At the beginning of every holiday season, as we begin the dark slide into winter, we gather those we love around us and tell each other for which we are grateful. We then cover our homes in lights, making them welcoming beacons for those who must travel during this cold, benighted season.
For the following weeks, we huddle around our fires and pray that this time, like every time before it, the days will cease becoming shorter and the nights getting longer, that this natural course of things will again reverse itself. At its apex, though, that long night lingers, for three long days, and if you go out on the cold evenings it’s not hard to imagine our ancestors huddled in the freezing temperatures and waiting for the end.
And like a child crowning from its mother, three hard days later the sun stays in the sky just a little bit longer than it did before. Whether this is called Christmas, or Dongzhi, or Yuletide, we all recognize it as the mercy of the universe in allowing us to live a little longer, to grow and to celebrate in the face of the worst conditions. No wonder a short time later we celebrate the New Year, that we’ve turned a corner and can celebrate a fresh beginning, a time to reinvent ourselves and set new goals in the face of lengthening rays of the sun. We are, again, born in hope.
Merry Christmas to you and yours, and a Happy New Year.
Odd, but it’s true, it was the Velvet Elvis that set me at ease. When I first met Mrs. Beeks, I found her unsettling, all jangling gold jewelry and a cloud of perfume, her too white teeth set against yellowing skin. But I needed a place to board and, with the local foliage changing, I was running out of options.
Then I saw the Velvet Elvis hanging in the hallway – it reminded me of my mother and her harmless fascination with the King. So I signed the registry in Mrs. Beeks’ vestibule and was barely put off when she raucously laughed.
Even with the early Autumn nightfalls to help explain it, though, sometimes the house feels like someone has draped the windows in heavy velvet, plunging the house into an interminable dark. It’s disorienting and I’m unable to locate the exit or my room, only the eyes of the King following me as I pass under the portrait time and time again.
With Elvis’ yellow spangles the only light to see, I’m uncertain how long I’ve been at Mrs. Beeks’ or why I arrived. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the portrait was changing, or changing the house, but I don’t dare look at it. Every time I pass under it now, I hear the jangling of Mrs. Beeks’ gold jewelry and – I swear to you – it sounds like it’s getting closer.
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“Breakfast, 4:00.”
I shrugged at the cryptic-sounding note. I could get off a bit early and be at the bistro by then. I crumpled up the note, sticking it in my pocket as I left the booth.
The casino was busy for the relative early hour, the twilight from recent sunset still burnishing the terracotta roofs of the nearby buildings. As I walked around to the employee entrance I noted a string of luxury automobiles lining up out of the promenade’s motorway to the casino’s porte-cochère. I stood at a corner watching the wealthy and the well-dressed exit their vehicles and head inside. It was the usual parade of unctuous middle-aged men and their younger escorts, the occasional grand old couple out for a night of proving to themselves they weren’t old, and young, carelessly stylish people playing with their parents money. Most of the slightly less affluent arrived looking for their excitement on foot. I didn’t recognize anyone important so headed inside before my lurking became conspicuous.
Changing out of my coat and into the casino blazer I saw Thibalt in the locker room. The bruise around the left side of his mouth made me realize how little time had actually passed since Sarti’s stunt in the main room. I asked him how he was.
“I am fine,” came the unsurprising reply. He motioned a circle that encompassing his entire face. “I think the punch might have made improvements.” He smiled showing the chipped tooth he hadn’t had the time or money yet to repair.
I chuckled, trying to show some appreciation for his stoicism. He asked me which sector I was working and said that I didn’t know, using that as an excuse to head to Central. Picking up my earbud and signing in I noticed Jasper wasn’t there. I stepped to the back of the room and picked up a house phone, lifting the receiver from the cradle. I dialed the number I had gotten off the mobile.
A heavily accented and cautious, “Bonjour,” answered. In reply I identified myself. “You aren’t calling from the phone.” It wasn’t Mitnick. I had heard Whip speak very little, but I was fairly certain it wasn’t him either. Brick maybe. Mitnick probably had a stable of heavies that I hadn’t met yet.
“I forgot it at home,” I lied. There was a muffled consultation on the other end of the line. “There is a party tomorrow night.” The voice provided an address, someplace not far from the villa I had met Mitnick at, maybe even the same one. “You are welcome,” was the conclusion and the line went dead. The last words didn’t sound like an invitation, but some mistranslation of an order.
I spent some time in my sector, staring blankly into space, the buzz of the casino security in one ear, the constant noise of the slot machines in the other. This was only broken by the occasional whoop of victory or groans of frustration. Most of the gamblers in this part of the casino didn’t interact with each other, but stared dead-eyed at whichever machine they thought would pay out, only moving to refill their stock of coins. I could feel myself mirroring that, but me mentally staring at the intractable problem of the dead Russian. If Sarti hadn’t had him killed, that left the entire town as a suspect. But who else would want to kill him? He had been at the Factory before he had gone missing and had very likely gone missing from the vicinity. And the Factory was a routine hangout for the Corsican and his crew, who were also somehow connected to Mitnick. The coincidences piled up high enough that it struck me as very unlikely that the killer was a new player.
An idea came to me then that was outrageous enough that I heard Cheryl’s voice, this time asking me if the implementing this plan didn’t seem like a good idea only in the boredom of my working shift, safely behind the thick walls and security layers of the casino. It reminded me that I wanted to protect Sophie.
“We’re only in this ‘cause Sophie wanted to be,” I countered out loud, surprising a couple of pensioner tourists walking by, old enough that they looked at each other to confirm I had spoken, and it wasn’t some aural hallucination of elder years. Watching them pair scuttle away with an awkward burst of speed made me think Sophie was probably as restless as me, the women she brought home a product of that and her compassion.
I decided it was time to stop trying to hide Sophie away and let her out to play.
“Genocide,” began the professor, “was not new nor did it originate in Nazi Germany. If one reads the Old Testament one easily finds evidence that the Hebrews engaged in it, often on the orders of Yahweh, and frequently quite proudly. In Judges you can read of the Israeli leader, Jephthah, calling together the men of Gilead to murder tens of thousands of people using the pronunciation of a word as the sole test for life or death.
What the Nazi regime did was bring genocide into the industrial age. Previous to the rise in Germany, even in World War I, if a tribe, a government, or a political party, wanted to execute an entire people, they had to do it in person, one by one, often by hand.
What the Nazis did was invent ways of killing people, en masse, that had never been seen before, industrializing it through means of production that previously had been used to create rather than murder.”
The professor paused, looking out at his audience of blue-eyed, blonde students. After a moment he ordered, “Discuss.”
“Then why are you trying to find him?” From Simon, the question didn’t come out as judgmental, but admonitory. His expression suggested he could smell the trouble I was getting myself into.
I thought about saying he owed someone money, which may or may not have been true, but it felt too much like a falsehood to share. I went with a stripped down version of the truth. “My boss wants me to find him.”
Simon set the picture back down with a humph. “That should be a job for the police.” He flicked ash from his cigar. “But they do not do that anymore.” I didn’t know if that was official policy or merely an informal practice, but Simon’s statement seemed to indicate some kind of actual experience in the matter. The French police were stretched thin with border control and terrorist watch, with more and more funds going to the gendarmerie every year for these things and little else. Adults searching for adults were told that others had “the right to disappear”.
I watched him smoke. Unable to resist the gravity of this small mystery I asked, “Someone you know vanish?”
Simon crossed one arm along his chest, holding the arm with the cigarillo up by the elbow. Despite the defensive position he frowned intimately and replied, “My son. A long time ago.”
“I didn’t know you were married.”
He chuckled a little then, seeming not able to believe it himself. “Once. Also a long time ago. She died when we were still young and happy.” Simon was no longer looking me in the eye, but staring at the mirror behind me again, wistful and waiting for a ghost. I wondered then if he had somehow sensed the same loss in me, or maybe me in him.
Blinking something out of my eye I decided I had just come for breakfast. In an attempt to move the subject towards what I wanted to talk about I asked, “Has the mobile rung?”
Simon turned his head, putting him into a profile of disinterest. He only shrugged, indicating that even if it had rung he hadn’t bothered to notice.
“May I see it?”
Simon shrugged again, his indifference almost appearing genuine. He got up, though, and walked across the tiled floor to behind the marble counter. A few seconds later he returned with the small flip phone and set it on the table. Opening it I noted it was still charged. If Simon didn’t care about the mobile, he was still kind enough to plug it in for me.
Going over the screen I quickly familiarized myself with its miniature landscape, little more than a digital display of the time and date. In the upper right corner were two icons, one a telephone handset, one like only the oldest hotels in town still had. The other an envelope, which with some fat thumbed navigation I found indicated a text message. It read: “Missed you. Ring back soon.” The ambiguity of the language impressed me – it could have been a message from anyone, a forgotten appointment or an absent lover.
Rather than use the mobile I took note of the phone number and closed the phone. Setting it back down, I thanked Simon, but didn’t explicitly ask him to take the mobile again. Instead I counted out what I owed him for breakfast. I wanted to tip him, but that wasn’t the custom here and he would likely take it as an insult. Instead I ordered something expensive off the menu, then told him I had changed my mind. I paid for it and left before he came back out of the kitchen.
As the light began to turn its way to evening, the flat gray square out in front of the church was filled with tourists and pigeons. Both the birds and the people gathered in small bunches, enjoying the rounded shade of trees or the square profile of the basilica. None of them paid me any mind as I walked through, just a local enjoying a walk once the afternoon rains had passed. The telephone booth was unoccupied, but the telephone in it functioned, which was a continual surprise. I thought about dialing the number from the mobile, but then thought better of it, wondering if Mitnick’s crew might be able to trace it here. While it wasn’t likely, that might compromise the dead drop. Instead I pretended to make a phone call while running my hand along the bottom side of the phone. My finger hit the crinkly edge of something that could have been wrapping paper but was the solid square of a post-it note. I pulled it up and out to read in thin letters of English:
