Babayaga

with his pants down and her skirt up and then bring them in for some real questioning.” He grinned lasciviously.
    “Well, between those two and that one in the cage downstairs, we should be able to make some progress,” said Lecan.
    “I agree, I agree,” said Maroc. “It’s a very exciting day.” And so they made their arrangements.
    Later that night, sitting in an unmarked car across the boulevard, they watched as their subject Alberto paced back and forth on a lamp-lit corner of the park. They had followed Alberto from his apartment and now, having waited for almost half an hour, all of them were growing impatient for Madame Vidot’s arrival.
    Lecan lit a Gauloise.
    “You fool,” said Maroc. “Put it out; she’ll see us if she comes up now.”
    “She’s not coming,” said Lecan.
    “Impossible,” said Maroc. “You read those dirty transcripts, the woman is like a cat in heat.”
    Lecan looked at his watch. “Maybe her conscience got the better of her. Maybe she feels bad about that nice husband she killed. Who knows? What I do know is we have been here for some time and there’s no sign of her. I honestly don’t know why he’s still waiting. The little slut stood him up.”
    Maroc stared at the lone silhouette loitering across the street and shook his head in frustration. Where was she? He had felt so tantalizingly close to wrapping up all the strands in one nice, neat package, but now some gnawing sense at the bottom of his stomach was telling him that the simple solutions he wanted were beginning to slip away. “Fine. Let’s at least grab him. He must know what she did with Vidot. He must. Even if he’s innocent, he’ll have a lot to tell us.”
    “Well,” said Lecan, reaching for the door handle, “we’ll never know unless we ask.”
    They got out and crossed the street. Alberto stopped his pacing as they approached; they could tell he recognized them at once. Then, pretending he had not noticed them, he began to nonchalantly walk down the path into the darkness of the park. It was bad enough that his date had not shown up, but a conversation with the police was clearly not the way he wanted to spend the night.
    “The bastard’s trying to slip away,” said Maroc, picking up his pace. He would have run but he hated running, it always made him feel fat, and so by the time they reached the corner, their suspect was gone. “Come, he went that way, we can catch up with him,” Maroc said. Lecan followed him into the park.
    They walked in silence, listening for footsteps, but the Bois was quiet. They followed the paved walkway until it divided and then, instead of splitting up, they both stayed to the right, going deeper into the park and crossing near the lake. Every so often they would pause and look around, hoping to hear their quarry’s footsteps, but as they stood in the silence, it was clear that Alberto had escaped them.
    They headed back to the car. Halfway down the walk, Maroc tapped his hand on Lecan’s shoulder and pointed into the overgrowth. “Look, is that him?”
    “It’s hard to tell,” said Lecan.
    “Who’s he with?” Obscured by the brush, they could only dimly make out a group of figures standing in a small clearing about fifty meters away. Maroc and Lecan moved in closer, stepping carefully between the thornbushes and tree branches in an effort not to make any noise. Coming closer, they found a situation of such interest that it made them completely forget their missing suspect.
    There were seven people there, all of whom appeared to be frozen as stiff as wax statues. As Maroc and Lecan came to a break in the trees, it became clear why the group of people were immobile, as the majority of them had guns pointed at one another. A small bald man was moving about and talking. Maroc squinted into the darkness, trying to make out what was happening. “What the devil is he—?”
    That was when the little man produced a gun and shot one of the men in the head.
    Maroc immediately pulled his whistle from his pocket and blew it as loudly as he could, rushing headlong into the middle of the clearing, with Lecan right behind him. “Police! Put down your weapons and stay where you are.”
    Maroc had, up until this point, served largely in administrative roles, and in his entire professional history he had very little actual experience working in the streets among the citizens of the city’s neighborhoods. His long, comfortable career had begun with a desk job in a