Black Diamond

keep Algeria French, the car’s tires had been shot out, yet it could still drive away at full speed. Every time the baron’s DS came in for service, Lespinasse at the garage would almost purr with pleasure.
    “Did you know I bought this car from Pons?” the baron asked, his eyes on the narrow road ahead, dense trees on either side flickering past in the glow of the headlights. It was still an hour before dawn, but they had wanted to be at the Ste. Alvère market before it officially opened at 8:00 a.m.
    “It must be over twenty years ago, maybe more, not long after his wife left him. I got it cheap. These days they can go for over a hundred thousand at classic car auctions.”
    “You’ll never sell this,” Bruno said. “It’s part of you. But I wanted to ask you about Pons. How come the wife left?”
    “I’m told he used to beat her. She came from the south, near Carcassonne. Got a job teaching at the college here. A real beauty, blond hair but with that lovely golden skin you sometimes get in the Midi. I was living in Paris then, and Pons had already grabbed her when I came down one summer. Olivia, her name was.”
    “Jealous?”
    “I certainly was.” The baron laughed. “But then things changed. Pons was never known for fidelity. She put up with it for a while. Then she started taking her revenge. I was one of the lucky ones. Not the only one, though. When Pons found out, that was the end of the marriage.”
    “How was she doing, financially?”
    “I helped her get a lawyer. She did okay. Pons was never mean about money, at least not where the boy was concerned. But I know he complained the boy never wanted to see him, that Olivia had poisoned the kid’s mind about him.”
    “Did the boy know about you?”
    “I doubt it. I’m pretty sure Pons never knew about me either, we were always discreet. I was married by the time she came to Paris.”
    “Why the delay before she got a divorce?”
    The baron shrugged. “Divorce wasn’t so easy in those days, not with the kid, and even trickier after she took the boy to Paris. Pons claimed she’d abandoned the family home, but the lawyer got her a decent settlement.”
    “What happened then?”
    “She taught for a while. Later she got a management job in a good hotel by the Opéra and then opened her own restaurant. I helped her a bit, but it was never a great success. Then she got breast cancer, and everything fell apart. The boy went off backpacking around Asia, didn’t even make it back for the funeral. It was just me, some other old boyfriends and the staff from her restaurant. Pons didn’t come. At least he sent a wreath.”
    They had arrived, just a few minutes before seven. Bruno climbed out of the car’s warm interior and shivered as he pulled on his old army greatcoat. He looked up to see if he could discern the first hint of lightness in the eastern sky. Not dawn yet, he thought, and pulled his small basket from the backseat. It was a modest haul he had to offer, and he only had the second grade of truffle, the
brumale
. The real black diamond, the
melanosporum
, would not be traded until later in December. The best of them, ones that could go for more than a thousand euros a kilo, seldom came onto the market until January.
    Bruno had planted the alley of white oaks that would nourish the growth of truffles on his land soon after his arrival in St. Denis, knowing that it would be a few years more before he would have the chance of a real harvest. But he had six small and knobbly
brumales
of different shapes and sizes, three from his own trees and three from his forays in the woods behind his home. They weighed in total something less than half a pound. The largest was just a little bigger than a golf ball. He might with luck get a hundred euros for them, but the price would depend on the market. He dipped his nose into the basket to smell the deep, earthy scent. He wrapped the truffles inside a page of
Sud Ouest
and stuffed itinto his pocket; they smelled better when they were kept warm.
    He had left the two best of his
brumales
at home, steeping in virgin olive oil. They would be for his own use. Normally, he would not bother to attend the market until late December, even with his
brumales
, but the baron had said Hercule wanted to see him, and Bruno owed Hercule a great deal.
    When Bruno had first seen the tiny darting fly beneath one of his trees that signaled the presence of truffles, he had begun to think about investing for the