Fortune's Deadly Descent (5 page)

“You must remember something else about laughing with Benny,” Benicio says finally.

I’m thinking of the witness again, Helena Watson, her calling the mystery man’s eyes sad. I’d looked into his stare, there in the aisle—he seemed to know all about the panic surging in my chest.

“You were
laughing
at something,” Benicio says.

I will myself to recapture the faces of strangers, to pick out the one tracking Benny and me, studying us, calculating. But it’s no use. I can’t remember what I didn’t see. I was thinking about the heat, about the novel crumbling. All those months gone, wasted. “Benicio,” I say, gathering myself, “I had a hold of his hand when we got on. I wasn’t careless.” I am unsure if this is true.

“No, of course not,” he answers, “but what were you laughing at?”

“I’m telling you
I don’t remember
. Just because a camera recorded my face that split second doesn’t mean I know what I was thinking. Tell me what
you
were thinking when you scratched your head in the living room two hours ago. I took your picture, you want to see it?”

Benicio’s heavy sigh flutters the thin hairs on my arm.

The thing I won’t say is this: With school out for summer, Benny has needed so much of my time. While other kids from his school are off at camp, he’s home in the kitchen, if not cooking, then making lists, experimenting with oils, fruits, French herbs and mushrooms found only at the farmer’s market across town. While other boys build Lego towers, Benny handles razor-sharp knives, boils water, adjusts gas burners. We could have hired more help, a nanny even. But early on we agreed that we’d take care of him ourselves. He might grow up in an estate but the values of our family would remain simple, hands-on, and that included making sure the boys did chores. I didn’t want them believing someone
else should do their laundry. I’ve wanted them—
all of us
—to be self-reliant. But there’s no denying I have trouble trusting strangers. Who wouldn’t under the circumstances? Aside from young cousins babysitting for an evening out, and another set of cousins, Claudia and Renata, whose housecleaning business brings them over twice a week, and whom Isak has already checked out under the guise of government auditors, we’ve always managed for ourselves.

But he’s only seven years old—
eight
. His hands are small and not completely under his control. Over the years Benicio and I have supervised him more or less equally, but lately Benicio’s been traveling, consulting on one film then another, researching in Paris for his new screenplay. In just the last three months, he’s been to LA four times. We’ve lost our balance.

Benicio drags the reading chair to the side of the bed. He faces me as if visiting a sick patient.

“Sweetheart,” he says.

“Something’s wrong with the portraits in the living room,” I say.

Benicio leans in and takes my hand between both of his. I smell celery on his breath, the citrusy fragrance of his shampoo. He’s eaten, he’s showered—his hair’s still wet. When did he manage
that
? Time’s not working the way it’s supposed to.

“I thought maybe some were knocked down and put back up,” I say. “Maybe Benny—? I don’t know. What order were they in?”

After a moment I realize that what I think is Benicio’s caress of my hand is actually the shuddered rhythm of his tears.

I sit up and pull him toward me. His cool damp hair clings to my cheek. I rub his back as if in a daydream, his T-shirt warm and cotton soft beneath my palm, my fingers bumping down his
spine. But his agony presses against me like a hot blanket I suddenly have the urge to shove from my skin.

“I love you,” he whispers into my neck.

I tell him I love him too, and for an instant the feeling is the same as always—a slow heat radiating across my chest. But it’s no longer all there is; mistrust rushes to its side like a menacing twin.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I’m about to say there’s no need for apology. I’m about to ask,
What do you have to be sorry for?
I’m about to ask,
What could you have possibly done?
when he puts his mouth on mine and straddles me on the bed.

“Not
now
,” I say, against his mouth, but already I’m kissing him, hard. I have the urge to punish him, punish myself—for losing our child, for indulging in this, for
needing
this. Benicio’s tears are wet on my mouth. I dig my nails into his back. We are poachers, taking what doesn’t belong to us, stealing a comfort we don’t deserve. We are ugly, crying, grunting, enduring the very thing that used to bring us joy.

Benicio slumps into the chair by the bed, and I melt across the covers. The sun weakens, then disappears. We’re dressed again, but thrown like wreckage, adrift. When a knuckle raps the door I welcome the intrusion. “Come in,” I say, expecting Oliver.

Inspector Moreau stands in the doorway, his face eerily shadowed by the overhead light. A moan erupts from my throat. Pinto barks and lunges; she’s used to strangers in the house, but not in the bedroom. I manage to catch hold of her collar.

Benicio spins in his chair.

Gone is Moreau’s powder-blue polo tucked into pressed pants tucked into combat boots. Gone the blue cap with gold piping. His short hair lies flat, as if lacquered to his skull. His white shirtsleeves are rolled neatly to his elbows. His cologne leads the way as he crosses the room toward us.

I can’t make sense of Moreau being here. Is he off duty? Off the
case
? Has he hand-carried news of Benny because it’s too grim for the telephone? Or does he mean to
arrest
me? I feel, suddenly, like I’m dropping through space, accelerating. I squeeze Pinto against me and her bark dwindles to a low growl.

“May I?” Moreau says, of the empty chair against the wall.

A rational corner of my mind tells me the buzzing sensation I feel is shock. I’m going into shock.

“Yes, of course.” Benicio drags the chair to the bed, then Moreau sits so that both men are now facing me.

“May I?” Moreau says again, reaching for the bedside lamp.

Benicio nods and a cone of yellow light spreads across his face, revealing speckles of whiskers.

Pinto sniffs the air, still doubtful. I slide beneath the eiderdown and gather her close again. Seven happy years in this house. Extraordinary years. After having come so close to death, and then dodging it so magnificently, these years have been such a gift.

Don’t say it
, I think.
Don’t make it real
.

“I’m sorry,” Moreau says. His eyes are the color of chestnuts, and round, too, like chestnuts, but since I saw him, just days ago, the rims have turned an ashy blue, the lines around his mouth have deepened into ridges.

A droning white silence whirls between the walls.

“But we haven’t found your Benjamin,” he says.

Haven’t found your Benjamin
.

Air bursts from my lips.

“I have a few more questions, and thought it best to come in person. As
myself
. As a father, a grandfather. Separate from Inspector Moreau.”

These words flood me with relief.

And disbelief. And dread.

Moreau is in my bedroom, five hundred and sixty kilometers from Saint-Corbenay. Which means Benny is still missing, still out in the world needing to be found. I struggle to grasp what’s happening. Is this a tactic to make me lower my guard, admit something, incriminate myself? Do they honestly think I could
have done something to Benny? In a flash I see the turret, the sculpture, the white-paned windows of Jonathon’s prison.

“May I smoke?” Moreau asks.

Benicio reaches for the water glass from the bedside table and hands it to Moreau for an ashtray. Moreau stares inside and sloshes the bit of water as if stalling to form his thoughts before he speaks.

He lights the Gauloise pinched between his lips and draws on it, quickly. “I have seen the photograph,” he says, expelling the tarry smoke sideways. “They faxed it to me this morning.”

So that’s it. Isak has had the photograph the entire day, if not longer. It’s possible he showed it to Benicio before I even got out of bed this morning.

“Curious,” Moreau says. “That this man should be right behind you. Laughing. Then offering to help find the boy. Then vanishing himself.”

“No kidding,” I say. “But if you’re asking for some kind of explanation from me, save your breath.”

Moreau simply stares at me, noncommital.

Finally, he gives the tiniest of nods, and says, “You know, I love the movies.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Benicio’s arms tightening against his chest.

Moreau draws again on his cigarette, then taps the ash into the glass, where it sizzles in the water. “Especially the old detective films.
Films noirs
. A bit of a cliché, I suppose. But I could spend all of a Saturday watching these films. Sadly, my favorite series has never been translated into French so I watch in English. Inspector Stark. British. You know it perhaps?” He looks back and forth between us. “In any case,” he adds, “I’ve sharpened my English on these films.”

“Please,” Benicio says, “say what you have to say.”

But just then Isak pops his head in the doorway. “How is everything?” he asks.

Moreau offers Isak a tight-lipped smile, and I sense that a turf war’s about to break out, each of them believing he could crack the case, if the other would only clear out of the way.

But, for now, Isak narrows his eyes, nods, and disappears.

Moreau turns to Benicio with a strange look—surprise, giving way, oddly, to pity. The look he gives me, I can’t read at all. “The man on the train wanted a ‘rundown’ of what your Benjamin was wearing,” he says. “Is this right?”

“
Yes
,” I say. “We’ve been through all that.”

Moreau nods without taking his eyes off me. “It’s just that it sounds so much like Inspector Stark:
Let’s get a rundown on that guy
.”

“Didn’t I say that when we first talked—that his words sounded like they had quotes around them?” But now I’m wondering if I only thought this.

“I have a child of my own,” he says after a moment. “A girl close in age to your Benny.” His cigarette is burning down, untouched, the ash about to fall in his lap.

“OK,” I say.

He nods. “I’m very protective of her.”

And I’m
not
protective of Benny? Is that what he means? Is this the message everyone wants to give me, that even if I’m not behind all this, I’m still guilty, still a poor excuse for a mother? I rub the raw edge of my bitten tongue against my teeth. He has no idea how
overprotective
I am, how suspicious of others. He doesn’t know how I’ve had to
train
myself not to see threats everywhere, not to deny the boys room to grow.

“To find your son,” Moreau says, “is to save my own daughter. Do you see?”

Another dramatic pull on his cigarette, and the ash falls, miraculously into the glass. He’s blowing smoke around, gesturing as if he has all the time in the world. “Your son disappeared in Saint-Corbenay, as you know. Not only is this village my district, it’s my
ville natale
, my place of birth, and where I live now, with my wife and daughter, Arabelle.”

Benicio glances at me, his face drained of patience.

“And, you see, Arabelle was approached not long ago by a strange man.”

Benicio and I both sit up straighter. “He asked her questions about who she was and where her parents were. He had a strange accent, she said. And he frightened her. She had the good intelligence to run home. This was six months ago. Saint-Corbenay is a small town, but I no longer know everyone who lives there. Roma Gypsies pass through, wealthy foreigners acquire old properties and renovate them for profit. We have a couple of hotels, two bed-and-breakfasts. Tourists hiking in and out. So, no, I don’t know who this man was. I never saw him before in Saint-Corbenay. I have not seen anything of him since. Until, perhaps, now.”

My skin prickles.

“And you say you didn’t know this man on the train, the man who wanted
a rundown
?”

“No. I keep telling you.”

He stares at me another moment, as if trying to decide how far to push. “Yet he made you laugh,” he says.

“He did
not
make me laugh. I realize that’s what it looks like in the photo, but it’s an illusion. Benny and I were just…getting on the train. I explained all this to Isak.”

“You really have no idea who this man is?” Benicio asks Moreau. “No clue where he came from?”

“Ah,” Moreau says, releasing another gust of tar from the side of his mouth. “This is the essential question.”

He pauses to rub his temple with a force that reddens the skin. And then he nods deeply, as if under the weight of something he’d rather not put into words. “As our Cockney inspector would say, ‘This is the ’ole inta which everything ’as fallen.’”

Why do I feel this is all a ruse? Or just another stray fact, nothing at all to do with Benny?

Moreau lifts a single eyebrow as he crushes his unfinished cigarette against the inside of the glass. “It can be hard to think clearly when a thing so dreadful has happened. Difficult to locate a fact inside one’s own head.” He taps his temple. “But I believe it is only a matter of allowing it to come to the surface.”

So this is how the French solve a crime, I think. Don’t rack your brains over it, just let the truth bob up out of the murk.

“I’m
sorry
,” I say. “My son is missing, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. You must know I’ve gone through every damn second of that day over and over—”

“Madame Hagen, I don’t doubt this.”

I cross my arms, realize it makes me look defensive, and drop my hands into my lap.

Moreau’s head tips to the side as if something is understood between us. I have no idea what that might be.

“Inspector,” I say. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“As I said. To speak with you again, as a father.”

Benicio leans back in his chair and links his hands behind his head. The muscles of his arms tauten, his T-shirt pulls across his muscular chest, and the contrast between his lean, sturdy build and Moreau’s soft, fatigued-looking frame is a statement being shouted loud and clear. “With all due respect,” Benicio says, “why come all the way to Zurich to sit in our bedroom and ask the same questions Isak has asked a dozen times?”