mouth, a phone rings. It takes a moment to realize it’s Benicio’s phone on the counter where I left it. I don’t recognize the number. Moreau looks at me, the phone, me. “Answer it,” he says. “It’s the call.”

“No. Isak said they wouldn’t forward it. They’re using a vocal specialist or something.”

“Answer,
now
.” Moreau says.

I nearly drop the phone trying to turn it on. “This is Celia.”

“Are you ready?” the man says, same accent, same sickening tone.

I glance at Moreau. He nods.

“Yes,” I say.

“Oliver will deliver the money to the Zoo Zurich.”

“I’m sorry. Did you say the zoo?”

“Yes.”

“In Zurich?”

Moreau squints, steps back, crosses his arms.

“I don’t have time to repeat myself,” the man says. “Two hours, on the wooden bridge near the Schwarzstorch. The landing at the water. I will have a pram with a baby inside. Oliver will bring the money in large bills carried in two diaper bags. Clearly the largest he can find.” He laughs.

“All right,” I say, even though Oliver is hundreds of kilometers away from Zurich. And as far as we know,
Benny
is
here
, right across the goddamn street. They
know
this. The man on the train, Moreau’s brother,
knows
this.

“The pram contains explosives,” he says. “If Oliver tries anything at all, or should a sniper take a shot at me, someone will activate the explosives.”

I force myself to say, “What about Benny?”

“He will be pushing the pram.”

The line deadens.

I’m shaking from head to foot. The boy in the window—who was he? Why is Moreau’s brother hovering down the street? “Isak!” I yell. “Are you there?”

“It’s all right. I’m here. Please don’t be alarmed by this threat.”

“Don’t be
alarmed
? Where’s the goddamn
vocal
specialist?”

“We changed tactics with the voice—”

“And Oliver is
here
. In Saint-Corbenay. They know this. How the fuck do they think he’s going to deliver this money in two hours?”

“First of all, Oliver will not be delivering the money, no matter what. Second, I apologize about the vocal specialist. We decided against it. I couldn’t warn you or you wouldn’t have sounded so frightened by the call. You understand? They want you to be frightened. It makes them feel in control.”

“But they
know
we’re here! I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“
How
do they know? Why are you so sure of this?”

I have to stop and think. Clearly, they know Benicio is here. But Oliver and me? Moreau’s brother knows we’re here. But what if he didn’t tell anyone?

I glance up at the dark window. Could they have taken Benny back to Zurich during the night? Or was the boy in the window just some other boy? The old woman actually his grandmother?

“I will phone you back in a few moments,” Isak says and is gone.

Moreau is pacing, rubbing his temple, the scope abandoned to the table. He stops to light a cigarette. And then he says something to Gaston in French.

Gaston appears nervous.

I back against the window and crane my neck to see a sliver of Moreau’s brother still on the corner smoking, just as
his
brother is, a few feet from where I stand. I could reunite them in this moment. And yet—Moreau and Gaston are suddenly yelling at each other. I understand only the tone, the quick angry gestures.

“What is it?” I ask.

Moreau grips Gaston’s collar. The man raises his hands in the air, insisting on something, his voice pleading.

Both are so caught up in their arguing that neither stops me as I grab the phone and bolt from the house.

I’m on the man so quickly he appears not to have seen me until I shove the gun into his spine.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone that we were here?” I say.

He slowly raises his hands.

“Why do they think Oliver and I are still in Zurich?”

He doesn’t answer.

“I’m not afraid to shoot you,” I say. “I don’t give a damn
who
you are.” I push him toward the house across from Gaston’s. Moreau is now running down the street toward us, ducking quietly, as if dodging bullets.

I keep the gun pressed into the man’s back, mindful that he could spin and go for the weapon. I feel the heat coming off his neck.

Moreau immediately grabs the man’s shoulder, and now the two stand face-to-face.

“I’m so sorry,” I say to Moreau. “I know what he means to you. But Benny is my son.”

“Let him go, Celia.”

The man jerks his face from me to Moreau. His lips part.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

Moreau’s face shifts as if he’s about to answer for him.

“Adam,” the man says.

I shove him to the door. “OK,
Adam
. Open the door.”

“Celia. You can’t do this. Give me the gun.”

“Open it,” I say.

His brother glances at the lock. “I can’t.”

“In five seconds I will shoot my way through you
and
the lock.”

“Give me the
gun
,” Moreau says.

“I don’t have a key,” his brother says.

“One. Two.”

The man raises his hand and knocks.

“What the fuck?” I say.

Moreau slips to the side and pulls a gun from his jacket, a spare that looks meaner than the one in my hand.

“Open the goddamn door,” I say.

“I am,” the man says.

I hear movement inside but no voices.

He knocks again.

I don’t know what else to do but step slightly to the side of the door, opposite Moreau, and wait and see if someone answers.

Then the sound of footsteps inside, clicking, bolts unlocking. The door opens a slim dark crack; I shove Moreau’s brother through it.

In an instant, we are all three standing in front of a man in his undershirt and shorts, as if we’ve barged in on a leisurely afternoon he’d meant to spend with the television. He has a pear-shaped head and the dark, rounded eyes of surprise.

The living room smells of paint and fresh concrete and new furniture. The walls are bright white and completely bare.

Moreau points his gun at the guy in his underwear and yells at him in French, but his eyes repeatedly dart toward me, to the gun at his brother’s back. The man of the house looks as if he’s about to piss himself. He raises his hands and backs into a rickety wooden chair. His jaw is wider than his forehead, and when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. His red, bulbous nose looks more like a growth above the large mustache, the kind worn by so many of the farmers in Europe. The fat on his chin and legs trembles.

“Adam,” I say. “Take a seat over there next to your friend.” He does as he’s told. He and Moreau keep eyeing one another.

“Where is Benny?” I say to the man of the house.

He stutters in French. “
Ne parle pas anglais
.”

“Ask him,” I order Moreau. “Tell him he has one minute. After that I’m going to shoot.”

Moreau starts to protest.

“Ask him!”

Moreau relays the question to the man—at least I assume he does—then they talk for what feels like five minutes. When they’re finished, the man lowers his hands, softening his voice.

“What?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

I can feel Moreau’s stance loosening, the threat of his tone weakening.

“Tell me!”

“I think we made a mistake,” Moreau says. “I don’t think he’s here.”

“Don’t believe him, Moreau. Who was the boy in the window?”

“His grandnephew. The woman was his sister, the boy her grandson. The boy became ill while visiting. But they’re gone now. They left this morning for Lille, where they’re from.”

I see a twitch in Adam’s eye. “What?” I ask him. “What is it?” But he doesn’t speak. “What were you doing on this street? Why did you tell me to stay away? Why steal my computer, only to throw it in a field?”