Страница 182 из 194
Well, the chef thought, why not tell the newspaperman? It couldn’t do any harm anymore to Jordache, who wasn’t going to be doing much drinking in waterfront cafes from now on. “It appears,” said the chef, “that he was a professional pugilist. He even fought in Paris. Once. In the main event. He was knocked out.”
“A fighter?” Hubbell’s interest was aroused once more. The sports section might run a couple of hundred words. If the man had fought a main event in Paris he must have had some sort of reputation. People would be curious about an American fighter being killed in France. He would telex into the office as much of the story as he could dig up here and tell it to get the background dope out of the morgue. They rewrote all of his stories in New York anyway. “Jordache?” Hubbell said. “I don’t remember any fighter by that name.”
“He fought under an assumed name,” the chef said, making a mental note for himself to look into that part of Jordache’s history. Professional boxing was a business that gangsters were always mixed up in. There might be a lead there—a promise broken, a deal gone sour. He should have thought of it sooner. “He fought under the name of Tommy Jordan.”
“Ah,” the newspaperman said. “That helps. Certainly. I remember some stories in the papers about him. That he was promising.”
“I know nothing about that,” the chef said. “Just the fight in Paris. I looked it up in I’Equipe. He was a great disappointment, l’Equipe said.” Now he wanted to call a promoter in Marseilles who had co
“His brother? He’s here?”
“The entire family,” the chef said. “They had been on a cruise together.”
“Would you happen to know the brother’s first name?”
“Rudolph. The family was originally German.”
Rudolph, Hubbell thought, remembering, Rudolph Jordache, that was the name in Life. “So,” he said, “he wasn’t the one who was married here?”
“No,” the chef said impatiently.
“And his wife is here, too?”
“Yes, and under the circumstances she, the sister-in-law, might be able to help you more than I can …”
“The sister-in-law?” Hubbell said, standing too. “The one in the bar?”
“Yes. I suggest you ask her,” the chef said. “If you find out anything that might assist me I would be grateful if you visited me again. Now, I’m afraid I …”
“Where can I find her?”
“She is at the Hôtel du Cap at present.” He had ordered Jean Jordache to remain in Antibes for the time being, and had taken her passport. He would need Jean Jordache for help in the case when he found Danovic. If he ever found him again. He had interviewed the woman, but she had been hysterical and drunk and he had gotten only a confused and disjointed story from her. And now the idiot of a doctor had put her under sedation. The doctor had said she was unstable, a confirmed alcoholic, and that he wouldn’t be responsible for her sanity if the chef kept after her with questions. “The others,” the chef said, “I believe can be found on the Clothilde in the harbor. Thank you for your interest, monsieur. I trust I haven’t wasted your time.” He put out his hand.
Hubbell said, “Merci bien, monsieur.” He had gotten all the information he was going to get, and left.
The chef sat down at his desk and picked up the phone to dial Marseilles.
The small white ship moved slowly in the afternoon sunlight across the Mediterranean swell. On the far-off coast, the buildings along the shore and back in the hills made a pink and white pattern against the green background of pine and olive and palm. Dwyer stood in the bow, the name of the ship, Clothilde, printed on his clean white jersey. He was a short, tight-muscled man and he had been crying. Because of his protruding long front teeth he had always been called Bu
You could say that again, Dwyer thought. Not his weather, nor mine either. We fooled ourselves. We came to the wrong place.
Alone in the pilothouse, dressed like Dwyer in chinos and white jersey, his hand on a spoke of the polished oak and brass wheel, stood Wesley Jordache, his eyes fixed on the point of land on which stood the citadel of Antibes. He was tall for his age, a lanky, powerful, rawboned boy, ta
“You’ve had your last fight,” his father had said.
Then the silence. And the rough man saying, “Did you hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir,” the man had said. “I’m your father.”
His father had laid down the rules for the wrong member of the family, the boy thought, his eyes on the citadel where, he had been told, Napoleon had been imprisoned one night on his return from Elba.
At the rail aft, dressed in incongruous black, stood the boy’s uncle, Rudolph Jordache, and his aunt, Gretchen Burke, brother and sister of the murdered man. City people, unaccustomed to the sea, accustomed to tragedy; stiff figures of death against the su
The woman was in her early forties, tall, slender and straight, her black hair blowing a little in the offshore breeze, framing a luminously pale face, the signs of age just omens now, hints of things to come. She had been beautiful as a girl and was beautiful in a different way now, her face stern, marked by sorrow and a troubled sensuality that was not temporary or fleeting but a permanent habit. Her eyes, squinting against the glare, were a deep blue that in some lights shaded down to violet. There was no damage of tears.
It had to happen, she thought. Of course. We should have known. He probably knew. Maybe not consciously, but known just the same. All that violence could not have a nonviolent end. True son of his father, the blond stranger in the family, alien to the dark brother and the dark girl, although all from the same bed.
« »
The man was slim, too, a well-cared-for, aristocratic Yankee slim-ness, inherited from no parent, acquired by an act of will, now accentuated by the neatly cut, almost ambassadorial dark American suit. He was younger by two years than his sister and looked younger than that, a false, gentle echo of youth in the face and bearing of a man whose speech and movements were always deliberate and considered, a man who had known great authority, had struggled all his life, had won and lost, had taken on responsibility in all situations, had come up from penury and want to amass a considerable fortune, who had been ruthless when necessary, cu