The Decoy (5 page)

'OK,' he said, 'you've passed.' He pulled out a real pen and wrote something down.

'Just like that?'

This seemed to amuse him. 'Why? Do you want to go on and see if I can find a reason to fail you?'

She'd shrugged, and he'd said, 'Good. Classes begin when full semester starts. I'll see you then.'

She took a deep breath. 'There's something I should tell you. I'm not actually a resident here. I mean, I don't have a green card or anything. I'm not even a student at the university.'

'You can act, can't you?' Paul had said.

She shrugged. 'I hope so.'

'Then act like a student. If I'm right about you, it's the least you're capable of.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

On their first day, Paul had got them to perform a scene from
Hamlet.
Claire had thought her fellow students were pretty good. Then he made them do it again while balancing broom handles on their fingertips. In the effort to keep the handles upright the scene fell apart, the actors tripping and stumbling over the unfamiliar language.

Afterwards, Paul had gathered them around him. 'Let me tell you something. What you were doing just now, the first time, wasn't acting. It was
pretending.
You were copying what you've seen other actors do, but it wasn't real to you. That's why you couldn't do it the second time, when you had to concentrate on something else.

'I am going to tell you only one thing today, but it's the most important thing I'll ever say to you: Don't think. Acting isn't faking or impersonating. Acting is
doing.'

'Is this a Method class?' one of the students asked.

An expression of mild annoyance crossed Paul's face. 'Don't ever let me hear you use that word. It implies that there's a set of rules or a formula of some kind. The phrase Stanislavski himself used was "inhabiting the moment". That's our goal.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

Today they end up improvising a story in which two washroom attendants have been mistaken for brain surgeons and are operating on the president's mistress. Claire, lying on the floor, plays the mistress. The surgeons have just decided they will replace her brain, which they have accidentally mutilated, with one of their own, when someone walks forward into the circle.

She sees a man in a long brown raincoat, snow all over his Hush Puppies. He stops and says, 'Claire Rodenburg?' to no-one in particular, and somehow he says it in a way that instantly, brilliantly, wearily, conveys that he's a cop.

'You can't take her!' one of the surgeons yells. 'She hasn't got her brain in!'

An expression of distaste flits momentarily across the policeman's face. He looks down, directly at Claire. 'Miss Rodenburg?'

'She's a very good friend of the president's,' the other surgeon says. 'Be careful what you do with her.'

She notices that he isn't fazed by any of this surreal nonsense. He just holds out his ID, down low where she can see it, and says, 'Detective Frank Durban. Why don't you people take a break?'

===OO=OOO=OO===

There's an empty room next door. A few plastic chairs are scattered around. She sits, though the detective remains standing.

'Forgive me for interrupting your afternoon,' he says.

She has already realized what this is all about. The lawyer she ripped off has made a complaint. 'Look, I'd better explain—'

'Am I correct in thinking you sometimes work with Henry Mallory?' he says abruptly.

'Yes.'

'What do you do for him, exactly?'

'I see if men… you know, if they're going to be unfaithful,' she says nervously. She touches her hair, embarrassed. 'His clients pay me to make a pass at their husbands.'

The detective pulls out a photograph in a clear plastic sleeve and shows it to her. 'Do you recognize this lady?'

'Yes, I do,' she says. And she has to keep the surprise out of her voice, because it's not the lawyer's wife but another client entirely, one from nearly a week ago.

'Do you know her name?'

'I think it's Vogler,' she says hesitantly. 'Stella Vogler.'

'According to Mr Mallory, she was a client of yours.'

'That's right, yes.'

'Why had she come to your agency?'

Claire tells him what she can remember. It isn't much.

Stella had been worried about her husband, Christian. They'd been married for two years, and in that time he had changed, she'd said. Always secretive about his movements, he had taken to going out at strange times with no explanation. On other occasions he was evasive and resisted being questioned. And, although as possessive as ever about Stella, he had started to regard her with a coldness that at times appeared close to hatred. Same old familiar story. Claire has only been working for Henry for a short while, but already she feels like she's heard it a thousand times before.

The detective scribbles rapidly in his notebook now. 'So you were asked to, uh, meet with Mr Vogler. How did that meeting go?'

'Well, that's what was odd.'

'In what way?'

'In that he wasn't interested in me.'

Frank taps his pencil on his teeth. 'That happen often?'

'No. That was the first time, in fact. Usually I'm … well, usually I'm pretty successful.'

'I can imagine,' he says.

There's an awkward silence. She looks at the floor. The policeman clears his throat.

'Tell me', he says, '
exactly
what occurred.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

The bar was a big, quiet place, the front room of an old chop house. The kind of place she never usually saw the inside of, on her budget.

His wife had told them that Vogler went there often. He sometimes did research at the public library, and the bar was near his route home. Invariably he sat on his own, drinking a single glass of red wine and reading a book.

They had arranged for Stella to tell him she'd be out of town for a couple of nights, so that if he wanted to play around behind her back he had the perfect opportunity. In fact, she'd booked herself into a hotel uptown.

'The Lexington?'

'That's right.'

Frank, writing all this down, nods thoughtfully.

Claire had ordered a drink and sat at the bar, near where Christian Vogler was sitting. After a few moments she noticed him raising his head to look at her. She sipped her drink and waited.

She was on her third Virgin Mary before she realized that, this time, waiting wasn't going to work.

At one point he got up from his table and came to the bar, striding impatiently across the room towards her. But he was only getting change from the bartender for the phone.

'How long was he on the phone?'

'Not long. A minute, maybe more.'

'OK. Go on.'

While he was gone, she casually went over to his table and picked up the book he'd been reading. It was a volume of poetry in French.

He returned, and she'd started guiltily. 'Oh, I'm sorry. Is this yours?'

'Yes,' he'd said curtly. There might as well have been a sign over his head saying, Do Not Disturb.

She looked at the book's title.
Les Fleurs du Mal.
'That means "The Flowers of Evil", right?'

'That's right.' He held out his hand to take the book back, and just for a second she glanced into his eyes. Christian Vogler had striking eyes -gooseberry-green, with a secondary ring of black, as if the iris had been edged in charcoal. She had to make herself look down again at the book. '
"J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans,"'
she read aloud.

And he'd blinked, surprised. 'You have a good accent.'

'I did some French at school. But this is hard… a grave of pyramids… no…'

'There's a translation over the page. If you're really interested.'

She turned the page. 'So there is.' She started to read it aloud, taking her time, her trained voice milking the pauses and line breaks.

I have more memories than if I had lived a thousand years.

An old cabinet stuffed with dead ideas—

bundles of abandoned verses, old receipts and bills,

dusty locks of hair, and long-forgotten wills —

is not more full of secrets than my aching head.

It's a sarcophagus, an immense grave where the dead,

those bodies I have loved, are tumbled willy-nilly,

prodded and nudged incessantly

by morbid reveries, like worms:

It's a house of shuttered, closed-up rooms

where closets full of wedding clothes

are slowly pulled to lace by moths.

She paused, glancing at Vogler. He was looking at her intently. 'Please, go on.'

She shrugged and continued:

The days go on forever. Boredom and ennui

are in themselves a kind of immortality.

Slowly, I become the opposite of flesh:

antimatter, darkness, life's antithesis;

like some old statue of a half-forgotten god,

abandoned in the desert, starved of blood,

whose enigmatic, weatherbeaten frown

lights up, for one moment, as the sun goes down.

A beat of silence lengthened into two. While she was reading Christian Vogler had closed his eyes. Now he opened them again, regarding her without expression. 'It's kind of weird,' she said into the silence. 'What does it mean?' Then she noticed the photograph on the back cover. 'Oh, that's you. "Translated and with an introduction by Christian Vogler." You're a poet.'

He shook his head. 'A translator. And only in my spare time.'

'What's it about?' she asked, to keep him talking.

Again, the blank, indifferent stare. 'It's not about anything. It's about itself.'

'Sure, but why did he write that particular poem?'

'Ah.' Vogler thought for a moment. 'He had a complicated love life.'

'Sounds like my kind of guy'
Careful, girl. Take it slowly.

'He was involved with two women.' Vogler looked off across the bar, as if marshalling his thoughts. 'Though perhaps "involved" isn't quite the word. One was a prostitute, a negress whom he called his
Venus noire,
his Black Venus. The other was a sophisticated society beauty, the wife of a friend. She was called Apollonie Sabatier, but biographers call her the
Venus blanche,
the White Venus. The prostitute was in love with him, and he was her lover, but he was also in love with the
Venus blanche.'

'A love triangle.'

'Of a sort.'

'What happened?'

'He wrote an extraordinary series of erotic poems. He said he wanted to do something completely new, to create beauty out of evil. The poems touch on every kind of perversion, but their effect is strangely gentle. He sent them to the
Venus blanche
anonymously. Eventually she guessed who it was. She offered to sleep with him; it was no big deal, she had slept with many of her husband's friends. They spent a single night together.'

'She ditched him?'

'No. Nobody knows what happened. The only clue is a letter of rejection that
he
sent to
her
the next day. He said he preferred to remember her as a goddess rather than as a woman.'

'I guess some people don't like to be tied down,' she said. 'What about you?'

It was a mistake, too obvious, too crass. She knew that the moment the words had left her mouth. Christian Vogler got to his feet. 'I have to go,' he muttered, looking around.

'Oh, please, I wanted to ask you something. About, uh' — she glanced at the page — 'Baudelaire. Where can I find a translation like this? It sounds so interesting, and—'

'Keep it.' He pulled money from his pocket for the waitress.

'Keep it? Look, why don't I give you my number, and—'

'My address is written inside. Send it back when you're done.'

'Are you sure? It won't take a moment to—'

'It's no problem,' he said, pulling on his jacket.

'Can't I even buy you a drink?' she asked desperately.

He paused. For a moment he ran his eyes over her with a kind of curious reluctance. 'I enjoyed talking with you,' he said. And then he was gone, and she'd found herself addressing some last-ditch question to the empty air.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'Think he worked out what was going on?' Frank asks sceptically.

Claire shrugs. 'I don't see how.'

'What about Mrs Vogler? How did she react when you told her?'

'Pleased, obviously. Reassured. Happy.'

'She pay you?'

'Of course. Why wouldn't she?'

'We found a large amount of cash on her person,' he says flatly, and Claire's eyes widen.

'You mean… she's dead?'

Durban nods, watching her reaction.

'Oh God,' she says, appalled. Then, 'How?'

'We're treating it as homicide.'

'That's
terrible
:'

He takes her over it again, and then a third time, until eventually he puts his notebook away. 'Last question. What happened to the book?'

'The book?'

'The book of poetry. You ever send it back?'

'I guess it's still lying around my apartment somewhere.'

'Well, it's probably not important,' he says, getting to his feet. 'Just don't throw it out, OK?'

Frank Durban sighs and leans forward on the orthopaedic stool he's installed in front of his computer. The stool forces him into a half-kneeling position, as if he's on his knees before the great god Paperwork.

He's almost finished page twenty of the VICAP submission form. Despite the stool, his lower back is killing him.

At last he clicks on Send. In just a few moments, a computer at the FBI's headquarters in Virginia scans the report and compares it with over 30,000 other reports of unsolved crimes from all over the USA.

Statistically, you were more likely to find your killer by sticking a pin in the phone book.

The pin was quicker, too.

A message flashes on the screen.

Thank you for your submission.

According to our records, previous submission indicates a possible match.

Intrigued despite himself, Frank clicks on Next. But instead of showing him the details, the computer says: