The Marseille Caper

Five

Sam could hear a few moments of Mozart in the background before Reboul’s voice cut in.

“Alors, Sam. How was your day in Cassis?”

“Good, Francis. We had a great time. Elena loved it.” Sam looked down at the notes he’d made on the back of Nino’s lunch bill. “I wanted to go over a couple of points with you before we go out this evening. We’re having dinner with a friend, Philippe Davin. He’s a journalist with La Provence, and I’m hoping he can give me some background on Patrimonio and the distinguished members of the selection committee.”

“A journalist?” Reboul’s voice was less than enthusiastic. “Sam, are you sure …”

“Don’t worry. I’ll stick to the plot. Your name won’t come into it. Now tell me-is there anything particular you’re interested in? Philippe’s a bloodhound. What he doesn’t know he can usually sniff out.”

“Well, whatever you can find out about the other two projects and the people behind them would be useful, but not the usual press release nonsense about their hobbies and their charitable donations. For instance, I’d love to know where they’re getting their money from. Also, don’t forget the personal side. Do they have debts? Addictions? Mistresses? A fondness for call girls? How do they stand with Patrimonio? Are there any rumors of bribery?” Reboul paused, and Sam could hear the click of a glass being put back on a table. “Not that I would dream of exploiting any of this, you understand.”

“Of course not.”

“But in business, information is like gold. You can’t have too much of it.”

“I’ll bear that in mind, Francis.”

“Have a pleasant evening, my friend. Bon appetit.”

Sam was smiling as he put down the phone. There had been a wistful note to Reboul’s voice, and Sam had the feeling that he would have liked to join them for dinner.

They had arranged to meet Philippe at Le Bistrot d’Edouard on Rue Jean Mermoz, which Philippe had chosen as a tribute to Elena. It was a Latin restaurant, and so La Bomba Latina would feel instantly at home. Moreover, said Philippe, she would be ravished by the huge selection of tapas.

In fact it was Sam who was ravished first, as soon as they had come through the door. It looked like his kind of restaurant: a series of simple, intimate rooms, plain white paper tablecloths, the painted walls-oxblood-red below, white above-hung with blackboards listing the wines and the tapas of the day, the early arrivals with their jackets off and their napkins tucked into shirt collars, which was always a sign of healthy appetites and good food, and a smiling welcome from the girl behind the bar.

They were led up a short flight of stairs to a corner table on the first floor, where a beaming Philippe, ice bucket already loaded and poised, jumped to his feet and crushed Elena to his bosom. Compliments and cries of delight followed, and Sam, who was by now getting used to these expressions of masculine affection, received a kiss on each cheek. Finally, slightly out of breath, Philippe sat them down and poured each of them a glass of wine.

“This is a wonderful surprise,” he said. “What are you doing here? How long are you staying? Where are you staying? But first, a toast.” He raised his glass. “To friendship.” He leaned back in his chair, still beaming, and gave Elena and Sam a chance to admire the adjustments he had made to his appearance since they had last seen him in Los Angeles.

Previously, he had favored a style of dress he liked to describe as “mercenary chic”-army-surplus pants and jackets, olive-drab fatigue caps, and paratrooper’s boots. His black hair had been abundant, and undisturbed by the comb.

All this had gone, and Che Guevara had been replaced by Tom Ford. The new version of Philippe had a closely clipped head, the hair on his scalp very little longer than the dark, three-day stubble on his face. His clothes were razor-sharp: a skinny black suit and a whiter-than-white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, with highly polished black shoes. He might have been a fashion-conscious soccer player or a refugee from the Cannes film festival, which was currently taking place farther along the coast.

“Notice anything different?” Philippe didn’t give them time to reply. “I’ve changed mon look. Mimi at the office is now in charge of my personal presentation. What do you think?”

“Where are the sunglasses?” said Elena. “And how about an earring?”

“Where’s the Rolex?” said Sam.

Philippe grinned, shot his cuffs, and there it was: a great stainless-steel carbuncle, guaranteed waterproof to a depth of a thousand feet.

Sam shook his head in wonder. “Congratulations to Mimi. She’s turned you into a style icon. I hope you’ve kept the scooter.”

“Mais bien sur. It’s the only way to get around Marseille. But enough of me-what are you two doing here?” He waggled his eyebrows energetically. “Honeymoon?”

“Not exactly,” said Sam. And while they drank the Quatre Vents that Philippe had chosen because, as he said, of its rondeur and its shimmer of green, Sam gave him an edited version of his assignment: hired by an American architect, backed by Swiss money, in town to persuade the selection committee that a three-story apartment complex would suit Marseille better than a forty-floor hotel.

Philippe listened carefully, nodding from time to time. “I’ve been hearing all kinds of things about this,” he said, “and I’ve been trying to set up interviews with your competitors, but they’re acting very shy at the moment.”

“Do you know who they are, anything about them?”

“OK.” Philippe glanced around the room before adopting the investigative journalist’s standard operating position-body tilted forward in a confidential crouch, head sunk into his shoulders, the voice low and discreet. “There are two other syndicates: one British, one French. Or perhaps I should say Parisian. The head Brit is Lord Wapping, an ex-bookmaker who bribed his way into the House of Lords with some heavy financial contributions to both of the major political parties.”

“Both of them?”

“Mais oui. Apparently it happens all the time in England. It’s what they call a win-win situation.” Philippe paused for a sip of wine. “The leader of the Parisian project is a woman, Caroline Dumas. Very bright, very well connected politically, used to be a junior minister until she got too friendly with a senior minister and his wife found out. Now she works for Eiffel International; it’s one of those huge conglomerates-construction, agribusiness, electronics, with a chain of hotels on the side. Personally, I don’t think she has much of a chance on this one.”

“Why not?”

“She’s Parisian.” Philippe shrugged. He clearly felt that, in Marseille, no further explanation was necessary.

Their waitress, who had been hovering patiently, took advantage of the gap in the conversation and directed their attention to the list of tapas on the blackboard.

That particular night in May there were fifteen to choose from: pata negra ham from acorn-fed pigs in Spain; tuna roe drizzled with olive oil; fried aubergines dusted with mint; tartare of salmon, with honey and dill; deep-fried zucchini flowers; clams; artichokes; monkfish; anchovies-a selection of delights that had them in agonies of indecision. They finally agreed on three tapas each, followed, at Philippe’s insistence, by the specialty of the house: inkfish with blackened pasta.

Sitting back to take another look at her surroundings, Elena’s eye was caught by a frieze of oversized handwriting that ran along the top of the wall just below the ceiling. The same three words-buvez riez chantez-were repeated around all the walls of the upstairs room.

“What is that?” she asked. “Some kind of weird French thing like a tapas code?”

“It means drink, laugh, sing,” said Philippe. “To encourage us to have fun.” A sudden roar of laughter from the next table interrupted him. “Not that we need much encouragement.”

“I find it very strange,” said Sam, “that the average Frenchman has this reputation for being … well, serious, you know? Not the kind of guy to let his hair down. Too concerned with appearances.”

“What you call a tight-ass?” suggested Philippe.

Sam grinned. “I never said that. But actually, most of the French I’ve met love to have a good time. I remember going to the wine auctions in Beaune once and I couldn’t keep up. Drinking, laughing, singing? That’s all they did for three days straight. And yet there’s this image of the straitlaced French. I don’t get it.”

Philippe held up his finger, a sure sign that enlightenment was to follow. “That’s because people like to pigeonhole us, to take one aspect of our personality and judge us on that. Now, of course we are serious about important things-money and food and rugby, for instance. But we are more complex than that, and we are full of contrasts. On the one hand, we are amazingly egotistical: the two most popular words in the French language are moi and je, normally used together. And yet our treatment of others is usually polite, even considerate. We show respect. We kiss, we shake hands, we men rise to our feet for women, we leave the room when we take phone calls so as not to irritate people around us.” He paused to take a long sip of wine. “We drink, my God how we drink. But it is very unusual to see public drunkenness. We dress conservatively, and yet French women led the world in going topless on the beaches. It has been said that our national preoccupations are sex, hypochondria, and the belly. But there is more to us than that.” He nodded his approval of what he had just said, and held out the empty wine bottle to a passing waitress for a refill.

Elena had been paying close attention to this crash course in the French psyche, and, in what she hoped was true Gallic style, held up a finger of her own and wagged it. “Handshaking, OK. Cheek-kissing, OK. Polite, OK. Until they get into their cars. I have to tell you I have never seen so many seriously homicidal drivers as there are in France. What’s their problem?”

Philippe smiled and shrugged. “Some would say joie de vivre, but I have another theory. I think that French drivers suffer from a physical disability: they only have two hands, when, of course, they need three. Smoking and the telephone take up one hand and the other must be kept free in order to make insulting gestures at other drivers who are too fast, too slow, too close, or Belgian.” Seeing Elena’s puzzled expression, he added, “Belgians always drive in the middle of the road. This is well known. Ah, here are the tapas.”

The next few minutes passed in a contented semi-silence as they explored the nine small dishes set before them, sniffing, tasting, sometimes exchanging a forkful of violet-colored artichoke for a tender little clam wrapped in Spanish ham, or mopping up the herb-scented olive oil with their bread. In many ways, tapas make an ideal first course: not too heavy, with a variety of flavors to wake up the taste buds, and served in modest amounts that don’t blunt the appetite. With the final dish wiped clean, the conversation returned to business.

“I guess you know there’s some kind of press reception and cocktail party later on this week,” Sam said to Philippe. “Are you going? Will Patrimonio be there?”

Philippe raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Bof! Try to keep him away. This is his moment of glory. I’m afraid we can expect a speech from the old windbag. I shall be there to record it for posterity. And you will have a chance to meet your competitors, take a look at their ideas.” He shook his head at the thought. “Hotels, hotels, hotels. It’s always hotels or office buildings.”

“So what do you think of our idea?”

“Of course, I haven’t seen the details. Even so, I hope it will win. It’s more human, more civilized.” Philippe stared into his wine glass, his expression thoughtful. “But from what I hear, Wapping has a history of always getting what he wants, one way or another. Not an easy man to beat. And you can usually trust Patrimonio to make the wrong decision.”

Elena was frowning as she put down her glass. “You keep talking about Patrimonio as if he were the only guy that mattered. I know he’s chairman, but isn’t there a committee? Don’t the members have a say? Or are they just dummies put there to make up the numbers?”

Philippe started to run his fingers through his hair-an old habit-until he realized that there was nothing left to run his fingers through. “There are six, or maybe seven, on the committee. I know that two of them owe their jobs to Patrimonio, so they’ll vote the way he tells them to. As for the others, your guess is as good as mine. They’ll all be at the reception. I’ll see what I can find out.”

The dish of the day arrived in all its dusky glory, with tendrils and thin slices of inkfish resting on a bed of glistening black angel’s-hair pasta. To one side, for a change of texture, and to provide what Philippe called an epiphany for the palate, there was a creamy sauce of goat’s cheese.

Elena took her first mouthful, and let out a small sigh of pleasure. “This is lovely. Is it going to give me black lips?”

Sam leaned forward to inspect her mouth. “Not yet. So far, it’s just the teeth.”

Elena turned to Philippe. “See what I have to put up with?”

Philippe nodded his head in sympathy. “Humor is how the Anglo-Saxon man declares his love,” he said. “A Frenchman is …,” he performed a demi-shrug, with just the one shoulder cocked, “more subtle, more romantic, altogether more alluring.”

“I like it,” said Elena. “Alluring is nice.”

Sam felt it was time to change the subject. “Tell us about Mimi at the office. Is this the real thing? Has she started redecorating your apartment? She’s certainly redecorated you.”

Philippe turned to Elena. “You see? He mocks me. Now then: what can I tell you about Mimi? Petite, red hair, highly intelligent, witty, wonderful legs, and, obviously”-here, he smirked-“excellent taste in men. You will adore her. She wanted to come tonight, but she has a martial-arts class.”

Thoughts of Mimi gave way to consideration of dessert, with Philippe persuading Elena to try what he described as a profiterole on steroids, a veritable prince of profiteroles, plumped up with a miraculously light creme Chantilly. Sam contented himself with some Manchego cheese-sliced thin, the way it should be-with quince jam and a glass of solid red wine from the Languedoc. As he ate, he listened to Philippe describing to Elena a few of the city’s distractions: the Cathedrale de la Major, supported by 444 marble columns; the Vieux Port; twentieth-century art in the Musee Cantini; Pagnol’s Bar de la Marine; the magnificent Vieille Charite, designed by the court architect of Louis XIV to shelter the homeless; the view from Notre-Dame de la Garde. Or perhaps a tour of the boutiques, guided by Mimi, followed by a restorative session in the spa on the Corniche. And, of course, there was always Marseille’s favorite blood sport.

“If you like soccer,” said Philippe, “this is not to be missed-Olympique de Marseille’s last game of the season, against Paris Saint-Germain. We detest them. Mark my words, it will be a grudge match.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Elena. “What does a girl wear to a grudge match?”

“Body armor.” Philippe took a deep, noisy breath through pursed lips. “Those PSG fans are brutes.”

Over coffee, it was agreed that Elena and Mimi would meet the next day. Sam was to continue polishing up his presentation, and Philippe planned to call his contacts in the city bureaucracy to see what he could dig up. They said their farewells in the soft, warm darkness outside the restaurant. Philippe slipped on his sunglasses against the glare of the moon, cocked a leg over his scooter, and clattered off. Tomorrow would be a busy day for all of them.