Babayaga

of the brasseries to the wild parrots of the bird market to the garden view from Montparnasse. Of course, there were also the yellow-and-pink-pastel-skirted girls who looked as tasty as macaroons as they carried their books to their Sorbonne classes, and then there was this thick, little puffball of a man who was singing about pimples and dancing around Will’s office. Watching Guizot bounce about, Will realized that he had thoroughly enjoyed, savored, and celebrated every single day he had spent in this city, and now it appeared it was over. “Fuck,” he said.
    Guizot stopped and held up his hands. “Come on, it’s a good song!”
    III

    Standing in the finely furnished apartment, Detective Vidot felt guilty. Crimes were always bad, and all too often they were tragic, terrible, and truly awful things, and yet whenever they involved peculiar or unusual circumstances, Vidot inevitably felt a wondrously delicious feeling rise up inside his heart, a delightful sensation that bordered on giddiness, and one that almost always inspired him to break out in an enormous smile. It was a shameful habit that he had long struggled to suppress. He thought it stemmed from the fact that ever since he was a young boy, he had derived enormous pleasure from puzzles, crosswords, jigsaws, anagrams, word games, and riddles. The great mystery stories featuring Dupin, Holmes, and Lecoq had sparked the initial ambition that led to his career. But once he actually became a police detective the smile itself caused unfortunate results, especially when his duties included querying a victim’s grieving relatives, neighbors, or traumatized colleagues. Too many times, that impish grin had slipped across his face, sending the sad souls he was questioning into even more wildly distraught states. Calls had been made, complaints lodged, and over the years, he had strained to erase it from his features, attempting to appear more consoling and sympathetic, yet the little smile always found a way to creep back, dancing at the corners of his mouth, mischievous, almost like a nervous tic.
    It was a good thing no friends or family of the unfortunate victim were around now, because this case had him grinning from ear to ear from the moment he had first encountered it.
    Atop the hill that rose in the 5th arrondissement, not far from rue Mouffetard, there had once, long ago, been a tall, spiked gate on rue Rataud that protected the chaste, devout nuns living within the monastery. Late in the nineteenth century, city life had grown too chaotic, so the sisters were moved away and the gate had been almost completely disassembled. But due to a series of arguments between the hired laborers, devotees of the protosocialist Saint-Simon, and the more conservative Catholic accountants, the final work was never completed. The gate’s top was left intact, arcing above the lane, its sharp and heavy pointed hooks, primitive precursors of modern concertina wire, curling menacingly down toward the cobblestones below. It was here that they found the body of Leon Vallet hanging early on Monday morning, the iron spikes impaling his thick neck and skull. Blood was splashed down the wall and across the cobblestones like spilled paint.
    “How did he even get up there?” had been the first, and remained the most, obvious question. There was no clear answer. One policeman suggested he had somehow fallen from the neighboring building, but Vidot could see that was impossible. The hooks faced downward: Leon Vallet must have been thrust up into them. The small team investigating the scene offered up various theories. Perhaps he was riding atop a tall truck that had driven beneath the gate. But a truck would not be found on these narrow streets, and besides, what would a successful man of finance be doing atop such a truck? Was he taking a hayride? No, no. Perhaps an explosion had thrust him upward? This was easily dismissed, as there were no signs of combustion, either on his body or on the ground below.
    “Did anyone report hearing any unusual sounds?” Vidot asked.
    “No,” said a patrolman. “We have asked around the neighborhood. They said it was a quiet night.”
    Vidot nodded. He looked at the corpse that lay on the street. It had taken the team the better part of an hour to unhook and carefully lower the victim. It was incredible that his skull and neck had been able to support such heavy weight. Vidot would have thought gravity would have pulled the torso down from