“Your foster parents are still alive at this point? The couple you’ve mentioned? Who lived near the prison?” she adds with a trace of irony.
“No. But I still was able to live there for a while. It was not expensive and I had work, odd jobs. I come home and I can tell someone has been inside. It was strange. Nothing was missing except the covers on my bed. I think, well, that’s not so bad. At least whoever it was took only that. Then it happened again several more times. I realize now it was them. They wanted my hair. That’s why they took my bedcovers. Because I lose a lot of hair, you see?” He touches tangles of hair on top of his head. “It is always falling out if I don’t shave. It gets caught on things when it’s so long.” He holds out an arm to show her, and long hair wafts weightlessly on the air.
“Then you’re saying you didn’t have long hair when you met Susan? Not even on your back?”
“Not at all. If you found long hairs on her body, then they were put there, you see what I am saying? All the same, I accept that her murder is my fault.”[“_Toc37098917″]
CHAPTER 15
WHY IS IT YOUR FAULT?” BERGER ASKS CHAN-donne. “Why would you say that Susan’s murder is your fault?”
“Because they followed me,” he answers her. “They must have come in just after I left, and then they did that to her.”
“And did they follow you to Richmond, too, sir? Why did you come here?”
“I came because of my brother.”
“Explain that to me,” Berger replies.
“I heard about the body at the port, and I was convinced it was my brother, Thomas.”
“What did your brother do for a living?”
“He was in the shipping business with my father. He was a few years older. Thomas was good to me. I didn’t see him much, but he would give me his clothes when he no longer wanted them, and other things, as I’ve told you. And money. I know the last time I saw him, maybe two months ago in Paris, he was frightened something bad was going to happen to him.”
“Where in Paris was this meeting with Thomas?”
“Faubourg Saint Antoine. He loved to go where the young artists and nightclubs are, and we met in a stone alleyway. Cour des Trois Freres, where the artisans are, you know, not too far from Sans Sanz and the Balanjo and, of course, the Bar Americain, where girls can be paid to keep you company. He gave me money and said he was going to Belgium, to Antwerp, and then on to this country. I never heard from him again, and next the news came out about the body.”
“And where did you hear this news?”
“I told you I get many newspapers. I pick up what people throw away. And many tourists who don’t speak French read the international version of USA Today. There was a small story in it about the body found here, and I knew right away it was my brother. I was sure. For this reason, I came to Richmond. I had to know.”
“How did you get here?”
Chandonne sighs. He looks fatigued again. He touches the inflamed, raw skin around his nose. “I don’t want to say,” he replies.
“Why don’t you want to say?”
“I’m afraid you’ll use it against me.”
“Sir, I need you to be truthful with me.”
“I’m a pickpocket. I took a wallet from a man who had his coat draped over a monument in Pere-Lachaise, the most famous cemetery in Paris, where some of my family is buried. A concession a perpetuite” he says proudly. “Stupid man. An American. It was a big wallet, the sort people keep passports and plane tickets in. I’ve done this many times, I regret to tell you. It’s part of living on the street, and I’ve lived on the street more and more since they started after me.”
“These same people again. Federal agents.”
“Yes, yes. Agents, magistrates, everyone. I immediately took the plane because I didn’t want to give the man time to report his wallet missing and then have someone stop me at the gate in the airport. It was a return ticket, coach, to New York.”