——

  Shimo parked the big Citroën in the village square and walked up the street, his exotic appearance and formal black suit attracting undisguised stares from a group of women chatting outside the épicerie. They stopped talking as they watched to see where he was going, and nodded to each other when he turned up the alley that led to Bennett’s house. Later, they would ask Georgette what business such a visitor had with her Englishman. Shimo paid them no attention. He was used to being stared at in that impolite, gaijin way.

  He knocked at the door. Bennett opened it, and the two men exchanged solemn inclinations of the head.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Bennett.”

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Shimo.”

  “Bonjour, bonjour.” Georgette appeared from the kitchen, eyes bright with curiosity under the peak of her cap. “Alors, un petit café?” She returned to the kitchen and turned off the radio, the better to eavesdrop. Bennett scratched his head, while Shimo looked at him impassively. To have Georgette as an unofficial member of the meeting, and subsequent reporter to her friends in the village, would give the proceedings the secrecy of a news broadcast. Going down to the café would be almost as bad. Bennett decided to change languages.

  “I seem to remember you speak English.”

  The faintest shadow of a smile. “Of course. I speak all the European languages.”

  Bennett grinned with relief. “We’ll speak English, then.” He nodded back toward the kitchen. “She can’t understand a word. Let’s sit over here.”

  “You may wish to make notes,” Shimo said. “And before we start, I must ask you to give me the letter you received from our mutual friend.”

  Bennett went to fetch a notepad and Poe’s letter, as Georgette came in with coffee, tried to engage Shimo in conversation, and retired in a huff when he thanked her in English.

  “There you are.” Bennett slid the blue envelope across the table. Shimo checked that the letter was inside before putting it in his pocket, lit a cigarette, and began to speak in a low monotone.

  “The address is the Residence Grimaldi, Avenue de Monte Carlo, just off the Place du Casino. The top two floors. The car is a dark-blue Mercedes 380 SL, with Monegasque plates. It was serviced last week. You’ll find it in the underground garage. There’s a spare place next to it for your car. Accounts have been opened at three restaurants—the Coupole, the Louis XV, and the Roger Vergé Café. Sign for your meals. When you receive the bills at the end of the month, call me with the amounts. Checks will be sent to you, which you will then mail from the Monaco post office. The same system with the phone and electricity bills, and with parking tickets. Be sure to get three or four of those a month. Are you clear so far?”

  Bennett looked up from his scribbling. “It doesn’t sound too arduous. Tell me, does anyone come into the apartment to clean?”

  Shimo stubbed out his cigarette. “The previous femme de ménage has been sent back to the Philippines. You will hire another one.” He made a slight motion of his head toward the kitchen. “Not her. Pay in cash.”

  “Ah,” said Bennett. “That’s the other thing I was going to ask you. I’m a little short at the moment. Bills to pay here …”

  Shimo held up his hand, and Bennett noticed for the first time the pronounced bulge of the knuckles of his index and second fingers, and the ridge of hardened skin that ran like a carapace down the side of his palm. So useful for breaking bricks, or necks. “Twenty thousand francs will be delivered to the apartment on the fifteenth of every month.” He took a plain brown envelope from his pocket. “Here is the first payment. The keys to the car and the apartment are also in there, and our friend’s signature. I will call you in Monaco at eight tomorrow night to make sure you’ve settled in without any problems.” He looked at his watch. “Any questions?”

  Bennett studied his notes for a moment, then shook his head. “No. It seems pretty straightforward.”

  Shimo stood up, and Bennett followed him to the door. The Japanese turned and bowed. “I wish you a pleasant stay in Monaco.” He managed to make it sound like an order.

  Coming back to the living room, Bennett found the inquisitor in the baseball cap, her feathers still ruffled, putting the coffee cups on a tray and looking with disapproval at the mashed remains of Shimo’s cigarette. “So,” she said. “A Japanese. No doubt you had business with him.”

  Bennett thought for a second. “As a matter of fact, Georgette, I’m thinking of buying a car. A Toyota. Very good cars, Toyotas. Very reliable.”

  “But not cheap.” Georgette cocked her head, waiting for further information.

  Bennett took a deep breath. “Absolutely. But I’ll be doing this job for the next few months, a lot of traveling. In fact, I’ve got to leave tomorrow.” He saw Georgette’s eyes narrow. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll see that you get your money.”

  “And who will take care of your clothes? Who will scrub and darn? Who will treat your shirts like babies? Eh?”

  “Don’t you worry about that, either. I’ll be staying in hotels.”

  Georgette blew an expressive gust of air through pursed lips. “Those barbarians. They use starch like jam. This I have been told.”

  ——

  That evening, while Bennett was preparing for his extended absence, Georgette went into the Café Crillon for her daily dose of pastis and gossip. Monsieur Papin, as usual, was recovering at the bar from an exhausting day of petty extortion and steaming open envelopes. Three of the village ladies had already told him about the foreigner who had paid a call on Bennett—most unusual, a Japonais in a suit—and he sidled up to stand beside Georgette, ready to gather intelligence.

  “Et alors, ma belle,” he whispered confidentially, as though he were proposing an assignation behind the café. “You had a visitation today?”

  Georgette, not wishing to admit she knew nothing of what had been discussed, and particularly not to Papin, whom she detested, took her time before giving him a knowing, sideways look. “None of your business. Certain things are private.” She took a deep swallow of pastis, and shuddered with pleasure as it went down.

  “The Japanese had a very important car. Une grosse Citroën. And a suit. He was obviously a serious man. A friend of Monsieur Bennett’s, perhaps?”

  “Papin, this I will tell you, and no more. Monsieur Bennett is leaving the village tomorrow, for certain reasons. I am not permitted to say what they are.”

  Papin nodded, and tapped the side of his nose. “He will want his letters forwarded.”

  “Yes,” said Georgette. “To me. Unopened, if possible.” She emptied her glass, banged it on the bar, and left the café in a mood of considerable satisfaction. That little salaud, trying to poke his nose in her affairs. Well, not exactly her affairs, but almost.

  5

  GEORGETTE had insisted on taking charge of Bennett’s packing, putting each shoe in a separate plastic bag, swathing his shirts in tissue paper, arranging socks and underwear and ties just so, all the while muttering about the brutal incompetence of commercial laundries and the ever-present danger of voracious moths in strange, and doubtless poorly cleaned, hotel closets. Bennett wished he could take her with him. She had never been farther from the village than Avignon, an hour’s drive away, and a duplex in Monaco would seem like a different world to her.

  “I’m going to miss you, Georgette.”

  “Pouf.”

  “No, really. But I’ll keep in touch. I’m sure I’ll get back from time to time.”

  Georgette sniffed, smoothed a final layer of tissue paper over a trio of sweaters folded shoulder-to-shoulder, and closed the scuffed leather suitcase with a grunt of satisfaction. “Voilà.”

  Bennett checked his jacket pockets, feeling the reassuring swell of cash. Keys. Passport, just in case. He was ready to go.

  “Well,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”

  “And if someone should ask for you? What shall I tell them?”

  “Say I’m traveling.” He picked up the suitcase. “I’ll send you a postcard. Lots of postcards.”

  Georgette abandoned any further attempts to pry information from Bennett, sniffed again, and patted him roughly on the arm. “Remember to change your socks.”

  ——

  Bennett kept his little car at a steady seventy-five on the autoroute, pulling over to let the BMWs and Mercedes hurtle past, with disdainful snorts from their exhaust pipes. Even this early in the season, cars with German and Swiss plates were plentiful, their drivers impatient to reach the sun after a long northern winter. A week, two weeks, and then they’d rush back, skins lightly toasted, to their Munich offices or their Geneva clinics, and start making plans to do it all over again in August. Bennett was beginning to appreciate the luxury of his own situation, and felt any misgivings about his decision to work for Poe melt away in the face of six months of paid sunshine. What had Poe called it? A harmless deception. The only one to suffer will be the taxman. It was a seductive argument, and to Bennett it was no worse a crime than many of the creative financial adjustments practiced every day by big corporations in the sacred cause of increased dividends and satisfied shareholders.

  He glanced at his watch as he passed the signs for Cannes and Antibes. Too late for lunch. Anyway, he was anxious to see his summer lodgings, to take in the rarefied air of the place that Brynford-Smith had always called, with a hint of envious resentment, Millionaires-sur-Mer, and to start living life according to Poe. He turned off the autoroute at Nice and took the road that curls along the coast, past Villefranche, Beaulieu, and Éze, remembering all the good times he had spent with various girls in various hotels in the days when the fitting end to a successful shoot in Paris had been a weekend on the Riviera. Scouting for locations, they’d called it, until the company accountant had put his foot down when Bennett tried to justify the purchase and consumption of a magnum of ’73 Margaux as refreshments for the crew.

  He came into Monaco, feeling suddenly shabby in his small and dusty car, turned right to take the road down to the port, and then stopped to get his bearings.

  Monaco is tiny. The entire principality would fit comfortably into New York’s Central Park, and so expansion and development over the years has been upward, with most of the twenty thousand or so residents living in scaled-down skyscrapers. The senior resident, being a prince and the current representative of the world’s oldest ruling family, has more spacious quarters—a palace, complete with a band, a palace guard, and a battery of antique cannons to repel any invaders prepared to drag themselves away from the gambling tables. Police are faultlessly dressed and numerous. Crime is something one reads about in the foreign press. It is a place where a man can be at peace with his money.

  Bennett drove slowly around the port, turned up the hill that lead to the casino, and found the ramp descending to the parking area beneath the Residence Grimaldi. He used his key to operate the security barrier, made his way cautiously past the protruding snout of a white Rolls-Royce, and pulled into the vacant space next to Poe’s Mercedes. It was all as Shimo had said it would be. He got out and eased his back, while he looked around what could have been an underground showroom for the better class of automobile. His Peugeot was by far the smallest and easily the dirtiest car to be seen. He wondered if they fined you in Monaco for being in possession of an unwashed vehicle.

  The elevator was carpeted and mirrored, and it took him up to the penthouse with a resigned hydraulic sigh, as if unused to carrying such an elderly and travel-worn suitcase. Bennett crossed a small hallway, and unlocked the door, blank except for the round black eye of a peephole.

  Poe was clearly a man who liked the grand view. Through the glass wall of the sitting room, beyond the terrace, with its tubs of geraniums and oleanders, Bennett could see the rippling shimmer of the Mediterranean in the afternoon sun. The room itself was cool and modern, glass and brushed steel and leather, impersonal except for a few books, a stack of CDs by the stereo, and a collection of framed, signed travel posters from the thirties, promoting the winter delights of Cannes and Monte Carlo. In the far corner, a spiral staircase led to the lower level, where Bennett found that the entire floor had been gutted to make one enormous master suite of bedroom, dressing room, and bathroom, a supremely selfish and comfortable arrangement. There was no provision for any overnight guest who wasn’t prepared to share Poe’s bed. Bennett put down his suitcase, opened the sliding doors, and stepped out onto a second, slightly smaller terrace, facing due east. A sunrise terrace. The air was soft, a good ten degrees warmer than in the Vaucluse, and as he looked down at the small sailboats tacking their way across the sheen of the bay, Bennett felt that his luck had changed. Summer here was not going to be a hardship.

  Unpacking could wait. There were errands to do, the Mercedes to be exercised, parking tickets to be gathered. He took the elevator down to the garage and spent a few minutes sitting in Poe’s car, adjusting the seat and mirrors, enjoying the scent of leather, the solid, bank vault sound of the door closing, the growling echo of the engine as he started her up. It was a different world from the baby Peugeot, and encouraged a different, more relaxed style of driving. A right-of-way seemed to come with the car, and Bennett noticed an unusual deference from other drivers. Or perhaps it was just that traffic squabbles, like crime, poverty, and income tax, were not permitted to disturb the orderly, agreeable rhythm of Monegasque life.

  Bennett made several stops—for wine, bread, coffee, milk, and a celebratory pair of Armani sunglasses—but failed to pick up a ticket. Was a Mercedes immune? He decided to test the forbearance of the police, and left the car beside the steps to the casino while he went across the road to the Café de Paris, stopping at the entrance to buy a copy of Gault Millau’s restaurant bible. He chose a table on the terrace and ordered a beer from a waiter who was still displaying the early-season smile that would turn into an overworked scowl by August.

  From his seat in the sun, Bennett enjoyed a view deluxe. To his left, the Rococo pile of the casino, once known to its less fortunate patrons as the cathedral of hell; to his right, the sculptures and meticulously clipped and watered casino gardens, a platoon of gardeners moving slowly through the palm trees in search of any weed foolish enough to try its luck in such exalted surroundings; directly opposite, the Hôtel de Paris, birthplace of the crêpe Suzette, and conveniently placed for any guests with an urge to invest in roulette and blackjack. Bennett watched the obsequious flurry at the hotel entrance as an extremely old man, accompanied by an extremely blond girl, emerged and frowned up at the sun before inching his way across to the casino, where willing hands massaged him up the steps and into the permanent twilight of the gaming rooms.

  The beer arrived, and with it a ticket informing Bennett that it would cost him thirty francs, exactly three times what Léon charged him in the café at Saint-Martin. But what the hell, Bennett thought. Tonight he’d be signing rather than paying, and he turned to the pages of his Gault Millau for inspiration. He studied the descriptions of the three restaurants that Poe had designated, and decided to start at the top, with the cooking of Alain Ducasse at Louis XV, one of the dozen restaurants in France to be given a rating of 19 out of 20, and almost certainly more expensive than anywhere he had eaten in years. He was glad he’d missed lunch.

  The thought of dinner reminded him of his homework—a little light forgery, the training of his hand in the peaks and swoops of the Poe signature. He tipped the waiter, received a nod in return, walked over to the Mercedes—to find, at last, a parking ticket. He slipped it into his pocket with the sense of a mission accomplished, and drove around the corner to his new home.

  The evening sun was still on the terrace, its residual glow gilding the walls of the living room. Bennett looked through Poe’s musical library, mostly opera—he wondered idly if his mother was anywhere to be heard in the chorus—and chose a selection of arias sung by Freni. Music to forge by, he thought. Did this constitute a crime, or did the permission of the signature’s owner excuse any wrongdoing? Well, it was academic. Here he was, and Poe he’d be. He settled on the couch in front of the coffee table with a pad of paper and the specimen signature, turning it upside down, as Poe had suggested, for the first few attempts. It reminded him of school punishments: write one hundred times I must not chatter in class. A prolix boy is an ignorant boy. Copying a mere four letters was easier, and within an hour, his version of J. Poe resembled the real thing closely enough to pass the scrutiny of a bored waiter.

  His eye was caught by one of the books on the table—a square black volume with a photograph of a rough, grimy hand holding a pockmarked black lump. The title, reversed out in white, read: La Truffe: The Mysteries of the Black Diamond. He flicked through it. There were photographs of dogs digging in the earth, of more grimy hands holding truffles, or wads of banknotes, of creased and weather-beaten faces. And at the beginning of a chapter headed “Truffle Swindles,” there were several sheets of paper covered with notes and figures in Poe’s bold black handwriting. Curious, Bennett took them out to read over dinner.

  His own knowledge of truffles was not altogether limited to the occasional extravagant meal. It was impossible to live in France for any length of time without becoming aware of the importance—indeed, reverence—with which these pungent fungi were regarded; they were the black, misshapen jewels in the crown of la France gastronomique. Their prices were reported in newspapers. Their quality, which varied from year to year, was discussed in bars and restaurants all over the country. Their superiority over the white Italian truffle was proclaimed by patriot gourmets from Lille to Carcassonne, and God help anyone who disagreed. In Anglo-Saxon countries, cleanliness is said to rank next to godliness; but the French give the stomach precedence over soap and water, and the truffle is an icon. In fact, it was not unknown for the village church at Saint-Martin to hold a truffle Mass in celebration of a particularly good season. In other words, truffles were very close to being sacred objects—with the added allure of being impossibly, riotously expensive. Or, with the right connections, free.