The Coral Thief (24 page)

“Yes. In Paris. I heard some rumors a few days ago, and had some friends look for him in the old Jewish quarter. One of them sent word this morning.”

“Vraiment?”

“He’s back in the rue du Pet-au-Diable,” Manon added

“Merde. Merde
. It was always like this. He’s always too late. I’ve been looking for him for weeks, and now he just turns up in the rue du Pet-au-Diable when it’s too damn late. I wonder if Jagot knows. It won’t be long. If we know he’s there, Jagot will know.”

“My man said that Silveira has Sabalair with him,” Alain said. “That makes a difference. Jagot won’t move in on them until the time is right. And if they are in the rue du Pet-au-Diable, Jagot hasn’t a chance—Silveira can disappear like a ghost in those streets. My man said Silveira is back in Paris looking for you, Lucienne. Word reached him that you were here.”

“Well, his timing’s perfect,
hein?
It is quite the reunion now.”

Alain, hearing the flint in Lucienne’s voice, changed the subject, veering back from the edge of something dark that had entered the room with Davide’s name. “It’s impossible, you know,” he said. “We can’t get into the museum again. They have more guards in there now and a whole set of new locks. We might as well put the chains on our wrists and ankles and go straight to Toulon.”

Manon intervened. “Remember that job in the rue Saint-Pierre? You cut the glass in five seconds and cleaned out in seventeen. You said
that
was impossible. For you everything is always impossible—until you do it.”

Lucienne turned to the others. “We are going to need more money. I need to rent two floors of a house overlooking the Jardin and it won’t be cheap. We must have equipment and transport, and we’ll need a set of false documents. That will cost more money than I have.”

“Reuben?” Manon asked.

“No. Reuben’s retired.”

“Who then?”

Lucienne walked back to the window. “Silveira,” she said.

Alain turned on her. “Are you mad?”

“We have no choice. We need him. I’m going to see him. Tomorrow.”

“Start with the pawnshop in the rue du Pet-au-Diable,” said Saint-Vincent. “I asked around yesterday. He’s not been back long. And take Daniel with you.”

16

HE RUE DU PET-AU–DIABLE
runs through the Jewish quarter of the city, the name an ancient echo of derision and prejudice. An old menhir stood on that spot in the Marais, near a house that had been used as a synagogue until the Jews were expelled in the twelfth century; locals called it the Hôtel du Pet-au-Diable, the house of the devil’s fart. The medieval French poet and notorious thief and murderer François Villon even wrote a ballad about it. Its name survived in the street name. The Parisian Jews who worshipped there, of course, did not survive.

Lucienne and I took a narrow street off the rue Tisserand that led into a maze of more narrow, covered passageways, unlit and, in the early evening, dark and forbidding and muddy underfoot. A child, a small boy with a dirty face and bare feet, stood pressed up against the wall in the first alley.

“Are you lost, mister? Want some help?” he said and grinned. Then he said something else, which I couldn’t follow. It still surprised me that no one could tell that Lucienne was a woman in man’s clothes. This boy took us both for men. He didn’t question it.

“No, we know where we’re going,” Lucienne said, passing the boy a coin.

“Why don’t we get him to take us there?”

“Have you learned nothing in Paris, Daniel? If I ask him to take us, he’ll lead us into a cul-de-sac, and then he and his little friends will rob us—and then probably beat us too.”

“But he’s so young.”

“Oh, believe me, his friends will be older.”

Behind us in the darkness, I heard the boy give a sequence of whistles, some short, some long. More alleys led off to the right and to the left. When I peered down into them I could see small groups of children looking toward us, whispering to one another. Eyes bright in the darkness like wolves.

“We’d better be quick or they’ll head us off,” she said, urgency in her voice.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“Of course. You don’t think I’d risk us getting lost down here?”

“But this M. Silveira is rich?” To either side, the ornate carved doorways of derelict hotels showed signs of richer times. Now the smell of urine and rotting meat rose from the walls and the mud beneath our feet.

“Yes. Very. He’s in the diamond trade. His family ships red coral from the Mediterranean coast to Goa. They trade the coral for diamonds, ship the diamonds back to London for cutting and polishing, then sell them. They have a monopoly. A very successful one.”

I imagined Silveira sitting on a golden throne in a warehouse full of red and white coral, a pile of tangled and polished branches stacked high behind him.

Suddenly the whistle was answered by another ahead. And to the side. As we reached the next junction, we were surrounded by children, boys jostling us, converging on us, pushing and talking. “Monsieur, monsieur. Are you lost? Let me show you … We take you … This way. This way. You go left here and then take the second right …”

“Just don’t speak to them,” Lucienne said. “Don’t be drawn in. Keep talking to me and look straight ahead.”

“What should I say?”

“Just keep talking.”

“All right, all right.”

A boy appeared from an alleyway slightly ahead to the right. He was older, perhaps fifteen. He stood there, legs slightly apart, blocking our path, a wooden bat in one hand. The smaller boys walked around and in front of us, pushing, babbling; I glanced behind me. Another older boy had stepped into the alley behind us. There was no way out. The boy with the bat looked at Lucienne, taking her in. Lucienne looked back at him, and touched her middle finger to the spot between her eyebrows. He said something to the younger boys that I couldn’t follow. They looked up at Lucienne and then dropped back. Suddenly we were alone in the alley with only the boy ahead. He touched his finger to the point between his eyes and then disappeared too, into the darkness.

“Joaquim,” she said. “He knows me. He’s in charge around here.”

I took a deep breath, my body still trembling. I had been prepared to fight.

“Why do the Indians buy coral?” I asked, finally, remembering our conversation as we walked on.

“Funeral rites. The more red coral you take with you on the pyre, the more important you are. They store it up ready to burn. It’s an investment. Let’s go.”

“That’s strange,” I said, glancing into the darkness around us.

“They don’t care for diamonds as much as we do,” she said. “It’s a matter of aesthetics.”

“Why does he live here, then, if he’s a diamond dealer?”

“He’s safe here. All his networks start in this square mile, but they stretch everywhere—London, Goa, Madras, Brazil. He used to have a house in the rue du Temple. That’s where I last saw him. Things must be difficult if he’s back here. He is hiding.”

A head the alleyways led through an entrance to a narrow street. We quickened our pace. As we stepped out of the maze, I could still see the children watching us in small groups from openings that might have been rabbit holes. On the narrow and cobbled rue du Pet-au-Diable, most of the shop fronts were either boarded up for the evening or permanently closed, except for a pawnshop that carried a sign saying E
ZRA
M
OSES
—C
URIOSITÉS ET
B
RIC
-
À
-B
RAC
over the window. Lucienne stopped in front of it. The street was almost deserted.

“Bric-à-brac,”
Lucienne said, lowering her voice. “It could mean anything. The old shops in this quarter are often fronts for something else. Jagot tried to establish an outpost down here, but he failed. Even his contacts can’t get him in here. They’ll tear down these old streets now; build wider ones, streets in which they can see. Streets like these hide people.”

I could see our reflections framed in the window: two men, the younger one in a brown jacket, the older one in gray-green, running his hand casually over the old books that had been arranged on a small bookcase outside. Behind the glass, the window displayed suits of mail standing like ghosts, fantastic carvings, rusty weapons, shells and ornaments, figurines in china and wood and iron and ivory; tapestries and strange dreamlike furniture. A placard in one corner announced in French: “Watches and jewelry exchanged and repaired. Buttons, bullets, and teeth from the field of Waterloo.”

“Bric-à-brac,”
I repeated, recalling my anatomy lessons and the jars of body parts I had seen in the anatomy theaters of Edinburgh.

“There are several curiosity dealers down here,” Lucienne said. “They don’t do much passing trade. They are more like agents. They sell
objets
to collectors: shells, furniture, relics, horns of unicorns—that kind of thing. Waterloo relics sell best of all now they say: weapons, buttons, even stones from the battlefield. A friend of mine,
English, bought a Waterloo thumb, nail and everything, from a man in the Palais Royal. He keeps it in a bottle of gin. What a strange mixture of books. Look: Homer, cheap romances, Euclid, Descartes, and this …” She picked up a tattered copy of a small red leather book. “A life of the Polish Jew Salomon Maimon, philosopher.”

A figure in worn clothing appeared at the door and looked at us both encouragingly. “Good day, sirs,” he said. His face belonged to a man of about thirty, but though he was only seven or so years older than I was, he looked much older, older even than Lucienne. He had a dark, far-off gaze.

“What is the price of this book?” Lucienne asked slowly.

The shopkeeper took the book and examined its flyleaf, saying, “There is no price, I’m afraid, sir. The shopkeeper is not in. He has gone to dinner. Will you wait?”

“M. Silveira?” Lucienne whispered.

“Qui”?
The shop assistant kept his eyes on Lucienne in rather too studied a way, I thought.

“Silveira. Davide Silveira,” Lucienne repeated. “We will speak in English.” She too had become very still. The street children, who had slouched closer in the last few moments, began to whisper among themselves.
Trompe-la-Mort. Trompe-la-Mort
.