Blowback

Chapter Thirty-four

The gold dome of the church at Les Invalides dominated the north end of the Avenue de Breteuil, the gateway to a complex of buildings originally built in the seventeenth century as a retreat for the veterans of French military campaigns. Later it had become home to a collection of army museums, and the final resting place of many of the country’s war heros, including Napoleon Bonaparte himself.

The Michelin building was an ugly, modern, eight-story block set back behind black railings and stark, pollarded trees just a couple of hundred meters to the south.

Enzo walked quickly past the green neon light of the pharmacy next door, hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat, head bowed by the rain. Pierre Mages stood waiting for him beneath a shining wet black umbrella outside the security booth at the gates. It had seemed like a convenient, and appropriate, place to meet. They shook hands, and Enzo looked up at the anonymous cream and black building which had so much influence on the eating habits of a nation. “Are we going in?”

Mages laughed. “Good God, no. I’m not welcome in there any more. And good riddance.” He nodded toward the other side of the long, wide avenue. “I know a cafe not far from here.”

The cafe he had in mind was several streets away, the windows of its steamy warm interior misted from the damp. Hardy smokers intent on shortening their lives sat under the canopy outside, wrapped in coats and scarves against the cold, and sipping on coffees which had long since lost their heat.

Mages found them a table by the window, and immediately rubbed a hole in the condensation with his hand to peer out at the grey, wet of the morning. “Have you had breakfast?”

Enzo nodded. Although, in fact, he had eaten nothing. He had barely slept, the image of that tiny face staring up into his, burned into his brain as if seared on to it with a branding iron. It had been a long night of alternating happiness and depression. But he forced himself to focus now. He was here to plumb the past, not fret about the future.

Mages ordered them each a coffee, plus a pain au chocolat for himself. Enzo looked at him closely for the first time. Dyed black hair was scraped thinly back over an almost bald pate. His complexion was pasty pale, loose flesh hanging around sad jowls. His suit seemed too big for him, as if he had lost weight. Enzo would have guessed that he was perhaps ten years older than himself. He said, “What on earth made you write the book? Surely you knew that Michelin wouldn’t tolerate it?”

“Of course. But I was sick of it, Monsieur Macleod. I’d had fifteen years as an inspector, one of the monks of gastronomy, and three years as deputy director. You know, there is only so much food a human being can take.”

“Most people would have envied you a job like that. Eating in the best restaurants, your employer picking up the tab.”

Mages’ laugh was without humour. “You have no idea, monsieur. Nobody does, unless they’ve done it. Eating huge meals twice a day, writing detailed reports on every mouthful, inspecting rooms, prices. Up and down hotel stairways. Always on the road. Always away from home. A damned lonely existence. And then back to Paris, stopping only long enough at the Service du Tourisme to file your reports, pick up your next assignment, and hit the road again. Oh, and of course, you always had to travel by road. Michelin makes tires after all. It wouldn’t do for its inspectors to travel around the country on trains and planes.”

He took a mouthful of coffee and nibbled on his pain au chocolat.

“Let me assure you, when you have eaten your way from one end of France to the other, in every kind of restaurant you can imagine, the last thing you ever want to see in front of you again is another plate of food. You start to hate it. Every dish a trial, every meal an ordeal.

“And, of course, you are sworn to secrecy. You can’t even tell your friends what it is you do for a living. Not that it’s what you could call a great living. I would have earned more as a bank clerk. And during my time there, the number of inspectors almost halved, which only meant more work for those of us who were left. More food. More goddamned food than you would ever want to eat in a lifetime.”

Enzo watched him dip his pain au chocolat into his coffee. “You seem to have rediscovered your appetite.”

Mages smiled. “This is a rare treat. Since I quit, my wife put me on a strict diet. I was a skinny young man when I married her. By the time I retired I had put on more than thirty kilos.”

Enzo did a quick calculation. That was between sixty and seventy pounds.

“And that’s not to mention the damage I’ve probably done to my arteries, wolfing down all those high cholesterol sauces made with butter and cream and foie-gras.”

Enzo could almost have sworn that the grey skin around his eyes became tinged with green as he spoke. “So you enjoyed your job, then?”

The ex-Michelin inspector laughed heartily. “At first I loved it, Monsieur Macleod. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. But, really, who would want to live in heaven. You can have too much of a good thing, and the endless routine of roads and restaurants becomes tedious to the point of ennui.”

Enzo sipped on his coffee. “They fired you when the book came out?”

“No, they banned me from publishing it while I was still in their employ. Confessions of a Michelin inspector splashed in extracts all over the popular press was not the image they wanted for the guide.”

“So you quit?”

“I did.”

“And was the book a success?”

Mages shrugged. “Moderately. It created a bit of a stir when it first came out. But, you know, the media moves very quickly on to the next hot thing. There’s nothing more redundant than yesterday’s newspaper.” He paused. “Or unsold books on a shelf. A meal that has gone cold. We sold a few, and remaindered a lot.”

“You were still deputy director the year Marc Fraysse was murdered.” Enzo watched him carefully.

“I was.”

“You must have read Jean-Louis Graulet’s piece giving air to the rumor that Fraysse was going to drop a star in that year’s guide.”

“I did.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Was it true?”

Pierre Mages looked Enzo very steadily in the eye. “Absolutely not. If Michelin had awarded four stars instead of three, monsieur, Marc Fraysse would have been in line for another.”