I think it was in this moment, as I listened to his calm and measured voice, that I realized that the crude, proto-fascist mask he wore in public was a cover for his true personality. Right now, the man towering over me seemed like a ruthless gangster, like someone out of The Godfather—but if there was even the faintest chance that he could help us, then I was ready to pledge my allegiance to him.

“We’re going to clean this place up,” he said, turning to Ahmed, the foreman. “But first, go and get some tarps from the van.”

The blood had drained from Ahmed’s face and his eyes were wide with fear. “What’s the plan, boss?”

“We’re going to concrete him into the wall,” Francis said, jerking his chin toward the corpse.

“Which wall?” asked Ahmed.

“The wall of the new gym.”

5

The Last Days of Vinca Rockwell

1.

May 13, 2017

“I never talked to my father about it ever again,” Maxime said, lighting a cigarette.

A ray of sun caught his lighter, a Zippo in a lacquer case with a reproduction of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. We had left the stifling atmosphere of the gym for the heights of the Eagle’s Nest, a narrow, flower-strewn ridge that ran along a rocky outcropping overlooking the lake.

“I don’t even know exactly where he walled up the body.”

“Don’t you think maybe this is the time to ask him?” I said.

“My father died last winter, Thomas.”

“Shit…I’m really sorry.” The shadow of Francis Biancardini loomed over our conversation. I had always thought of Maxime’s father as indestructible. A rock on which all those foolish enough to attack him met their fate. But death is an exceptional adversary. It always wins in the end. “What happened?”

Maxime took a long drag off his cigarette. “It’s a pretty grim story,” he said. “In recent years, he had been spending a lot of time at his villa in Aurelia Park—you know where that is?”

I nodded. I knew the opulent gated community in the hills above Nice.

“Late last year, there was a spate of burglaries in the complex, some of them pretty violent. The burglars often burst into the villas in broad daylight when residents were there. There were a number of home invasions where they tied up the victims.”

“And Francis was one of them?”

“Yeah. Over Christmas. He always had a gun in the house, but he didn’t have time to use it. He was tied up and beaten by the intruders. He died of a heart attack brought on by the beating.”

Burglaries were one of the many plagues of the Côte d’Azur, along with the concrete sprawl, the permanent traffic jams, the crowds brought by mass tourism.

“Did they ever catch the guys who did it?”