Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters Read online

  But oh no! He had erred, so now he felt the need to be humbler than humble, to sit there like some poor wretch who waits around until someone is kind enough to favour him with a fleeting glance.

  Maigret almost lost his temper because he sensed that this show of humility was another form of pride. The message seemed to be:

  ‘You see! I proved myself unworthy. You could have had me up before the disciplinary board, but you were kind to me. I acknowledge that and I’m putting myself in my rightful place, that of a poor devil who asks for charity.’

  So idiotic! It was pure Lognon, and it was probably this aspect of his character that made trying to help him such a disheartening exercise. He was even treating his cold as some sort of penance!

  He had gone home to get changed. His suit was just as drab as the one he had been wearing that morning, and his shoes were already sopping wet. As for overcoats, he must have only one of those in his wardrobe.

  If he had done his shopping in Paris, he had definitely taken buses, waiting for them on street corners in the pouring rain on purpose.

  ‘I don’t have a car to run around in! I can’t take taxis, I don’t want to either, because at the end of the month it’s beneath my dignity to argue with the cashier, who always seems to accuse people of cheating on their expenses. I don’t cheat on anything. I am an honest man, a scrupulous man.’

  Maigret called to him:

  ‘Do you want to talk to me?’

  ‘I’ve got plenty of time. Whenever you’ve got a moment.’

  ‘Go and wait for me in my office, then.’

  ‘I’ll wait here.’

  Fool! Lugubrious fool! Still, you couldn’t help pitying him. He was obviously very unhappy. He was worrying himself sick.

  Maigret left the commissioner’s office twenty minutes later, and Lognon hadn’t moved, hadn’t smoked. He had just stayed there, rooted to the spot in the waiting room, dripping like an umbrella.

  ‘Come in. Sit down.’

  ‘I thought I should probably bring you up to date with what I’ve found out. You didn’t give me any specific instructions at lunchtime, so I gathered that I should just do my best.’

  Still that display of excessive humility. Yet in Lognon’s case it was usually an excess of arrogance that made him so unbearable.

  ‘I went back to the Hôtel Wagram, where Bill Larner still hasn’t shown his face, and I got some information about him.’

  ‘So did I,’ Maigret almost said.

  But what was the point?

  ‘He’s had the same room for almost two years. I had a look. His luggage is still there. He seems only to have taken a briefcase with his papers, because I couldn’t find any letters or a passport in his drawers. His clothes come from the best tailors. He lives on a grand scale, tipping lavishly and regularly entertaining women, always the same kind, the kind you meet in nightclubs. According to the concierge, he only likes brunettes, on the small side but curvy.’

  Lognon very nearly blushed.

  ‘I asked if any male friends came to see him. Apparently not. He did, however, get a lot of telephone calls. No post. Ever. One of the receptionists thought that he often ate at a restaurant on Rue des Acacias, Chez Pozzo, which he saw him go into several times.’

  ‘Have you been to Chez Pozzo?’

  ‘Not yet. I thought you would prefer to go there yourself. I questioned the staff of the post office on Avenue Niel. That’s where Larner had his mail sent to a poste restante address. Mainly letters from the United States. He picked up his post yesterday morning. They haven’t seen him today, but there’s nothing for him.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Almost. I went to the Préfecture and at immigration I found his file because he regularly renewed his residents’ card. He was born in Omaha – I don’t know where that is, but it’s in America – and he is forty-five.’

  Lognon produced from his wallet one of those passport-size photographs of which foreigners have to submit multiple copies when they apply for their card. If the photo was to be believed, Bill Larner was a good-looking man with a knowing glint in his eye; a bon vivant, who was just starting to put on a little weight.

  ‘I haven’t found out anything else. I searched my apartment for fingerprints but they didn’t leave any. They used a master key to get in.’

  ‘Is your wife better?’

  ‘She had an attack soon after I got there. She is in bed.’

  Why couldn’t he say this in a more normal voice? He seemed to be apologizing for his wife’s health, as if it was his personal responsibility, and the whole world was blaming him for it.

  ‘I almost forgot. I stopped at the garage at Porte Maillot to show them the photo. It was definitely Larner who hired the car. When he paid the deposit, he took a wad of notes out of his trouser pocket. Apparently it was all thousand-franc notes. As the car was right there, I looked it over. They had cleaned it, but you could still see stains on the back seat which were probably bloodstains.’

  ‘No bullet holes?’

  ‘I didn’t find any.’

  He blew his nose the way some women who are having a hard time suddenly shed a tear or two as they’re talking.

  ‘What do you plan on doing now?’ Maigret asked, trying not to look at him.

  The sight of Lognon’s red nose and watery eyes was making Maigret’s eyelids sting, and he thought he was catching his cold. Still, he couldn’t help pitying him. In a matter of hours, the inspector had slogged from one end of Paris to the other in the cold rain. A few telephone calls would have achieved pretty much the same results, but what was the point of telling him? Didn’t he need to punish himself?

  ‘I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. I am grateful to you for letting me be a part of this investigation, because I have no right to be.’

  ‘Is your wife waiting for you to get back for dinner?’

  ‘She never waits for me. Even if she were waiting for me . . .’

  You felt like shouting: ‘Enough! Be a man, for heaven’s sake!’

  But instead, as if involuntarily, Maigret gave him a sort of present.

  ‘Listen, Lognon. It’s now six thirty. I am going to telephone my wife to say I’m not coming home, and you and I are going to have dinner together at Pozzo’s. Maybe we’ll find out something.’

  He went next door to brief Janvier, who was on duty, then put on his heavy overcoat, and within minutes they were waiting for a taxi on the corner of the embankment. It was still raining. Paris was like a train tunnel; the lights looked unnatural, people hugged the walls as if they were fleeing some mysterious threat.

  Maigret had a thought on the way and told the car to stop outside a bistro.

  ‘I need to make a call. We can have a quick aperitif.’

  ‘Do you need me?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I’d rather wait in the car. I get heartburn if I drink.’

  It was a little bar frequented mostly by taxi drivers, very hot, very smoky and with the telephone by the kitchen.

  ‘Immigration? Is that you, Robin? Evening, my friend. Do you mind seeing if the two names I’m about to tell you are in your records?’

  He spelled out Cinaglia and Cicero’s names.

  ‘I just need to know if they’ve been given residence permits.’

  No mention of them. The two men hadn’t been near the Préfecture, which suggested they weren’t planning on staying in Paris long.

  ‘Rue des Acacias.’

  It seemed as if today was his day to be in a generous mood. He brought Lognon up to date in the taxi.

  ‘The two dark-haired characters who went to Place Constantin-Pecqueur on Tuesday seem to be Charlie Cinaglia and Cicero. They are obviously partners of Larner. He got them the car, and it was Larner who went to your apartment the second time. Probably because they don’t speak French.’

  ‘I thought of that too.’

  ‘The first time they weren’t looking for papers but for someone, living or dead, the man t
hey’d thrown out on to the pavement in Rue Fléchier. That’s why they looked under the bed and in the cupboards. When they didn’t find anything, they wanted to know who you were and where they could find you, so they sent Larner, who searched the sideboard.’

  ‘They know I’m in the police now.’

  ‘That must bother them. The newspapers’ silence probably worries them too.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid they’ll leave Paris?’

  ‘To be on the safe side, I’ve alerted all the stations, airports and traffic police. I’ve circulated their descriptions, or rather, Janvier’s seeing to it as we speak.’

  Even in the shadowy taxi, he could make out Lognon’s faint smile.

  ‘And that’s why there’s all this talk of the great Maigret! Whereas a lowly inspector like me conducts his investigations by pounding the streets, the famous chief inspector only has to telephone Washington, give orders to a swarm of assistants and put the stations and gendarmeries on alert!’

  Good old Lognon! Maigret wanted to give him a slap on the knee and say, ‘Come on, no need to pretend!’

  Maybe deep down Lognon would have regretted forfeiting the title of Inspector Hard-Done-By. He needed to moan and groan, needed to feel he was the unluckiest man on earth.

  The taxi stopped in the narrow Rue des Acacias, opposite a restaurant with red-and-white-checked curtains at its window and door. As soon as he stepped inside, Maigret was hit by a blast of the New York he had got to know with Jimmy MacDonald. Pozzo’s didn’t look like a Parisian restaurant, but one of the sort you find in practically every street off Broadway. The lighting was very soft and took a while to get used to. At first you could barely make out anything, and faces hung blurrily in a kind of half-light.

  There was a row of high stools along the mahogany bar, and little American, Italian and French flags were dotted between the bottles on the shelves. A radio or gramophone was playing quietly. Nine or ten tables were laid with tablecloths in the same checks as the curtains, and the panelled walls were hung with photographs of boxers and showbusiness personalities – especially boxers – most of which were signed.

  At that time of day the room was almost empty. Two men were playing poker dice with the barman at the bar. A couple at the back were eating spaghetti under the dreamy gaze of a waiter who stood by the hatch leading to the kitchen.

  No one hurried forward to greet them. All eyes merely turned for a moment towards the strange pair that Maigret and the skinny, lugubrious Lognon made. There was a special sort of silence, as if someone had called out just as they were opening the door, ‘Look out! Cops!’

  Maigret thought about sitting at the bar, then chose the table closest to it after taking off his coat and hat. There was a delicious smell of spicy food, with a strong tinge of garlic. The dice started rolling on the bar again, but the barman continued observing his new customers with a wryly amused expression.

  The waiter wordlessly handed them a menu.

  ‘Do you like spaghetti, Lognon?’

  ‘I’ll have whatever you’re having.’

  ‘Well then, two spaghettis to start.’

  ‘To drink?’

  ‘A bottle of chianti.’

  He let his gaze wander over the photographs, then stood up and went over to examine one more closely. It must have been taken quite a while ago. It was of a stocky young boxer and signed, with a dedication to Pozzo: Charlie Cinaglia.

  The man at the bar still hadn’t taken his eyes off him. Without stopping playing, he called out from a distance:

  ‘Interested in boxing, eh?’

  Maigret replied:

  ‘Maybe in certain boxers. Are you Pozzo?’

  ‘I suppose you’re Maigret?’

  It was a mild, easy-going exchange, like two tennis players knocking up before a match.

  When the waiter put the bottle of chianti on the table, Pozzo continued:

  ‘I thought you only drank beer.’

  He was small and bald, apart from a few strands of very dark hair combed over the top of his skull. He had big, round eyes, a nose as bulbous as Lognon’s and a wide, rubbery clown’s mouth. He spoke Italian to the two men sitting across the bar from him. They were both dressed with extremely studied elegance; no doubt Maigret would have found their names in his files. The younger one clearly took drugs.

  ‘Help yourself, Lognon.’

  ‘After you, sir.’

  Perhaps Lognon had really never had spaghetti. Or was he doing it on purpose? He dutifully imitated Maigret’s every move, like a guest straining with all his might to please his host.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘It’s not bad at all.’

  ‘Do you want me to order something else?’

  ‘Not on your life! I’m sure this is very good for you.’

  The spaghetti kept slipping off his fork, and the young woman eating at the back of the restaurant couldn’t help bursting out laughing. At the bar the game of poker dice came to an end. The two customers shook hands with Pozzo, glanced at Maigret, then strolled slowly to the exit, as if they wanted to show that they had nothing to fear, nothing on their consciences.

  ‘Pozzo!’

  ‘Yes, inspector . . .’

  The Italian was even smaller than he looked behind his bar. His legs were especially short, which was emphasized by the pair of very baggy trousers he was wearing.

  He walked over to the policemen’s table wearing a fake smile, with a white napkin over his arm.

  ‘So, you like Italian food, do you?’

  Rather than answer, Maigret glanced at the photograph of the boxer.

  ‘Has it been long since you’ve seen Charlie?’

  ‘You know Charlie? So you’ve been to America, then?’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Me? I lived there for twenty years.’

  ‘In St Louis?’

  ‘In Chicago, St Louis, Brooklyn.’

  ‘When did Charlie come in with Bill Larner?’

  Maigret was increasingly reminded of his stay in the United States. He sensed Lognon was listening to their conversation with amazement.

  It was true, it wasn’t going the way such things normally did in France. Pozzo wasn’t behaving the way owners of shady restaurants usually do when they are questioned by the police.

  Instead he was standing over them, affable, relaxed, an ironic glint in his big eyes. Pouting comically, he scratched his head.

  ‘So you know Bill too! Sweet Bill, eh? A very likeable guy.’

  ‘He’s a good customer of yours, isn’t he?’

  ‘Would you say?’

  He sat down unapologetically at their table.

  ‘A glass, Angelino.’

  He poured himself some chianti.

  ‘Don’t worry. The bottle’s on me. Dinner too. It’s not every day that I have the honour of playing host to Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’

  ‘Are you enjoying yourself, Pozzo?’

  ‘I always enjoy myself. Not like your friend. Has he lost his wife?’

  He studied Lognon with an air of mock commiseration.

  ‘Angelino! Bring these gentlemen scaloppine alla Fiorentina. Tell Giovanni to prepare them as he would for me. Do you like escalopes done the Florentine way, inspector?’

  ‘I met Charlie Cinaglia three days ago.’

  ‘Did you just fly in from New York?’

  ‘Charlie was in Paris.’

  ‘Really? You see what these people are like. Ten years ago, it was good old Pozzo this, good old Pozzo that. I think he even called me Papa Pozzo. Now he’s in Paris and he doesn’t even come and see me!’

  ‘Same with Bill Larner? And Tony Cicero?’

  ‘What was that last name you said?’

  He wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he was putting on an act. Quite the opposite. He was playing it up on purpose, more and more like a clown performing his routine. But when you looked at him closely, you noticed that, for all his face-pulling and wisecracking, his eyes r
emained hard and watchful.

  ‘It’s funny. I knew a lot of Tonys but I don’t remember a Cicero.’

  ‘From St Louis.’

  ‘You went to St Louis? That’s where I became an American citizen. Which I am, by the way.’

  ‘But you’re living in France now. And the French government could very easily revoke your licence.’

  ‘What for? Doesn’t my place comply with hygiene regulations? Ask at the local police station. We never get any fights. Never any soliciting either. In fact, the chief inspector, who I’m sure you know, is good enough to come and have dinner here with his wife from time to time. It’s not that busy now. Our clientele get here later. Let me know what you think of these scaloppine.’

  ‘Do you have a telephone?’

  ‘Of course. The booth is at the back, on the left, the door next to the bathrooms.’

  Maigret got up and ensconced himself in the booth. He dialled the number of the Police Judiciaire, spoke almost under his breath.

  ‘Janvier? I’m at Chez Pozzo, the restaurant on Rue des Acacias. Tell surveillance to put a tap on this line all evening. You’ve got time. It won’t be for half an hour. Tell them to make a note of all the conversations, especially if any of the three following names are mentioned.’

  He spelled out Cinaglia, Cicero and Bill Larner’s names.

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘No. We’re going through Hotel Agency files.’

  When he went back into the room, he found Pozzo trying unsuccessfully to get a smile out of Lognon.

  ‘So you didn’t come and see me for my cooking?’

  ‘Listen, Pozzo. Charlie and Cicero have been in Paris for a fortnight, you know that as well as I do. They probably met Larner here.’

  ‘I don’t know Cicero but, as far as Charlie is concerned, he must have changed a lot because I didn’t recognize him.’

  ‘That’ll do! For certain reasons I want to have a private conversation with these gentlemen.’

  ‘All three of them?’

  ‘It’s a serious business, a murder.’