Conquest, p.1
Conquest, page 1
CONQUEST
A LA RUE FAMILY CRIME THRILLER
RICHARD WAKE
MANOR AND STATE, LLC
CONTENTS
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Part I
Sunday at Vincent’s
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Part II
Off the model’s back
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Part III
Blue Renault Caravelle
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Part IV
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Part V
Fathers and sons
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Part VI
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Part VII
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Part VIII
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Part IX
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Part X
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Part XI
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Part XII
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Part XIII
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Copyright © 2023 by Manor and State, LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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PART I
SUNDAY AT VINCENT’S
The back table at Vincent’s had been reserved on Sunday afternoons for the La Rue family for as long as Henri La Rue could remember, even if they only made it about once a month. He had been there as a kid when it was three tables pushed together and his entire goal had been to hit his brother with a spitball before the end of the paper straw got too wet to produce the necessary blast of air. He had been there, too, when it had become necessary to separate his children, Guy and Clarice, in order to avoid a full-scale war. But Guy and Clarice were grown now and only occasional attendees on Sunday afternoons. These days, it tended to be all old people.
Gérard, Henri’s uncle, always sat at the head of the table. The food was always the same — either roast pork or roast chicken on alternating weeks, mashed potatoes, green beans, green salad, bread and butter, all served family style. Desserts were the only menu items that were ordered individually. And, as Sylvie said, “It might be different if it was extraordinary chicken. If it melted in your mouth. If it brought you to a culinary orgasm.”
“Do we have to—” Henri said.
“Be nice to have an orgasm,” Sylvie said. She was Henri’s wife.
Aside from orgasms, the main topic of conversation among the men at the table was the story in that morning’s Le Parisien, the story of René Morel, a man who was being sought by police after he was identified as a collaborator with the Gestapo during the war. Fifteen years after VE Day, this remained a big deal, a crime punishable by imprisonment or even death, depending upon the extent of the collaboration.
“I always suspected,” Gérard said. He had a copy of the newspaper at the table with him, and waved it indifferently in front of his face.
“Based on what?” Martin said. Martin was Henri’s younger brother, the spitball target.
“Intuition,” Gérard said.
“Did you know him back then?” Henri said.
“I knew who he was, but I didn’t know him,” Gérard said. “I didn’t get over to the 10th very much back then. Still don’t.”
The La Rue family was from Montmartre, the 18th arrondissement. The Morels were from the neighboring 10th. They shared a geographical boundary in Paris, north of the Seine, but little else. The La Rues ran their business and the Morels theirs, and they only interacted when there was a dispute — which there almost never was because of the boundary. The last time had been five years earlier, when Henri heard about a brothel that was two blocks into the 18th and that he did not control. It took exactly three minutes with the proprietor and one pair of brass knuckles to discover the Morel family connection. It took exactly one cup of coffee in the days after that to extract an apology and the signed-over lease to the brothel from René Morel. And that was the last time.
“He always was weak,” Gérard said. He had ordered the Peach Melba and was in the process of inhaling it. Sweets were the only vice of his uncle’s that Henri knew about.
“The paper said a woman is giving the testimony,” Henri said. “An old mistress, maybe?”
“A woman,” Gérard said, digging his spoon back into the dessert. Gérard had never married.
“All these years later, I don’t get why anybody cares,” Martin said.
“How can you say that?” Henri said, although he knew why. But he couldn’t help himself, and his voice rose, and he said, “The goddamned Gestapo, they killed—”
“Enough,” Gérard said, his voice even louder than Henri’s, his hand raised like a traffic cop. Then he stood up, and the man next to him stood up, too. He was Gérard’s oldest friend, Maurice. Behind his back, everybody in the family called him Silent Moe, mostly because he almost never said anything to anyone other than to Gérard, and only then in whispers.
The two of them carried their port into the back room of Vincent’s, which also had been reserved for the La Rue family every Sunday afternoon for as long as Henri could remember. The lunch was always just a prelude to the real ritual. After about five minutes, Henri went first. He was the oldest, and he always went first — with the port in his hand and the envelope in his breast pocket. Gérard had a small crew, and they still had some money out on the street, but that was about it. For the most part, all Gérard did was collect envelopes based upon his seniority — and he was a master at it. He could tell by feel if it was light or heavy, and by how much. If it was light, you got a question. If it was heavy, you got a nod. Actually, the envelope got a nod — Gérard’s eyes were always down, looking at it in his hand. The one who handed it over never received so much as a “good job” or, God forbid, a “thank you.” On that day, Henri’s envelope was just right. On days when it was just right, there was no reaction at all, just a quick handing of the envelope over his shoulder to Silent Moe, who was sitting just behind him.
What followed would be a few minutes of conversation — about pending business, or staffing issues, or whatever. That day, though, Gérard began with a warning.
“Forget Morel,” he said. “Forget about the 10th.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Henri said.
“Don’t kid a kidder,” Gérard said. “You forget I’ve known you since you were born. I’ve wiped your ass.”
“My ass is clean and so is my conscience,” Henri said. “I’m not thinking about the 10th.”
The truth was, the 10th was all that Henri had been thinking about since he opened the newspaper that morning. With Morel out of the way — and he was either going to jail or disappearing for good — the 10th arrondissement became an open question, mostly because Morel had no children and there were no other Morels in the line of succession. Instead, there was just his half-assed organization led by three captains whom Henri had met along the way and referred to as Opie, Dopey, and Really Dopey.
The 10th was not a wealthy arrondissement — much of it was pretty run down, to be honest — and it wasn’t particularly big, either. But what it had were train stations, two of them: the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est. Train stations, with so many goods coming and going, were the Parisian gangster equivalent of gold mines. Through an accident of geography, the La Rues controlled two arrondissements — the 18th and the 9th — but had no train stations, while the 10th had two. Those stations were what Henri was fixated on most of all.
“I mean it, Henri — don’t,” Gérard said.
“I know, I know,” Henri said, and then he put on Gérard’s voice and began, “The historical sanctity—”
“Don’t mock me,” Gérard said. “But it’s true, and you know it as well as I do. The historical sanctity of the boundary lines keeps the peace and keeps all of us wealthy. Don’t be a hog. Hogs get slaughtered.”
He had said it a hundred times over the years, and Henri knew that the old man wasn’t wrong. The boundary lines had kept the peace, and the peace had made all of them wealthy. At the same time, the old man had evolved into a boss who was somewhere between risk-averse and calcified. And “wealthy” was a relative term. And it wasn’t as if two train stations became available every day — and with Morel in hiding, and only Opie, Dopey, and Really Dopey to run the operation, the stations might very well be available. And it wasn’t as if Gérard would be the one collecting the envelopes in Vincent’s back room forever.
When Henri returned to the main table, it was Martin’s turn. He waited about two minutes though, because that was how it had always been done — to give Gérard a chance to take a sip of port, and exchange a word or two with Silent Moe. When Martin got up and left for the back room, Sylvie turned to Henri and asked, “So what did he say?”
“About what, dearest?”
“About the 10th,” she said. “About the Morels. About the damn train stations.”
They had not discussed the matter that morning, but Sylvie read the same newspaper that her husband did and had been married into the La Rue family for more than a quarter-century. She knew how it worked. She also had enough ambition for both herself and Henri and always had.
“You know what he said,” Henri said.
“That old fossil.”
“He might not be wrong.”
“Of course, he’s wrong,” Sylvie said. “My God, he’s the walking dead. What was the last thing about him that moved, other than his bowels?”
Gérard was 72 years old. He had run the thing since Henri’s father, Jean — Gérard’s brother — died eight years earlier. When Jean was alive, he was the oldest and in charge, but he had an ability to allow Gérard enough authority that led outsiders to believe that it was an equal sharing of power between the brothers. It wasn’t, though, and everyone inside the family knew it. When it became Gérard’s turn, however, there was no appearance of power sharing with Henri, his oldest surviving nephew. Gérard’s authority was undisputed as, year by year, it rusted over.
“That old man,” Sylvie said. She poked at her slab of vanilla cake.
“Dried out, like him,” she said. She tossed the fork onto the little plate. The clatter startled Father Lemieux, who was sitting two seats away on Sylvie’s right, next to where Silent Moe had been.
“It can’t be that bad, Sylvie,” Father Lemieux said.
“I should have had the ice cream,” she said. “I’d ask for a bite of yours, but you appear to have licked the dish clean.”
“Growing boy,” Father Lemieux said. He patted his stomach, which was non-existent.
Sylvie turned her back to the priest and half whispered to Henri, “And why exactly is he around so much these days?”
“He’s become friends with Gérard,” Henri said. “From when he was an assistant at St. Pierre’s.”
“And where is he now?” she said.
“You know, you could turn, and face him with a friendly smile, and ask him yourself,” Henri said. When she gave him the same you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look that she gave him when they were 16, and he had begun to reach his hand under her blouse, Henri said, “He’s downtown now — good with figures or something. He works for the archdiocese in some office.”
“So he’s a briefcase priest, probably in some fabulous rectory downtown that has a cook with a Michelin star, but he keeps coming back up the butte for the Sunday slop at Vincent’s?”
“They became friends,” Henri said. “What can I tell you?”
“I bet he goes to the house,” she said. Then she picked up her fork and stabbed at the vanilla cake.
The house where Gérard lived was on the very top of the butte, just a block from Sacré Coeur. It was, without question, the thing that most bothered Sylvie about Henri’s uncle. Gérard had the top two floors of a classic old building that had been updated with an elevator and tight windows along the way. It was enough space for eight, but Gérard lived there alone among his antique furniture and his fabulous views — neither the cook nor the maid lived in. On the wall in the living room hung a Van Gogh that was said to have been painted during the artist’s short, wild stint in Montmartre.
“A minor work, but still,” is what Gérard said every time he pointed it out. And if Henri had been in the living room 20 times over the years, Gérard had pointed it out 20 times.
“Just once, he could have the lunch at his house,” Sylvie said. She was by then eating the vanilla cake without making a face.
“This is tradition,” Henri said.
“He’s a cheap old bastard,” Sylvie said. “I mean, have we ever eaten in that palace?”
“Come on, he has us over every year for a Christmas drink,” Henri said.
“That’s not eating,” she said.
“Last year, I think there was pâté,” he said, and immediately regretted it. On the list of no-win arguments, this had to be at the top. No. 1: Gérard was a cheap, old fool with a fantastic house on the top of the butte that he did not deserve. No. 2: When are you going to buy me a house on the top of the butte? Even at the worst times, the mistress didn’t rise above No. 3.
“Pâté?” Sylvie said. For a second, as she gripped and then re-gripped the fork, Henri wondered if she was subconsciously considering stabbing him with it. Then she sputtered the word “pâté” two more times, louder and then louder still. Henri looked over and saw Father Lemieux slightly raise an eye from his ongoing task, which involved scraping the last drop or two of ice cream smeared on the dish. Just as quickly, though, his eye was back down and the priest was back at it.
“If you would just show a little backbone in your dealings with him,” Sylvie said. Then she went quiet. There was no way to have this argument without the appropriate decibels. Nobody he had ever met could reach a righteously indignant crescendo like Sylvie could, and she knew that Vincent’s on a Sunday afternoon would rob her of the full range of her powerful instrument. So she stopped and picked at the vanilla cake, and then reached over and picked at Henri’s untouched chocolate cake.
“But still,” Sylvie said, and then she stopped as abruptly as she had started. Martin’s return from the back room, and his taking the seat on Henri’s other side, shut her up and allowed Henri to extricate himself from the unwinnable argument. Sylvie understood that business always took precedence.
