“In any event,” he went on, “our earliest clients happened to be Germans. And we were grateful to see them walk in the door, I can tell you. They were customers and they had money to spend; were we supposed to ask them if they’d been Nazis? And turn them away if they said yes? All right, maybe some of them had been, but that was neither here nor there. The war was over. Now that I think about it, I suppose that they might have taken it for granted that Marcel, with his background was, shall we say …”

  “Sympathetic to the cause,” I said.

  Lebrun swelled up, snorting. “Certainly not! I resent your implication.” He managed to look genuinely offended. “I can assure you that he has never implied such a thing, either by word or deed. Neither have I, I would like to point out.” He resettled himself in the chair, huffed a little, and continued.

  What they, these wealthy German customers (who might or might not have been Nazis) assumed, he explained, was that Marcel Vercier must have had a large network of contacts with collectors in the occupying forces. (“Collectors” was his word. I’d have picked another.) And having access to this network, he would naturally have a known and trusted dealer’s entrée to the loot they now wished to sell. (“Loot” is my word. What Lebrun said was “acquisitions.”) Further, with the situation being what it was—“the war and all”—these “collections” would surely be available through the Galeria Metropolitana at attractive prices.

  “That is what they assumed,” Lebrun said.

  “And were they correct?”

  He let a beat go by before answering. “In large measure, yes, but mostly after the fact, what you might call a self-fulfilling prophecy. You see, it wasn’t long before other German collectors, recent emigrés to Spain, desperately short of money but not short of objects of art—heard about us and came to us with collections of their own to sell. We accommodated them.”

  “At distress-sale prices,” I said, producing a narrowing of Lebrun’s eyes. I wasn’t trying to make an enemy of him on purpose, I just didn’t seem able to help myself.

  “This is a business, Mr. Simon,” he said coldly. “As in any other business, we try to pay as little as we can for what comes in and charge as much as we can for what we sell. That’s the oldest rule of business; if you don’t do it, you don’t survive. It’s simply a question of what the market will bear and not an ethical issue at all.”

  That, to put it gently, was a matter of opinion. Even with Vercier’s sympathies in regard to National Socialism aside, what the Galeria Metropolitana was obviously doing was knowingly, whole-heartedly profiting from loot plundered by the Nazis during the war. They were buying it from Gestapo officers, or Occupation bureaucrats, or others in that sleazy chain; individuals who now found themselves temporarily strapped for cash {“with the situation being what it was, and all”), and they were selling it to eager new buyers who didn’t much care about where it had come from or how it had been gotten and chose not to ask.

  If that didn’t involve ethical issues, tell me something that does. Lebrun might not be quite the piece of work Vercier had been, but he had to know what he was doing.

  “What happened to your face?” he asked abruptly.

  I managed not to touch my temple. “I fell.”

  “At your hotel?”

  “Let me ask you something,” I said. “Did you know that Vercier had been tried in absentia by a citizens’ tribunal in 1945? And sentenced to death?”

  Lebrun’s bushy eyebrows jumped. His jaws worked for a moment before he spoke. “I had no idea! To death?”

  He was goggling at me with his mouth open, like a catfish flopping away on a deck. No, I thought, I’d been wrong in thinking he might have known about it; this was news to him. Either that, or he was a hell of an actor.

  “How can you know such a thing?” he got out at last.

  “I’ve just come from Veaudry. I saw the tribunal records.”

  He shook his head. “To death,” he said again, wonderingly. “But all he did … that is to say, he only …” He blinked; his upper lip jerked. “They didn’t … did they try me as well?”

  “No. Well, not that I know of.”

  Not surprisingly, that wasn’t a good enough answer. “Are you positive?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “Because, you know, those people were so vicious, so filled with spite, they might do anything, they might even …” His mouth stayed open for a moment as an idea took hold. Then he leveled a quivering finger at me. “I told you! It was they who killed Marcel, don’t you see? They hunted him down like an animal and slaughtered him. My God!” And then, softly, sardonically, to himself. “So, his precious film didn’t protect him after all.”

  More likely it was his precious film that had gotten him killed; him and Armand Chastenet, and—almost—me. But what would have been the point of getting into that with Lebrun? No, it was time to gird my loins, so to speak, and do what I’d come to do: to ask him the question I didn’t want to hear the answer to.

  “Mr. Lebrun, that’s not what I came back to Barcelona to talk to you about.” I breathed slowly in and out to get rid of the tremor in my voice. “I’d like to know about the relationship that existed between you and Lily.”

  I expected the question to bring on another of his ready flare-ups, but it didn’t. He was calmer than I was. “Relationship, what relationship?” I already told you; I haven’t seen her in twenty years. More than twenty years.”

  “That’s what I’m referring to; the relationship that existed twenty years ago.” He looked at the ceiling. “What is he talking about? Half the time I don’t know what this man is saying.”

  “Mr. Lebrun,” I said, “I was told in Veaudry that you and Lily had once been … close.” I held my breath.

  “Were you now?” he said, and actually smiled. “And who were you talking to?”

  It was true then. I’d hoped against hope that it wasn’t. And I’d told myself that it didn’t matter if it did. I think I’d almost come around to believing myself too, but now I felt all hollowed out, emptied like an old potato sack. To think of Lily, fresh and innocent, living with this turd, even if he didn’t look like an overstuffed owl at the time … I didn’t answer him; I’m not sure I could have. I just shook my head and waited.

  “All right, then,” he said, lowering his head and looking me straight in the eye from under those eyebrows. “She lived with me for a while in 1944—five or six weeks, I think. I’m surprised she never told you. Why do you suppose she kept it from you?”

  I stared woodenly out the grimy window, not wanting to look at him. “Look, Mr. Lebrun, I don’t really care what went on then. All I’m interested in is where she is now.”

  “Do you mean you think she might have come to me? Ah, I see. That’s what you’re asking. Well, I live upstairs. Would you like to come up there now and see if you can find her? Even if I can’t produce Lily I can offer you an apéritif.”

  I thought it was pretty unlikely that Lily would have run back to someone like Charles Lebrun, but then, who knew anything any more where Lily was concerned? But even if she had come to him, she certainly wasn’t in his apartment at this moment or he wouldn’t have invited me up. On the other hand, who was to say this wasn’t a calculated bluff on his part?

  Pretty doubtful stuff, but I didn’t see that I could afford to pass up even the most improbable lead. “Sure, I’d be glad to have an apéritif with you.”

  He jumped up. “Very good. Come. Unfortunately, my wife is out this morning. She would have been delighted to meet you, I know. She was very fond of Lily.”

  That stopped me. “Your wife was fond of her?”

  “Of course she was. Being a woman, and having no employment to take her away from home, she naturally got to know her better than I did while Lily was with us.”

  With us? “Wait a minute. You mean Lily stayed with you and your wife?”

  “Yes, of course, what else—” It was only then that he caught the drift of my thoughts, and he climbed up on his high horse. The man had a remarkable ability to puff himself up like a blowfish. “Why, what did you suppose?”

  “I … I just …”

  “Her mother was on her deathbed. Marcel couldn’t care for her and also deal with a headstrong young girl; he came to us and asked us to take Lily in. Béatrice and I, we were glad to have her, a poor lost child. We did our best, we treated her like our own daughter. Even after Marcel ran for Spain, we kept her with us as long as we could. And you thought—really, sir!”

  His tone and his expression effectively combined outraged decency and withering contempt, but I supposed he was entitled to it, and in any case I didn’t mind a bit. I felt as if 200 pounds had just been lifted off my shoulders.

  “Mr. Lebrun, I …”

  “Besides,” he added icily, “she was five months pregnant at the time.”

  * * *

  Wham.

  All I could do was to weakly shake my head. Things were coming at me too fast to cope with; I couldn’t keep up. Considering that (according to Louis) I’d spent just about my whole life avoiding human complications I was sure making up in a hurry for lost time. Lily pregnant … at sixteen! It wasn’t so much the fact of the thing, although that was upsetting enough in itself to think about; it was more the idea that I could actually have gone all these years without knowing so important a thing about her, and that she could have gone all these years leaving me in the dark. I couldn’t help wondering how many more things she’d kept to herself. How many other surprises were out there just biding their time?

  “Pregnant by whom?” I asked when I was able to get out a near-complete sentence.

  He jerked his head irritably. “I didn’t want to tell you about this at all, it wasn’t my idea. Let’s talk about it upstairs, where we can’t be overheard,” he said with a glance at the door, on the other side of which sat the efficient Mrs. Aguilar, audibly typing. “I could use something to drink myself. Come.”

  I was getting more apprehensive by the second. Europeans aren’t like Americans that way. They don’t invite new acquaintances into their homes at the drop of a hat, so why did I rate it? What new shocker was I being buttered up for now?

  Lebrun’s apartment occupied the two floors above the gallery, the top floors of the building. To get there we took an elevator from the back of the showroom, a mahogany-paneled affair, much sturdier than the public cage-elevator below. As he was turning the key in his door, it was opened for us by a big, buxom, woman wearing jeweled harlequin glasses, impeccably groomed and quite formidable in a fashionable, belted woolen dress that emphasized her mighty bosom, with about a hundred cloth-covered buttons running down the front and a single strand of handsome, natural pearls at her throat.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded crossly of Lebrun, in a voice as fluty as a society lady’s in a Marx Brothers farce.

  He was so surprised he jumped back, almost treading on my instep. “Béatrice!” he cried in French. “Isn’t this your shopping day?”

  “Renée wasn’t feeling well, so we called it off. We’ll go tomorrow. Everything’s a mess in here. I have the maids polishing the furniture; I expected you to be downstairs all morning. Now I find out you’re going to be barging in and out. It won’t do.” She was more or less blocking the doorway, a figure to be reckoned with.

  “Who’s barging in and out?” said the aggrieved Lebrun. “ I merely—”

  But I couldn’t rein myself in any longer. Who cared where we talked? I just wanted to hear about Lily. “Look, Mr. Lebrun, if—”

  Mrs. Lebrun finally took notice of me standing out in the hallway. “And who is this, may I ask? Or do you not plan to introduce him?”

  Lebrun, looking as if he’d have infinitely preferred the second option, told her. Learning that I was Lily’s husband immediately transformed her rather hard expression to one of sympathy and produced a long, appraising look—the sort of look that would have been delivered through a lorgnette if we were in that Marx Brothers comedy—one that I’m pretty sure translated as: Well, well, what do you know, so this is the poor boob that Lily Vercier married.

  “I’m going to pour us some sherry,” Lebrun announced to end the uncomfortable silence.

  “Go and sit down,” she ordered him. “Use the living room, not the parlor. I’ll be in to join you with the drinks.”

  “You don’t have to—” Lebrun began, but she was already heading toward a sideboard at the end of the corridor. Grumbling, Lebrun motioned me to follow him.

  The Lebrun living room was a largish, high-ceilinged space with draped windows, dark mahogany furniture covered in floral chintz that matched the curtains, and an overabundance of throw pillows. Some dried flowers, a big mirror over the sofa and a few old tinted photographs on the walls. No antiques. Mrs. Lebrun was the interior decorator around here, I thought, and not her husband, an impression he confirmed by snatching up a couple of fat pillows from a corner of the sofa and tossing them onto the floor with an irritated grunt as he sat down. He indicated the other end of the sofa for me, but it seemed awkward to be looking at him sideways, so instead I took an armchair across from him, shifting the three pillows on it to make a little room.

  “Go ahead and throw the damn things on the floor,” Lebrun said.

  “It’s fine the way it is.”

  “Suit yourself. My wife will be right in with the sherry.”

  I didn’t care about the sherry, and I didn’t give a damn about the pillows, I wanted only to hear what he had to tell me. “Look, Mr. –”

  “Will you be going back home from here, Mr. Simon?”

  “Probably. I want to ask you—”

  “If you have any trouble arranging tickets, ask Mrs. Aguilar to help you. She’s excellent with the airlines; knows the schedules by heart.”

  “Thank you. Look, I really need—”

  But I didn’t make it that time either. Mrs. Lebrun appeared with a tray. She set down a sherry glass on the coffee table in front of me, a second one next to a nearby armchair for herself, and a green bottle of mineral water and a glass before Lebrun. From a cut glass decanter she poured the two sherries.

  Lebrun gave her a black look. “I wanted sherry too. I distinctly—”

  “You’ll drink mineral water,” she said nonchalantly. “I don’t want to go through another one of your attacks.”

  “I think I should be the one—” But he quailed before he’d finished the sentence. He had noted that his wife, slit-eyed, was staring hard at the pillows he’d scattered on the floor. He knew he would be paying for it later on and apparently thought he was better off not making things worse.

  Mumble-mumble, he finished.

  Mrs. Lebrun hadn’t sat down yet. She just stood there, feet apart, evaluating me through those harlequin glasses. “Lily Vercier’s husband, eh? And how is our Lily these days? Does she ever talk about us? About me?”

  At last, we were going to get to Lily. “Well, the truth is, I don’t know where she is, Mrs. Lebrun.” I didn’t see any reason to keep this to myself. Lebrun would tell her soon enough anyway, if he hadn’t already. “In fact the reason I’m here is that I’m trying to—”

  But Lebrun cut me off, tossing a warning glance at his wife. “Béatrice, Mr. Simon, doesn’t know about what happened in … the old days. I was about to explain.”

  “Aaah,” she said; a knowing sigh. This unexpected show of sympathy, while not exactly overwhelming, was so unsuited to her snooty demeanor that it shook me up even more than I already was. I took a gulp of the sherry, hoping to fortify myself against whatever it was that I was on the verge of learning.

  Relatively speaking, how bad could it be? I’d already found out that her father had been a big-time collaborator, that she’d been pregnant at sixteen, that for seventeen years she’d steadily, convincingly lied to me about things big and small. keeping me out of the most important parts of her early life.

  “Show him the picture,” she said. “That’s the best way.”

  Lebrun shook his head so hard his cheeks wobbled. “No, I think not, Béatrice.”

  “What picture?” I asked with my heart thumping in my ears.

  “There’s no need—” Lebrun began.

  “If you won’t, I will,” she snapped. “He has a right.”

  Lebrun hung his head and said no more.

  I felt cold sweat pop out on my forehead. Oh, Lord, what was coming now?

  Mrs. Lebrun opened a wall cabinet and rummaged out of sight for a moment, then returned with a thin, tabloid-sized newspaper. Lebrun, having apparently surrendered to her dominant force of personality, watched, sunk in edgy silence.

  “It’s the best way,” she told him again, putting the paper down in front of me with the front page up. It was a newspaper, all right, a yellowed, old one, Les Dépêches according to the masthead, and dated September 20, 1944. I looked up at her. “What… ?”

  She gestured with her rounded chin at the black-and-white photograph that took up half the page. There was a brief caption in French beneath it: “À Veaudry, la justice est servie.” In Veaudry, justice is served.

  The photograph showed a crowd scene in the square in front of the town hall, which was battered from bombs or shells, but still recognizable. Most of the people in it were men, some drawn-up and magisterial, others jeering at—and in some cases blatantly ogling—three dazed-looking, half-naked women huddled together in their midst. The photographer had arranged the participants so that the men were posed well to either side and there was a clear field of view to the women, who had been made to face the camera. The one on the left, only a teenager, had apparently resisted, so that the man nearest to her was pushing her chin up and around to make her comply. All three of them were bare to the waist, the bodices of their dresses having been pulled down around their hips. All were spattered with filth or blood, all had crudely shaven heads. The ones on either side had swastikas painted—no, tarred—between their breasts, and the one in the middle had a clumsily lettered sign hung around her neck. We whored with the Germans.