Maroc nodded as Lecan hung up the phone. “You’re right, twenty-four hours in a cell should soften her up, then we’ll put the screws to her. I bet she’s in it with Vidot’s wife. I can smell it. Which reminds me”—he picked up a stack of papers and waved them at Lecan—“Pingeot brought these transcripts by yesterday, want to take a look?”
Maroc had placed Madame Vidot and her lover under twenty-four-hour surveillance, tapping their phone lines and watching each of their homes. Though the lovers had not attempted to meet, they spoke often. Which is how, the previous afternoon, Maroc had found himself listening to his very nervous subordinate, the young Christian Pingeot, reading lurid and explicit pornography out loud to him for the better part of an hour. “Then this Alberto fellow says”—the officer had cleared his throat—“ahem, ‘I want, um,’ ahem, ‘I want to thrust my spear deep into you, your’ … sir, I really cannot.”
“Read it to me, officer.”
“All right, sir. ‘I want to thrust my spear deep into your moist petals’—please, sir.”
Maroc had to agree it was pretty bad stuff. But he had made poor Pingeot continue, simply because he enjoyed seeing the officer’s discomfort. Now he gleefully handed the transcripts to Lecan.
Lecan read the report with wide eyes. “My, this fellow Alberto is a terrible poet,” he said.
“Well, he certainly is Italian,” Maroc conceded.
Lecan smiled. “Do the two know we are watching them?”
“Hard to say. But she won’t let him come to her flat. And they cannot go to Alberto’s, his wife is there. So see what he proposes?” Maroc pointed to a section of the transcript.
Lecan read it and smiled. “Ah-ha, the rascal, he wants her to meet him tonight in the Bois.”
Maroc clapped his hands. “Ha ha, such good old-fashioned naughtiness. Makes me feel young again,” he laughed. “Well, why not join in the fun, eh? Are you up for a bit of surveillance tonight? Maybe we can catch them with his pants down and her skirt up and then bring them in for some real questioning.” He grinned lasciviously.
“Well, between those two and that one in the cage downstairs, we should be able to make some progress,” said Lecan.
“I agree, I agree,” said Maroc. “It’s a very exciting day.” And so they made their arrangements.
Later that night, sitting in an unmarked car across the boulevard, they watched as their subject Alberto paced back and forth on a lamp-lit corner of the park. They had followed Alberto from his apartment and now, having waited for almost half an hour, all of them were growing impatient for Madame Vidot’s arrival.
Lecan lit a Gauloise.
“You fool,” said Maroc. “Put it out; she’ll see us if she comes up now.”
“She’s not coming,” said Lecan.
“Impossible,” said Maroc. “You read those dirty transcripts, the woman is like a cat in heat.”
Lecan looked at his watch. “Maybe her conscience got the better of her. Maybe she feels bad about that nice husband she killed. Who knows? What I do know is we have been here for some time and there’s no sign of her. I honestly don’t know why he’s still waiting. The little slut stood him up.”
Maroc stared at the lone silhouette loitering across the street and shook his head in frustration. Where was she? He had felt so tantalizingly close to wrapping up all the strands in one nice, neat package, but now some gnawing sense at the bottom of his stomach was telling him that the simple solutions he wanted were beginning to slip away. “Fine. Let’s at least grab him. He must know what she did with Vidot. He must. Even if he’s innocent, he’ll have a lot to tell us.”
“Well,” said Lecan, reaching for the door handle, “we’ll never know unless we ask.”
They got out and crossed the street. Alberto stopped his pacing as they approached; they could tell he recognized them at once. Then, pretending he had not noticed them, he began to nonchalantly walk down the path into the darkness of the park. It was bad enough that his date had not shown up, but a conversation with the police was clearly not the way he wanted to spend the night.
“The bastard’s trying to slip away,” said Maroc, picking up his pace. He would have run but he hated running, it always made him feel fat, and so by the time they reached the corner, their suspect was gone. “Come, he went that way, we can catch up with him,” Maroc said. Lecan followed him into the park.
They walked in silence, listening for footsteps, but the Bois was quiet. They followed the paved walkway until it divided and then, instead of splitting up, they both stayed to the right, going deeper into the park and crossing near the lake. Every so often they would pause and look around, hoping to hear their quarry’s footsteps, but as they stood in the silence, it was clear that Alberto had escaped them.
They headed back to the car. Halfway down the walk, Maroc tapped his hand on Lecan’s shoulder and pointed into the overgrowth. “Look, is that him?”
“It’s hard to tell,” said Lecan.
