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45
INSPECTOR POPIL WALKED from police headquarters on the Quai des Orfèvres to the Place des Vosges, carrying a slender portfolio. When he stopped at a bar on the way for a fast espresso, he smelled a calvados on the service bar and wished it were already evening.
Popil walked back and forth on the gravel, looking up at Lady Murasaki’s windows. Sheer draperies were closed. Now and then the thin cloth moved in a draft.
The daytime concierge, an older Greek woman, recognized him.
“Madame is expecting me,” Popil said. “Has the young man been by?”
The concierge felt a tremor in her concierge antennae and she said the safe thing. “I haven’t seen him, sir, but I’ve had days off.” She buzzed Popil in.
Lady Murasaki reclined in her fragrant bath. She had four gardenias floating in the water, and several oranges. Her mother’s favorite kimono was embroidered with gardenias. It was cinders now. Remembering, she made a wavelet that rearranged the blossoms. It was her mother who understood when she married Robert Lecter. Her father’s occasional letters from Japan still carried a chill. Instead of a pressed flower or fragrant herb, his most recent note contained a blackened twig from Hiroshima.
Was that the doorbell? She smiled, thinking “Hannibal,” and reached for her kimono. But he always called or sent a note before he came, and rang before he used his key. No key in the lock now, just the bell again.
She left the bath and wrapped herself hurriedly in the cotton robe. Her eye at the peephole. Popil. Popil in the peephole.
Lady Murasaki had enjoyed occasional lunches with Popil. The first one, at Le Pré Catelan in the Bois de Boulogne, was rather stiff, but the others were at Chez Paul near his work and they were easier and more relaxed. He sent dinner invitations as well, always by note, one accompanied by a haiku with excessive seasonal references. She had declined the dinners, also in writing.
She unbolted the door. Her hair was gathered up and she was gloriously barefoot.
“Inspector.”
“Forgive me for coming unannounced, I tried to call.”
“I heard the telephone.”
“From your bath, I think.”
“Come in.”
Following his eyes, she saw him account at once for the weapons in place before the armor: the tanto dagger, the short sword, the long sword, the war axe.
“Hannibal?”
“He is not here.”
Being attractive, Lady Murasaki was a still hunter. She stood with her back to the mantle, her hands in her sleeves, and let the game come to her. Popil’s instinct was to move, to flush game.
He stood behind a divan, touched the cloth. “I have to find him. When did you last see him?”
“How many days is it? Five. What is wrong?”
Popil stood near the armor. He rubbed the lacquered surface of a chest. “Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“Did he indicate where he might be going?”
Indicate. Lady Murasaki watched Popil. Now the tips of his ears were flushed. He was moving and asking and touching things. He liked alternate textures, touching something smooth, then something with a nap. She’d seen it at the table too. Rough then smooth. Like the top and bottom of the tongue. She knew she could electrify him with that image and divert blood from his brain.
Popil went around a potted plant. When he peered at her through the foliage, she smiled at him and disrupted his rhythm.
“He is at an outing, I am not sure where.”
“Yes, an outing,” Popil said. “An outing hunting war criminals, I think.”
He looked into her face. “I’m sorry, but I have to show you this.” Popil put on the tea table a fuzzy picture, still damp and curling from the Thermo-Fax at the Soviet embassy. It showed Dortlich’s head on the stump and police standing around it with two Alsatians and a hound. Another photo of Dortlich was from a Soviet police ID card. “He was found in the forest Hannibal’s family owned before the war. I know Hannibal was nearby—he crossed the Polish border the day before.”
