Текст книги "Blue Labyrinth"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

42

Margo Green took a seat at a large conference table in a forensic suite on the tenth floor of One Police Plaza. The suite was an odd combination of computer lab and medical examination room: terminals and workstations stood cheek by jowl with gurneys, light boxes, and sharps disposal cases.

Across the table sat D’Agosta. He had summoned her from the Museum, where she’d been spending her off afternoon analyzing the anomalous compound found in the bones of Mrs. Padgett and dodging Dr. Frisby. Beside him sat a tall, thin Asian man. Next to him was Terry Bonomo, the department’s Identi-CAD expert, with his ubiquitous laptop. He was swiveling back and forth in his seat and grinning at nothing in particular.

“Margo,” D’Agosta said. “Thanks for coming. You already know Terry Bonomo.” He gestured at the other man. “This is Dr. Lu of Columbia Medical School. His expertise is plastic surgery. Dr. Lu, this is Dr. Green, an ethnopharmacologist and anthropologist currently working at the Pearson Institute.”

Margo nodded at Lu, who smiled in return. His teeth were dazzlingly white.

“Now that you’re both here, I can put the call through.” D’Agosta reached for a phone at the center of the table, pressed its SPEAKER button, and made a long-distance call. It was answered on the third ring.

“Hello?”

D’Agosta leaned toward the speaker. “Is this Dr. Samuels?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Samuels, this is Lieutenant D’Agosta, NYPD. I have you on speakerphone with a plastic surgeon from Columbia Medical and an anthropologist connected with the New York Museum of Natural History. Could you please share with them what you told me yesterday?”

“Certainly.” The man cleared his throat. “As I told the lieutenant, I’m a pathologist with the Indio Department of Corrections here in California. I was undertaking the autopsy on the John Doe suicide – the man suspected in the murder of the employee at your Museum – when I noticed something.” He paused. “I first established the mode of death, which, as you know, was rather unusual. As I was completing a gross examination of the corpse, I noticed some unusual healed scars. They were inside the mouth, along both the upper and lower gingival sulcus. At first I thought they might be the result of an old beating or car accident. But as I examined them, I could see the scars were too precise for that. I found a similar, symmetrical set of scars on the other side of the mouth. At this point, I realized they were the result of surgery: specifically, reconstructive facial surgery.”

“Cheek and chin implants?” Dr. Lu said.

“Yes. X-rays and CAT scans bore this out. In addition, the imaging showed plates – titanium, as it turned out – fixed to the jawbone.”

Dr. Lu nodded thoughtfully. “Were there any other scars? On the skull or the hip, or inside the nose?”

“When we shaved the head, we found no scars. But yes, there were intranasal incisions, and a scar on the hip, just above the iliac crest. The images I forwarded to Lieutenant D’Agosta document everything.”

“Did the autopsy turn up any anomalous findings, chemical or otherwise?” D’Agosta asked. “The man was in obvious pain before he killed himself. And he was acting more than a little crazy. He might have been poisoned.”

There was a pause. “I wish we could say with certainty. There were some very unusual compounds present in the blood that we’re still trying to analyze. The man was on the verge of renal failure; it’s possible those compounds could have caused that.”

“If you come up with anything definitive, please relay it to me via the lieutenant,” Margo said. “Also, I’d appreciate it if you could analyze the skeleton for the presence of unusual compounds as well.”

“Will do. Oh, and one other thing – the man dyed his hair. It wasn’t black, but dirty blond.”

“Thank you, Dr. Samuels. If there’s anything else, we’ll be in touch.” D’Agosta ended the conference call with the press of a button.

There was a large manila envelope on the table, and now D’Agosta slid it in Lu’s direction. “Doctor? I wonder if you could give us the benefit of your expertise.”

The plastic surgeon opened the envelope, pulled out the contents, and quickly arranged them in two piles. Margo saw that one pile contained a mug shot and morgue photographs; the other, colored X-rays and CAT scans.

Lu sorted through the photos of the man Margo recognized as the phony Professor Waldron. He held up one close-up and displayed it to the group: Margo made out the inside of a mouth, the upper gums, soft palate, and uvula clearly visible. “Dr. Samuels was correct,” Lu said, tracing his finger against a faint line just above the gum. “Notice this intraoral incision – technically named, as Dr. Samuels told you, the upper gingival sulcus.”

“And its significance?” D’Agosta asked.

Lu put down the photograph. “There are basically two kinds of plastic surgery. The first is skin work. Face-lifts, eye bag removal – procedures that make you look younger. The second kind is bony work. This is much more invasive, and is used in cases of trauma. Say you were in a car accident and had your face crushed. Bony work would attempt to correct the damage.” He waved a hand at the photographs. “Most of the procedures done to this man involved bony work.”

“And this bony work – could it be used to alter a person’s appearance?”

“Definitely. In fact, since there’s no evidence of prior trauma, I would guess that all the procedures done to this man were to alter his facial appearance.”

“Just how many operations would it take to accomplish that?”

“If the operation was sufficient to change the bony orientation – a midface advancement, for example – just one. The patient would look completely different, especially with dyed hair.”

“But it sounds as if this man had several procedures.”

Lu nodded, then picked up and showed them another picture. Margo recognized it, with some disgust, as a close-up of the inside of a hairy nose. “See the intranasal incision? It’s well hidden, but visible if you know what to look for. The doctor used that incision to introduce silicone into the nose, no doubt to make it look taller.” He flipped through the other pictures. “The upper intraoral incisions, where the gum meets the sulcus, would be used to alter the cheeks – you make a cut on either side, make a pocket in the bone, slip in the implants. The lower intraoral incision, on the other hand, would have been used to add silicone to the chin, make it protrude.”

Terry Bonomo had his laptop open and was furiously typing notes as the surgeon spoke.

Margo watched D’Agosta shift in his chair. “So our friend here had his cheeks altered, his chin altered, and the height of his nose changed.” He glanced significantly in Bonomo’s direction. “Anything else?”

“Samuels mentioned titanium plates.” Lu reached for the X-rays, stood up, and walked over to a series of X-ray light boxes fixed to one wall. He snapped them on, fastened the X-rays to the glass, and examined them.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “The face was restructured by advancing the jaw.”

“Can you explain that, please?” Bonomo asked.

“It’s called a LeFort osteotomy. You essentially break and realign the face. Using the same incision in the upper gingival sulcus, you go right down to the bone, make a complete cut so it becomes mobile, and then push out the jaw. Pieces of bone from other areas of the body are added to fill up the space – usually from the patient’s skull or hip. In the case of this person, there is a scar above the iliac crest, so clearly the extra bone was taken from the hip. Once this is completed, titanium plates are used to fix the maxilla in position. You can see one of them, here.” He pointed to an X-ray.

“Jesus H. Christopher,” said Bonomo. “Sounds painful.”

“Any idea how long ago these procedures might have been done?” Margo asked.

Lu turned back to the X-rays. “It’s hard to tell. “The maxilla is fully healed – you can see the callus, here. The titanium plates haven’t been removed, but then again, that’s common. I would say at least a few years ago, maybe more.”

“I count four procedures,” D’Agosta said. “And you say these would have been enough to change the man’s looks completely?”

“Just the LeFort osteotomy would have done the job.”

“And based on the photographic, CAT scan, and X-ray evidence here, can you reverse-engineer these changes? Show us what the guy looked like before all this work?”

Lu nodded. “I can try. The fractures in the medulla, and the size of the incisions in the mucosa, are clear enough. We can work backward from there.”

“Great. Please work with Terry Bonomo here and see if we can’t get an image of this guy’s original face.” D’Agosta turned to the ID expert. “Think you can do this?”

“Hell, yeah,” Bonomo said. “If the doc here can give me specifics, it’s a cinch to modify the facial biometrics. I’ve already got wireframe and three-D composites of the perp’s head loaded into the software; now I just need to take my standard operating procedure and run it backward, so to speak.”

While Margo looked on, Dr. Lu took a seat beside Bonomo and together – hunched over the laptop – they began refiguring the face of the killer, essentially undoing the work some anonymous plastic surgeon had done years ago. Now and then Lu returned to the autopsy photographs, or the X-ray and CAT scan images, as they painstakingly adjusted various parameters in the cheeks, chin, nose, and jaw.

“Don’t forget the dirty-blond hair,” D’Agosta said.

Twenty minutes later, Bonomo hit a key on the laptop with a dramatic flourish. “Let’s give it a moment to render the image.”

Margo heard the laptop give a chirrup about thirty seconds later.

Bonomo swiveled the laptop toward Dr. Lu, who examined it a moment, then nodded. And then Bonomo turned the laptop all the way around so Margo and D’Agosta could see it.

“My God,” D’Agosta murmured.

Margo was shocked. The plastic surgeon was right – the image looked like a completely different man.

“I want you to model that from several angles,” D’Agosta told Bonomo. “Then download the rendered images into the departmental database. We’ll run the facial-recognition software against it, see if the face is anywhere out there.” He turned to Lu. “Doctor, thanks so much for your time.”

“My pleasure.”

“Margo, I’ll be back.” And without another word, he stood up and walked out of the forensic suite.

In less than twenty minutes, D’Agosta was back. His face was slightly flushed, and he was out of breath.

“Goddamn,” he told her. “We’ve got a hit. Just like that.”

43

Pendergast pulled into the visitors’ parking lot of the Sanatorium de Piz Julier and killed the engine. The lot was, as he expected, empty: the convalescence spa was remote, tiny, and selective. In fact, at the moment it had only one patient in residence.

He got out of the car – a twelve-cylinder Lamborghini Gallardo Aventador – and walked slowly to the far end of the lot. Beyond and far below, the green skirts of the Alps stretched down to the Swiss resort town of St. Moritz, from this distance almost too perfect and beautiful to be real. To its south reared the Piz Bernina, the tallest mountain of the eastern Alps. Sheep were grazing peacefully on its lower flanks, tiny dots of white.

He turned back and headed toward the sanatorium, a red-and-white confection with gingerbread molding and brimming flower boxes beneath the windows. While he was still rather weak and unsteady on his feet, the most severe symptoms of the pain and mental confusion he had experienced in Brazil had eased, at least temporarily. He’d even scrapped his plans to hire a driver and rented a car instead. He knew the Lamborghini was flashy and not at all his style, but he told himself the speed and technical handling the mountain roads required would help clear his mind.

Pendergast stopped at the front door and rang the bell. An unobtrusive security camera set above the door swiveled in his direction. Then a buzzer sounded, the door sprang open, and he entered. Beyond lay a small lobby and nurse’s station. A woman in a white uniform with a small cap on her head sat behind it.

“Ja?” the woman said, looking up at him expectantly.

Pendergast reached into his pocket, gave her his card. She reached into a drawer, took out a folder, glanced at a photograph that lay within, then back at Pendergast.

“Ah yes,” the woman said, replacing the folder and switching to accented English. “Herr Pendergast. We have been expecting you. Just one minute, please.”

She picked up the phone that sat on her desk and made a brief call. A minute later, a door in the wall behind her buzzed open and two more nurses appeared. One of them gestured for Pendergast to approach. Passing through the interior door, he followed the two women down a cool hallway, punctuated by windows through which streamed brilliant morning sunlight. With its taffeta curtains and colorful Alpine photos, the place appeared bright and cheerful. And yet the bars on the windows were of reinforced steel, and weapons could be seen bulging beneath the crisp white uniforms of the two nurses.

Near the end of the hall, they stopped before a closed door. The nurses unlocked it. Then they opened the door, stepped back, and gestured for Pendergast to enter.

Beyond lay a large and airy room, its windows – also open, also barred – giving out on a beautiful view of the lake far below. There was a bed, a writing table, a bookshelf full of books in English and German, a wing chair, and a private bath.

At the table, silhouetted in a beam of sunlight, sat a young man of seventeen. He was studiously – even laboriously – copying something from a book into a journal. The sun gilded his light-blond hair. His gray-blue eyes moved from the book to the journal and back again, so intent on his work he remained unaware anyone had entered. Silently, Pendergast took in the patrician features, the lean physique.

His sense of weariness increased.

The youth looked up from his work. For a brief moment, his face was a mask of incomprehension. Then he broke into a smile. “Father!” he cried, leaping from the chair. “What a surprise!”

Pendergast allowed himself to return his son’s embrace. This was followed by an awkward silence.

“When can I get out of this place?” Tristram finally asked. “I hate it here.” He spoke in an oddly formal, schoolboy English, with a German accent softened by a touch of Portuguese.

“Not for a while, I’m afraid, Tristram.”

The youth frowned and played with a ring on the middle finger of his left hand – a gold ring set with a beautiful star sapphire.

“Are you being treated well here?”

“Well enough. The food’s excellent. I go on hikes every day. But they hover over me all the time. I have no friends and it is boring. I liked the École Mère-Église better. Can I go back there, Father?”

“In a little while.” Pendergast paused. “Once I have taken care of certain things.”

“What things?”

“Nothing you need be concerned about. Listen, Tristram, I need to ask you something. Has anything unusual happened to you since we last met?”

“Unusual?” Tristram echoed.

“Out of the ordinary. Letters you’ve received, perhaps? Telephone calls? Unexpected visits?”

At this, a blank look came over Tristram. He hesitated for a moment. Then, silently, he shook his head.

“No.”

Pendergast looked at him closely. “You’re lying.”

Tristram said nothing, his eyes fixed on the ground.

Pendergast took a deep breath. “I don’t quite know how to tell you this. Your brother is dead.”

Tristram started. “Alban? Tot?”

Pendergast nodded.

“How?”

“Murdered.”

The room went very still. Tristram stared, shocked, and then his gaze dropped to the floor again. A single tear gathered tremulously in the corner of one eye, then rolled down his cheek.

“You feel sad?” Pendergast asked. “After the way he treated you?”

Tristram shook his head. “He was my brother.”

Pendergast felt deeply affected by this. And he was my son. He wondered why he felt so little sorrow for Alban’s death; why he lacked his son’s compassion.

He found Tristram looking back at him with those deep-gray eyes. “Who did it?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to find out.”

“It would take a lot… to kill Alban.”

Pendergast said nothing. He felt uncomfortable with Tristram’s eyes on him so intently. He had no idea how to be a father to this boy.

“Are you ill, Father?”

“I am merely recovering from a bout of malaria brought on by my recent travels – nothing more,” he said hastily.

Another silence fell over the room. Tristram, who had been hovering over his father during this exchange, now went back to his writing desk and sat down. He appeared to be struggling with some inner conflict. Finally, his gaze turned back to Pendergast.

“Yes. I lied. There is something I have to tell you. I promised him, but if he’s dead… I think you must know.”

Pendergast waited.

“Alban visited me, Father.”

“When?”

“A few weeks ago. I was still at Mère-Église. I was taking a walk in the foothills. He was there, ahead of me, on the trail. He told me he had been waiting for me.”

“Go on,” Pendergast said.

“He looked different.”

“In what way?”

“He was older. Thinner. He looked sad. And the way he spoke to me – it was not like the old way. There was no… no…” He moved his hands, uncertain of the word to use. “Verachtung.”

“Disdain,” said Pendergast.

“That is it. There was no disdain in his voice.”

“What did he discuss with you?”

“He said he was going to the United States.”

“Did he say why?”

“Yes. He said that he was going to… right a wrong. Undo some terrible thing he himself had put into motion.”

“Were those his exact words?”

“Yes. I didn’t understand. Right a wrong? Write a wrong? I asked him what he meant and he refused to explain.”

“What else did he say?”

“He asked me to promise not to tell you of his visit.”

“That’s it?”

Tristram paused. “There was something else.”

“Yes?”

“He said he had come to ask my forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” Pendergast repeated, hugely surprised.

“Yes.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“I forgave him.”

Pendergast rose to his feet. With something like a throb of despair, he realized the mental confusion, the pain, was beginning to return. “How did he ask for your forgiveness?” he asked harshly.

“He wept. He was almost crazy with grief.”

Pendergast shook his head. Was this remorse real, or some cruel game Alban was practicing on his simple twin brother? “Tristram,” he said. “I moved you here for your own safety, after your brother was murdered. I’m trying to find the killer. You’ll have to stay here until I’ve solved the case and… taken care of things. Once that happens, I hope you won’t want to return to Mère-Église. I hope you’ll want to come back to New York – and live with…” He hesitated. “Family.”

The young man’s eyes widened, but he did not speak.

“I’ll remain in contact, either directly or through Constance. If you need anything, please write and let me know.” He approached Tristram, kissed him lightly on the forehead, then turned to leave.

“Father?” Tristram said.

Pendergast glanced back.

“I know malaria well. Back in Brazil, many Schwächlinge died of malaria. You don’t have malaria.”

“What I have is my own business,” he said sharply.

“And is it not my business, too, as your son?”

Pendergast hesitated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to speak to you like that. I’m doing what I can about my… affliction. Good-bye, Tristram. I hope to see you again soon.”

With that, he hastily let himself out of the room. The two nurses, who had been waiting outside, relocked the door and then escorted him back down the corridor of the sanatorium.

44

Thierry Gabler took his seat on the outdoor terrace of Café Remoire and opened his copy of Le Courrier with a sigh. It took less than a minute for a waitress to come bustling up with his usual order: a glass of Pflümli, a small plate of cold cured meats, and a few slices of brown bread.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Gabler,” she said.

“Merci, Anna,” Gabler replied with what he hoped was a winning smile. She walked away, and he followed the sway of her hips with a long, lingering gaze. Then he turned his attention to the Pflümli, picked up the glass, and took a sip, sighing with quiet satisfaction. He had retired from his job as a civil servant the year before, and taking in an aperitif at a sidewalk café in the late afternoons had become something of a ritual. He particularly liked the Café Remoire: while it didn’t have a view of the lake, it was one of the few truly traditional cafés left in Geneva, and – given its location, centrally situated on the Place du Cirque – it was an ideal spot to enjoy the bustle of the city.

He took another sip of the eau-de-vie, folded the newspaper neatly onto page three, and glanced around. At this time of day, the café was bustling with the usual assortment of tourists, businessmen, students, and small knots of gossiping wives. The street itself was busy, cars rushing by, people walking hurriedly here and there. The Fêtes de Genève was not far away, and already the city’s hotels were filling with people anticipating the world-famous fireworks display.

He delicately folded a piece of cured meat onto a slice of bread, raised it to his lips, and was about to take a bite when all of a sudden – with a loud screech of brakes – a car nosed to the curb not four feet from where he was seated on the café’s terrace. Not just any car, either. This vehicle looked like something from a future century: slung very low, it was at once sleek and angular, seemingly sculpted from a single chunk of flame-colored garnet. The massive rims of its wheels came up to the top of the dashboard, itself barely visible behind smoked black glass. Gabler had never seen a vehicle like it. Unconsciously, he put his piece of bread down as he stared. He could make out the Lamborghini badge on the car’s evil-looking snout, where the grille should have been.

Now the driver’s door opened vertically, gullwing-style, and a man got out, heedless of the oncoming traffic: an approaching car almost hit him and it sheared away into the passing lane, honking angrily. The driver took no notice. He slammed the car door, then made for the entrance to the café. Gabler stared at him. He was as unusual looking as his vehicle: dressed in a severely tailored black suit, with a white shirt and expensive tie. He was pale – paler than any man Gabler had ever seen. His eyes were dark and bruised looking, and his walk was both deliberate and unsteady, like a drunk trying to pass himself off as sober. Gabler saw the man briefly speaking to the patroness inside. Then he emerged again and took a seat on the terrace a few tables down. Gabler took another sip of Pflümli, and then remembered the bread-and-meat he’d made for himself and took a bite of it, all the time trying not to stare openly at this stranger. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man being served what looked like an absinthe, which had only recently been legalized in Switzerland.

Gabler picked up his newspaper and addressed himself to page three, now and then allowing himself a glance at the man a few tables down the terrace. He sat still as stone, paying attention to nothing or nobody, pale eyes staring into the distance, rarely blinking. Now and then he lifted the glass of absinthe to his lips. Gabler noticed that the man’s hand was shaking, and that the glass rattled whenever it was returned to the table.

In short order, the glass was emptied; another was ordered. Gabler ate his bread, drank his Pflümli, and read his copy of Le Courrier, and eventually the odd-looking stranger was forgotten in favor of the long-established activities of his typical afternoon.

And then something happened that attracted his attention. From down the Place du Cirque, Gabler spied a traffic officer slowly making his way toward them. He had a ticket book in hand, and was examining each parked car in turn. Now and then, when he came to an illegally parked vehicle, or one whose time had expired on the meter, he would pause, smile with private satisfaction, fill out a ticket, and slip it beneath a wiper blade.

Gabler glanced at the Lamborghini. Geneva’s parking rules were both byzantine and strict, but the vehicle was clearly improperly parked.

Now the officer was nearing the café’s terrace. Gabler watched, certain that the black-clad man would rouse himself and move his car before the meter man got there. But no: he remained where he was, now and then sipping his drink.

The officer reached the Lamborghini. He was a rather short, rotund figure, with a reddish face and thick white hair curling out from beneath his cap. The car was so obviously parked illegally – squeezed into the narrow space at a rakish angle demonstrating indifference, even contempt, for authority and order – that the officer’s smile was larger and more self-satisfied than usual as he licked his finger and flipped open the ticket book. The ticket was written and slipped beneath the wiper blade – it was recessed into the engine frame and took a moment to find – with a flourish.

Only now, as the traffic officer moved on, did the man in black get up from his table. Walking off the terrace, he approached the officer, placing himself between the man and the next parked car. Without speaking, he merely extended a finger and pointed at the Lamborghini.

The traffic officer looked from him, to the car, and back. “Est-ce que cette voiture vous appartient?” he asked.

The man slowly nodded.

“Monsieur, elle est…”

“In English, if you please,” the man said in an American accent Gabler recognized as southern.

As did most Genevans, the traffic officer spoke decent English. With a sigh – as if making a huge sacrifice – the man switched languages. “Very well.”

“It appears I have committed a parking transgression of some kind. As you can probably tell, I’m a stranger here. Kindly allow me to remove my car, and let us forget about the ticket.”

“I’m very sorry,” the officer said, though his tone of voice did not sound at all sorry. “The ticket is written.”

“So I’ve noticed. And what heinous act, pray tell, have I committed?”

“Monsieur, you are parked in a blue zone.”

“All these other cars are parked in a blue zone, as well. Hence my assumption that parking in a blue zone was permissible.”

“Ah!” said the officer, as if scoring an important point in a philosophic debate. “But your car does not display a disque de stationnement.”

“A what?”

“A parking disk. You may not park in a blue zone without displaying a parking disk that indicates the time that you arrived.”

“Indeed. A parking disk. How quaint. And how am I, a visitor, expected to know that?”

The traffic officer gave the man a look of bureaucratic disdain. “Monsieur, as a visitor to our city, it is you who are expected to understand, and abide by, my rules.”

“My rules?”

The officer looked slightly chagrined at this slip. “Our rules.”

“I see. Even if such rules are capricious, unnecessary, and, ultimately, pernicious?”

The little traffic officer frowned. He looked confused, uncertain. “The law is the law, monsieur. You have broken it, and—”

“Just a minute.” The American put a hand on the officer’s wrist, effectively stopping his progress. “What is the fine associated with this ticket?”

“Forty-five Swiss francs.”

“Forty-five Swiss francs.” Still blocking the man’s way, the American reached into his suit jacket and – with insolent slowness – removed a wallet and counted out the money.

“I cannot accept the fine, monsieur,” the officer said. “You must go to the—”

Suddenly, and violently, the American tore up the bills. First once, then twice, then again and again, until nothing was left but tiny squares. He tossed them in the air like so much confetti, so that they fluttered down, landing all over the traffic officer’s cap and shoulders. Gabler looked on, agape at this development. Passersby and others sitting on the terrace were equally astounded by this exchange.

“Monsieur,” the officer said, his face growing still redder. “You are clearly intoxicated. I must ask you not to enter this vehicle or—”

“Or what?” the American said with acid scorn. “You’ll write me a ticket for littering while under the influence? Pay attention, sirrah, and I’ll cross the street, right here. Then you can write me a ticket for jaywalking under the influence as well. But no, let me guess – you don’t have the authority to levy such a weighty punishment. That would take a real policeman. How very sad for you! ‘Take thy beak from out my heart!’ ”

Mustering all his dignity, the rotund traffic officer reached for a cell phone at his side and began to dial. As he did so, the American dropped the melodramatic attitude he’d abruptly assumed and reached into his jacket pocket again, this time pulling out a different wallet. This one, Gabler saw, contained a shield of some kind. He showed it to the officer for just a moment, then slipped it back into his jacket.

Immediately the manner of the officer changed. The chest-swelling, officious, bureaucratic behavior faded. “Sir,” he said, “you should have told me at first. Had I known that you were here conducting some kind of official business, I would not have issued the ticket. However, that doesn’t excuse—”

The American leaned in toward the smaller man. “You misunderstand. I am not conducting any official business. I am merely a traveler stopping off for a stirrup cup on my way to the airport.”

The traffic officer shook his head and backpedaled. He turned toward the Lamborghini and the traffic ticket, which flapped slowly back and forth in the breeze floating down the Place du Cirque. “Allow me, monsieur, to remove the ticket, but I must ask you—”

“Don’t remove that ticket,” the American barked. “Don’t even touch it!”

The officer turned back, now thoroughly cowed and confused. “Monsieur? I don’t understand.”

“You don’t?” returned the voice that grew icier with every word. “Then allow me to explain it in terms that, one would hope, even the meanest intelligence could grasp. I’ve decided I want that ticket, Goodman Lickspittle. I am going to contest that ticket, in court. And if I’m not mistaken, that means you will have to appear in court, as well. And at such a time I will take the greatest pleasure in pointing out to the judge, the lawyers, and everyone else assembled what a disgraceful shadow of a man you are. A shadow? Perhaps I exaggerate. A shadow, at least, can prove to be tall – tall indeed. But you: you’re a homunculus, a dried neat’s tongue, a carbuncle on the posterior of humanity.” With a sudden movement, the American knocked the officer’s cap from his head. “Look at you! You must be sixty if you’re a day. And yet here you are, still writing parking tickets, no doubt precisely as you were doing ten years ago, and twenty years ago, and thirty years ago. You must be so wonderful at the job, so singularly efficient, that your superiors simply don’t dare promote you. I salute the remarkable comprehensiveness of your insipidity. What a piece of work is a man, indeed! And yet I sense you aren’t entirely happy with your position – that gin-blossom I see writ large across your features implies that you frequently drown your sorrows. Do you deny it? I see not! Nor is your wife particularly happy about it, either. Oh, I detect in your hunted features, your bullying swagger that nevertheless yields instantly to superior force, a true Walter Mitty. Well, if it’s any consolation, I can at least predict what shall be inscribed upon your tombstone: ‘That will be forty-five francs, please.’ Now, if you will kindly step away from my vehicle, I’ll just head to the nearest police station and ensure… and ensure—”