“Coffee,” I told Marino.
We sat at a counter inside L’Embarcadére and were served espresso in tiny brown cups.
“What the hell is this?” Marino grumbled. “I just wanted regular coffee. How ’bout handing me some sugar,” he said to the woman behind the counter.
She dropped several packs on the counter.
“I think he’d rather have a café créme,” I told her.
She nodded. He drank four of them and ate two ham baguettes and smoked three cigarettes in less than twenty minutes.
“You know,” I said to him as we boarded a train á grande vitesse, or TGV, “I really don’t want you to kill yourself.”
“Hey, not to worry,” he replied, taking a seat across from me. “If I tried to clean up my act, the stress would do me in.”
Our car was barely a third full, and those passengers seemed interested only in their newspapers. The silence prompted Marino and me to speak in very low voices, and the bullet train made no sound as it suddenly lurched forward. We glided out of the station, then blue sky and trees were flying by. I felt flushed and very thirsty. I tried to sleep, sunlight flashing over my shut eyes.
I came to when an Englishwoman two rows back began talking on a portable phone. An old man across the aisle was working a crossword puzzle, his mechanical pencil clicking. Air buffeted our car as another train sped by, and near Lyon, the sky turned milky and it began to snow.
Marino’s mood was getting increasingly curdled as he stared out the window, and he was rude when we disembarked in the Lyon Part-Dieu. He had nothing to say during our taxi ride, and I got angrier with him as I replayed the words he had recklessly thrown at me last night.
We neared the old part of the city where the Rh8ne and SaOne rivers joined, and apartments and ancient walls built into the hillside reminded me of Rome. I felt awful. My soul was bruised. I felt as alone as I’d ever felt in my life, as if I didn’t exist, as if I were part of another person’s bad dream.
“I don’t hope nothing,” Marino finally spoke apropos of nothing. “I might say what if, but I don’t hope. There’s no point. My wife left me a long time ago and I’ve still never found anybody that fits. Now I’m suspended and thinking about working for you. I did that? You wouldn’t respect me anymore.”
“Of course I would.”
“Bullshit. Working for someone changes everything and you know it.”
He looked dejected and exhausted, his face and slumped posture showing the strain of the life he’d lived. He’d spilled coffee on his rumpled denim shirt, and his khakis were ridiculously baggy. I’d noticed that the bigger he got, the larger the size of the pants he bought, as if he fooled himself or anyone else.
“You know, Marino, it’s not very nice to imply that working for me would be the worst thing that ever happened to you.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing. But pretty close,” he said.
33
Interpol’s headquarters stood alone on the Parc de la Téte d’Or. It was a fortress of reflective pools and glass and did not look like what it was. I was certain the subtle signs of what went on inside were missed by virtually all who drove past. The name of the plantanne tree-lined street where it was located wasn’t posted, so if you didn’t know where you were going, you quite likely would never get there. There was no sign out front announcing Interpol. In fact, there were no signs anywhere.
Satellite dishes, antennas, concrete barricades and cameras were very hard to see, and the razor wire-topped green metal fence was well disguised by landscaping. The secretariat for the only international police organization in the world silently emanated enlightenment and peace, appropriately allowing those who worked inside to look out and no one to look in. On this overcast, cold morning, a small Christmas tree on the roof ironically tipped its hat to the holidays.
I saw no one when I pressed the intercom button on the front gate to say we had arrived. Then a voice asked us to identify ourselves and when we did, a lock clicked free. Marino and I followed a sidewalk to an outbuilding, where