Louis Shalako

A Little Chunk of History.

Thank you for reading.

A Little Chunk of History. Louis Shalako.

2026-09-17T15:48:31.789-04:00

A rendering of an archaic longhouse.

Louis Shalako

If I should ever fail as a writer, I shall surely go back to my first love, which was archaeology.

(Which is kind of sad when you think about it, but that would be a story for another day.)

I blame the Bookmobile of elementary school days, and Louis Leakey and the Olduvai Gorge; which I read all about as a very small boy…the Bookmobile was a trailer, dropped off in front of our school, regular as clockwork, every Thursday morning, about nine a.m., rain or shine. More importantly, the teachers encouraged us to go out there and have a look, two or three at a time, and if nothing else, it got us out of class and out of the building for a while.

It’s just a little promise that I make to myself sometimes, and the funny thing is, it’s not such a bad idea. I might even look good in the archaeologist’s hat, but I do promise to shave, trim the hair and the eyebrows once in a while, and the odds of good old Tony Robinson, (a.k.a. Baldric), and the Time Team following me around anytime soon would appear to be rather slim.

No, ladies and gentlemen, it’s just that my sister gave me this crazy old map, and I was a little startled to see that the bones of a mastodon had been discovered down by the river. Studying that map, I see that more mastodon bones were found near Brigden. It seems that when the glaciers melted around 12,300 years ago, they and other creatures were following along the Wyoming and Seaforth moraines. Primitive man arrived not too far behind, with their spears and their bows and those big brains, which we still enjoy today. I can find the Wyoming moraine. If you leave Wyoming, and head west on Churchill Line, you really can’t miss it: just north of Marthaville, the land climbs, there’s few small dips, and then, voila! You’re looking down from a height, and down below are the flatlands so familiar here in Sarnia-Lambton.

I was interested to learn, that there were ancient Algonkian earthworks in Corunna of all places. These are long since gone, or otherwise inaccessible due to being on private, or industrial land.

...some crazy old map...

Here’s the thing. At some point I was Googling key words and all of a sudden I’m reading a pdf of an archaeological dig in the Thedford area. I’m reading about an Iroquoian village from pre-Columbian times, in the Burley section of Pinery Provincial Park…I’m looking at drawings of arrowheads, and looking at photographs of pottery sherds, some of which had been reconstructed in order to demonstrate the shape of the original piece. I’m looking at site maps, I was looking at photographs of the famed Kettle Point chert, the dominant colour of which turned out to be a surprising shade of yellow, and which was traded all over the Great Lakes. It is, essentially, a kind of flint, and used for arrow points, spear heads, scrapers, and knife-blades.

I’ve actually seen that stuff on the beach, and never even gave it a thought.

The map at least claims, that the final resting place of the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh is on Walpole Island.

This site is typical of Iroquoian culture, it is in Middlesex.

That may be true, I simply don’t know, but this map is a gold mine of information. I won’t name them all, but at various times the Dawn Tramway and the Erie and Huron Railway operated in the south of the county. The Canadian Southern, the Michigan Central. There were half a dozen companies, most of them short-lived, all dating to that golden era of rail and steam.

When you consider the present population of Dawn-Euphemia is less than two thousand people, even the smallest of spur lines seems like a very ambitious project. Ah, but when the roads were muddy tracks through the bush, this was the way the milk, butter and eggs, all those bushels of corn and wheat, got to market.

The other thing was settlement—if you want people to take up and clear the land, build homes, schools and the like, you’re going to have to produce some kind of surplus, and get those products to market. The big economic lesson here is that it was a cash-poor, and credit-poor society. Turnaround from investment in seed to selling a crop was a yearly cycle. The margins must have been very tight. What they did have was land—just land, their own, back-breaking labour, and some kind of a dream, I guess.

When they got around to building that first, one-room schoolhouse, it was a communal effort, where the majority of materials and labour were donated. All they had to do then, was to find the money to pay a teacher, and it would be eight grades, all under one roof.

Next time I go for a walk in the woods, I will definitely be keeping an eye out for mastodon tusks sticking out of the side of a creek, or arrowheads, or fossils, or a piece of chert. Some location, one that looks like the perfect campsite from times immemorial, or almost anything, really. If I find a chunk of history or something, that would be okay too.

Also—

Iroquoian pottery had rounded bottoms. It distributed the heat more evenly, and the pots could rest in soft earth or ashes, as all cooking was done over an open fire. In that sense, I am learning something new every day.

And that, as they say, is archaeology.

END

Chert, ladies and gentlemen.

Notes.

The Moore Museum is located at 94 Moore Line, Mooretown, Ontario.

The Lambton Heritage Museum is located at 10035 Museum Road, Grand Bend, Ontario.

The former Stones & Bones Museum has found a new home on the second floor of the Sarnia Library, 124 Christina St. South, Sarnia, Ontario. It’s a $3.5 million project, hopefully opening in 2028, and you can donate here.

Sources indicate the final resting place of Tecumseh has never been proven.

The earliest known use of archery dates back approximately 60,000 years as evidenced by artifacts recovered from Sidubu cave in South Africa.

Thank you for reading.

Spiders in Space. Louis Shalako.

2026-09-09T20:37:34.643-04:00

Louis Shalako

It all started off innocently enough, as such things often do, from a casual remark over a pint down at the old Cock & Bull.

Perhaps it was that third pint, but Harry had gotten this look on his face—Harry often had that look on his face, and this was one of those times.

“Spiders. Spiders writing Shakespeare—in space.”

“Hah. It will never go, old chap.” Hamble made a face. “It’s too obvious—too derivative.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

Hamble snorted.

“What are you going to do? Gobble down some radioactive psilocybin and write that up?” He shook his head. “Why not monkeys, anyways?”

They’d have a much better chance in his opinion.

“It’s just like you said. It’s a little too derivative.”

“Uh, huh. Why not. It’s a hundred-million dollar grant, after all. Or more.”

The competition would be fierce, and not all of them crackpots, either.

Hamble considered it further.

“All right. We have nothing to lose. Just promise that you will try and keep it short—”

In the end, they had agreed to go with the monkeys.

***

The American Association of Astronautics had been founded by a bunch of major tech-bros in order to do some third-party lobbying on behalf of an entire industry. This was understandable enough, considering their plan to put a gazillion satellites into orbit, not to mention colonizing Mars and eventually, at least to hear them tell it, the very stars; and maybe even Uranus. Their biggest problem in terms of public relations was the prospect of forty launches a day, from each of a hundred-odd sites all across the nation, and as often as not from ecologically-sensitive areas, and just a little too close to suburbia in some cases. The odd rocket blowing up on the pad, or worse, above people’s heads, was only a secondary consideration.

Some genius had suggested a competition, open to all comers—and in their own words, give us your idea, and we will put you into space.

The total pot was two-hundred-fifty billion dollars. Once a year, in what had become an annual media ritual. Literal pocket change, or pulled out from under the cushions of the couch, for what were some fairly major dudes...

The competition involved first, second and third place, with a series of consolation prizes of one hundred million each.

Harry grinned, hunched over the keyboard.

Using existing assets, he figured he could easily do it for a couple of hundred million, three, three and a half at the most.

A few work-from-home engineers and a post office box was all they really needed.

It wasn’t the technical feasibility which worried him—it was the rationale for such an experiment, especially as he was going up against all the best universities, as well as a hundred, a thousand other hopefuls, big defense corporations and even high-school science projects. These were always good for some feel-good publicity, and every year, it seemed an effort had been made to squeeze one or two of the latter into the launch schedule. Calling it pure science, for some future benefit of the human race, (or hetero sapiens, by a recent presidential decree), had been the best he could do, and no one expected the President of the United States to be all that good at Latin anyways. Or even anthropology—

It was all laid out, thirty-one pages, all nicely formatted and with a few artist’s impressions just to bring it to life.

It was all there.

He bit his lip, and hit send.

***

The International Space Station had its challenges these days, abandoned for some years in fact, but a team of professional astronauts had brought up the original cargoes, first the work-stations, then the feeding and watering apparatus, a few bales of straw for bedding, and then, finally, a half a dozen monkeys, who, in some sense, reflected the challenge of maintaining a number of unsophisticated hominids in Low Earth Orbit when the subjects had limited knowledge and zero understanding of the ethical implications of their existence.

They were, in a sense, colonists—

They would have to be fed and watered, and provided with heat and an atmosphere just like everybody else.

When it came to intellectual stimulation, all that really took was a few pictures of bananas on a screen.

The last flight had brought up Hamble, joining Harry through the hatch and after stowing his gear, they had spent a few hours bringing in priority consumables. After a quick breather, on a word from Harry, he was strapping his backside down for a thorough briefing.

Sooner or later, the ISS must come down, but in the meantime, the human complement were all volunteers and all operations were on their own personal waivers.

He took a good sniff and heaved a deep sigh.

Hamble could smell every person that had ever been up there, and that was just a fact—

“So. Tell me about the spiders.”

***

Those are some ugly spiders...

“I’ll get to the spiders in a minute. Suffice it to say, the monkeys haven’t gotten too far along, although they did come up with a pretty good little sonnet just the other day…it was quite romantic. Also, you’re going to be up here for a hundred and seventy days. Try not to masturbate too much; it saps your vitality.”

“Hah.” Hamble’s brow clouded.

His most recent conquest had been a pretty little blonde of indeterminate gender orientation, with corn silk hair that had, in the end, gotten caught up in his teeth.

“A hundred seventy days, cooped up with half a dozen monkeys…and how many spiders did you say?”

“Well, it’s not that bad. We have to keep our eyes on the goal, after all, which is whatever cash is left over after all of this. And then there’s our memoirs, late-night talk shows, obscure podcasts, merchandising, and the like.” He glanced at his notes. “…so. In order to avoid explosive decompression, the bananas had to have an atmosphere at sufficient pressure to be transported into orbit. This is how the original spiders, or a bunch of eggs maybe, got up here. They seem to be doing very well, once the first few generations hatched out, and it’s all very exciting…somehow they survived all physical checks and routine irradiation, stuff like that…” He’d been thinking about that irradiation, and the micro-gravity, and perhaps some unique genetic expression in a novel environment.

People thought that evolution took a hundred million years, the very same people who had added five or six inches of height and a hundred pounds of average body weight in a single century.

It wasn’t always like that—the Galapagos finches, for example.

The monkeys, born on Earth, had been thoroughly screened and no surprises there.

Hamble considered it.

“The PETL people are all over it.”

“The what?”

“People for the Ethical Treatment of Literature.”

“…ah.”

“…why can’t we just get AI to do it, that’s what they’re saying…”

“Because that would be too easy—and it wouldn’t get us a few hundred million for this bullshit either. It would also defeat the whole purpose of the experiment. Which is to get a few hundred million for this experiment, but enough said about that…”

“If it wasn’t for bad news, we wouldn’t have too much news at all.”

“Hmn. Speaking of bad news, in compartment eleven, there’s a big, fat marmot that likes to eat rocks. No idea where he came from…that being said, we’re not here for science, so much as to generate controversy.” This was the old Russian module, which had leaked like a sieve.

Repairs had been carried out with brushes and crazy glue, and it was said the crew had been high for days due to the fumes…

Hamble stared, mouth open.

“Ah—a what?”

“A big, fat marmot that likes to eat rocks. My current theory is that it was some kind of unofficial mascot from a previous mission. When they returned, of course they had no idea of what to do with it. Figured it would just die or whatever, but, by this time, it was such an influencer, a real internet sensation, that some folks founded a foundation, and decided to feed the thing as long as it lived…” It was just one more payload, at so many dollars a kilo. “His name is Peter and the kids just love him.”

“And where in the heck did the rocks come from?”

“Ah. Gifts from adoring fans, just raising awareness of the need to send rocks or something. Some little place in southern Illinois. Ineffectual do-gooders, if you can believe it.”

“Oh, Darwin.”

“We only did so much research, right, and this was one of those popular middle-school projects. Miss Hillman’s grade-seven class of 2034, somewhere in Illinois, all those bright and shiny little-kid faces. The judges went for that one like fruit-flies on a baby’s blanket.” In that sense, an unforeseen circumstance.

***

Harry consulted his notes again.

“Okay. One more thing.”

“What’s that?” As if that weren’t enough.

“The spiders have come up with something resembling a short passage of Nietzsche infused with subtle undertones of Kafka. And I mean new material, and not just some egghead rehash…in spite of all those legs, plus the mandibles, all them freaking eyes, spiders really don’t type all that much faster than monkeys. Also, the caps-lock appears to be stuck on. It may be a while before we get much more on that one…”

Argh.

He looked up.

“So. I guess it’s about time we had a look at those spiders.”

***

“Ah! Ah! Ah!”

Hamble recoiled from the small view-panel on the hatch. The common, yellow house spider, Cheiracanthium, hundreds of them, had grown impressively large, their abdomens now as big as a tomato…

“I did say it was interesting.”

“Ah! Ah! No…no.”

“Yes.” Harry uttered a long, deep sigh. “Come on, Buddy. They’re beautiful spiders. It’s only a hundred seventy days…we might even learn something from it.”

“I want to go home.” Oh, Mother, how he wanted to go home—

But those spiders were effing big.

Hamble had a thought. He turned to look at Harry.

“How in the hell are you feeding them things, anyways?”

“Oh. Very, very carefully.” With a twist of the crank of the hatch, and one good, quick shove, Hamble was in there and it was time to kill the microphone and the cameras for a while.

So far, so good.

And—

Tomorrow was another day.

END

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Coming Soon: The Dead Man's Touch, the Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery Series #11. Louis Shalako.

2026-07-09T17:19:33.024-04:00

Hedy Lamarry, as I recall.

Louis Shalako

Coming soon.

The Dead Man’s Touch is the eleventh in the Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery Series. Still recovering from a fractured skull and temporary amnesia stemming from the Dead Reckoning case, Inspector Gilles Maintenon accepts three cases from the hand of Roger Langeron, head of the Sûreté in Paris. Two are baffling enough, and one seems deceptively simple. This is just the beginning of a complex but ultimately successful investigation by the officers of the Special Homicide Unit, one where truth is mostly lies and there are plenty of surprises.

***

Long Cool One Books is pleased to announce that The Dead Man’s Touch, the eleventh in the Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery Series, will be digitally published in a very short time.

It will appear as an ebook across multiple platforms, and as an audiobook on Google Play.

In the meantime, here is the tenth in the series, Dead Reckoning, available for free from Google Play in audiobook form.

Louis Shalako is the founder of Long Cool One Books and the author of twenty-five novels, numerous novellas and short stories. Louis studied Radio, Television and Journalism Arts at Lambton College, later studying fine art. His stories have appeared in Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He has been published in Dutch, Estonian, German, Greek, Portuguese, Romanian and two dialects of Spanish.

Louis Shalako does not use artificial intelligence (AI) in the creation of his works.

Design by J. Thornton. A Long Cool One Book by Louis Shalako.

Thank you for reading.

#Louis

Where Eagles Dare: A Series of Plot Holes Flying in Close Formation.

END

Broadsword Calling Danny Boy: on Alistair MacLean. Louis Shalako.

2025-06-13T18:26:00.009-04:00

"Broadsword calling Danny Boy."

Louis Shalako

On Alistair MacLean.

I was just watching the 1979 film of Alistair MacLean’s Bear Island.

It has been said that the quality of his work was uneven. You could say that about any writer, if one compares the first thing they ever wrote against the last thing they ever wrote, along with some of the really great stuff when they were at their peak. Of course their work was variable, and so is mine and so is yours.

Author John Creasy wrote something like six hundred books, and there are a few in there, which I have read, where one wonders how it actually got published in the first place. Truth was, he was grinding them out relentlessly, at the dining room table, and trying to feed a family, when the going rate for a novel might have been a measly twenty-five pounds.

(How in the hell do you even do that? - ed.)

There is a big difference between six hundred books and twenty or thirty, that difference is the luxury of time.

I wanted to talk about Alistair MacLean due to the number of films that were adapted from his works.

First, a little background.

“In 1941, at the age of 19, MacLean was called up to fight in the Second World War with the Royal Navy, serving with the ranks of ordinary seaman, able seaman, and leading torpedo operator. He was first assigned to PS Bournemouth Queen, a converted excursion ship fitted for antiaircraft guns, on duty off the coasts of England and Scotland. Beginning in 1943, he served on HMS Royalist, a Dido-class light cruiser. There, he saw action in 1943 in the Atlantic theatre, on two Arctic convoys and escorting aircraft carrier groups in operations against Tirpitz, and other targets off the Norwegian coast. He took part in Convoy PQ 17 on Royalist. In 1944, Royalist and he served in the Mediterranean theatre, as part of the invasion of southern France and in helping to sink blockade runners off Crete and bombard Milos in the Aegean.” (Wiki)

Where Eagles Dare consistently ranks among the top five war adventure films of all times, and that’s pretty good company to be keeping for any writer. The Guns of Navarone is an acknowledged classic, one I have viewed many times. Force 10 from Navarone, another classic film.

Alistair at about twenty.

In terms of comparisons, River of Death is quite terrible, at least in the film version. And I have read the book, in fact I used to check for new titles at our local mall book shop, way back in the days when we had time, money, and plenty of hair on the old noggin…a leather jacket and a seventeen-hair mustache, if you really want to know.

Fear is the Key, this film has one of the best car chase scenes ever. What might have been described in the book is fully brought to life in this one. MacLean loved sending things over cliffs, for example vehicles in Where Eagles Dare and Guns of Navarone, as well as Bear Island. There are probably others, and this is one reason why they’re called action-adventure stories. Oh, yeah. In Breakheart Pass, a train goes over a cliff.

He wasn't exactly messing around, when it came time for things to go off of cliffs.

H.M.S. Ulysses, his first novel, was based on his wartime experience in the Royal Navy.

This accounts for some of the naval themes, arctic themes, for example Night without End. There are lots of ships in his novels, Golden Rendezvous for example.

The list of actors that have appeared in the films is impressive. Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, Vanessa Redgrave, Harrison Ford, Robert Shaw, Rock Hudson, Charles Bronson, Christopher Lee, Patrick McGoohan, Carl Weathers, Lloyd Bridges, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Hawkins, Robert Morley, Edward Fox, Franco Nero, the list, ladies and gentlemen, goes on and on and on. Barry Newman, Ben Kingsley, John Vernon. Richard Harris and Anne Turkel, Burgess Meredith and David Janssen, John Carradine.

Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasance and Michael Dudikoff in River of Death, just to name a few more. And I know I’ve left a few out—I had to, there’s just too many films and too many names.

Gregory Peck, David Niven, Richard Widmark, Ed Lauter, Ben Johnson, Charles Durning, Richard Crenna. Gia Scala and Irene Papas. As I said, this is a very long list.

Throw in a hundred more character actors, whose faces you might recognize, and whose names may be vaguely familiar, and you start to get the idea of just how successful Alistair MacLean actually was. Patrick Wymark and Michael Hordern, in Where Eagles Dare, for example, these actors each have very long lists of credits, starring and supporting roles, in film and theatre. Barbara Bach and Michael Byrne in Force 10 from Navarone is (or are), just one more example, then there were Mary Ure and Ingrid Pitt. Jill Ireland.

These are just a few of the ‘vapid females’ (essentially, Bond Girls), in what are called stories ‘of good Englishmen and bad Germans’. Which would appear to be an entire genre in itself, at least when a good writer gets hold of it.

It’s different for everybody of course, but when I read these books and saw the films for the first time, I was a young man, impressionable, an inveterate reader above all else. I soaked it all up like a sponge.

These are the stories that make a young man’s fancy turn towards writing a few stories of his own someday…

The books that kind of stick to your ribs, like soul food for the adventurous home-boy.

When I fantasize about my own humble bookshelves, which I do from time to time, (if only we had money!), this would be one box set I might be willing to pay money for—just for the purposes of study, scholarship, and maybe even stealing a few ideas here and there as a writer myself. Maybe even just learning a little something at the knee of a master. Or maybe it’s just some kind of an escape.

It always was, an escape.

There is nothing wrong with a little escapism, at the time we probably needed it, and there are times when we still do.

In which case, we will always have someplace to go.

I have written a critique of Where Eagles Dare, and you can read it at the link below. I describe it as ‘a series of plot holes flying in close formation’, and yet I still enjoy the film, just as much as I did the book, such a very long time ago.

MacLean figured out how to make it work for him, and perhaps that is the real lesson here. I have no idea of who the reader is, I have no idea if the lesson is relevant to you, although plenty of folks write, and plenty more dream about it just as I did. I can only hope you enjoyed reading this story.

No, ladies and gentlemen, it turns out the lesson was for me.

And why not.

I’ve always needed plenty of stimulation.

END

Plenty of stimulation.

Alistair MacLean. (Wiki)

When Eight Bells Toll.

The Golden Rendezvous.

Fear is the Key.

Night Without End.

Breakheart Pass.

Why I Love Louis L’Amour.

On Agatha Christie.

Louis Shalako has books and stories, ebooks and audiobooks, available from Google Play.

Thank you for reading. The blog is acting rather wonky today, and trying to get the text all in the same shade of black has defeated me.

#Louis

Why I Love Louis L'Amour. Louis Shalako.

2025-06-12T13:03:00.001-04:00

He loved the stories.

Louis Shalako

Why I Love Louis L’Amour.

I love Louis L’Amour books and stories. I like the highly-romanticized version of the American West, which is only half myth. Some of it might even be real. And a lot of the rest is bullshit—

We’ll talk about that some other time.

I suppose it’s the action, the adventure, the escape into a world where the moral questions are easy enough.

It’s good versus evil, no mistaking that.

One must assume the characters are engaging, the women beautiful, the villains are clearly the villains. The landscapes in the background speak for themselves.

Louis L’Amour is one of the few authors that can regularly bring a tear to my eye. This is when the male character arrives in town, immediately goes for the most beautiful girl in town, and often noting that he’s going to have to buy a cow—for the milk, right, like when they marry, settle down, and have lots and lots of children. That’s pure romance, and even men like a little romance once in a while.

This is the character with a bag of peach pits and cherry pits and apple seeds to plant when he gets his own spread…a hard worker, someone with a dream, a story to tell, and not afraid of a fight.

Coming from an interesting background, not without its hardships, L’Amour had one hell of a resume.

From Wikipedia:

“Louis Dearborn LaMoore was born in Jamestown, North Dakota, on March 22, 1908, the seventh child of Emily Dearborn and veterinarian, local politician, and farm equipment broker Louis Charles LaMoore (who had changed the French spelling of the name L'Amour). His mother had Irish ancestry, while his father was of French-Canadian descent. His father had arrived in Dakota Territory in 1882. Although the area around Jamestown was mostly farm land, cowboys and livestock often traveled through Jamestown on their way to or from ranches in Montana and the markets to the east. Louis played Cowboys and Indians in the family barn, which served as his father's veterinary hospital, and spent much of his free time at the local library, the Alfred E. Dickey Free Library, particularly reading the works of 19th-century British historical boys' author G. A. Henty. L'Amour once said, (Henty's works) enabled me to go into school with a great deal of knowledge that even my teachers didn't have about wars and politics.

After a series of bank failures devastated the economy of the upper Midwest, Dr. LaMoore and Emily took to the road. Removing Louis and his adopted brother John from school, they headed south in the winter of 1923. Over the next seven or eight years, they skinned cattle in west Texas, baled hay in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico, worked in the mines of Arizona, California and Nevada, and in the sawmills and lumber camps of the Pacific Northwest. It was in colorful places like these that Louis met a wide variety of people, upon whom he later modeled the characters in his novels, many of them actual Old West personalities who had survived into the 1920s and 1930s.

Making his way as a mine assessment worker, professional boxer, and merchant seaman, Louis traveled the country and the world, sometimes with his family, sometimes not. He visited all of the western states plus England, Japan, China, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, and Panama, finally moving with his parents to Choctaw, Oklahoma in the early 1930s. There, he changed his name to the original French spelling L'Amour and settled down to try to make something of himself as a writer.”

Something has been said about the Social Darwinism of some of his later books. It’s not unlikely he would be a conservative, a Republican. It went with the terrain. These were hardy, independent, self-reliant people who had overcome all odds, (those who didn’t die young), which is a recurrent theme of his stories after all. The fact that they’re not preachy or beat the reader over the head with it, is what helps to make them readable in the first place. I doubt if he had much sympathy for the truly criminal or the irresponsible or the just plain no-accounts.

Louis was not a lazy man and neither am I.

One of his more popular titles is the book and film entitled Shalako.

In a kind of tribute to a writer of what was, essentially, pulp, my name is Louis Shalako. If a name has any power, and I believe that it does, this is a great name and a wonderful homage to Louis L’Amour. Louis is of course French, and the Zuni Shalako is a celebration of the winter solstice, a time of rebirth, renewal, and consequently, great magic.

It is also a tribute to myself.

It’s very symbolic, but in a sense, I have remade myself. I wanted to make a few changes and so I did. All I ever really wanted to do, was to write pulp—genre fiction, ladies and gentlemen. I doubt if L’Amour set out to sell 200 million copies, that’s a ludicrous proposition. What he said, was that he would ‘try to make something of himself as a writer’. You have to admit, the gentleman was very successful. And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

It’s interesting that his father Anglicized the name but Louis changed it back.

L’Amour means love in French. This is pure deduction, but this is why the man changed it back. Louis loved the world he saw around him, the people, the places, and the times he lived in. He love the land and its history. It was his own form of tribute, far more so than LaMoore, if we think about it.

In that sense, he is a kind of inspiration to us all.

As a very wise man once said, love your customer.

And if you don't love something, you're going to hate everything, and that is no way to be, which is just plain miserable.

***

A bizarre anecdote. My uncle Ed ordered a sign to go out in front of the family business. When the sign arrived, it read E.S. Ambrose, Monuments. Authorized dealer for Rock of Ages. (A brand-name of the time, from a big quarry up in Quebec. He sold tombstones.) The correct spelling was Ambroise. About as French as you can get, right. But Sarnia was an English speaking town in Ontario. Ed being Ed, instead of boxing it up and sending it back, (at his own expense no doubt), he decided to live with it, although he’d probably still have the correct name on his driver’s license and stuff like that.

I'll need three tombstones...

END

Louis L'Amour. (Wiki)

A Lesson For Us All. Zach Neal.

The Zuni Shalako.

John Wayne as Reactionary.

Shalako. The film.

Louis Shalako has books and stories on Amazon.

Thank you for reading.

On Wartime Housing. Louis Shalako.

2025-06-01T05:31:00.011-04:00

730 square feet.

Louis Shalako

The new federal government of Canada is promoting home-building, and one aspect of the plan is pre-approved home designs.

There have been references to ‘war-time’ housing, which was built in large numbers and all across this country after WW II. Large numbers of service men and women were coming home from Europe and other theatres, and they needed two things. They needed housing, and they needed employment.

A large housing program served both needs, bearing in mind circumstances are different in the modern context. We have both a housing shortage, and a labour shortage. Funny thing is, there's no real shortage of money. Just look at the homes people are buying now, more importantly, look at the mega-homes that are being built.

By eliminating the basement, and putting the furnace, hot water tank, laundry tubs on the ground floor, you simply bump out the side of the kitchen and add a few more squares. You also save a big chunk of up-front money.

Young people could, in fact, afford a small starter home. The design, #50-13, seen above, stands at 730 sq. feet. My two-bedroom apartment is roughly equivalent. With pre-fabrication, the components relatively small, (for highway trucking), the longest elevation at 30', you could pump these out like so many hot rolls. You could sell these at $299,000.00, with the feds splitting the 10 % down payment, and a mortgage amortized over 25 years, at some rational rate. I’ll go three and a half percent compounded monthly.

All the interest has to do is to cover the costs of the program. Developers make their money by actually building the homes in a speedy and efficient manner. The faster you can build them, the better, and if you build it, they will come.

We have to start the conversation somewhere, after all.

All prospective owners would be subject to means testing. Essentially, are you poor enough to both need the program, but also, can you pay your own way insofar as you must—a very specific demographic group, largely consisting of what we might call ‘mature renters’, a group who might like to get out from under the stern eye of the landlord and maybe build a little wealth of their own, for, essentially, the exact same money.

The basic idea is that people could buy a house, on their own land, for $1,000.00 a month, of course on top of that would be municipal taxes, electricity, heat, water, and insurance and maintenance costs. The entire kit fits on a flatbed or inside a standard semi-trailer.

The kit might include all structural elements, and basic amenities like the furnace, hot water tank, bathtub, shower, fridge and stove, pipe for plumbing and rolls of wire and boxes of electrical components, bundles of shingles, stacks of drywall board, all of it packed into one or two long trailers. You can use the stock colours or upgrade at your own expense, however these are in no way ‘custom builds’. These buildings do not require marble floors and bronze countertops, and zirconium-encrusted platinum toilets a la the bourgeoisie.

We're building homes, not status symbols, or stroking the egos of the unrepentant hedonist.

Those people already have money, they already have their McMansions, if they have over-leveraged their credit portfolio, that is their problem and they can suffer the consequences of their own greed and ignorance, their lack of foresight. For all I care, let them rot or let them sell the his and hers Harleys to make next month's payment...but I digress.

Assuming services are on site to hook up to, the basic assembly is rather quick, finishing takes longer, and in some narratives, in the old 1 ½ story housing, the upstairs bedrooms might not have been finished, the basement, almost certainly not. Garages, privacy fences, decks and hot tubs can come later.

Actual plan from the era.

At any time, after the first five years, you could buy out the balance and own it free and clear. This allows for people to resell at a profit and pay off their debt to the Crown and the taxpayers. The initial covenant does not extend to the second buyer. They will pay something a little closer to a going rate.

After five years, the first owner has built up some minimal equity, been ‘forgiven’ the federal contribution to the down payment, and with a relatively stable housing market, the ‘going rate’ for a property of this nature probably has increased a nominal ten percent in value. Simply put, your new home value is at least, (and probably more than) $330,000.00. With payments, offset by interest, over five years, you probably have thirty grand, perhaps a little more of your own equity. If you sold right now, you have paid all monthly costs, but at least you get some if not all of your money back in terms of that $60,000.00 difference in home value.

(Thirty grand of your own and the increase in value combined. - ed.)

You ain’t going to get that in the rental market, are you—and now, perhaps, with a little in savings, with your personal circumstances now different, you might even go looking for something a little more up-market.

Okay, so the government and the taxpayers are not too interested in funding large-scale, tract housing with a bunch of ‘tiny homes’, eight by ten and with a hot-plate beside the door and a tiny chemical toilet in a box under the bed.

We are talking real homes, on perhaps a fairly narrow frontage, in order to maximize the impact of municipal services, including water, sewer, utilities like gas and power. I would suggest forty-five feet with no more than eighty or one hundred feet of depth. This allows for a one-car garage to be built at a later date, and a substantial yard with garden, play areas, etc. It’s a green space.

(The secondary or pass-on covenant, which is passed on to the next buyer, deals with issues like second dwellings, over-sized garages and other obnoxious uses. Human nature being what it is, this will have to be backed up by municipal zoning and ‘covenant’ enforcement bylaws. The financials are free market terms at this point. We would also like to see pure speculators kept out or penalized on subsequent sales. Call it 'capital gains' or something like that. Under the terms of this covenant, the owner must live in the dwelling. Buying one and then renting or leasing it out would be strictly prohibited.)

It is private property after five years. It is yours, free and clear, admittedly with a mortgage on it. In that sense, the right to private property and capitalistic concerns are acknowledged.

I don’t like concrete pads sitting right at grade level. I prefer a two-foot crawl space, this would be well insulated, but it also gives heating ducts and plumbing somewhere to go. It is not a living space and should not be treated as such.

What you want is a proper foundation below the frost line, a wooden deck with floor joists and the like. Construction is ‘stick-built’, but major components are done in a factory. With a floor plan of 30’ x 24’, that floor/deck is essentially three ‘panels’ of rectangular shape, each of which can fit on a semi-trailer. They’re all framed up, all you have to do is to drop them on the foundations and fasten them together. A note here. Some of the original designs were literally sitting on concrete blocks; which may, or may not have been set on footings below the frost line. However, in terms of the front wall or elevation, in terms of the factory-built model, the wall is all framed up, sheathed, insulated, electrical roughed in with coils of sufficient length sort of taped securely. Once the four walls are standing, trusses in place, plywood on the roof, windows and doors in, the wire can be pulled out, routed through the ceiling space to an electrical box in the utility area of the kitchen. Essentially, heat and plumbing are down and under, electrical goes up and over and back down, in my concept. A few bags of insulation for the ceilings, and voila! And it is time to move onto trimming and finishing out, perhaps carpet on plywood for the first few years, but it is a snug and viable home for those who qualify.

There is a new apartment building in town, and there are laundry facilities in each apartment. It’s a compact installation—each unit also has a separate meter for water and electricity, very much a trend in new apartment construction in this country. The rent is one thing, the monthly costs are another. In that sense, it is similar, and yet you own the end result.

To try and improve this design is to make it bigger, which seems fair enough. There would have to be a series of designs, all of them under $500,000.00, including a building lot and all service hookups. When you see the new builds in town here in Sarnia, Ontario, semi-detached and starting at $569,000.00, with a garage, a basement, a second floor, it shows what is possible using some imagination.

Another quick note, virtually none of these buildings are wheelchair or mobility accessible, which would require a single-floor design, with large doorways, ramps for access and much larger bathrooms, specially-designed kitchens for example.

Try putting one of these on its own lot and see what happens.

END

A Rational Plan forAffordable Housing.

Wartime Housing Report.

Approved Housing Designs for Ontario Region.

The Floor Plan of an Accessory Dwelling Unit.

What is an Accessible Home.

Here's one on a fair sized lot, $389,000.00

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Amazon.

See his works onArtPal.

Thank you for reading.

On The Green Berets, and John Wayne as Reactionary. Louis Shalako.

2025-05-08T10:29:00.021-04:00

Louis Shalako

Here’s a funny thing. John Wayne wasn’t acting. In the early days, he might have had to do some acting in order to become the role. Those were all westerns, and Mr. Wayne could ride a horse, he was from Texas. He enjoyed the outdoors, shooting, hunting and fishing for example.

(If you ever see me on a horse, you can assume I am not only acting, but way out of my depth.)

It wasn’t a great leap of the imagination, when it came time for him to get in front of the camera. The man didn’t even have to change his shirt or pull on a set of cowboy boots. He was already dressed for the role, when he came walking in that front door. Once who John Wayne was, or became what he believed himself to be, once all of that had been defined, all he had to do was keep on keeping on. After that, all he ever did was to play himself.

Writers were tasked with writing a film, (or screenplay), and that much is true. It is also true that almost anyone might have been cast in some of the roles. The actual premise went a little something like this: what would John Wayne do, when confronted with a given situation. What would John Wayne do if he was a senior officer in the Green Berets. There is no acting here. The political and social commentary is all John Wayne, ladies and gentlemen.

A sort of cultural anachronism, the rah-rah patriotism, the Battle Hymn of the Republic kind of film. I reckon everyone in this film was a Republican, even David Janssen.

A film so bad, it's taken me three days to watch it and I actually like crummy old war movies. The Green Berets is a reactionary movie in the fullest sense. John Wayne was trying to project, or to correct a narrative, this at a time when there were student protests, journalists were investigating, that 24-hour news cycle was just coming on, with film literally flown home for the evening broadcasts. (It took about 48 hours to get a film back to the U.S., priority jet flight.) Congressional and Senate committees were inquiring into the conduct of the war. There was bad news all around from Vietnam. You can bet the pollsters were all over it, and politicians listen to the pollsters, don't they. Even the Viet Cong are Republicans in this film.

It's interesting to see Batjac Productions stock actors regurgitated all through the film. Most of them appeared in many a western produced by Batjac. I'm recognizing face after face. It strikes me that your politics had better be correct or you would never work with Mr. Wayne. He simply wouldn’t have you, no matter how suitable or how good you were in a role. That is, in a word, reactionary.

Over the years, many people have blamed micromanagement from the White House for the U.S. defeat. They’ve had fifty years to figure it out, and yet they still haven’t. Some have blamed Communist infiltration, paid demonstrators, (sound familiar?), professional agitators poisoning the minds of students. Some have blamed the news media for the loss of the war. The news media do not have the power to deploy battalions and institute military plans. Some have blamed General Westmoreland for fighting WW II tactics and strategies in unsuitable terrain and social conditions. Some have blamed Robert MacNamara’s focus on body counts, and some have blamed the corruption and incompetence of South Vietnamese political and military leadership. (Also, a capitalist leadership. But we'll try and ignore that. - ed.) It is also true that a strategic bombing offensive isn't very effective against mud, hills and villages of straw huts, and when the major city and port of the enemy are off limits.

Very few acknowledge the fact that the war was unwinnable before the U.S. ever got involved.

The Japanese found that out. The French found that out at Dien Bien Phu. The Chinese have found out, both before, and since, that time period. The lessons were there, they were simply ignored. The lessons are still being ignored.

Ho Chi Minh, a key figure in Vietnamese history, attended the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference in Paris, hoping to seek recognition and support for Vietnamese independence from France. He used the platform to deliver an eight-point petition demanding equal rights and autonomy for Indochina. While he hoped to meet with President Woodrow Wilson, he was ultimately unsuccessful and did not secure the support he sought. (AI overview)

One of the more obvious lessons here. A motivated and ideologically-pure entity will prevail over a decadent and hedonistic entity by virtue of discipline and energy.

Communism was scary shit to the America of the time, and that still holds true today, even though true communism has never been successful. The idea of Marxist-Leninist communism is essentially dead. In that sense, it is the word that holds power and not the reality. This is why so many Americans foam at the mouth at the word socialism.

More from our AI overview:

However, at the time of the Versailles Conference, Hồ Chí Minh was committed to a socialist program. While the conference was ongoing, Nguyễn Ái Quốc was already delivering speeches on the prospects of Bolshevism in Asia and was attempting to persuade French socialists to join Lenin's Communist International.

That is also one of the lessons, and it is also why when reactionaries talk about socialism, they also point to places like Venezuela, China, North Korea. Which may have communist or socialist overtones, but are anything but benevolent to the common people.

They are authoritarian dictatorships, extractive, exploitative, and anything but benign. They are not only corrupt, from the top down in the usual fashion, but also incompetent. They are, in fact, the antithesis of socialism.

***

Nietzsche believed that a man's belief about himself is not a fixed entity, but rather a product of his own creation and interpretation of his existence. He argued that individuals must "become who they are" by cultivating their unique virtues and facing the challenges of life head-on. This process involves self-discovery, self-reflection, and a constant striving for self-mastery. (AI overview)

In a sense, John Wayne was self-invented. Whether we agree with his political or social views or not, that was one hell of an achievement, ladies and gentlemen. I'm in the process of doing something very much like that myself.

It's crazy enough, it might just work.

Others have done it before.

END

The Green Berets. A John Wayne film and more.

John Wayne.

Batjac Productions. (Wiki)

Battle Hymn of the Republic, sung, ironically enough, by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Louis Shalako has books and stories on Google Play.

See his works on Fine Art America.

Thank you for reading.

Zen, and the Manly Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. Louis Shalako.

2025-04-21T19:27:00.005-04:00

Borrowed image, for the purposes of training and other scholarly purposes.

Louis Shalako

Zen, and the Manly Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance.

It really does something for the male psyche to take something apart and put it back together again. And it works better than it did before.

There is the challenge of manual dexterity, there is the psychological component. It is a mental challenge as much as anything, a test of character.

And I do want to ride that bike. I could live without creaks and groans from the bottom end, and the chain skipping, right about when I need full power to get across a busy street.

Okay, so I had already disassembled the hub of the front wheel of the Trek 3700, 2.5” oversize frame mountain bike, cleaned everything, greased it with wheel bearing lubricant, and reassembled it.

#men

I had the rear wheel of the mountain bike on the table, the shaft and the bearings and the gears removed. With a dab of grease on the end of a small screwdriver, I had set eight out of nine 3/16" ball bearings into the race when the ninth went a little too far, now it's stuck in the middle of the hollow part of the wheel hub. The grease acts as a kind of glue, which has its advantages and its disadvantages. I had a hell of a time getting that out. I gave it up for a while, sat in the living room, and let the dull roar from the lower back simmer down. I’ve done this job before, in fact I have changed a bent shaft after dropping off a curb at a relatively low speed.

The front wheel has shocks, the rear wheel does not.

I might have been a little rough with it.

The problem was no clearance for that last ball, and yet I have counted those little steel balls several times. So, I used the tip of the screwdriver and shoved the balls in their race a bit to the left and a bit to the right. Having finally recovered aforesaid ball, I managed to get that one in. Now it's time to flip the wheel and try the other side, which is easier because it's just like both sides of the front wheel—no inset, deep in a hollow of the gear-set, where I can't see a damned thing. Nine balls in there, nicely set in nice, fresh wheel bearing lubricant, to use a technical term. Carefully sliding the gears on their shaft in from the right side, the tip of the threaded axle shaft came out the left side without disturbing the embedded balls on that side. Now, all I had to do was to screw in the left side cone and the bearings at least are complete. Tomorrow, I will put that back on the bike and install the front and rear brake pads. And I am at peace.

***

So. The front brakes were good—maybe even a little too good. The rear brakes were shit, which means you are depending on those front brakes. Ergo, I swapped the front pads for the rear pads and vice versa. There are some little adjustment screws on the cables, and I could mess with them as well.

I'm toying with the idea of pulling the main crank and cleaning that out. That one will take a good-sized cold chisel and a hammer, as I don’t have a gear puller. A little WD-40 soaking overnight might help, otherwise we might just leave that one for another day.

***

The black plastic gears described in the text are upper left. Then there are the two plates that hold them together.

This is the derailleur of my Trek mountain bike. I have pulled (19), which is a black plastic gear, with two flanged washers, and a stainless steel insert. I sprayed them with WD-40 and began cleaning, in fact scraping with a small screwdriver. This minor assembly is held in position by a hex-drive, countersunk machine bolt. Number 17 will be essentially the same, bear in mind that the chain went behind 19, it is 'in front' of 17. As far as the scraping went, there were something like fourteen years of dirt and grease on those gears, or, for about as long as have I owned this bike; or ever since I got into this three-floor walk-up in the central city. At some point I will drag the bike down three flights and give it a go in the real world. In the meantime, it's an interesting project. Not so much mechanical aptitude, but psychological attitude. It's a mental challenge. I do a little bit every day, watch Youtube tutorials when necessary, and the job will get done. In that sense, the story took a few days to write. First I had to get the hands dirty and figure this shit out…

#zen

So, if you think about it, 17 comes out using the same countersunk machine bolt or screw.

The metal pressed part, 18, will actually rotate out of the way in order to pull the gear.

Okay, I've pulled gear 17 and will proceed to clean that up and put it back in.

#bicycles

It's the upper gear in the derailleur.

***

I had to take it apart and put it together at least three or four times, and yet there is really only one way to get the chain through the derailleur. I even mentioned in a previous paragraph, the chain goes 'behind' the lower black plastic gear, and 'in front' of the upper gear. (It's not like I didn't know that.) I had the bike upside down, and of course the thing is spring loaded, you've got the chain off the front sprockets, and it's in the retracted position. I'm half bent over and my glasses are hanging off the nose. I have the little gear in one hand, the machine screw in the other hand, along with the hex key, and I was using my extreme manual dexterity, all five fingers and very large hands, just to align the front and back parts of the assembly, all the while squeezing the gear in and not losing the inside washer for the tenth time. You have to do all of this while pulling outwards and extending the derailleur…a third hand is what you need, in other words. Now all you got to do is get the screw through the hole...

The author's machine

So, I did the front wheel one day, the rear wheel the next. I did the bottom gear on the derailleur one day, and the upper gear the next.

I reckon before taking that down and trying it out, we’ll go over it in terms of lubricating the chain, anywhere there is a rotating part, a bearing, a bushing, anything that pivots. It cannot help but to be better than it was before.

One thing at a time, right.

END

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

See his works on ArtPal.

Here he is on Bluesky.

How to Silence Common Bike Noises.

How to Grease Your Bearings.

Thank you for reading.

Bogus Social Policy and the Price of Ignorance. Louis Shalako.

2025-03-30T09:38:00.007-04:00

iStock.

Louis Shalako

Bogus Social Policy and the Price of Ignorance.

I hate it when people ask me for spare change in front of a business, a store, a bank. I hate it even more, when all I want is a twenty dollar bill so I can go to work—and there are three fucking crackheads, all lined up in a row, using the little ledges under the ATMs in order to heat up their little rocks on tinfoil and sniffing that up their little plastic tubes.

I hate it even more, when one of the twitchier ones is up and active, and gets in behind me when I’m trying to use the machine…that one brings out my own natural aggression.

Bear in mind, every fucking one of them has a knife, a pellet pistol, a spring-loaded baton, brass knuckles…hopefully you get my point—and not one of theirs, right in the kidneys.

It’s so much better when they’re down on their blankets, muttering to God and themselves, invisible things that only they can see, and at least I can keep an eye on them.

Lately, the bank lobby is unlocked at 8:30 a.m. The bank itself opens at 9:30, (although not Sundays). At one time the lobby was open all night, and you could get cash 24-7. For a while, they were opening up at 6:00 a.m., but the homeless would congregate there as soon as the doors were unlocked. It gave them three and a half hours to warm up, or just get out of the rain. Now, there's a security guard there, at least in the morning hours.

The homeless numbers exploded due in large part to bogus Ontario social policy, which includes an appalling welfare regime, a lack of rent control, especially on units which become vacant in the older buildings, and punitive guidelines which means two persons on disability or welfare who cohabit an apartment must give up a good chunk of the so-called housing portion of their benefit. And of course, the rent is simply too high for one person to manage it on their own.

I have in fact been refused tenancy 'because you don't make enough income', even though I passed the credit check, and even though I'd been paying rent for years at another location. That rent wasn't too far off the $800.00/month in the new place. $800.00 per month sounds damned cheap these days, with housing costs having skyrocketed. My mistake was to tell them I was on ODSP—a typical case of someone thinking they're just being honest, and somehow cutting off their own nose. I should have just said I was self-employed; and semi-retired, uh, from a good factory job down in Chemical Valley. At the time, I was a little too young to claim to be a senior citizen. Just for the record, if someone can write a cheque for first and last month’s rent, and it doesn’t bounce, what in the hell is your problem, anyways? And if it does bounce, you are within your rights to refuse the application.

Even now, there are no plans in the Ontario government to raise the rates, even though the results of their policy are all too clear, neither is there any great rush to build affordable, geared-to-income units for our most vulnerable.

In the building where I live, the landlord began locking the outer lobby door at 7 p.m. in the evening, and unlocking again at 7 a.m. in the morning—this again requires more labour, whether one of their own employees or a private security guard. This was due to a small number of incidents of homeless people camping in the outer lobby overnight.

They do it for six months of the winter.

The Contradictions.

Imagine telling a landlord, ‘don’t worry, we’ll be going down to the Salvation Army once a month and applying for rent assistance’, or ‘don’t worry, we’ll be applying to the county, the province, the federal government for all related housing assistance programs’.

Landlord: So, you can’t pay the rent. And you still expect me to let you in…huh.

The bougies can never see the contradictions, funny thing is, they’re the ones that wrote them in the first place.

Homeless numbers were growing even before the pandemic. When something like one-third of the work force was sent home for months and months, naturally, some of them became homeless. CERB, the emergency benefit of $2,000.00/month, simply wasn't enough for some households to survive a long period of unemployment. My point is that at least some of our homeless must have been employed at some point in the past, to the extent that they could, effectively, pay the rent. And when a unit becomes vacant, in the absence of rent controls, the sky is the limit in terms of raising the rent. Also, with a million new Canadians coming in the door in a very short time, housing stocks were clearly going to be under strong pricing pressures. This is where both federal and provincial governments come in, in fact Quebec and Ontario were fighting over quota, in the sense that immigration brings investment, skills, even just warm bodies for relatively unskilled labour to a province or region.

These folks weren't immediately grabbing upscale housing. No, they were grabbing affordable housing...

As for the government(s).

They wanted to have their cake and eat it too. The price of that ignorance, was our most vulnerable going to the wall, ladies and gentlemen.

Here in the Sarnia area, a few new buildings have gone up. There is the Addison, on London Road, there are two new buildings at the old Sarnia General Hospital site, and two fairly large buildings on Venetian Blvd. in Point Edward. This is a municipality bounded on three sides by Sarnia. Then there are public housing projects on Maxwell Street and an indigenous one on Confederation Street. These are nearing completion and staff are combing through the (nine-year) waiting list in the case of the Maxwell St. project. Whether private or publicly-funded projects, these will only take so much steam out of our local housing bubble.

...what the bougies see in their heads when they talk about 'affordable' housing...

***

It doesn't exactly help when local realtors insist on continuing to blow hot air into that balloon, neither does it help when one considers what the bougies see in the privacy of their own heads when they talk about housing...

In one Parthian shot, I would ask Canadian journalists the following question. If, as is so often implied in stories about homelessness in Canada, the sole and only cause of homelessness and poverty is #mental_health_addictions, (all one word in their own minds), how is it that they can never seem to qualify for a disability pension, for example the Ontario Disability Support Program?

No, they're stuck on the street, where they are told they must save up first and last, on two or three hundred dollars total income per month, for an apartment they couldn't afford in the first place.

Or does that question seem impertinent.

Or maybe it's just one more contradiction.

END

Mark Carney makes Announcement on Housing. (CBC, Mar. 31/25)

Approvals are Nothing. Shovels in the Ground Are Everything.

In Depth: The New Landlord.

Tiny Homes for the Homeless. The Big Myth.

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Amazon.

See his works on ArtPal.

Thank you for reading.

Dead Reckoning, Chapter Thirty-Two. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #10. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-31T15:23:00.005-05:00

Louis Shalako

With the Beretta tucked into the back of his belt, hidden by the long shirt-tails, and keeping his left side turned to them in what must appear an odd move, he moved forward three or four metres. It kept them thinking. He kept those hands up, and that’s all they needed to see. He needed to get well clear of the door, and to divide their attention. The MAB, standard issue service pistol on his right hip, the flap pulled well up and over, and tucked in behind the belt, safety off, would be invisible…hopefully. He stopped, staring off into the woods, puffing contentedly on the cigar.

“Hello? Hello? Is there anybody out there—”

“All right asshole, we’re over here—what an idiot.”

“We’re not here for silly fucking mind-games.” Another voice, separate and distinct.

There were four or five of them, and then there was Capucine, still clutching her basket. Two men had her, firmly held by the upper arms, he could see that much out of his peripheral vision.

He stopped, and turned to his left to face them.

“Life is a game. There are no rules.” He took another left-handed puff and blew smoke in their direction.

They kind of froze when they saw that 7.65-millimetre MAB hanging there in a brown leather holster.

He spat the cigar out, off to one side.

“Fuck you, all of you, and all of the God-damned fucking horses you rode in on…”

“Fuck off, wise guy—I’ll shoot the girl right now if that’s what you want.”

“Hey. Monsieur Blue Eyes. How’s the fishing these days, or were you just trolling for queers.”

The man’s mouth dropped and his eyes bugged out at that one—but this was their friend from the riverbank, sure as hell…

Éliott stared at them, wordless, then engaging the eyes of Capucine. He winked, and the one holding her stared in amazement. His face was turning red. She gave him the slightest of nods and her eyes darted back and forth…thinking it through, measuring distances, calculating the odds here and there…her head cocked a little and she was right back on him.

There were the four toughs and a smaller man, older, in a sleek grey suit.

That would be the boss.

“Maintenon’s not here. Which one of you fucking cocksuckers is left-handed. I will trade you this old hermit that lives here—for that man. You can keep the girl, she don’t mean nothing to me.” He glared at them. “Yeah, I figure it was a left-handed piece of shit that hit that old man on the head, with a big fucking stinking rock that you picked up, right there on the trail. Cocksucker. Right by that log on the riverbank. I want that miserable, low-life piece of shit.”

Éliott made a couple of funny little signs. They knew she was deaf all right, and possibly didn’t see much harm in it—not understanding the significance of it all. Pissed-off as they were. It was like they just couldn’t take it seriously. They were after Maintenon—not him. First, he crossed his hands across his chest, and then put them out wide, just like the fucking Pope. The symbol for love. Then he held up the right hand, palm facing her, index finger pointing straight up. He stuck out his thumb, sideways, then he lifted the pinky finger…the letters I, L and Y. I-L-Y—I love you. He waggled the little finger, just so she got it.

“It’s okay. I’m just letting the girl know everything’s going to be all right—”

She stared, open mouthed as the scumbags looked on in sardonic amusement. They looked at each other, grinning, fools that they were. Tears popped out in those beautiful eyes, and she nodded.

Both hands up and in front again, he closed his fists and then spread his fingers—drop.

Just…drop. And just like all the others, her eyes were on that gun on his belt, and right back up again...

Capucine went limp, half-hauling the stupid bastard down with her, and, just at that exact same second the hermit stepped out of the doorway, shotgun leveled and cocked on the left side barrel. His finger was on the trigger and the thumb right there by the right-side hammer.

Éliott’s right hand, already dropping, slapped leather about the same time they all stopped, turned to gape, to think, and then try and decide what to do with their fucking guns, now that there were two targets, and with the girl kicking up trouble. What were they doing, waiting for instructions…too fucking late, Monsieur.

He shot the one half-standing over Capucine as she rolled and twirled her legs and brought him down anyways. It looked like he’d gotten that one right in the temple and he wasn’t getting up. The one almost directly behind them, his own vision and attention suddenly obscured and diverted, stepping back quickly and trying not to get entangled, flinched about the time the hermit’s shotgun boomed, hopefully taking the one on the farthest left. Éliott had already pulled the trigger on this one. Another hit, right in the guts. He went down, clutching his middle, eyes wide and horrified and staring straight into his own.

He was screaming bloody murder and good for him…

There were a couple of reflexive pistol shots, coming in their direction but they missed, spanking off the ground into whining richochets…

The shotgun boomed again, there was a lot of yelling and now the sound of dogs barking off in the distance. Éliott found the little man in a grey suit through all the smoke and carnage. It was the fog of war, and he lined up on a running target. He squeezed off shot after shot until the fucker went down, sliding along face down until he hit the base of a small tree. One more squeeze and she just clicked. He dropped the weapon and pulled the other one. There might have been a little twitch or two, but the man in the grey suit was definitely down.

Smirnov down after five shots in the back.

Capucine was up on her feet in an instant, eyes blazing at Éliott in one quick flash, and then she was gone, bounding away like a fucking rabbit.

Someone was yelling and fucking clapping…clapping? Dropping into a crouch, he spun to the right, both hands on the weapon. There were people in the woods.

“…don’t shoot! Éliott. Hold fire! Hold fire. It’s me! It’s Hubert! It’s Alphonse and there’s another officer…Constable Garnier.” They were up and crashing through the underbrush. “Hold fire! Hold your fire!”

The hermit, behind, was reloading, hands shaking all over the place in sheer excitement, or sure as shooting…he would have fired already. Two hot shell-casings lay, still smoking on the ground at his feet.

He was cussing and groaning something awful. A fresh shell dropped and he stooped to scrabble at it.

“Fuck.”

“Hold on, sir. They’re friends of mine.” But there were more people coming up the trail, and the dogs were much closer now…just around the next corner. “You okay with that thing?”

The hermit nodded grimly, snapping her shut and cocking one barrel…one at a time, that’s the way.

“Bring ‘em on, partner.”

And there they were, five or six of them, fucking big ugly dogs, straining at the leash and being rather strenuously held back by men in the blue uniforms of the police.

“Hold fire! Hold fire!”

That sure sounded good from where he was standing.

He heaved a big breath, and then another—

Thank God.

Now, the only question was what had happened to Capucine. She sure as hell wasn’t with these guys.

There were five bodies lying around in some state of disarray. They couldn’t all be dead, or so he thought, although the one guy had gone real quiet. His eyes were still open and he moaned and groaned, flat on his back. With a little luck, they might even have one or two left to talk. He put the gun up as the local cops arrived and the three Paris detectives waded through chest-high weeds and stumbled over rocks and berry-canes as they picked their way down the slope. He bent and picked up his own gun. Pulling the clip, he reloaded, also taking a quick look to make sure the tip of the barrel wasn’t clogged with good old topsoil.

Now, it was all over bar the shouting.

Maybe.

Hubert got there first.

“That was a beautiful thing to see—just beautiful.”

This was one report he would enjoy writing.

“Nice shooting, young man.” Alphonse patted him on the back. “You might want to go after that girl, Éliott.”

Éliott nodded, eyeing the new guy, but it was only to be expected. No one was irreplaceable, after all.

“Good morning, detective. I’m Garnier—” He took a good look around. “Nice work, incidentally.”

Éliott grunted in sheer relief.

“Thank you, thank you very much—”

“We’d better check these bodies. Secure those weapons.” Showing his identification, Garnier grabbed a shoulder and went off with one of the locals to do just that.

As for the hermit, he’d taken one look at the descending crowd and retreated back into his hidey-hole; with the door bolted and the curtains closed.

“If that wasn’t Gilles, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

“Here.” He handed off the hermit’s Beretta to Alphonse. “Want to make a bet? I’ll give you ten to one, that this weapon is registered to the Inspector.”

“Oh—oh.”

“…you might want to get these damned dogs out of here, or you’ll never get him out of there.”

Éliott could only give the barest of explanations, and then he was off, sprinting down that trail after Capucine.

***

érotisme et transgression

Well, she wasn’t at home. The place was locked up and clearly her mother and any other family members were out. It was like he knew virtually nothing about her. She might have locked herself in. He took a look behind the house, and there didn’t seem to be too many bicycles around. With no idea of whether she had friends or relatives nearby, he set off down the road to the village. Banging on doors and windows wasn’t going to do much good if she was still in there, yet he rather doubted it.

It was going to be a hot day after all—

He’d run out of steam but he could still walk. The ankles were still tender, even now.

He hadn’t gotten more than a few hundred metres down the road when a big black car pulled up alongside.

The passenger side window was open and Alphonse was alone in the car.

“Come on, boy, hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”

The vehicle stopped and Éliott climbed in.

“Not at home, eh?”

He shook his head.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“We’ll find her…somewhere.”

“Yes.”

“I doubt if she’ll go to the police station. They’re saying she blew right through them. One guy fell down trying to get out of the way. It’s a good thing he managed to hang onto the dog, or she’d still be running. Or maybe treed somewhere. She just jumped right over him and kept on going…” He looked over at Éliott. “I understand she has a few ribbons for track and field. Back in high school, you know.”

“Huh.”

Their eyes met.

“Why don’t we try the Church? Wouldn’t surprise me, you know.”

Éliott nodded, but surely, someone around here would have seen her.

It was as good a place to start as any.

***

Alphonse had stayed in the car.

A bicycle leaned up against the wall, just beside the steps out front.

Éliott opened up the door to the fine old church and saw a forlorn figure, right side, right up in the front row. She was kneeling at the end of the pew, hands in the classic position.

It was her.

Head down, in prayer, of course she wouldn’t hear the door. The place wasn’t real big. Just then, the door of the confessional booth opened and an elderly woman in a veil came out, clutching her purse and adjusting her hat, glancing incuriously at him on the way past. The door on the other side opened and the priest came out, stopping at the sight of him.

Seeing a stranger in his church, and knowing a little or maybe even a lot about the girl, he came and stood protectively at the head of the centre aisle. All set to provide passive, non-violent resistance or something like that—

The shepherd of his flock.

“Good morning, sir. Welcome. Was there something I can help you with—”

“It’s all right Father.” Éliott genuflected and did the blessing, crossing himself with a little dab of the Holy Water. “I’m Detective Éliott LeBeaux of the Sûreté. I was just wondering. How much does a marriage license cost around here, anyways?”

The priest relaxed. He nodded and smiled.

“Normally, about fifteen francs. In this case, we might be happy enough to waive the fee.” He coughed, reached over and touched Capucine on the shoulder, seemingly oblivious to all around her, eyes closed and lips moving silently. “You, ah—you might want to ask the young lady, first.”

She straightened up, saw the Father, and also, that he was intent on something else.

She looked around.

“Éliott!” In something less than a couple of heartbeats, she was up from the pew and into his arms, which had closed around the girl in something that was both beautiful and natural.

They had eyes only for each other, although the world still turned around them…

Whatever it was, it was as big as all of life—and death, and beyond.

It was—love.

And that was about all anyone could ever really say.

The Father gave his head a little shake. He gave a little nod and fought back a smile.

Turning to the altar, he bobbed and made the Sign of the Cross.

Turning again, he engaged Éliott through the poor guy’s watering eyes.

“There are days like this, when I just love my job.” He glanced up at the Cross in the wall. “Anyways, whenever you beautiful young people are ready, I shall be in my office.”

Turning, with a little swish from the vestments, he headed for a narrow door off to the side.

He stopped and looked back.

“I'll tell you what. I'll pay the fee myself. Just this once.” He smiled. “Bless you, my children.”

And then he was gone.

The End

Previous.

Chapter Thirteen.

"...thank you...thank you very much."

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Chapter Thirty.

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

Thank you for reading.

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

Thank you for reading.

Dead Reckoning, Chapter Thirty-One. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #10. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-29T20:26:00.006-05:00

Louis Shalako

Capucine’s heart was full as she packed her handbasket, with whatever she’d bought, whatever she could afford on her limited pay. Whatever was in the garden. Whatever she could scrounge, essentially.

Quite frankly, she didn’t know what to think of all of this—

Thoughts of Éliott and the old man filled her mind as she left her mother’s house, and headed off, up the road, and onto the trail leading to the woods, the river, and ultimately to the cliff-place. It was another brilliant morning, and she didn’t have to work until one o’clock.

The load tugged at her arm, to the extent she had to shift sides from time to time. The grass was still wet and the dew was cool on her toes.

There was yet another bottle of cognac in there, more beer. There were still more small cartons of cigars.

Éliott had given her some money, quite a bit of money, actually, and a list, and a note. After going to the police station, sworn to secrecy and on his mysterious errand, she’d done a bit of shopping in town. The basket was heavy indeed, the load this time including clean, white towels and a couple of washcloths, laundry soap in addition to the food.

There were other thoughts.

He’d asked for a book from the library, a book of signs. If that didn’t make the heart skip a beat, nothing would. She’d brought him that the day before, and she wondered how he was making out with it. Admittedly, it might be a tough read for the uninterested or the uninitiated.

It was Éliott more than the old man that plagued her thoughts these days, and nights.

While she liked him, and he obviously liked her, his intentions were anything but clear.

As for her imagination, it was working overtime lately, not just in the romantic sense, but also in a kind of sheer, unmitigated terror—

If he was a liar, he was very good at it, and she wanted to believe him so very badly. His attempts to sign with her were either very sweet or very cynical, she could not quite decide which.

He was also very good with the old man, a sign of something, something she wasn’t too sure of. If it was a kind of manipulation, what could he ever hope to gain from it? The old man had nothing of his own, nothing to steal in the first place.

Perhaps it was a sincere wish to help, and yet the challenges would be almost insurmountable.

The average person wouldn’t have bothered. It was all too easy to write them off and to move on with one’s own business. He seemed to have an awful lot of money, for a drifter, and that didn’t seem all too likely either.

And then there was her—

She was a normal, healthy young woman, who also just happened to be deaf. She had always been alone, and she’d known that from a very young age. It really was all up to her in this world. She was different, in a world that did not easily accept such differences. Not unnaturally, her thoughts had, in the privacy of her own room and in the darkness of the night, turned to thoughts of érotisme et transgression. She had no shame on that score. The Church didn’t know everything, although God might, (a rather uncomfortable thought), but the human body, the human mind, the very soul of a person was nourished far more by pleasure, rather than by any amount of pain and suffering.

Which had their place, to be sure—

There might even be such a thing as love.

It was also pure fantasy, much of the time, and she knew that as well.

She had been hurt before.

Upon reflection, it would seem that she had been lonely, and that for a very long time now.

Capucine was a good Catholic, whatever that meant.

But.

Sooner or later, Éliott would have to show his true colours.

Only time would tell, but something was sure to happen.

It always did.

***

The sun had gone behind a cloud, and the birds had held up for a moment, but only for a moment.

When the man stepped out onto the trail before her, up in the hills as she was now, at first, she simply didn’t comprehend the reality. She knew the trail, and the side trails, and this man had just stepped out of the bushes. Her initial thought was that he was lost. More likely, just having a quick pee and then moving on. It meant nothing, until a second man had stepped out from the other side. Had he been urinating as well? She kept walking, prepared to ignore them, but she stopped dead when she realized both had pistols, and those pistols were leveled right at her—

She gasped, turned to run, although that was hopeless enough at a distance of ten or twelve metres. She knew that much. The bushes, the forest were right there—

This is when she screamed. Two more men had come out of the bushes behind her, and one of them was right there in her face, and his big hands clawed at her, her arms and her sweater and her basket. They were right on her, dragging her to the ground, controlling her, and more than anything, trying to prevent her inevitable, one good scream. Another man, this one in a grey suit, stepped out of the bushes with a look of anticipation on his face.

Biting at a hand, throwing punches, trying to get at someone’s testicles with an elbow, a knee, a fist, the man cursed as she let out one good, long, all-encompassing, blood-curdling, heart-stopping scream.

A big hard hand clamped down again and cut it off—

“Good girl. That’s a good girl, just shut up now, all right.” He held the gun in front of her eyes and gave her arm a good twist.

“I’ll bet they heard that one—” Someone said as she cried. “It’s too bad she can’t hear us, it might be better...”

She was sobbing, and he gave her a cuff on the ear.

“…oh, look. I wonder what’s in that lovely picnic basket…” Another voice, this one was pure evil.

Struggle as she might, she wasn’t getting away and they hauled her to her feet. Jerking from side to side, she tried to break the hold.

“…right lads. Let’s get on with it.”

She cried more bitter tears as one of them knocked her on the head with the barrel of his gun and then they were dragging her along, helpless but still mostly on her feet.

***

When the scream came, Éliott didn’t know what to think. It was so unfamiliar out here. His initial thought was a bird, perhaps an eagle or something big like that taking a rabbit, perhaps right outside that very door. Admittedly, he didn’t know too much about such things.

When the pair of them heard voices, men’s voices, not too far away, clearly coming up along the trail, and then the scream came again, it could only mean one thing.

Éliott was up like a shot, knocking the chair over backwards as he hastened to the door, where not incidentally, he had hung his coat—and in an inner pocket of that rather offensively-plaid hunting jacket was his pistol and a spare clip.

He knew the shotgun was loaded. The hermit had acknowledged that there were a couple or three spare shells kicking around the house. The hermit was up, heading down towards the back of the place, and Éliott was peeking out through a crack in the curtains.

There wasn’t anything much to be seen.

“I’m coming.” The hermit stuck close to the left wall, coming up to where the shotgun leaned against the wall. “See anything?”

“Not yet.”

“Here.” Coming across past the door, the old man snapped a match and lit up a couple of the thin, black cheroots.

He stuck one into the corner of Éliott’s mouth.

“Thank you.” Holy—but the hermit was a fairly cool customer.

There was someone out there, a voice.

“Maintenon! Inspector Gilles Maintenon! I want to talk to you.”

The hermit looked at Éliott.

“Who in the hell is this Inspector Gilles fucking Maintenon?”

Éliott’s lip curled in feral humour.

“How in the hell would I know—” He thought. “Just keep quiet—they’ll get to it. Anyhow, I reckon they’ve got Capucine. She must have been due, just about now.”

A quick glance at the watch confirmed it.

It was time to speak up. He opened up the door, just a few centimetres.

“I’m terribly sorry. There’s no one here by that name. Are you sure you have the right address?”

“We’re not after you, asshole. We’re not too interested in the girl. It’s Maintenon we want.”

“Show me the girl.” Looking over, the hermit was getting redder and redder in the face and Éliott had better do something quick or the old fucker would probably go bolting out there, both barrels blazing. “Otherwise, fuck right off, Monsieur.”

“Come on out and have a look—if you’re so tough.”

The hermit was at his shoulder, shotgun in the left hand, something black and heavy in the other. It was a gun—a Beretta, small calibre, semi-automatic pistol. Éliott’s jaw dropped, but what the hell.

“Here.”

“Hang on.”

Two guns were better than one. He quickly undid the belt to slide the holster of his own MAB, standard issue, onto his right hip. The hermit’s eyes popped a little at the sight of that, but he didn’t object. As for the Beretta, it appeared to be loaded, it was fairly clean and important things like that.

“Thank you.”

“It’s me they want, boy. You don’t have to go out there.”

“Yeah, fuck, but who in the hell are you?”

The hermit stared at him.

“And why you, anyways?”

The hermit shook his head.

He chewed on a lip, thinking.

“I don’t know. I’ve been sort of hoping that it would all come back to me.” He pushed in close again and took a quick turn at looking out a crack in the curtains. “They say another good blow on the head will do it sometimes…I rather have my doubts, or I might have even given it a try. There are plenty of rocks around…”

That voice came again.

“We haven’t got all day, sonny boy. In about a minute we’re going to start breaking bones, maybe even cutting the girl. You understand, asshole?”

Éliott yelled right back.

“Yeah, I understand. Asshole.” I’ll cut you first, motherfucker—

He pointed and the hermit scooted back to the other side. In a low voice, Éliott gave him the simplest possible instructions, in the hopes that he might even be able to do it.

“You don’t have to go out there either, you know. In which case, they’re probably just coming in anyways. It’s your choice. You do have five shells. They’ll push her in the door first.”

“I know. I know.” He nodded. “The trouble is, of course, is that I want to—”

“Huh.”

“Let’s get these bastards.”

“I agree, sir. Let’s get these fucking bastards…”

This time of day, the sun would be above that cliff. The interior would be all shadow. Opening the door, wide open, as far as it would go, left-handed and using a broken old shovel, staying back in the dimness as far as possible, he called out again.

“All right. I’m coming out—and you’d better be playing straight with this one.” He put the shovel down, nice and quiet.

He pulled up the right hand shirt tail and tucked it into the top of his trousers. It wouldn’t do to get all snagged up there. He twisted the butt of the pistol so it stuck out a little, hopefully making it easier to grab in a hurry.

He gave the hermit a little nod and stepped, very cautiously, hands sort of held half-high, well out in front of him, hands going out the door first, and then he came out into the light.

It was just like they said—they wanted Gilles, not him.

END

Previous.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Chapter Thirty.

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

Thank you for reading.

Dead Reckoning, Chapter Thirty. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #10. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-28T20:04:00.000-05:00

Louis Shalako

“How much authorization do we need.”

It was one hell of a question.

Alphonse had finally been located. Roger, as it turned out, was in some big meeting with the Minister and a bunch of other bigwigs, and would be out of touch for quite some time according to his personal secretary.

“Fuck. Is the car gassed up?” Hubert would have liked to have had the opportunity to phone home and let Emanuelle know what was up.

“Both tanks.” Alphonse nodded and Garnier grinned.

“Both tanks—” He and Eugenie had laughed at that one.

Eugenie was still there, unable to tear herself away. She was also aware of Hubert’s marital status, what with her job and all.

“Would you like me to give Emanuelle a call?”

“Yes. Thank you. Thank you, ever so much. Boys, fuck it. Let’s go.”

They could buy a tooth-brush or whatever at a truck stop. Hubert still had a fair whack of cash on hand—he hadn’t actually gotten around to turning it in, due to the fact that LeBeaux was still missing, and rendering accounts would have been complicated by that fact.

It would have left too many loose ends and the accountants absolutely hated that.

So did he—

He sat down and cranked a fresh sheet into the typewriter.

He looked at the Mademoiselle.

“This note’s for Roger, or Levain, okay? Make sure he sees all of this stuff, please. Call down and let your boss know what we’re doing, okay. Tell him to keep it under his hat.” His hands flew over the keys and fuck the typos anyways.

“It’s authorized—” Alphonse. “Authorized by events.”

“Don’t you worry, Alphonse. I’ll make it stick.” And she would, too.

They were already grabbing their hats and bolting for the hall. Hubert scooted back and slammed open a desk drawer.

“My gun.” He held it up to show her and then he remembered one last thing. “Ah—please answer the phone, and make a note of it. Name, phone and incident report number. Someone will be back soon enough…”

Then he was gone.

Hopefully, but Levain, LeBref, Firmin…Margot. Someone would be along.

Looking around, Eugenie picked a chair and settled into it.

She might be in for a wait. She reached for a phone, as Monsieur Piffard would be wondering just exactly where she’d gotten off to.

***

"...thirteen hours, gentlemen."

Unbelievable—

“Thirteen hours, gentlemen. Sure beats taking the locals all the way—eight hundred and something, ah, sixteen, fucking kilometres. Probably a record run, when you think about it.” Alphonse pulled a little black book from the glovebox, reaching across a bleary-eyed Garnier’s semi-inert form to do it. “Thirteen hours and seven minutes.”

Giving the tip of his pencil a lick, he began noting it all down for posterity under the overhead light.

“Oh, Jesus.” It was well before dawn, a moonless night, and the stars blazed over the mountainside.

Hubert had been cramped up in the back seat for about the last five hours, although they’d rotated through, each of them taking a shift at the wheel, and each of them having some time to stretch the legs at one or two short stops along the way. He’d been trying for some kind of fitful sleep, and not having much luck so far. Time for that had run out.

Putting the book away again, Alphonse reached under the seat and pulled out a holster with a big, black revolver in it. Opening up the door, he stuck out a leg, but had to pause and kind of think about it for a second.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Oh, Jesus, is right. Fuck, is more like it.” Martin Garnier was stiff and sore, not so much from the bumpy ride, sheer hell along some stretches, but also from bracing, just to hold himself in place in imminent expectations of a deadly crash, and taking up permanent residence as the saying went.

Alphonse in particular, had raced through the night, out on the open road and with traffic light.

“I can’t believe it—have you ever considered Le Mans, or the Grand Prix or anything like that…the Mille Miglia, perhaps?” Garnier.

“No. Not really. Those guys are mostly pussies anyways. But, we did it.” Alphonse. “We have arrived, gentlemen. Make sure she’s locked up.”

Two more car doors opened, as cautiously and as quietly as possible. They were at the gate to the logging road. The engine ticked softly as things cooled down under the hood. They could smell hot oil and dirt, mixed together in about equal proportions. What had once been scrupulously-clean bodywork was now slathered in road dust. There were insects all over the front end and windshield, and bits of asphalt stuck on behind the fenders, down low. This from an unfortunate road-building project. They’d had no choice but to slow down to a ludicrous twenty-five kilometres per hour, and to sit and wait when the flagman said. Just about then, it was like all of them at once had this terrible, sudden urge to shit—sheer tension, but there you have it.

Hubert, with the knapsack slung over one shoulder, had just closed the rear passenger door when Martin went all wobbly and he had to catch him on the way to the ground.

“Whoa, Buddy, hang on there—”

Alphonse hurried around the front of the vehicle to grab on and help hold Martin up.

“Altitude sickness.”

“Sure—and maybe a touch of carbon monoxide poisoning too.” As for Hubert, he was a bit light-headed himself. “Fuck.’

“It’s okay, guys. I just stood up a little too fast, that’s all.” Martin planted his feet and sort of shook them off, as by the looks of him he wasn’t ready yet, and they weren’t quite ready to let go—

He gave them a wacky grin—

“Anyone got a smoke?”

“Come on boy, stand up straight. Put your hand on the roof. Take a couple of long, slow breaths and blow out hard.”

“All right, all right.”

“Right. We go in, dead silent. No talking. Five metres apart, guns drawn, safeties on—got it? Let’s not shoot each other in the ass, okay.” He held up a small pair of binoculars, hanging on a strap about the neck. “Let’s get in as close as we can and maybe get a look at the place.”

Hubert nodded.

“Sure, Alphonse. Whatever you say. Do you want to lead off?”

Without a word, the old veteran slipped under the gate, just a big steel pipe across a couple of posts, all painted yellow, and then headed up the trail, and very dark it was in there too. He slowed up while they could still see him, waiting.

The crickets, which had reigned supreme, had gone dead quiet as this new presence made itself known.

“Come on, buddy.” It was barely a whisper, and with Martin following along, Hubert had better get going or they’d never catch him.

“I’m all right.”

Martin slung his own pack and by this time it was well over five metres. Ducking low, he went under the gate, pistol drawn but not cocked…not just yet.

Just to be sure, he found the safety button.

One little push, and that is all it takes, he thought.

She’s all set to go.

END

Previous.

Chapter Thirteen.

Real change is incremental.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

Thank you for reading.

Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Nine. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #10. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-27T19:43:00.002-05:00

Louis Shalako

The Special Homicide Unit was busy at the best of times. At the worst of times, their small team of detectives were understaffed and overworked. It was a small part of a larger division of the Sûreté. It was one cog in a much larger machine, and a bit of a dumping ground for the sort of cases that, upon examination, appeared to have had little chance of an arrest, let alone a successful prosecution.

It was only their record of success that justified their existence at all. It was also why Gilles had originally been tapped to head the small, specialized working group in the first place.

Maintenon wasn’t just good. He’d been good, very good, literally for decades now. In other words, it was not just luck and it sure as hell was not a fluke. Flukes happened from time to time, but not a whole bunch, not all in a big long row like that. That’s not to say they didn’t have their failures, because they did—everyone had their failures and the homicide business was no different than any other.

Maybe that was Smirnov’s problem. He hadn’t accounted for the possibility of failure.

Smirnov had believed himself to be the smartest guy in the world, a type Hubert had run across before.

Hubert was in the room, poring over report, after report, after report. If he was to have any hope of catching up, let alone even understanding this case, he would have to read every stinking line of it. It was all too possible to get bogged down in the details…

The file was thin enough, but those had been different times. Vadim Smirnov. Only child of Russian émigrés, relatively prosperous people who had been resident in France, but rendered stateless after the Russian Revolution of 1917. As members of the hated bourgeoisie, they would hardly take the risk of going back to Russia. Not if they didn’t have to. The case dated back to 1913, when Gilles—and Archambault, had been young constables, involved in an investigation relating to human smuggling, white slavery and child prostitution. It was believed the victims, a number of attractive young women, a smaller number of attractive young males, all of them underage, some of them of quite a good social background, had been inveigled, whether through drugs, alcohol, psychological extortion, or other means, simple kidnapping perhaps. Some, at least, had been smuggled out of the country and sold as sex-slaves in the harims of certain foreign countries.

Others had ended up in the various stews, brothels right here in town.

Gilles had been an undercover cop working the vice beat at the time—the worst beat of all in some ways, and yet, it was an opportunity. An opportunity to do some good in the world. He was lucky to be there, at the right time and in the right place, with some good relationships with the people around him. This included plenty of civilian sources, and right when it counted most.

Gilles and Archambault had put two and two together. They had come up with a plan. The plan had required certain bait, and certain risks, and time more than anything. They’d gotten lucky in that poor old Vadim and a couple of others had come along to pick up the package. He’d been convinced by a simple photograph of the merchandise, a rather youthful-looking police woman who had volunteered, (and good for her, too), and to deliver an envelope simply stuffed with money.

Convicted by a jury of his peers—theoretically, at least, although few people were as bent, warped, positively twisted, or even just plain sick, as he was, Smirnov had been sent off to Devil’s Island for twenty-five years. Before leaving, right at his sentencing in fact, he had sworn undying vengeance against all things police, but most of all against Gilles.

Gilles had approached him—Gilles had been totally undercover, and it had taken some little time to establish that bond of trust with Vadim. That sort of thing wasn’t easy to do. Smirnov had liked Gilles. He’d taken him under his wing, made him his protégé, and he had thought they were friends. The fool had been fooled. He didn’t like it much. He saw it as a betrayal, and this coming from someone in his rather peculiar profession, where honour was also seen in a rather peculiar light—assuming you were not one of them, it could seem mighty peculiar indeed. Yet even the criminal underworld had their standards and their pecking-order. Pimps and pedophiles were about as popular as arsonists and anarchist bomb-tossers. The honest thieves saw themselves as above all of that.

Maintenon’s eye-witness testimony on the stand had been convincing. Vadim had to sit there in court and watch and listen, with his carefully-constructed image being destroyed, painfully, for a man of some renown of his own. He was already a successful businessman, with quite a number of small hotels, bars and restaurants. All of them of a rather grimy nature. That was the funny thing about crime, sometimes. To say it was just greed would have been too easy, without actually coming up with an explanation. He obviously knew how to apply himself. The man could have easily done without it and still become a success. He’d also had a penchant for the social scene and a rather brazen philanthropy of the front-page variety. He was a donation-matcher, a known type. The publicity would mention some ludicrous upper limit, a million francs or whatever, knowing that it would never be met and therefore he would never have to cover it. Funny thing was, the journalists never seemed to catch on. They lapped it all right up, with a kind of relish. His cover, and his image of his own self had been smashed in the dirt. His extensive network of criminal contacts had been compromised, and those people would not be too happy either. His more respectable friends had run for the hills, figuratively speaking.

It had been established that the man wasn’t above sampling his own wares from time to time, and that kind of embarrassment hurts.

His properties were gone. His wife had abandoned him, and the kids weren’t speaking to him, although that might have changed over time. It often did. Any shred of genteel respectability he’d once had was gone—and that hurt too.

If he had stashed a little money away somewhere, the police had never been able to trace it, although it was a pretty good bet that he had.

It never seemed to occur to these guys. Devil’s Island was infinitely preferable to the guillotine, which wasn’t exactly known for second chances. There were a few dead bodies here and there, going back years in some cases. Proving the act had been futile. The man had insulated himself well enough to slide on that aspect of the case, or cases, as it turned out. It was more a case of criminal conspiracy to kidnap and extort, and then there was the kiddie stuff—real sex crimes, bad enough for all of that. Gratitude was hardly to be expected, but even so—even so.

And, while Smirnov, was putting in hard labour, in his off hours busy growing root vegetables and leafy greens, begging for cigarette butts, trying not to get fucked up the ass in the meantime, and cursing his fate on Devil’s Island, Gilles and a million others like him had gone off to the War…four, long years of war.

The fucking idiots had let him out, with time off for good behaviour. Word was, he’d been studying the Bible and teaching other inmates how to read—so that they could better understand and appeal their cases, and shit like that. He’d become some kind of a Good Samaritan.

The mug shot was indifferent, faded with time, very small. It could have been almost anyone after a while. So that wasn’t going to be of much help.

And now, he was back in France. He’d been back for some years. Word was, he was back in business, the only business he had ever known—the man was making up for a lot of lost time, or so it seemed. He’d reverted back to type. Interestingly, the physical description matched up with any number of their suspects, although age alone might have let him off. The Bisson character, possibly—they might want to call the sweatshop and clarify on that little matter. Fuck, he couldn’t even recall the manager’s name, although it was in here somewhere.

Smirnov had built up a new organization over the course of several years. He had a big, rambling bar in one of the seedier little side-streets in Montmartre, one with a whole rabbit-warren of tiny rooms up above. With a little money, a small gang of associates, and a lot to lose, Smirnov’s thoughts might very well have come back to good old Gilles Maintenon. So many years, on a remote island, cut off from the very world. The man would have had plenty of time to brood—to think—and to plan.

...Smirnov.

“Regarding Monsieur Smirnov. Historically. Years ago. He’s smuggling people out of the country, the victims possibly drugged or unconscious. What better way, than inside of a bogus deep freezer? Put a bunch of air holes in the bottom, make sure the crate is loosely built in terms of leaving cracks for air to get in. Nail the top on, grease a couple of palms and that load is safe enough. Customs inspections are more of a problem getting stuff into the country. No one cares what goes out, except for possibly gold, or diamonds, or large sums of currency.” Stuff leaving the country was somebody else’s problem, essentially. “The victims would be drugged into unconsciousness…”

Hmn.

If it had worked well enough in the past, he might have used the same idea again.

LeBref looked up from his desk.

“Talking to yourself again. That’s one of the first signs of insanity. That, and hair on the palms of your hands.” There was a pause. “The third sign is looking for it…”

An old joke.

Hubert waved him off.

“Just thinking out loud.”

“Yeah.” LeBref put a few things away, snapped his briefcase shut. “All right. Well, I am out of here.”

Hubert nodded.

Hmn. It could be, Hubert supposed. It was a least some kind of a motive—but why the fucking freezer thing. That one was just plain weird. It did send a certain kind of message. There would be a thousand other people out there with the exact same motive, when you got right down to it. Which didn’t necessarily rule it out as a motive, the only question was, whose motive was it.

Hmn.

He sat and rubbed his eyes for a moment.

Fuck.

***

...just a minor flap here...

Not surprisingly, a busy and important police force such as the Sûreté, was all-in on the latest technology.

This included the tele-printer and the wire-photo services. As a separate unit, the room had their own rather large and expensive machine, with its own unique dial-up number. The whole department didn’t necessarily need to receive every little thing that passed back and forth, and the same went for the unit. They didn’t need to receive every little wanted bulletin, missing person report, or unexplained body found in a gutter. This was more useful to the situation room people down on the ground floor, a kind of clearing house of information for all of Paris, and in the larger sense, all over France and its overseas dependencies.

It was no big surprise when the machine in the back corner made its characteristic buzz, rattle and bang and began to print something out on its long rolling band of perforated paper.

Garnier came in just then, taking off his hat and jacket and hanging them up on the rack by the door. There were sweat stains under the armpits.

“So. How’d it go?”

Garnier dropped into his chair.

“Yeah. Big, white moving van. Stolen weeks ago. Abandoned in an industrial area. Nice—they tucked it in at the end of a long line of similar vehicles. It took some time before anybody clued in that it didn’t actually belong there. Ha. There is nothing really distinctive about it. Monsieur Aubert was kind enough to come along on his lunch hour and have a look. He said it might be the same vehicle or it might not…” According to the odometer reading, it had travelled less than a hundred kilometres in all of that time. “It fits well enough, without a single shred of other evidence to tie it in.”

Towed to the police garage, their technical people were having a look at it but he didn’t expect too much in that regard.

“Basically, the thieves jimmied the door and then hot-wired it. Any kid could do it, with a little knowledge and a bit of nerve.” Still wearing its original number plates, it also reinforced the idea that the thieves must have had somewhere to hide it. “Well, if nothing else, the company will be glad to get it back. Them and the insurance people.”

“Hmn.” Hubert looked over, the machine having gone quiet.

Rising, he went to grab a fresh cup of coffee…and then he’d tear that off and have a look.

And of course the phone on his desk was already ringing, it was about time he had a real good shit, and it was some little time before the significance of that photo, that face, staring up at him from the slightly-curled papers, still warm and smelling of hot ink on his desk sort of hit him—

Maintenon.

***

Another phone was ringing in the background, then it stopped.

Hubert’s hands shook as he passed sheets to Martin.

“Okay—it’s from Sergeant Dampier in Bagneres de Luchon…he says the girl is in communication with Éliott.”

“LeBeaux.”

“Yes. And he says, she brought them a small hand mirror, with the fingerprints on it, wrapped up in an old pair of socks, and that LeBeaux is holed up with the hermit. She gave them a roll of film, with exactly three exposures. This is from the best one.” He bit his lip. “There was a note. This part scares the shit out of me. He says in the note, apparently the girl is deaf, he says we were followed, he thinks on the way down, but definitely when we were there and on the way back. And the only way to break the tail was to abandon me and jump off the train. And, in his opinion, Gilles’ life is still in danger. Holy, shit.”

He had ten seconds to think—and no more.

“One, get the prints…no, call personnel and tell them to get Maintenon’s dossier up here. We want the prints. His most recent official photo. It’s not about the employment record or his pension contributions, okay? Top secret—tell them they have three minutes.”

“Right.” Martin reached for the phone, ignoring the one that had just begun ringing, no doubt disappointed on their first try only a few moments before…fuck, he had to pick up. “Special Homicide. Garnier here. My apologies. Hold, please.”

He stabbed the button and kept on with his first instruction as Hubert babbled into his own telephone, on the line with the desk downstairs.

“Hello? Hello? Henri? It’s Hubert up in Special Homicide…I need you to find Roger. Yes, that one. I need him like right now. I need you to find Alphonse. Also right now. And I need you to find Delorme or Levain, or both, got that?”

The line squawked a bit but he slammed it down. He rummaged in his desk drawers, frustrated at not being to find it immediately, looking for his big, old-fashioned magnifying glass. He pulled out a couple of tissues and began furiously polishing that.

“How much do you want to bet?”

How much do you want to bet.

“Sorry, no takers—”

Garnier was back on the line.

“Sorry about that, sir. Just a minor flap here. Ah. So. You have a case, and you think we might be able to help. Yes, sir. Ah—send the file on up, and thank you, Inspector.”

He put it down.

“Another case.” He shrugged. “We’ll put it on Firmin’s desk—”

As far as jokes went, that one fell pretty flat.

“Huh.” Hubert was thinking, thinking, thinking—

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” Two strong voices bellowed at once.

***

They’d made Mademoiselle Fournier, Eugenie from Personnel, a civilian employee, wait while they examined their prints, three full and a couple of partials. The one big thumb-print was perfect. She’d brought the file at a dead run, judging by the breathing. She would be prepared to wait for the file, or to make them sign for it—one way or the other.

In the meantime, Hubert had handed her the wire-photo image. They compared the official photo from the dossier to the man in the photograph.

“Anybody we know?”

“It—it’s—Maintenon.” Her jaw dropped and she clearly understood the significance of their unusual request for the dossier, which were supposed to be restricted information. “I think! He was down there—at the front desk, inquiring about vacation pay. Don’t forget, he had that beard.”

He’d been down in Personnel a couple of weeks ago, or more, at this point. The trouble was, she really didn’t see the man all that often.

Pulling out a sheet of typing paper, Hubert covered the bottom half of both faces. The official photo had him with a mustache. The photo had been taken several years previously. Gilles had taken up with the neatly trimmed beard more recently. The images were two different sizes, one taken by a good camera in studio light, processed and printed by a true professional. The other image had been taken in bad light, by a strict amateur, developed in some haste, by someone who perhaps wasn’t the best, and then the image had to be scanned in, line by line, reduced to a set of electrical pulses, sent by wire and then reproduced at this end in another sort of blaps of ink on paper sort of process…

Even so, the resemblance was uncanny.

Martin looked up from the fingerprints.

“Holy, shit.”

Hubert gestured toward the young lady.

“Give her the glass.” Neither one of them really knew Gilles, as for himself, his poor old heart was about ready to pop out of his chest.

What he needed, was an objective opinion—maybe even two or three of them, and some kind of a plan.

“Merde…” It was all she said.

None of them were experts in fingerprint analysis, but if those weren’t the prints of Gilles Maintenon, they would all be damned.

“Where in the fuck is Roger—” Hubert, fit to be tied.

His hand hovered over the phone, as he positively willed it to ring, but it didn’t.

END

Previous.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Eight. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #10. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-26T16:33:00.000-05:00

Louis Shalako

With the systematic following-up of new leads, also leading to new questions, and hopefully, new answers, it was time for a strategy session. Legwork was fine as far as that went, but there was a time for brain work as well.

“All right. How do we want to handle Savard and Bourdillon.” Langeron—

Hubert took that one.

“Okay. The source suggested we simply call Savard. He also suggested making the same sort of call to other institutions. A simple request for an inventory of all, er, stiffs on hand.” Assuming no big surprises, no great harm would be done—as for Bourdillon, he might be in deep trouble, where only the police could help. “In fact, that is exactly how we phrase it with Monsieur Savard. Don’t let on that we know anything. It’s just a routine inquiry and they probably have nothing to worry about, right?”

Roger nodded.

“Hmn.”

There was quite a list of unfinished business. They hadn’t called the football club secretary yet, among other things—they still had to get that serial number and phone Monsieur Aubert, all kinds of little details.

There just weren’t enough hours in the day sometimes.

“So. How in the hell did they take three bodies out of the hospital?”

“Inside help. Pull up to the loading dock. Grab a gurney. They have dozens of them lined up in the halls sometimes. And you’re just a couple of guys in coveralls. If anyone asks your business, you don’t know anything. You’re just following orders, you wave around some paperwork. The company name is on there and everything. But think about it, sir. These professional types, the academics, they’re taking a full hour for lunch, assuming they can even get it. Besides teaching, they have their other duties at the hospital. They’re all doctors and surgeons. All the perps need is a little information. What if they had at least one freezer right in the back of the vehicle. It is at least insulated. They don’t want them thawing out. This implies their base of operations couldn’t be too far away. Certainly within the city limits.”

Roger nodded.

“Walk in, grab them, walk out…bold, I will give them that much.”

“Considering what an unarmed security guard earns, or even a building custodian. It really wouldn’t take much of a bribe, just to gain access. They’d be in and out in less than half an hour…” The halls were crowded at times, and empty at others.

What if a security guard, well-bribed and timing it perfectly, just happened to be walking down the hall in close proximity right when he was needed most—

“Huh.”

Also.

There had been no real effort, considering the available manpower, to determine if Abu Samaha could be found at an old address, which they might be able to narrow down with a phone call, or two, or three. They at least had a photo of the man. They had all the names, which all agreed would be fake, and yet that also had to be confirmed. Bisson was a fairly common name, Samaha much less so. There was the question of finding a few of them, hundreds even considering Bisson, in the phone book. These were merely assumptions. There was the question of the possible rental, lease, or theft of the larger vehicle. There were other questions, other details.

“We could at least take a look through the phone book. I agree, though, it’s probably a waste of time.” Roger was lounging on the corner of Maintenon’s desk. “And then there’s this.’

He indicated a red file folder laying on the desk.

“What in the hell was Gilles doing down in the catacombs, two days before his departure? According to Leonard down there, this is the file he was asking for, and he spent some considerable time at one of the reading desks, reading it through from end to end.”

“That one is definitely interesting.” Garnier.

“Which file is that, sir.” Hubert—

“Smirnov…Vadim.” The case went back to 1913, more than twenty-five years before.

Archambault’s mouth opened…thoughts congealed in his head.

“Smirnov!” The look of awe kind of said it all. “Yes.”

***

The answer was so simple, especially when you were holding it in your hand.

He was shaving, with a candle and a straight razor, and the warm shaving cream was wafting its aroma around the space.

A simple hand mirror, picked up at the pharmacy for nineteen centimes, useful enough when shaving, and the perfect surface for snagging someone’s fingerprints.

Fuck, one good, clean print would be enough.

Éliott nodded to himself in the mirror. Splashing a bit of water on his face and neck, using the old man’s one decent towel, he could deal with it for some time. As long as it took—

He’d wash that thing out when he got the opportunity. A little excess shaving cream on there might even be an improvement.

After one hell of a good sleep, the day had dawned anew, bright, fresh, shiny, with the promise of rain on the horizon, a conclusion drawn after a faint rumble of thunder shortly before dawn. Yet the sky was still blue, and it hadn’t happened as yet. The mountain might hide a lot of things, what with all those trees in the way. It was like you couldn’t see past the forest, and once you were in it, you couldn’t see much for the trees either. As for a little soreness, all that cycling, hiking up hill and down dale; that too must pass.

“So. Sir. How do you feel about breakfast? I’ve been meaning to try out that bacon, and maybe some of those potatoes. I usually chop up a little onion, and maybe toss in a little poivre noir, a little bit of buerre in the pan to start them off. What do you say, mon ami?” There were plenty of eggs as well. “The thing is, once I open the tin, we might as well do them all.”

“Oh. Oh…oh, my head hurts.”

“That’s a good sign, sir, it’s a sign that you’ve been getting enough to drink. What you need is good old hair of the dog. That and one of my funny little pills here. I swear by ‘em, I honestly do—”

The poor old guy was dry heaving and retching a bit, which could be contagious and Éliott was doing his best just to ignore it. He rolled his eyes, heaved a deep sigh, and kept playing the fool—right to the hilt.

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we start off with the coffee. I don’t know about you, but a man has to eat just a little more often than I, myself, have been doing lately…”

“Argh.”

“Good. I’m so happy you feel that way. I’m going to have to finish trimming that hair of yours. This morning. My fault, really. I had to get the fucking hair out of that wound, in order to put the bandage on. Know what I mean?” Éliott put a little sugar in a cup and poured in coffee that was still relatively hot, although he’d been up for a while.

The older man was just awakening, with a perfect stranger having taken over his home, his kitchen and even his life to some extent. All of this in the clear light of day, and with a sore head to boot.

“Well, I can understand. You’re just not used to all of this pampering.”

“Kid, I got a head like a half-chewed caramel right now, would you mind shutting the fuck up for a while? Oh, oh, oh…”

“Of course. Ah—careful with that. And here’s a couple of pills. Anyways, I got to get us some more, ah, some more God-damned fucking water.”

Judging by the glare he got, this might be a good time to let the man have a little space.

With a mirror, you could polish the hell out of it, and it wouldn’t look too unnatural to be doing so. As for the cheap metal cups, a quick rinse, a rub of the fingers to get the lip-guck off of there, and that was about it around here. They’d both been handled by both men so they’d just be a mess of smudges.

***

He was out the door and heading for the gushing little side-creek where they got water when he heard an odd little animal noise from the brush alongside on his right.

It was the girl, hours before he had expected her. She’d been lying in wait.

She put a finger up to her lips, in a universal sign, before he could speak.

Glancing back at the door of the shack, he stepped off the trail and into the bushes. The old man would take a while to get going, and it seemed safe enough.

She handed him a note.

I can’t come today, I have to work at the library.

Capucine.

Like a fool, he’d taken off without his own pen and pad…fuck, what do I do. They had a slip of paper, but she hadn’t brought a pencil…fuck.

She was pushing him back onto the trail, and he had another look before stepping out.

One way or another, they would be able to handle it.

He gave her a quick wink, a nod and just kept on going.

His heart was in full song. She came back. She came back—

And every little breeze seemed to whisper…Capucine.

The rhyme wasn’t very good, but it would have to do for now.

***

“Now where, is that blasted girl.” The hermit, having had a pretty good taste of the cognac the day before, was fretting and fussing something awful.

“I don’t know. Doesn’t she have a farm or something around here, uh, maybe a job somewhere?”

“Ah. Fuck, yes, they call her in sometimes when they get behind. They have her re-shelving books down at the library in Luchon. She told me all about it.” The crazy old fucker made a sign, palms together, and then spreading them out as if to read. “That means book.”

“Ah. Nice. My first sign, and I reckon I’m going to need them all. That and a cow, you know. For the milk. That’s for when we have lots and lots of kids. Well, I wouldn’t worry too much. We still have a good third left in the bottle, and then we still have…ah, not quite three full bottles of the beer. I love them re-sealable caps, eh. That should be enough to last us the day, don’t you think—” A question struck him. “How do they call her?”

“Her fucking mother answers the phone, you half-wit.”

“Ah. Okay.”

There was still a fair bit of food, tobacco, coffee, anything that a man might want.

The hermit was shaking his head, a little more functional now, with at least one good shot into him as well as a couple of pain pills. Thirty milligrams of codeine in each one, and those seemed to be taking effect as well. The coffee probably helped too, thought Éliott, it would be a combination of many things rather than just one little thing.

They were going to have to mellow him out a little more before attempting too much personal grooming.

“Argh.”

Time healed all wounds, and that was true enough with the common hangover.

As for the hermit, it was getting on time for a shave and a haircut.

“Here.” He pushed the bottle a little closer. “Throw a little splash of that in your coffee. Yeah, next time I get a chance, I want to grab a few tins of condensed milk. It’s very sweet. I’ve always thought the flavour’s a bit off, but it’s tolerable enough.”

“I’ve had tinned milk before, young man.”

“My name’s Éliott, sir. You might want to give that a try once in a while. So, where did you have tinned milk? That was at Verdun, I’ll bet—”

The hermit scowled.

“What would a goofy little whipper-snapper like you know about Verdun.”

Éliott nodded.

“True enough, sir. True enough.” And thank fucking God for that. “Anyways, sir, it seems to me that we have two choices. One, I can cut your hair. Or, two, I can whip out my little harmonica. There’s an old Basque song I’ve been working on…”

“Argh.”

END

Previous.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Seven. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #10. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-24T17:47:00.000-05:00

Aubert: an uncle in the furniture business.

Louis Shalako

“I have an uncle in the furniture business. That’s how I got this job in the first place.”

Monsieur Aubert of Aubert Fine Furnishings and Appliances was a rather large and florid man in his mid-thirties. A not very subtle comb-over did little to hide the early-onset male baldness although the hair that was left was still black with no trace of grey.

The three of them stood in the middle of their household appliance section.

It was a large store, two thousand square metres. It was a big, rambling space for this part of the city, two full floors, most of it devoted to the softer furnishings, couches, chairs, lamps and tables, and then there were the cabinets, dining sets and other wooden wares.

“So, what was different about this particular sale?”

“Yes. I distinctly asked if it might have been better to get a much larger, commercial freezer, but he said no. It was just that he, or they, he and his wife, they had a big family, and a big house too, which was fortunate for them. He made a little joke of it.”

The average household might be at the butcher’s shop every day or two, looking for fresh meat or even just soup bones. There were those who invested in a side of beef, or a quarter, all cut up and packaged. Some subscribed to frozen food services, including vegetables and berries, fish and poultry. The savings over time might be significant, assuming one had the freezer space to hold it. There were those with a home garden, freezing and canning all the fruits, berries and vegetables in season.

It all took up a lot of freezer space.

According to him, they were fortunate to have two of the same model in stock. A previous customer had taken a look at their display model, plumped down the required deposit, and so they’d ordered one straight from the factory. They generally took a couple of days to arrive. When he’d called that particular customer, in order to ask them when they’d like to accept delivery, (and to write a nice little cheque for the remainder), the telephone number had been out of service. He’d been relieved when another customer had wanted two of the exact same article. Now, of course, it was looking like a pretty fortuitous coincidence—for somebody.

It they ever turned up, he would cheerfully refund their deposit, or, just maybe—order another unit for them, and hope they didn’t vanish again. If the gentlemen did call back, he would definitely call the police.

That other person’s name was Guy Landry and it would almost certainly be fake. The address he’d given was probably bogus as well. The detectives exchanged a glance upon hearing this—but now, even the civilians were making deductions. Putting a lot of detail into a news story was a two-edged sword, not that they needed much of a reminder.

“Did this second man give a name? What did he look like, what was he wearing. You say he paid cash—” Garnier was handling this one, and he seemed good enough at it.

“Hmn. The name was Thierry. The other thing was the wife. As often as not, they’re tagging along with the husband. Especially on a major household purchase. It’s a question of the colour, sometimes. They say the human eye can distinguish over a million different hues. Women, as you know, have a name for every single one of them. Dressed well enough in a grey suit. He seemed able to afford it, and I had no reason to doubt the story. But this fellow had the moving van along with him, and a wallet full of cash. There were two others with him, ah, the signs on their coveralls said Montgolfier Brothers.”

Monsieur Thierry.

“So he talked about the wife and kids, and yet he came alone.” That wasn’t particularly suspicious, except insofar as it fit the pattern.

“It also seems that money was no object…” Another deduction from the Monsieur, admittedly he was not too far off the mark with that last one.

“Okay. Is it all right if we call back and give you the serial number from, ah, the freezer we have?” Monsieur Aubert could check that against his own records.

“Certainly. I would be only too happy to help.” He smiled. “I’ve worked my ass off my whole life—and it isn’t even halfway done yet. I’m not real fond of thieves, and other such criminal types.”

The gentleman had handed over a substantial sum in cash. They had backed into the loading area at the rear of the store, and loaded up both freezers, one still in the crate and one uncrated, which had to be rolled off the display floor on a sturdy cart that they kept for just such purposes. He pointed out the exact model, lined up among a bunch of smaller units. It was fairly popular and he sold a number of various models each and every month. The furniture business involved shifting a lot of large, heavy objects as he said.

The date was after the theft of the blue delivery vehicle, but well before the thing had appeared in Maintenon’s kitchen. This confirmed more than one surmise. For one, the crime had been long in the preparation required to pull it off.

The plan had been well thought-out and fairly specific in its details.

This particular vehicle had been large, white, with no signs on the sides. Big enough to hold two deep freezers, with plenty of space left over, and then there were the two laborer-types. Monsieur Thierry had walked off down the street, to pick up his own vehicle. Or to catch a bus, a taxi or the Metro, perhaps. At the time, he hadn’t thought too much of it, except for his own good fortune in making the sale. Holding too much in stock tied up a lot of cash, so, why not let the manufacturers store it for him.

On his invitation, the pair followed him through a double doorway and then out into the warehouse. Unlocking the big overhead door, he opened it up.

“See that vehicle?” It was a big, boxy, slab-sided delivery van, also in white. “That’s ours. His was more or less the same size. I have no idea of what business he might have been in. You can rent them by the day or lease them on a longer contract. It’s routine to deliver a new couch, armchairs, beds, refrigerators, all the big stuff, right. For a walk-in to come along, and they have their own vehicle all set to go. It’s just different, that’s all. There are people who have the means and it saves them a small delivery fee. But. This way, the man kept us in the dark as to the address and phone number. And that, is one more reason why I called you.”

Interesting.

“And what did Monsieur Thierry look like, as far as you can recall…” Could you describe the other two gentlemen, and Monsieur Landry.

Did they look or sound foreign, for example…were they of average height, weight, colouring and build sort of thing…they’d been hearing a lot of that lately.

“Ah, let’s see. Oh, one of the ones in coveralls had a mustache, average height, not real heavy. A mop of dark hair. Dark brown eyes…”

Now was the time to whip out the football team picture.

Monsieur Aubert picked out Abu Samaha without hesitation…

That was about as good as it was going to get.

***

Éliott had searched for a clean towel, a clean rag, and he had been frustrated in the end.

There were a few rags, scraps of cloth for washing up, even one bath towel, not very clean, but that wasn’t what he needed right now.

The old man, slumped on his bench by the wall, snored softly in the dim light of the fireplace and the guttering stump of one candle. Outside, it was only the stars and the bats, the crickets and the tree-frogs for company and it was about as quiet as he’d ever heard it.

Finally, he had sacrificed his handkerchief, thoroughly soaking it in hot, soapy water. He had to move some junk out of the way including their table. He got his little milking stool and put that in close. Gently, ever so gently, he lifted the man’s chin off of his chest and carefully rotated the head. It was on the left side, up fairly high. Dabbing with the damp pad he’d made of the folded bit of cloth, he began loosening up the dried blood, pus and whatever else might have leaked out of the man’s skull.

Snork.

The man’s eyes popped open, and Éliott held his breath, crouched there at the man’s elbow, all too close in terms of the normal space people liked to have about them. The eyes closed and the snoring started anew.

He let out a careful breath.

He kept dabbing away at it, his once clean handkerchief taking on at first a pink hue, then getting darker and darker as he went along.

There was a lot of swelling in the tissues surrounding the wound. It was all black around the edges. Not much dirt, it was mostly just hair.

The eyes popped open and the head twitched. Éliott hung on to that chin in a kind of gentle violence.

“Argh. Hey. What in the hell are you doing?”

“I’m cleaning up this bloody fucking head wound, sir. We have already discussed this, sir, as you may recall—and you promised. Now, if you don’t mind, please hold still just for one, single, fucking minute longer…”

“Argh. Fuck off.” Groggy with sleep, the man was too lazy to struggle—too surprised, maybe that was it.

He was still pretty drunk, too.

Éliott laughed.

“One more minute, sir, and then I plan on doing just that.”

Actually it took three minutes, with the hermit half awake and half asleep and pretty incoherent.

When he finally made up his mind and questing hands began struggling to find a support, preparatory to getting up, Éliott had to give it up, but only temporarily.

“All right, sir. Let’s get you to bed. Ah—how about a little night-cap? There’s a good bit still in the bottle.” He’d given the girl a little money, nothing too crazy, and hopefully she’d be back tomorrow with another bottle of the good stuff. “I still need to slap a proper bandage on that.”

There was one more thing.

“You know, that swelling. It’s caused by one hell of an infection. I have just the thing, incidentally. I use it all the time. It really is no wonder you haven’t been feeling yourself lately. Have you felt feverish…very hot one minute, chills and stuff the next…any kind of weird headaches, stuff like that…”

Predictably, the question was ignored.

“I have to piss.”

“Good! Good for you, sir, here, let me help you up—please. Why, you’ve had quite a lot to drink, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Fuck you. I know how to piss, young man.”

“Of course you do, sir, of course you do. All righty, then. Off you go—”

Checking his watch, it was coming up on nine p.m., and as long as the days could be at this time of year, it was pretty much pitch-black out there. The cliff itself, and all of those trees made sure of that. The hermit was still struggling to get up, so he grabbed a wrist and an elbow and pulled…

“All right, all right. Let me go, for crying out loud…”

“Here. Hold on there, partner.” Éliott snapped a match and lit one of the little black cheroots for the man. “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

The man took the cigar and staggered for the door, trailing sinuous tendrils of blue smoke. It was like a series of question marks hanging in the air and following him out the door.

The hermit was talking to himself pretty good out there. There was nothing wrong with his vocabulary.

His grin faded.

It might be a good idea to keep an eye and an ear on the man. There was no telling what he might be capable of. Concussions had their side effects, and however or whatever or whoever, had stuck that blow, it must have come damned close to killing him outright.

The shotgun was right there, leaning up against the wall by the front door. He’d been wondering if it was actually loaded. He’d get a chance to look when the old man fell asleep.

As for a little touch of amnesia, hopefully that would pass with time—stranger things had been known to happen. He didn’t know enough about it, but in his impression, permanent amnesia was the exception rather than the rule. This case had not been caused by some underlying medical condition. It had been caused by a short, sharp blow to the head.

He really should have brought three cups, keeping one hidden away, but for the next little part of the plan, he would have to find something that would suffice to grab a few fingerprints. He would polish that up, whatever it turned out to be, something that would not immediately be missed, using his own shirt-tail if it came down to that.

The real key to the situation was the girl. Apparently, she lived just down the road, and while the centre of town was a few kilometres away, she did have a bicycle. He was asking a lot of her—

Extremely protective of the hapless old man, crusty and prickly as he was, she would have to be at her bravest and her most intuitive in order for this to work—and passing notes and mouthing words into her eyes was pretty limited in the sense of what he could do and what he might hope to get away with.

Hopefully she would just trust him.

And only for as long as the hermit considered him another fellow-traveller, just another forgotten man, holding the world in a similar disdain. That was only good so long as it lasted.

With the hermit, that might not be for very long at all.

The gentleman liked his booze and his cigars, and that would be very helpful.

“Don’t get lost out there. There’s still a few bears up in them there hills.”

The sound of water lightly splashing not too far outside the front door was reassuring enough, and another good reason not to go walking around barefoot.

“Fuck off, you stupid bastard.”

Éliott grinned from ear to ear.

That, is exactly what I wanted to hear.

Other than that, and continuing to work on the old man, it was about time to start thinking of his own stomach.

Sausages and beans, eh. Throw a little mustard on there and you got something.

That sounded pretty damned good right about now.

And simple pleasures were the best.

END

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Chapter Thirteen.

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Six. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #10. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-22T21:01:00.000-05:00

Louis Shalako

“Okay. So, Doctor Bourdillon is in charge of the Surgical and Anatomy Department. This is where the students get into all the really interesting stuff, like dissecting corpses for fun and profit. He’s in a hell of a lot of trouble, what with half the world reading that story in the paper—the one about Maintenon and that freezer full of stiffs.”

Bingo, as the saying went—

“Oui, Monsieurs. It would seem that Monsieur Savard, president of the hospital foundation, also reads Le Temps. Naturally, he inquired as to whether the department had taken any kind of inventory, or exactly what kind of records were kept, er, when the cadavers came and went, and all that sort of thing.” More casual curiosity than anything, but it had sure set a fire under someone’s tail.

“Yes, gentlemen, it would seem that our good Doctor Bourdillon went into the back room and started pulling out drawers…” He paused, literally, for the drama—this one was a real character, all right. “…and, well, you can probably guess the rest.”

“There’s your first hundred. Ah, please—go on.” Hubert pulled out a few more small bills, keeping them in hand for the moment. “I would love to have your phone number—just so we can talk later on. So, how many do they figure are missing.”

No answer.

The bills were carefully folded and then shoved deep down into a hip pocket, a little awkwardly considering the confines of the back seat. Alphonse had the seat all the way back as well.

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” He took a breath. “Three stiffs, just like it said in the paper.”

“Okay, so why don’t you tell us…ah, just exactly what kinds of records are kept, assuming you know anything about that at all—”

The man nodded.

“Sure. Uh, yes, they do keep records. They have a stack, copies of death certificates, as a matter of fact. They have to be able to identify the body, leading to the proverbial toe-tags of popular fact and fiction. They like to have the medical history of the various bodies. If someone died of cancer or a heart attack, the students can cut them up and have a look for themselves. Yes, sir, in alphabetical order, in a steel filing cabinet. Someone donates their body to medical science, that’s somebody’s momma or poppa, or maybe even someone’s little sister, right. Daddy’s little girl, just died of brain cancer or something. They are entitled to their human dignity. The funeral home delivers them right to our back door. They know enough not to embalm them. Some of them are true paupers, and they can’t afford a nice funeral in the first place. They can do all that stuff right here, when it’s applicable. I mean, they do cut them up and make slides of tissue samples, stuff like that. Bits of kidney, liver, brains and lungs, right. Pickled in formaldehyde. Poop samples, even. They look at them through microscopes and make little drawings and stuff. They’ve got a cold room with a bunch of stainless steel drawers and any number of stiffs in there. Some of them are full and some of them are, ah, partials. A few bits and pieces missing, you know. Ah…if someone is teaching musculature, the students don’t necessarily need all the internal organs to cut up a leg or a shoulder. Waste not, want not, right. At some point, we end up with skeletons, with little holes drilled in the ends of the bones, and they’re wired together and hung on a frame. Everybody loves a good skeleton. A lot of stuff does get a decent burial at some point, when it’s no longer useful. It’s like meat that’s been freezer-burned and the students are looking at cell walls and stuff under the microscope. The chaplain blesses all that stuff as it goes out the back door. No, I think the real problem, is that they have a few dead bodies missing, and more than anything, they would very much like to avoid any kind of big stink over it. They would prefer not to get sued by the next of kin for a million francs, eh. As for phone numbers, why not just call up Savard. Don’t let on you’ve been talking to anyone here. Tell him you’re calling around to all the universities, the larger hospitals, and don’t just fake it—he’s savvy enough to check up on you guys too.” Word would get around all too quickly in such a case.

“Interesting.” Hubert held up the bills, rubbing them between his fingers. “What else can you tell us. Who else works in that department. Where exactly do you work—I mean, how would you be in a position to know this sort of stuff.”

The man thought it over. He already had a hundred francs—for five minutes work—and was the risk really worth it. The cops already knew a little too much about him—why give them any more. They also, knew his face and where to look for him. Only he knew if the information was any good. It was like the thoughts were written all over him.

He was hooked well enough.

“Honestly, guys, there’s, fuck, at least a dozen people, mostly doctors, instructors in all the courses. They come and go as they please. Janitors, they have the run of the building, and they all have their own sets of keys. Security guards…I could cough up names all day long, why bother when it’s mostly irrelevant. It’s just a list of names.” The names of department heads, various administrators, those were on plaques over their office doors, all one had to do was to take a walk through the building. “I’m not accusing anyone in particular. I’m just saying they have a problem.”

Hubert pulled a business card out for the gentleman.

“Okay. So, if this checks out, how are we supposed to get in touch with you?” It was worth a try—

“It will check out. Trust me on that one.”

“All right, Monsieur Nope, as you say. If you can think of anything else, give us a call. I’m Hubert, that’s me on the card. Okay?”

“I’ll think about it.” He turned. “I’ll call you, say in about a week.”

“You might even get that other hundred.”

“I’m quite looking forward to it, gentlemen.”

“Hold on.” Hubert whipped out the team photo. “Recognize any of these people?”

He took a quick look.

“No, not really. They all kind of look the same, don’t you think.”

“Okay.” It was worth a try.

He popped the door and stepped out, hurrying away, heading in the direction away from the hospital. He’d probably circle the block and come back with a coffee and a bagel or something, thought Hubert.

“He’s obviously done all of this before.”

“Hmn. That’s just what I was thinking. But, there are informants all over the place. We all have them, right. Easy cash, or so it would seem. Assuming you know anything, anything at all.” Garnier, tired of craning and straining, settled into the seat. “He’s somebody’s little buddy all right.”

In which case, he was safe enough, as cops generally didn’t mess with another cop’s source unless it was a truly serious matter.

Alphonse hit the starter and fired her up.

They were out of there.

END

Previous.

Chapter Thirteen.

Oh, the suspense.

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Five. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-22T13:10:00.004-05:00

Louis Shalako

The phone was ringing and Hubert sat up in bed with a lurch and a flutter in his heart, but the thing had frankly scared the hell out of him. He’d been having one of those dreams, the one where you’re a rat caught in some kind of a maze, and you can never get out of there—

Emanuelle was in the bathroom, predictably enough, what with having a fetus pressing down on her bladder all the time, and he snatched it up before the ringing drove him to say a bad word or two…which he tried not to do too much around the house.

“Yes.”

“Can you be ready in half an hour?”

The voice was baffling in its familiarity.

“Argh. Who in the hell is this?”

“Alphonse—”

Of course.

“Merde. Ah—yes. I suppose so.” Fuck. “Can’t you pick up Martin first? For crying out loud.”

“No. He’s on the way to our first stop. I will be calling him next. I will be doing that right now.”

The phone went dead, and that was that. That was Alphonse.

“For fuck’s sakes…” Thankfully, a faint tinkling sound on the other side of the wall ended, there was a pause, and then the toilet flushed.

With a start of recognition, he threw back the covers and headed for the bathroom door before she decided to run the bath or something like that. This would not only be extremely time-consuming but also fairly irritating. This was no way to think of the love of one’s life or the imminent mother of his son or daughter, whichever that might turn out to be.

No matter how irritating that might be.

And love conquers all.

***

At this hour of the day, what with picking up Martin and then the busy morning traffic, the typical furniture and appliance store still wouldn’t be open for some time. Alphonse had figured that much out all on his own, and so they were on the way to meet their hospital informant, for whom they didn’t even have a name yet. How in the hell he had managed it, was a good question, probably his buddy Paul in the Situation Room. Someone would have taken the call, most likely coming from a booth like the last call. They would have gotten right to Alphonse at home, who was known, like Gilles, to be an early riser.

They’d have the source on one line, and Alphonse on the other to set that up, otherwise it was just another small mystery.

That’s why they kept him around, as everyone said—the sort of man it didn’t pay to underestimate.

Just a time, and a place, and a promise not to be late.

"So, how do you know all of this stuff...???"

It was a public park, just down the street from the hospital doors, and it seemed the person would be on their way to work. Or, possibly leaving a night shift or maybe just sneaking out for an early coffee break.

With tall, stately trees lining the boulevard, and a bit of urban forest for a good chunk of the block, it would seem that the park was popular with hospital employees. Three nurses walked along, heading into work, side by side, beside the car. Alphonse was slowing to turn in. He waited for them to get across the entrance, the turn signal indicator insistent in its clicking.

“I knew this was a good idea.” Alphonse studied the trim calves, slender ankles and svelte bodies with some care.

“Huh.” Hubert was still sort of spent from the night before, as even for a woman at seven-plus months preggers, Emanuelle had been sort of starved for attention lately…these guys had no real need to know that part. “Argh.”

“I agree with him—” Garnier, in a kind of diplomatic ambiguity.

He and Alphonse exchanged a quick grin, as the older man pulled in off the street and began looking for a parking spot.

This seemed to be something of an auxiliary to any official parking lot. Such a big edifice had to have at least some dedicated parking. It would also never be enough, and the number of vehicles on the roads went up by leaps and bounds with every passing year. In such an ancient city, you simply couldn’t build roads and streets big enough, or fast enough, and that went for parking places as well.

The parking slots were angled, rather than at ninety degrees, straight in and straight out. The place was mostly full. Alphonse found a spot, where they could watch the action through the trees. There were the front doors, which they couldn’t actually see from this angle, and there were the side doors. There were people coming and going, with a few people just standing around, smokers mostly. There must be doors on the back of the building and on the other side. Ambulances. Vehicle access for deliveries. There was a fair bit of foot traffic. People all over the place. There would be hundreds of employees, patients, visitors, and casual foot traffic on both sides of the street, buses pumping out their diesel stench. All kinds of extraneous action. The classic meet, in other words. Act natural, and blend in with the crowd.

“Make sure we all got our hats on, and roll down the windows.” Alphonse was firm on that one. “Let’s make it fairly obvious, at least for our new friend.”

Upon Alphonse’s arrival that morning, he’d parked across the street from Hubert’s place. For that reason, the left rear passenger door had been left unlocked. Hubert had climbed in and slid across. It was something of a surprise, when a figure coming up from behind appeared at the window, the door opened and the person dropped into the seat beside Detective Hubert.

Garnier: this guy seems pretty bold.

“Hi, guys.”

“Yes?”

“Okay. So, how much is in this for me.”

“Well, this has to be our guy.” Garnier had spun around on one hip to keep an eye on him, for he seemed pretty damned bold. “What exactly are we talking about, anyways?”

“Information, upon request.”

“Fifty francs.”

The fellow snorted.

“A hundred francs. And it had better check out—”

“I want five hundred. And we all know what I’m talking about. Frozen dead people, that’s what I’m talking about.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, Monsieur Nope, ah, one hundred francs. Half up front and the other half when it checks out. Take it or leave it.”

The man’s hand reached for the door handle, as Alphonse sort of engaged Hubert’s eyes in the mirror.

“We can do this the hard way, if you want.” Hubert was thinking this guy was familiar, in some way, a weasel, an archetype—a weekend football player maybe.

The guy sort of froze—then half turned back.

“And what in the hell is that supposed to mean?” It was pure bullshit, but threatening enough to someone who might be dependent on their present employment.

“I’ll make it a hundred up front. Another fifty if it checks out—and it had better check out. Capiche, mon ami?”

“A hundred, eh?”

“Yes, and we might even forget about withholding evidence of a crime, and interfering with police in the course of an investigation…uttering a false report…”

Hell, even Alphonse winced at that one.

Ouch.

As for the source, he took it all in stride.

Alphonse.

“Yeah, yeah, all right. Fuck it, if you can’t take a joke. A hundred up front.” Settling into the seat again, he held out a hand as Hubert reached for his wallet. “Ah, and a hundred when it checks out.”

In the mirror, Alphonse gave a barely perceptible nod.

“All right. A hundred it is, then, and another hundred when it checks out.”

“Let us hope this is worth it.” Garnier.

“So, what’s your name, anyways. What do you do here. Do you even work here at all. How do you even know this information…”

There was always a long list, but first one had to get them hooked.

First, let him take the money, second, we ask him about Abu Samaha—just another worker in a menial job, just another guy in coveralls, just one more building cleaner.

END

Previous.

Chapter Thirteen.

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Four. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-19T17:59:00.005-05:00

Louis Shalako

The pair of detectives had one last stop on the way back to the office. It was to the home of LeBeaux, on an upper floor of a pension-style apartment in a central part of the city.

As it turned out, Hubert barely had the chance to explain himself, as the lady of the house was out. Her daddy was still sick in bed, where he had been battling some sort of respiratory infection for weeks, and Éliott’s little sister had the bored composure of the typical fifteen year-old. Unluckily for them, any older siblings were also out at the moment. She took the envelope and the short explanation at face value, asking no questions and making no statements. A radio blasted away in the background, popular music no doubt, but it wasn’t helpful in communicating and it was clear they weren’t all that welcome in her little world.

After a quick thank you and a promise to draw it to her mother’s attention, she shut the door in their faces, and none too gently, either.

“That didn’t take too long at all. The fact that we simply reek of alcohol probably has nothing to do with it—” Garnier followed him back down the stairs again, and out onto the street.

And, of course, by the time they got back to the car, Alphonse had taken another radio call, and this time it was two more hits on their news story. The first, a man who claimed to have sold two large freezers to the same customer on the same day, and the second was a little more mysterious but it involved a low-level employee of the custodial department of a prominent Paris teaching hospital, Les Sœurs de la Charité de Sainte Marie, asking to meet them anonymously at a location of his own choice, assuming arrangements could be made.

Craning again, Martin kind of shook his head. He looked at his watch too.

“So. What do you think?”

Reviewing the addresses in question, they might do one, but they couldn’t do both, not before quitting time. This was a real thing when the case was going along at a certain pace, and this one had looked sort of hopeless all along. They were not gendarmes responding to a fire or a bank robbery in progress. They were detectives on an investigation. This was the long game, rather than the short game.

It was Alphonse who had the answer.

“Tell them we’ll get back to them.”

“He’s right.”

Martin picked up the microphone, clicking over to Channel D for secure communications.

An executive decision—but Hubert had been going all gangbusters for quite some time now and there was the need to prioritize. He did have a life of his own. He did have a wife to consider, and it had been quite a while since he’d spent a quiet evening at home. And just when you started to get comfortable, you thought of LeBeaux. That one was enough to make one’s stomach churn. There was nothing he could do about that, but he still wondered…and then there was Gilles.

Even so.

It could still wait until tomorrow.

And thank God for Alphonse and his no-bullshit attitude.

***

The girl had departed, which might help in some ways. It was also something of an emotional wrench, but one could only hope and pray on that one. He’d just have to sweat it out. Éliott had made a bit of a show, taking his sweet time, doing a real thorough job of it, in washing up the dishes, and in giving one hell of a good scrub to the pots and pans. He’d uttered a few cusses of his own while doing that, but it was like the old man just didn’t care. Then, heating more water and giving himself a proper shave. He’d topped it all off with another bit of performative theatre. He had taken off the boots and the socks, rolled up the pant-legs, all while sitting on the chair in front of the hermit, with the big bowl on the floor, and washed his feet in the leftover shaving water.

“Oh, thank God.” Finally—

Toweling the feet dry, changing into fresh socks, rinsing out the old socks, hanging them up to dry near the stove, it seemed the hermit couldn’t care less—or maybe he did; but he seemed to be lost in a world of his own.

“Oh, Charles. Oh, Darwin.” Fuck—

The hermit had laughed at that one.

Strong liquor would do that to you. This was especially true if a person hadn’t had any in a while. A full belly might have helped as well.

With nothing else to wear, he’d pulled the tongue and the flaps of the boots wide, stuffing the long laces down inside so he wouldn’t trip on them. This wasn’t the sort of place where you could go barefoot, there simply wasn’t the luxury. That floor was grubby indeed, and the socks were white and brand new.

They’d agreed to switch over to beer for a while and conserve the cognac. The hermit was half-pissed anyways. It was more a question of maintaining that buzz, without going overboard, so to speak. Éliott had dumped the scummy water outside, a good distance from the front door. He’d immediately filled up their big pot and began heating more water.

“Sir. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“Huh. The answer is no.”

He grinned, but the man really was like that. He simply didn’t care as to how he might be perceived.

“Ah, I don’t mean to pry, ah, but, uh. I was just wondering how you got that awful wound on the head, ah, on the old noggin there. That’s downright nasty-looking. Also, I was wondering. Would you, ah, have such a thing as a broom around here…”

A little psychology, a little human understanding. A little compassion might go a long way in a situation like this. It bordered on animal psychology. A little bit of the carrot, and a little bit of the stick. A direct question, and an indirect question, a rhetorical question, and one that was right to the point, always ready to back off, to circle around again, and try it on again another way—

“Huh?”

“A broom. A broom, sir. I was just saying, do you have any kind of a broom around here…”

“Yeah? And who the fuck are you.”

“I am Éliott, sir, and who the fuck are you, anyways.”

The hermit chuckled. This was about as close as Éliott had gotten to the direct question.

But surely the man would have a name.

“You’re an idiot.”

Éliott laughed, whether it was a joke or not, he wouldn’t care to speculate.

“Yeah. Well. Someday, perhaps, I will tell you my hard-luck story.”

“Huh.”

That’s how it had been going with the hermit, one step forward, and two steps back.

Éliott could only wonder at what had happened—at what must have happened.

“So. When was the last time you figure you had a bath, or anything like that—”

When was the last time you had them fucking boots off.

And—

What in the hell am I going to use for a blanket tonight.

That one didn’t bear thinking about.

***

The first time the two detectives had knocked on the hermit’s door, the whole thing had been so unexpected. The muzzle of a shotgun poking through a crack in the doorway and right in your face will do that to you.

There was a certain shock value. There was a certain immediacy, one which ruled out all other considerations, if only for a time.

But the hermit hadn’t been wearing a hat, and through the gap in the door, Éliott had glimpsed the greying hair, clumped with dark, clotted blood. Hubert had been in no position to see it, it was only him. It had meant nothing at the time, and they’d gotten out of there while the going was good. It was only when the man had passed them on the trail, with Hubert not paying too much attention, eager to get going. He’d taken a second to look, really look, and that wound had looked pretty damned bad.

Even then, he still hadn’t gotten it.

It was just one of those things. The man was such a prickly character, clearly not seeking company or attention, and in some sense, he’d figured it was none of his business.

It was only later, belatedly recognizing that they were, in fact, police officers, with a duty to protect and to serve. They’d sworn an oath to that effect. That was when that sneaky little guilty feeling had sort of caught up with him.

Even then, he still hadn’t caught on. It was only in the pre-dawn hours, laying there in that hotel room, still in that state, halfway between dreaming and wakefulness, it was only then, that the coincidental aspect of that wound had come to him. They’d gotten up, thrown their stuff in their bags and buggered off to the train station, and he’d still been thinking about it.

Had Maintenon fallen down, hit his head on a rock, rolled or slid into the river, and drowned, his body washing downstream and ending up caught under a logjam further down, as Hubert had so strongly come to believe? Or maybe he hadn’t, which left an awful lot of other possibilities, a lot of other theories. It left a lot of other doubts.

What if they were wrong?

What if every fucking one of us is wrong…

What if Maintenon hadn’t died after all? In which case, what in the hell had happened to him.

And what about that alleged ghost. Dolores’ ghostly apparition of her childhood crush, Gilles Maintenon, walking down the road in front of her house. High noon, or shortly thereafter.

What about that, eh.

Ghosts mostly came out at night. They preferred the darkness. Right? Not the broad light of day.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know Gilles. The changes wrought in the man were such, that all previous resemblances, all previous mental images were now somehow rendered obsolete, to the extent that he still wasn’t really certain. If nothing else, the man’s very behaviour would have cast doubt.

In that sense, it really wasn’t the same man.

Not anymore.

He had the scissors, he had the bandages, and he had an ointment to put on that nasty old wound.

But what he wanted, more than anything, (besides the girl), would be to gain the man’s trust, by any means necessary, and to give him one hell of a good shave—to cut that hair to something more closely resembling Maintenon’s hair, which was trimmed fairly regularly, but not obsessively, not with Gilles, that was for sure—

If he could shave his own face, he could shave someone else’s. Confidence was everything, in that sense.

And patience was everything else.

Maintenon did it when it was necessary, and only when he could get around to it. His hair had been fairly longish, weeks ago, when he’d been sent off on vacation. Getting his hair cut would have been just about the last thing on his list at that point.

One thing Éliott had figured out well enough—to get the man drunk, knock him out with the narcotic pain pills he had in his coat pocket, hanging by the door there, and then to just to go ahead and do it, would be pretty invasive of the man’s rights. It might not be very well appreciated, and for that reason, he was going to need at least some cooperation. If he was right, all well and good. If he was wrong, it would be morally reprehensible, and possibly even a kind of assault. An assault on human dignity, if nothing else, and how in the hell one would define that in the current situation was anyone’s guess.

If he could get that cooperation, that really would be some kind of a miracle.

And then there was the girl, an unknown quantity, and one who had no very good reason to trust him. He’d shown up out of nowhere, a complete surprise in every sense. He must be downright threatening to one such as her—every hound-dog in the village must have taken some kind of a crack at that one.

Once upon a fucking time—

No wonder she was so shy.

Right?

If she came back tomorrow, that would be a very good sign, otherwise, she would be gone for good—or at least until Éliott had given up, presumably to go home or just moving on, or something like that. It would be very hard for her to avoid the place and abandon her friend the hermit. Not for very long. Odds were, she just couldn’t do it, but then he hadn’t been able to do it either. Knowing that she didn’t have too many real friends herself didn’t help much either. Then again, everyone in town probably knew her—and sympathized without quite knowing what to do about it. This was, of course, merely an assumption.

Fuck.

End

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Chapter Thirteen.

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Three. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #10. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-18T20:09:00.002-05:00

...a bit of a mind-reader.

Louis Shalako

“If you are lonely when you're alone, then you are in very bad company.” Their hermit was something of a philosopher, once he’d been primed with a couple of drinks—and a hot meal. “Young people take the most ridiculous chances, when they have their whole lives ahead of them. Old people, with so much less to lose, are far more cautious. Perhaps it is because they understand the value of that life, and what it really means in the grand scheme of things, which is, exactly—nothing.”

And yet a life, was all a man really had—that and his self-respect.

The man had gotten some kind of education, somewhere along the way. That much was clear.

“What, then, is the purpose of one’s life? One life. Your life, my life, her life—why, it is there to be lived, and nothing more. And life is, ultimately, to face death. Each of us in our own way. For without death, there can never truly be life, for life is joy, life is but a dream, my young amigo, and death is…death is reality. It is the one true reality for each and every man, woman, and even the most recently newborn child.” He puffed contentedly. “Thank you for the cigars, incidentally. That really was thoughtful.”

“Huh. I’m sure that must be true. You are also very welcome. And, ah, and what about the girl?”

“Yes. I sense your interest, young man, but give it up. She’s stone-deaf, very innocent I should think, uh, but in answer to your question, she seems to have adopted me. For reasons which remain unclear.” He knocked back the last of his cup. “She has a very good heart, and an even better soul.”

“You got that right, sir.” He grinned in wry humour.

And a pretty fine pair of lungs as well, but he didn’t say it.

Éliott was nursing his own drink, looking around in curiosity. The place was bigger inside than it had looked from the outside.

Thoughtfully, he shoved the bottle in a little closer…

We are fishers of men, or so it said in the Bible. Sooner or later, he’d take the bait. All he needed was patience, persistence, skill…and a lot of love, he guessed.

A lot of fucking risks, but they had to be taken.

Not even three metres across the front wall, the interior went back a good ten or twelve metres, widening out as it went. That would have been what made the site attractive in the first place, with one small little wall to build up front and then the roof, trussed with logs or even whole tree-trunks or so it seemed. It might have even begun life as a simple animal pen, or maybe just a trap if one cared to go all the way back to Neolithic times. The slope of the roof had the effect of making the space look larger than it truly was. There were a pair of bunks back there in the far left corner. God alone knew what kind of mattress might be found under the faded blankets there, and the stove was backed up against the right side, about halfway into the room. There was a fireplace beside the stove, with the pipe for the stove going up, over and hooking into the chimney. The fireplace had been built out of stones and either mortar or just clay or something. The stove would have come much later, the pieces hauled in on someone’s back, and bolted together on site. The place seemed to get lower or deeper at the back. It was a couple of steps down. There was raw, sloping, naked rock in places, and yet some effort had been made to floor it in salvaged wooden planks, anywhere that was level or anything that could reasonably be leveled with some work.

Assuming two fires going at once, assuming a good pile of firewood, whether kept indoors or out, it would be warm enough to get through a winter in the mountains. You could always burn the floor in a pinch—

As for the girl, she sat on a wooden kitchen chair, the old man had a bench, his back to the wall, and he had a short little milking stool. It seemed the man didn’t get too much company, but a couple of stiff drinks had mellowed him out a little and he seemed in the mood to talk.

“How do I say I love you.”

The two of them had been signing back and forth, and he had no idea of what they were talking about, other than discussing him. They must have had something else to talk about—

“It’s a bit early for that, don’t you think.”

“I meant her.”

“So did I.”

Something of a philosopher, with a couple of stiff drinks in him.

They kept signing, with her eyes coming back to him from time to time, and him barely able to tear his eyes away. The hermit looked his way.

“I only wish I was a younger man myself.”

The girl looked embarrassed, and it seemed as if she might be able to read lips. Either that, or minds.

The old man regarded him anew, as if for the very first time, assessing him.

“Huh.”

It was all he said, and the other had to grin.

That was about as good an answer as he was likely to get.

There really was a love at first sight—

He was convinced.

Éliott took another careful little sip.

If it was worth having, it was worth the pursuit. He was only going to get one life—for whatever the hell that was worth.

One life, and one girl in particular, and that would be more than enough for him.

***

“How come she speaks so well. I mean, uh. She seems to swear well enough.”

It was a question that had been bothering him.

“Ah. Her family. She’s gotten a good education, I will say that. They sent her off to a special school. I suppose in some hopes that she might be able to live more or less independently. They would have had all the usual hopes of her being married, all the usual things that so-called normal people do. Anything other than being a burden, which is always a consideration. They’re not exactly rich, but then, not too many people around here are. She reads, and writes, or so I believe. You might try writing your name down for her…she’s had all kinds of specialists, teaching her to speak properly—with the deaf, the pronunciation can be way off, as they never actually hear the words as spoken by another person. Too often, people think they’re retarded when it’s just that they don’t speak very well. Ah, she does lip-read, pretty well, otherwise, she would hardly have been able to teach me anything…”

“So, she’s taught you a few signs, then? How long did that take, anyways.”

“Oh, not too long—” But then again, it was only a bare few signs. “Imagine that, the perfect woman—a woman that doesn’t talk.”

It was bitter enough, but it wasn’t him. Éliott shook his head.

It wasn’t that way at all, and he would have taken her at any price.

“She talks. Besides. It really isn’t like that—” She wasn’t perfect, that much was true, but only that much.

He hadn’t met too many perfect people in this world. Not so far, anyways. He sure as hell wasn’t one of them, not in any case.

How could one ever put it in words?

It really couldn’t be done now, could it.

The girl had unpacked her basket, and Éliott had hopped up to offer what help he could. It was good to be close to her, shy as she was. It was interesting to see the hermit had a couple of water buckets, and a tub big enough to heat water in for washing up, or better yet, a good shave.

It was a chance to confirm something he’d already glimpsed, a horrific, half-healed gash on the left side, rear of the head. It was great, red, oozing sore and that thing really needed treatment.

Hadn’t she seen it? Or perhaps she hadn’t the signs for it, or perhaps the old man hadn’t been able to read those signs, yet he seemed completely unbothered by it.

He had no signs, but he could at least point and make silent movements with his mouth. She nodded, looking scared for some reason. This was not the time to push too hard, not with either one of them. He helped her pull out her humble offerings, probably all she had to give, the items surplus in the sense that certain vegetables all came in at once and they’d just go bad otherwise. Radishes for example. A man could only eat so many radishes. You couldn’t eat them fast enough, and that was just a fact. Ha. Four more eggs. As for the carrots, they were mostly a lot of leaves and about as big around as his little finger. There was a wedge of cheese and half a baguette. It was plain enough fare, and little enough for a man to live on. They found places to put it all, although cupboard space was crude to begin with, and small enough by any standard. The eggs went into a big bowl, useless otherwise with a big crack in it, there being literally nowhere else to put them where they wouldn’t just roll away...

He went to his own shopping bags, and began pulling stuff out of there. As surmised, the hermit had no refrigeration, no ice-box, bearing in mind it would be a long haul. It was uphill all the way from the nearest store, and ice cost money, so this was no big surprise. He lined up the tins in a row, and organized them as best he could, labels up front just like mother always did. He’d completely forgotten a tin-opener, and was relieved to see one in there. All he could do was to hang the string of sausages over a nail sticking out of the wall that someone, now lost in the mists of time, had tapped into a crevice. She seemed a little happier to see all of that food, and he showed her the razor and the soap as well. She bit her lip, searching his eyes for intentions. All of a sudden, she nodded…she was intuitive, he’d give her that much, but then, she’d pretty much have to be. Fuck, it was like his heart just swelled up sometimes with this one—

Taking up the washing bowl, he filled it with water and put that on the stove, which was burning low.

He pulled out the sweater. He showed it to her, and then took it down and laid it on one corner of the lower bed, and two pairs of socks. There was definitely a bit of old-man smell down there. The bedding was…not good. She must have been watching. How could she not be watching.

He went outside to get more light firewood and the girl and the man went back to signing.

Stoking up the fire, admittedly, it was rather warm in there, even with the cold stone walls made up of the very mountainside, and with the door left open. It was a warm day to begin with. The window did not seem to open, there was no screen, so that was the best one could do. As for himself, he hadn’t eaten since the previous day, but he could wait just a little bit longer. It might even be good to go hungry once in a while, it gave a person a certain perspective. A tonic for the nerves. As for the hermit, looking at the pan and the plate, and what was left of his groceries, he’d had a pretty good breakfast, or was it lunch this late in the day.

They were going to need hot water.

We're going to need some hot water and bandages here...

It was just work. It was nothing to be afraid of—

He soon had the fire going to his satisfaction.

“So, sir. The Man with No Name. I occurs to me that I’m just a poor, lonely stranger, passing through these here parts, on my way to somewhere else, ah, hopefully, and, ah…ah, and I could really use a shave, and a change of socks.”

The hermit grunted, looking into the bottom of the glass.

“With your permission, of course. I would like to heat some water. Also, I was thinking that maybe we could get a couple of buckets of fresh stuff. Perhaps you could have the young lady show me where to go for that—” He had another thought. “I don’t mind washing up, and helping out a little around the, uh, house. I’m always real happy to chop wood and stuff like that. Er, keep an eye on the stove, please. There’s no need for that to boil over.”

There was a grunt of acknowledgement if not exactly agreement…or encouragement.

“Thank you for your kindness to a stranger…” An old Chinese proverb, a prophetic one, and one the hermit might have heard before.

The head came up and the man gave him a look. Turning to the girl, he made a couple of signs. Assuming success, Éliott emptied one bucket into the heating water on top of the stove. Tossing the last of the coffee out into the underbrush, he filled the coffee pot as well as she stood expectantly, hands brushing at the sides of her skirt, which tended to cling. Taking up the two empty buckets, it seemed they were ready to go. There didn’t seem to be too many objections.

With a nod and a look back at the hermit, she turned for the door.

He dropped the buckets, struck by an impulse. He rummaged through his jacket pockets. The pen and the notepad were there.

“Something wrong, young man?” The voice was slightly slurred, uncaring.

“No. No! But you were right. I really should write my name down for her—”

He resolved to do just that, and maybe a few more things besides. Certain song lyrics came to mind, or would that be too mushy.

Every little breeze seems to whisper Louise, for example.

END

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Chapter Thirteen.

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Two. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-17T20:38:00.001-05:00

Louis Shalako

Their last stop was to Maintenon’s flat. They stood just inside the street-level door. The lock on the mailbox was dead simple. Hubert had the tools and a bit of a knack. Madame had said the key was in a kitchen drawer, and told them exactly which one, but it was good to polish the skills from time to time. Martin held his tongue and waited breathlessly. There was the question of getting caught, and they didn’t have that warrant yet, either. He’d picked it in a half a minute and the actual key for Maintenon’s door hadn’t been all that much quicker. The guts of the lock were worn and he’d had to wiggle and wiggle the key just to make it work. They’d emptied the mailbox, down below, locking it back up again, almost a greater achievement than simply opening it according to Hubert. The lights came on when he snapped the switch, so there was still power. Hubert put that on a corner of the table for the moment after a quick riffle through, looking for overdue bills or whatever. He wasn’t even sure why, not really, but there didn’t appear to be anything interesting anyways. Knowing Gilles, he would have stopped the papers, any magazines and such that he might subscribe to. He would have paid the bills before he left. He would also have been expecting to return in due course.

With the windows closed up for weeks now, the air was musty and still. The first thing to do was to open up a window or two and turn on the tall pedestal fan in the front room.

“Ah, that’s better.”

It was damned warm up there on the third floor.

“Okay, let’s see if we can find the will.” Garnier looked around, never having been in the place before.

It was not huge, but it was certainly big enough, albeit a little grubby from years of benevolent neglect. It wasn’t the cleanliness, so much as the sheer amount of time that had passed, with the faint smell from the pilot lights burning on the gas range, the washing up, the boiling of kettles and bacon frying and pots full of potatoes. Judging by some little vents here and there, it was forced-air heat, most likely from a boiler in the basement. This would be either coal or gas-fired, and then there would be Gilles and his cigars and his pipe. Every little bit of that would contribute, over the years, to that faint yellow tinge to the walls and ceiling.

The place had a certain patina about it.

“Try the study. There will be a desk, and a locked drawer. Gilles has a Beretta around here somewhere as well. Either in the desk or in the bedside table.” Maintenon would have had a keychain, spare keys, all of that sort of thing, and they were the sorts of things that would not necessarily go along on vacation. “Anyone that reads the paper will know the place is vacant.”

And that included thieves—it especially, included thieves, as too many past events had proven. Plundering the homes of the recently-deceased was almost a specialty with some of the real pros.

Hubert went and opened the fridge. It looked like Gilles had cleaned out the milk and stuff, but there were some other things in there that didn’t look or smell very good. Lettuce, tomatoes, the carrots, stuff like that was looking pretty bad. What looked like cold roast beef had definitely gone green. Gilles really ought to have thrown that out.

“Ugh. I’ll see if I can find some garbage bags, or a box or something. But all of this stuff has to go—it’s a little over and above the call of duty…but, even so.”

Garnier went through the archway, looking for a hallway or something, and unsure of the layout.

Well, the will was there, in a sealed envelope, having found a key to the locked drawer on the upper right—the key was at the back, under stacks of old bills, some other boring papers and stuff, going back years. It was in an unlocked drawer, way down on the left side. Just as Hubert had said. As for the Beretta or any other possible weapons, they were beginning to get a little frustrated. It just didn’t seem to be there, and yet Hubert was pretty certain that it would be, or should be, if only they knew just where to look—having gotten a good puff of flour in the face when pulling an open bag out of the cupboard, he was getting a little fed up. They’d already loaded up a couple of bags of wasted food, and put aside a few tins of sardines for LeBref, or more accurately, Sylvestre.

There were only so many places to search. They’d already gone through every pocket of every coat, in every closet sort of thing.

“If a man was going away, there is some reason to make sure of the weapon. When he’s home, there are reasons to keep it relatively close to hand—” Yet they just couldn’t find the thing, one way or another.

“I still think he’s got a safe-deposit box somewhere.”

“Why the gun and not the will, then?” Hubert had a point, one had to admit. “We have the bank book, and we’ll have to call them and ask.”

The actual balance was impressive indeed.

“That’s quite a piss-pot of money, when you sort of see it all at once…”

Figuratively speaking—

“Huh.”

There was a very expensive wrist-watch in a top dresser drawer, still in the original box, and that was just one more example. The cuff-links and tie-clips that he saw were all right, but much more humble in cost and origin. Hubert doubted if the man had ever actually worn it—no more than twice, if that. It was that kind of watch, an engraved presentation from the department, after so many years of service, and a memento, rather than anything Gilles would ever wear. It was solid gold and heavy as hell.

They had gotten to the point of pulling potatoes and onions out of the bins in the small pantry, still looking for the pistol, when there was a bit of noise from the doorway. The door closed behind someone…they stepped out of the pantry.

Alphonse.

Hubert and Garnier stood there, a little surprised to see him, but of course he and Gilles had been fairly close. He’d also been in that fucking car all day long.

“It’s all right.” The tone was gruff, nothing unusual there. “Don’t worry. I have a gendarme, it’s his beat, he’s, uh…he’s keeping an eye on the car.”

“Huh.” Alphonse to the last, thought Hubert.

It struck him that they’d probably miss him when he was gone.

Alphonse pulled a bottle out of a paper sack that he had under the arm.

“I got this up the street. It was Maintenon’s brand.”

Cognac.

“We’ll need some glasses, please. Unless you’re not having one.”

Garnier gave Hubert a look, and he shrugged. Opening a cupboard, Martin found three glasses.

“Sure—why not.”

Opening up the bottle, Alphonse poured three stiff shots.

He set the bottle down on the table and raised a glass.

They took up their own respective glasses…

“Gentlemen. May I propose a toast—”

Hubert choked up a little on that one, but nodded.

“Sure, why the hell not—”

Garnier nodded.

Why not.

“To the ghost of Gilles Maintenon.” Was he fucking serious?

But of course he was.

There was only one thing for it, but to agree, to nod solemnly, to raise the glass, and to drain it.

“To the ghost of Gilles Maintenon.”

And if that didn’t put a rather fine polish on their day, nothing else ever would.

As for Gilles, he would have appreciated it—and who wouldn’t.

END

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-One. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-16T19:19:00.004-05:00

Louis Shalako

Their next stop was to Madame d’Coutu’s new place of employment, the result of some simple telephone work, and the lady would be expecting them at some point in the morning. For whatever reason, traffic was sheer hell this morning. It was halfway across town.

Good old Alphonse, sitting bored in the vehicle, had been listening with the radio actually turned up for a change, (rather than having it down real low and simply ignoring it), and had taken the call while they were inside the store. One more hit on their planted news story, and now they had another little errand on their plate. He had it all down in his own notebook, in writing that was surprisingly legible. Knowing Alphonse, he would have taken his sweet time with it.

Things were looking up.

And of course, Yvonne wasn’t too happy to see them. Truth was, they were late, and an appointment was an appointment. Real gentlemen would have been punctual above all else. For her, it was just so much bother, and she wasn’t shy about telling them that, either. She’d had one or two calls from the reporters, and she was still spitting mad about those people as she called them. It was also the height of embarrassment for an honest working woman to be visited by the police. Especially as her lady had been out all morning and had arrived home at exactly the wrong time and naturally, she had questions. One could only sympathize, not that it had done much good. For the working classes, to be out of work for any length of time would very shortly lead to personal disaster and naturally the police understood that. The dress was shapeless, the hair grey-brown and mousy, and there were lines around the eyes and the mouth. One wondered if she had smiled in days.

Hubert doubted if the lady had been out of work more than two or three days, what with having signed on with an employment agency and all. Still, one had to listen for a while out of politeness. Funny thing was, she seemed to have done all right with her current assignment, one wondered if she saw that much herself. Three times the size of Maintenon’s place, bright and airy and well-lit, the paint was the work of professional decorators rather than a mom-and-pop project. Hopefully, her current boss-woman wasn’t a real tyrant.

They were in the kitchen of a fine old flat, in a very fashionable part of the city, with the cook and the maid having made themselves scarce, and the lady of the house sort of fussing and fuming in the sitting room out front.

So far, she hadn’t been of much help, but then it had always been a long shot.

“Anyways. I’ve told you everything I know.” She was adamant, and her eyes strayed to the clock on the wall.

Having lost her previous employment, through no fault of her own and at some inconvenience to herself, she had only reluctantly given up the key to Maintenon’s apartment. The three of them were seated around the kitchen table…

Hubert, known for a certain charm of his own, was doing his best to soothe her down.

“Naturally we understand, Madame, and of course we understand your feelings…”

He patted her forearm and she snatched it away. It was all he could do, just to try again.

“Now, is there any little thing, any funny little detail, anything that might have struck you about those men, ah, that afternoon.”

“No. Not really.” She’d just taken her one-hour lunch break, gotten back to work on the dot of one o’clock, and she had been dusting and sweeping, just thinking about her shopping list, (and killing time strategically, or so he thought), when the knock had come at the door.

There was nothing new in any of this, it was all in the original report. It was time to call it a day with this one. Neither one of them had ever met the lady, and whatever ideas one may have had about the typical housekeeper, Yvonne had turned out to be a harried woman, old-before-her-time and with few skills and perhaps not too many friends. Unmarried, her only emotional outlet would be a cat and perhaps her sister’s children and grandchildren. That and a lot of knitting.

“Hmn. Okay. Would you mind taking a look at this photograph, please. Do you recognize any of the men in this picture.”

“Non.”

“Are you certain? Not even the slightest resemblance?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head.

Hubert picked a random face and brought it in a little closer.

“This man?”

She shook her head.

“Or this one?”

“No.”

“What about this one—” Monsieur Samaha.

Again, she said no.

“…or this one…”

“No.”

“Okay.” Taking a different tack, he mentioned that the cat, Sylvestre, was being well looked-after, and she made a face but said nothing.

The cat was no longer any problem of hers, and that seemed clear enough.

“Also, Madame, we have been wondering, well, if you have been paid, that is to say all caught up in terms of your employment at the Maintenon household…er.”

She flushed, went rigid, and then allowed that she had, in fact, been paid, in full, in advance, up to the end of the month by the inspector. This was before he went down south. Gilles hadn’t even been gone a week, but as soon as she’d heard the news, she had bolted for new employment.

“What would you have had me do?” Although she seemed a little nicer now, and the truth was, she might even owe Gilles a fair chunk of money in purely legalistic terms.

The lady didn’t actually come out and say that part, but it was a fair inference and no big revelation, personality-wise. It might explain her whole demeanour so far, what with having a conscience after all, a little touch of the guilt, and this in what could only be assumed to be a good Catholic. Especially if one got caught—

He nodded sagely, resisting the urge to try patting her on the arm again.

“Okay. Well, thank you, Madame, we will not waste any more of your precious time.” A thought struck him. “Normally, people would get severance pay anyways…and the circumstances are nothing if not unusual, right?”

He could see her consider it, latching on to it perhaps.

It wasn’t much of a surprise, really, but they’d had no option but to try her out.

He snapped the notebook closed, preparing to rise.

“There is one thing, though.”

“Oh? What’s that Madame.”

“It’s about the name on the coveralls. I distinctly remember now—it was Montgolfier Brothers.” She gave a firm nod and that was that—

Right up until the point when you realized she’d been lining the bottom of the birdcage, budgie-birds or parakeets, or something very much like that and quite musical…and that sure looked like a page from Le Temps in there.

It was hard to say if she was being deliberately obtuse, or maybe she was just genuinely stupid—she hadn’t mentioned Gilles by name in the entire time they’d been there, admittedly that really hadn’t been very long at all. It was like she had problems of her own and simply didn’t give a damn—

They clambered to their feet, repressing deep sighs or any expression at all.

Sometimes it was all one could do, but to remain polite, perhaps even gracious.

“Thank you, Madame d’Coutu. We are, of course, very grateful for your time.”

The poor woman had been alone in that kitchen, for at least some time, with a freezer full of dead people. That had to be taken into account as well—of course she had fucking well run for it, and who could blame her. It was perfectly understandable, and no shame in that. Except in the mind of the lady herself. It was a story she would tell and retell, and it would no doubt grow into something quite extraordinary over the years.

He really should have told her all of that, but, the problem was that the words just wouldn’t come out.

***

It was almost like they were getting somewhere.

“Yes, sir, we made the patches here. Montgolfier Brothers. They ordered a dozen patches, and paid cash up front. I’d never heard of them, we’ve never dealt with them, and they had no account. Our policy is clear on that.” Monsieur Renaud was the owner and manager of a very small factory, a sweat-shop, with about a dozen women at sewing machines in a loft on the eastern outskirts of the city. “A Monsieur Bisson. He came in person. A rather ordinary fellow, middle-aged, slight of build, average height and average weight. Well-dressed. A small mustache, hair fairly light but not real blond if you know what I mean…”

He thought further.

“Oh. Little round black glasses. The hair was combed straight up and over. I looked it up, that was about May twenty-first.” The gentleman had worn a hat, but he’d taken it off while coming in the door.

“Ah, I was just going to ask.”

The big, open room was on the top floor and very warm, although every window in the place seemed to be open. A fly buzzed here and there, curious and hungry, or maybe even just friendly, as Hubert brushed one off of the tip of his nose. The thing seemed to be in love with him—

He could feel the sweat all right, running down inside the shirt and he wondered how they did it sometimes.

The office itself was a glassed-in enclosure, where the employees were never out of sight, and neither was the boss. It was a little quieter in there with the door closed, with a fan to at least stir the air a little. Sewing wash-cloths and hemming hand-towels and fucking tea-towels for a centime apiece and things like that…cash paid daily, or so it said on a sign down below at street level.

No wonder the working classes were unhappy.

Without much hope, he pulled out the picture and let the man have a look at it.

“Do you recognize any of these men? Does anyone in particular look familiar? What about this one…or this one…or this one here…?” It was an old and familiar routine.

The gentleman took a moment to study it carefully.

“Ah, no. I’m afraid not.”

And in this particular case, not much joy to be had. It was routine police work, nothing more, nothing very exciting and not all that informative in terms of solving cases.

Perhaps sensing their disappointment, and wishing to be helpful, the gentleman spoke.

“Would you like to see how they are made?”

Apparently, they had an automated embroidering machine, which worked off of punch-card type templates and they could produce team and commercial patches in many fonts and sizes. These ranged from name patches on a mechanic’s work shirt to shoulder patches and breast patches, hat-badges, for police, fire, ambulance, sports teams and commercial enterprises all over the city. They could use any colour of thread, in any combination, and promised two-day completion on the smaller orders. The bigger the order, the steeper the discount. Custom design was a specialty.

Martin Garnier gave him a nod. What the hell, they had nothing to lose but time.

“Sure, why not. We’d be delighted.” Think of it as good public relations, or planting the seeds of tomorrow’s success today.

Not everyone was so willing to talk to the police and that sort of thing ought to be encouraged. It was a small place, the machine was right there, and it really didn’t take all that long. With an assistant, and at least one damned sharp mind, the pair had quickly thrown in a few steel letters in a particular font, changed a couple of spools of thread, cut a patch of flannel, a simple rectangle, clamped all that in place, and set the machine to work. They watched, open-mouthed, and finally, switching off, the fellow reached in with scissors, snipped a few extraneous threads, and pulled out a long, skinny patch, all set to be sewn on to a garment.

Montgolfier Brothers.

Nice.

The gentleman handed it over with a nod and a smile.

“And there you have it…”

“Thank you for the tour.” If nothing else, they had another pretty generic description of another suspect, and a name which would probably turn out to be bullshit. “I have to admit, that was all very interesting.”

They would have an odd little exhibit to show off when they got back to the room.

Martin wasn’t trying to be smart, but to see a little follower-thingy, a vertical rod on the end of an arm, tracing an outline on a row of steel templates on the one side, and the needles going up and down, tukka-tukka-tukka-tukka, around and around on a piece of fabric on the other side, and seeing the letters appear in three colours, as the whole apparatus sort of slid along on tracks above it; on a patch of felt, (or whatever), was fascinating enough in its own way.

At least he thought so—

It was all very illuminating.

END

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Chapter Thirteen.

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-15T20:32:00.004-05:00

Louis Shalako

“Ah, merci, Madame.” So she spoke French after all, which shouldn’t have been a surprise considering the polyglot nature of the immediate neighbourhood.

The shop right next door had signs in what looked like Chinese characters, which should have been some kind of a clue, and there was a Greek restaurant just down the block. Hubert had even been in there once or twice, years ago, and he might have even recommended it, unfortunately it was just a bit early for lunch.

Hubert was beginning to wonder where the man was, maybe they’d caught him in a nap, or just as likely, taking a good dump. There was the sound of hard shoes on wooden stairs and there he was after the curtains parted with a twitch and a discernable swish from the little roller hangers that it hung upon. Monsieur Omar was clad in a white shirt with long sleeves, a waistcoat in grey with pale pin-stripes and the traditional red Fez hat with a black tassel. Plain, darker grey trousers of a shapeless nature and scuffed black shoes rounded out the ensemble.

“Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen.” He beckoned. “Won’t you please step into my office. We can speak privately there, and the customers really don’t need to know there are police officers in my little store—”

He smiled at his own joke. They smiled right back, as best they could, still, there was something in the air—call it hope, thought Hubert.

That seemed fair enough, and hopefully their trip would be worthwhile. His accent was fairly tolerable, when one took into account that he had grown up with another language, one which would impose its own sort of effects on the second, and presumably, any other languages he might pick up. Hubert had been expecting a tiny damp cinderblock booth of a room, with a huddle and a muddle of papers, a sagging swivel stool and boxes of product stacked sky-high. It wasn’t quite that bad. There was room for a desk, a few chairs, a low couch, and a big metal filing cabinet among other things. As they entered, a little bell rang, probably connected to the front door, and it seemed he would know when a customer entered if he was working alone. Even the bulletin board, with its contractor and supplier business cards pinned along the right hand margin, seemed to be organized. There was a calendar, a telephone on the desk, decent lighting, and it all seemed very professional.

A younger woman, slender and anonymous in the garb, came in with coffee, and their new friend waved her away, but leaving the door open to catch a little more air.

“Okay, gentlemen. You’re interested in an unusual sale of ice, ice cubes in paper sacks.” He explained that some folks still had the old ice-boxes, where a solid block of ice, better yet, two or three, would be enough to keep food cool and from spoiling, for at least a day, or two, possibly three if the people didn’t open up the box very often, also, just how full of stuff it was.

“So, somebody came in and bought fifteen bags, ice cubes you said on the phone.”

“Yes. Abu.” He picked up a framed photograph laying on the desk.

He waved them in closer, pointing at one face in particular. It was a team photo, a football club, wearing their numbered jerseys, shorts, long socks with stripes at the top, and their cleated shoes. They had a banner and a small trophy. The whole bunch were smiling, or waving and yelling at the camera.

“This guy, eh?” Garnier held the photo in the light.

The face seemed ordinary enough. He didn’t even look all that foreign, not these days, not in this city. A mop of longish dark hair, and a mustache, not huge, but kind of curled and pointed on the ends. He appeared to be of average height and build, judging by the men around him.

“And you’re sure it was him? Second row, fourth from the left?”

“Uh, huh.” He cleared his throat. “I’d know him anywhere. We played together, ah, for about a season. We came in second place in our division. He’s not a bad player, actually.”

Hence the photo, and the trophy, and squinting, a date two years previous was visible, scrawled on an upper corner. The man explained further, but it was a league and everything. Strictly amateur stuff, still, there were passions, and rivalries, and everyone wanted to win. It was the love of the game that brought them together, and sometimes, it was what drove them apart. He still played, Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons, and they had practice on Sunday mornings.

“If nothing else, it gets me out of the store for a while.” While he owned the building and the family lived in the rooms above, the truth was, he spent an awful lot of time in that store.

“And you say he was wearing the coveralls.”

“Oui, Monsieur. I thought he was legitimately working. Now I know better.” He bit his lip. “Montgolfier Brothers. At the time, I thought, it was, er—how do you say it. A cute name for a company. It was convincing enough.”

“Did you speak to him? Did he seem to recognize you?”

“Interesting. He didn’t talk much, and I had no reason to get too involved. We had other customers in the store. He had another fellow with him, ah—also in the coveralls, and they basically paid cash, small bills, and took the bags, two or three at a time, out to the vehicle. It was a blue van with signs on the side.” He thought for a moment. “Did he recognize me? It’s certainly possible. I recognized him, after all. If so, he made no real reaction…not really.”

“And when was this?”

“Going by the newspaper, the morning of the crime. About noon, perhaps a little before.”

The detectives nodded at that.

“With your permission. We’d very much like to borrow this for a while.” Garnier.

“You’ll get it back, of course.” Hubert—

“But of course, gentlemen. Ah—was there anything else?”

“Does this man have a last name?”

“Oh. Yes. Sorry! Samaha. Abu Samaha. He was boarding with a family, ah, but I can’t say whether he might still be there.” He’d never known their name, but it was in Montmartre, in what was probably, going by the description, another low-income area, and another prime candidate for both immigrants, and the more bougie types looking for a bargain, a fixer-upper as it was called.

“…and what about the other man, can you describe him.” Garnier. “Did you hear him talk, did he have an accent, that sort of thing…”

“Fairly ordinary, middling height and weight. Maybe early thirties. Dark hair, clean shaven. Ah, dark eyes—that’s about it, gentlemen. He really didn’t say much, I had the impression he was a helper.” Abu was the one with the money, right.

“Did they have name-tags, on the breast pocket or anything like that?”

“Ah. No. Interesting—”

Just another detail, but it added to the overall picture.

“Okay. So, how do you guys get new team members? How is it organized?” Hubert wasn’t all that much into football.

“Ah. The club secretary puts an ad in the paper. People telephone, they inquire, people come and try out at the beginning of the good weather. Understand, we’re filling holes in the roster at this point. Most of us, not everyone, but we are back, year after year. If we do sign them up, there’s a small fee that everyone pays. Truth is, we simply can’t take everyone who wants to play—ah, we all pitch in on the fuel for a road game, that sort of thing. The fee basically covers the trophies, the, uh, engraving, and a little party for the awards ceremony. Nothing too spectacular, just a buffet with light snacks and so forth.” They played in public parks for a small fee, the schedule made up by the organization.

One of the members owned a popular restaurant, and the big banquet room, one night a year, was free for the asking. He put on a pretty good spread, buffet-style, self-serve, according to Khalid, and the organization paid for it at little better than cost and a gratuity for the staff involved. The men brought the wives and girlfriends, and it made for a pretty good night out; and, uh, what the hell—it was only once a year.

“I see. Thank you.” Hubert grinned at the observation.

The little flashes of personality were interesting, and Muslim ladies liked a night out once in a while, just like anyone else—who knew, right? It’s not like he’d ever thought to ask.

“Do you know if Abu had a driver’s license? Anything like that? Would you know where he might have worked?” Martin was trying to be as thorough as possible, which recent events had shown to be a necessity.

“Ah. I think not—the only way I have any idea of where he lived, was that the coach was dropping us off after an out-of-town game. The team has a rickety old bus and I suppose it’s better than everyone taking a taxi, cheaper, anyways, when you consider the whole bunch of us. I think he worked in some service industry somewhere—a building cleaner or something fairly menial like that.” That was it, and it was all the man had.

He sat there, hands folded across his belly, nodding affably, his eyes straying to the coffee, as yet untouched.

“Well, thank you, thank you very much. This may be very helpful to us.” Hubert paused.

“Ah. As it is written. The Law is like a stream of water, it brings life.”

“Hmn. Nice. The Koran, I presume?”

“Yes, in the very words of the Prophet himself.” He cleared his throat, hesitating—

“And?”

“And. The truth is, I didn’t like Abu very much. I don’t think he liked me all that much either, and yet we didn’t hate each other. He could be…brash. Rude, especially on the field. It’s not helpful when one player thinks he’s the star. I passed the ball to him one time, when he was in the perfect position to score. And he missed the ball. What bothered me was the way he talked to me afterwards, like it was all my fault. Honestly, it was a perfect pass and he just missed it. We couldn’t afford to hate each other, not while being on the same team. This might explain why he didn’t make a big fuss of recognizing me. Just one of those personality things, but I have learned to trust my instincts. First impressions can sometimes be wrong, but in his case, I think not. It is wrong, to wish ill for any man. Yet it is also very much human.” He nodded. “Also, if he has committed a crime against the society of man, and therefore, against the society of God, then he must be caught and punished. It is only right and just, after all.”

“Just a thought—do you have the phone number for your club secretary? Abu might have had other friends on the team, or perhaps he may have updated an address.” Hubert couldn’t think of too much else. “If someone hired Abu, for casual work or whatever, they might have hired one or two of his buddies as well…it’s just a possibility.”

“Ah, excellent idea. Yes, I have that.” He pulled a small black book from a side drawer and tore a sheet off a small note pad.

“Nice.” Garnier.

He put the name down in neat block letters, like a draftsman working on a set of building plans. Hubert reached and took a cup and sipped it appreciatively as Garnier carefully filed that away in his pocket.

“Ali—our secretary, will be able to give you gentlemen a list of the team members for that season or any season. All you have to do is to ask.”

“Wonderful.” It was all Hubert said.

Perhaps it was enough.

“Thank you, my young friends.” He put the tips of his fingers together. “It has been a pleasure.”

And on that note, it seemed they were off to their next destination. Martin took a moment to grab a pack of smokes, for Alphonse as he said, who might be suffering in that car all morning, if not all day long. Somewhere in the world, someone was always suffering, as Martin put it. Considering the fugue in there when they finally found the vehicle, two and a half blocks up the street, it might very well be them doing the suffering, certainly for the next little while…Hubert stood on the curb for a minute or two, vehicle door held wide open, waiting for some of the smoke to clear.

A blue cloud rolled off down the sidewalk.

Fuck.

On the other hand, they had at least gotten something.

END

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Chapter Thirteen.

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Nineteen. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-14T16:13:00.005-05:00

Louis Shalako

Garnier put down the phone.

“Alphonse is out front.” Having brought the car around from the far end of the building, his more-or-less usual haunt, and about as far away from brass-hats and authority as it was possible to get without booking off or actual desertion...

He’d radio the desk and tell them to phone up, and with months to retirement and a don’t-give-a-damn attitude, he usually got his way.

It’s not like they didn’t know him down there; and if they didn’t know him, they sure as hell soon would.

The pair of them grabbed their hats and headed down to the street.

A couple of days had passed. Their newspaper story ploy seemed to have paid off, with at least a couple of tips. Only time would tell whether they would pan out. In the meantime, a certain amount of legwork was in order.

There was something different about Martin today, and for a detective, Hubert might have been a bit slow on the uptake, but the fellow really was in a suit and tie this morning.

“Hey. Did you pass the exam?”

“Huh. Not so far as I know.” They clattered down the stairs, with feet pounding and doors slamming and other people talking, all echoing round and round in the hard, narrow space. “It just seems justified in terms of today’s job…er, jobs.”

Hubert nodded.

There were times when the uniform was just a little too conspicuous.

“Well. You look good.” And it was true.

Garnier had worn the fairly standardized shiny black shoes, medium grey trousers, and a darker jacket. The shirt was a pale, creamy yellow and the tie a light tone of electric blue, matching the corner of a handkerchief sticking out of the left breast pocket…the hair was freshly slicked back and there was the faint aroma of aftershave. The slight bulge of a shoulder holster was almost invisible.

“They do say the clothes make the man.” Anyhow, there was the door, and the shiny black car with good old Alphonse at the wheel. “There’s only one way to find out.”

“After you.”

Someone just coming in held the door for them and they plunged out into the broad light of day.

***

It was a long drive across town, and they had a chance to talk outside of the confines of the office.

Hubert was gaining new respect. Garnier had plenty of thoughts. After a minor comedy of manners, Garnier had settled for the front seat and Hubert had taken the back as befitted his status or seniority or something. It was better than the three of them up front, and that was for sure. Let the junior man do all of the neck-craning. Sure enough, Martin was already twisting in his seat and now Hubert found himself leaning hard to the left in a kind of sympathetic reaction.

“I’ve been thinking. That delivery van still had the original license plates. That pretty much confirms that they must have hidden it away until the exact date. To do the actual job, the van is already loaded, with the freezer and the lid. The bodies are in another freezer. So now, we have two freezers. Big ones. Fuck—another potential lead, did someone buy two freezers at once sort of thing. Maybe they drove around somewhere and picked the corpsicles up that very morning. That would require some pretty good knowledge, or an appointment with somebody rather bent in their own right, and the odds are they had them already, right. What if they paid money for them? That leaves another loose end, for them and for us. They have the rugs all lined up on the floor, right. Roll them up like cigares-au-chou, good old cabbage rolls, and toss them in the back. All of this, preferably indoors at some private location. The actual driving, it’s only across town. A half an hour, forty-five minutes to the Inspector’s house, say. Maybe less, maybe even a lot less. It’s a question of exposure and time. It’s very rare for an officer to see a vehicle, to remember even one of a hundred license numbers and go from there. It’s a big town. There are so many auto-theft reports, so many numbers to remember. A driver would pretty much have to make some kind of a real bad mistake to get pulled over. The officer pulls them over, he radios in the license information…that’s really the only way they could ever get caught.” Leaving the vehicle outside, even on private property, seemed much less likely. “They had to stick the new signs on it, after all. The old signs would be in plain view. That might have drawn attention.”

Hubert nodded. The daily bulletins were chock-full of such license numbers, and vehicle descriptions, and while the police did make plenty of arrests based on such information, it was much more useful in identifying abandoned vehicles.

Not all car thieves were pros, there were plenty of youthful joy-riders as well. A vehicle simply abandoned by the side of the street might have a perfectly sensible reason for being there, having run out of gas, a breakdown, or whatever. If it was not on the list, an abandoned vehicle really only mattered to the parking-meter people.

“Well, let’s hope Alphonse doesn’t run out of cigarettes.”

Hubert grunted at that one—

“That’ll be the day.” He had a thought. “He’s been known to piss in here, you know, in an old soda bottle he keeps under the seat…”

And now it was Martin’s turn to grunt, a grunt of appreciation or so Hubert thought.

Alphonse, he was convinced, would never run out of cigarettes, and he’d probably have a pack in his pocket in his coffin, and might even sit bolt upright and light one up at his own funeral. They might as well throw the bottle in there as well, he thought as a quiet little grin stole over him…

Through it all, Alphonse ignored them, perhaps more pointedly than usual. Finally he spoke.

“All right, boys, here we are.” He pulled into the curb.

Turning, he impaled Garnier with a look.

“Corpsicles? Really?” He shook his head in faint disgust. “Cabbage rolls?”

Chuckling, Martin reached for the door handle.

Their first stop was to the corner store of one Khalid Omar, an Algerian, who according to their information, had been in the country for twenty years or more. He had a wife and children, an extensive family circle, and no known criminal associations.

He’d seen the story in the newspaper and had phoned it in, with Firmin taking the call.

The family lived over their store in the east end of the city, in the 20^th Arrondissement, Belleville-Père Lachaise, a working-class area with fairly low rents. It was becoming more popular and even showing signs of gentrification as younger and more prosperous folks bought up cheap properties and began fixing them up. On the side of the hill named Mont Louis after the King, was the largest cemetery in Paris, with millions of visitors a year. The cemetery itself had been named after Père Lachaise, a Jesuit priest and confessor to Louis XIV, a point which was largely irrelevant except in setting a certain tone. It was a mixed neighbourhood, one which was neither good nor bad. It simply was.

Slums and ghettos were better off kept small and scattered around, dispersed, rather than all concentrated into one, as Hubert had always thought—

After dropping them off at the door, Alphonse took the car down, or more accurately, up, the narrow street, looking for one of the ever-elusive parking spots, as the streets seemed to become more and more crowded with every passing day according to his own pithy observation.

The lady behind the counter was serving a customer, and, from just inside the door, they had a moment to observe.

They were conversing in a language neither man was familiar with. On the phone, the man had spoken pretty good French, albeit strongly accented according to Firmin.

Dressed in the long white haik, traditional dress of her people, her hair was covered and most of her face, with only the eyes, eyebrows and the bridge of the upper nose visible.

Those soft, dark eyes were all right, thought Hubert, and she didn’t seem fat or anything.

The little bell on the cash register jingled, the drawer closed with a clunk, and her customer lifted their package and turned to go. This was when she became aware of them, even as a pair of young children played on a colourful rug on the floor, at one end of the open space behind the sales counter. They were cute as all hell, in the eyes of one who expected to become a father, very, very soon now. He was finding the prospect had given him new eyes to appreciate, or something like that.

The woman turned her head and spoke sharply in the general direction of a doorway screened by a curtain of gaily-coloured patterns, and the voice of a younger woman came in response. It sounded like Arabic or something very much like it.

“I reckon they’re getting the old man.”

The customer brushed past them with a nod.

“I reckon you’re right.” Hubert kind of liked the smell in the store.

It was combination of herbs and spices, and tobacco, along with something else, something cooking in the back room, or perhaps it was the chili-peppers and other obscure vegetables in open bins. There were all kinds of foreign labels on the grocery shelves, which were sort of front and centre aisle, and there were tall shelves along the exterior walls, anywhere where there wasn’t a window or a door.

He could see cigarettes, bottles, cans, boxes, bolts of fabric, house and kitchen wares, toys, fireworks, colourful signs in French and Arabic. They could buy a lottery ticket, or a packet of potato crisps, a bottle of wine, pretty much anything. Except maybe pork chops…or maybe that was being unfair, they were selling the wine after all.

It was the atmosphere that was somehow different, underscored by the foreign music coming from a small radio set on a shelf behind the counter.

“Bonjour, Messieurs. Vieullez venir, s’il vous plaît…”

END

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Chapter Thirteen.

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Dead Reckoning, Chapter Eighteen. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

2025-01-12T18:07:00.005-05:00

It was time.

Louis Shalako

Well, it was time and Éliott took a deep breath.

He had gotten out of his little hidey-hole. He had retreated the same way he had come in, and he was now about two hundred and fifty metres back up the trail. Outlandish as it might be and surely was, the noise would carry, and this had to be convincing.

He had the mouth organ, and he’d always had a good voice, or at least he’d always thought so. He started walking, and blowing little riffs, just tuning up and wetting the thing, which seemed to help as he recalled…

Half walking, half skipping, he began to play, and sooner or later, in spite of all the background noise, the hermit was bound to hear him. The smoke had still been rising, and the smell of bacon still strong when he had left his observation point. The key thing was not to waste too much time. Going along, he warmed up to the task, the act as he thought of it, and surely all of the world was a stage—and men are but fools.

The song was an old familiar one, very popular in its time and well-known.

It was by Leonard Joy.

Wonderful! Oh it's wonderful
To be in love with you.
Beautiful, you're so beautiful,
You haunt me all day through.
Every little breeze seems to whisper "Louise."
Each little rose tells me it knows I love you.(love you)
Every little beat that I feel in my heart
Seems to repeat what I felt at the start.
Each little sigh tells me that I adore you, Louise.
Just to see and hear you is joy I never knew,
But to be so near you thrills me through and through.
Anyone can see why I wanted your kiss.
It had to be, but the wonder is this:
Can it be true, someone like you
Could love me, Louise.

He had his own special lyrics, having worked on them, and he threw those in too.

The birds and the bees seem to whisper Louise

All the little trees, seem to whisper Louise—

The wind and the breeze, seem to whisper Louise

The birds in the trees seem to whisper Louise.

And I shall love you for evermore.

Just a few more metres to go, just one more corner, and he would be there.

***

Éliott had blown one more little riff, just to make sure he’d been heard, and he was just stepping out around a slight bit of cover, when his heart practically shot out of his mouth—

It was the girl, coming up the trail from the other direction, and she had her basket and her glorious hair, and sure as hell it had to be her, and she was coming this way, still seemingly oblivious to his presence. No cape or bonnet this morning, it was more of a bright floral dress and a tan shade of sandals. Short sleeves, worn off the shoulder. She was a bare thirty metres away.

My God—

He stood there, rooted to the spot.

His hermit came out the door, turning towards him with a cross look on his face, obviously following the sound—but the girl saw the other man first and she called out.

Startled, the hermit turned her way.

It was only when he stepped forward a little further and gave another short blast on the harmonica that she stopped dead, and, uttering a little scream, her free hand flew up to her throat and she almost dropped the basket. It was like she danced and juddered in place for a moment.

“Jesus Murphy! Holy Mary, Mother of God, and all the Saints. Allez vous, faire foutre, Monsieur.”

The man spun on one heel, staring just as the girl was.

God, she was cute, and it was all Éliott could do but to keep on with his insane little song and to hope for the best.

...every little breeze.

“…every little breeze, seems to whisper Louise…”

As for the hermit, proud possessor of two bags of groceries that didn’t really belong to him, and now, with the girl coming along with what sure looked like a resupply, it was a good thing he didn’t have the shotgun. Just this once and he was sure glad to see that. Also, the man was looking pretty puzzled and it was only a matter of time before he figured something out.

He would recover—

The girl had recovered sufficiently, and those incredible eyes were on him…still gulping for breath and hand on her heart. Whether his own heart had just skipped a beat, or perhaps the entire Universe had come crashing to a halt for one brief moment of time, but it was like nothing would ever be the same again.

He stuck the little mouth organ in a side pocket, it didn’t look like he would need it from here on in.

“Bonjour, Monsieur. Bonjour, Mademoiselle.” He doffed the hat with a theatrical bow.

The gentleman’s face was getting a little red, and he was clearly flustered.

“I see your lovely granddaughter has brought lunch, sir.” Whipping out the harmonica, he blew a couple of cheerful little notes and put it away just as quickly again. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to introduce the lady.”

In one must play the fool, then one must play it to the hilt. He went into a soft-shoe shuffle, tossing in a little bit of the Charleston, and no wonder they thought he was mad…

“…every little breeze…seems to whisper Louise…right, sir?”

The man stood there, agape. His mouth opened and closed, having no idea of what to do with this unwelcome stranger. Then there was the girl, and she had to be considered as well. He was like a tiger, confronted with a birthday cake or something, he had no idea of what to do with it. It was like Éliott could just see the thoughts revolving around and around in there.

Slowly, the idiotic grin faded and he heaved a sigh.

“…do I really have to get out the mouth-organ again? Sir.”

Just when he thought he had lost, the man’s shoulders slumped a little, he gave his head an odd little half-shake and then the lowered face came up and he spoke.

“And I suppose those were your groceries.” He sighed. “Did you go off for a big long poop or something? Argh. I suppose you might as well come in…for a second.”

The girl was making strange signs with both hands, the basket on the ground at her feet by this point.

The hermit gave him a long look.

Not my granddaughter.

“She’s not my granddaughter. Her name is Capucine. It’s a kind of very beautiful flower.” He made a few awkward hand signs of his own. “She’s about as deaf as a fucking stump, and it’s no wonder you scared the living be-Jesus out of her.”

He could barely tear his eyes off of her—deaf, you say—

Putain de merde.

Her face lit up again, she smiled, she made more signs, and then she picked up the basket. She proffered a hand in a universal signal, you first.

There was no sense in arguing with a deaf person.

Wordlessly, he turned for the door. It was up to Éliott to decide, whether he really wanted to go in there, where undoubtedly that old shotgun was right to hand. On the other hand, there was the girl.

Truth was, he wanted to know more.

Maybe even a lot more.

END

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