Read Red Gold for Free Online

to get into his jacket, looked around the room one last time. Not so bad. Now that he’d never see it again he started to like it.
    In the lobby, the patronne glanced up from the register she kept on the counter, then looked down, finding an entry, holding her place with a steel finger. “ Monsieur l’agent? ” she said.
    “Yes?”
    “Is this one coming back?”
    “Couldn’t say.”
    The patronne’s finger, stuck on Room 28, began to tap. Her eyes were shining with fury.
    Small—a very small victory, he thought. But likely the only one of the day. Outside, a battered Renault police car. A detective sitting in the passenger seat was reading a dossier as Casson got in the back.
    “You’re Marin?”
    Casson nodded. Closed his eyes for a moment. He was, more than anything, tired, in every way you could be. Tired of his life, of clumsy deception, of the world he had to live in. Shoot me and get it over with.
    The old engine whined, turned over, and finally caught, missing and backfiring on the low-grade gasoline the Germans gave the police. The flic said, “To the préfecture?”
    The detective turned, rested his arm on the top of the seat, and looked him over. He was an old man, heavy, with a head of thick, white hair and deep lines carved in his face. He had a big nose with a dent near the bridge and very pale blue eyes, wore an ancient black suit beneath his overcoat, a loose wool muffler, and a weather-beaten hat with the brim snapped down in front.
    “No. The rue Rondelet.”
    Casson looked out the window as the car drove off. In May of 1940, recalled to military service, assigned to a Section Cinématographique, he’d seen the streets of eastern Paris through the windshield of a truck. Different than the back of a taxi, he’d thought then. Now, the same streets, from the window of a police car.
    Blood will tell. It was a deep Gallic conviction, especially among women over forty. Casson’s father had been a rogue, and his mother had been employed full-time as the wife of a rogue: long-suffering, humiliated by unpaid butchers, terrified of the phone. But, often enough, his father’s shield. Casson père had more than once been spared by creditors who could not bear to hurt “his poor wife.” Wealth had always been just around the corner; shares in Venezuelan lead mines, a scheme to import herring from Peru, a powder that kept lettuce from spoiling, tonics, treasure maps, mechanical pens. And, late in life, one honorable and very productive venture—a wool brokerage—which he’d been done out of by men he called “licensed thieves who work in paneled offices.”
    The rue Rondelet was a little street in a factory district with a small poste de police. Not the kind of place Parisian detectives usually worked. “Go back to the préfecture,” the detective told his driver. “If anyone asks, tell them I’ll be in later.” The flic touched the visor of his cap with two fingers and drove off. Inside the station, a desk sergeant wearing a knitted green sweater under his uniform jacket greeted the detective like an old friend.
    Upstairs, a small office used for interrogation—two chairs, a desk scarred with cigarette burns, tall windows opaque with dirt, a floor of narrow boards. The station backed up to a schoolyard, it was recess, and Casson could hear the kids, playing tag and yelling. The detective leaned on his elbows and read the dossier, now and then shaking his head.
    “Casson, Casson,” he said at last, with a sigh in his voice. Casson flinched despite himself. The detective seemed not to notice. He turned the pages slowly, sometimes puzzling over the cramped handwriting. Suddenly he looked up and said, “You’re not going to insist on this Marin business, are you?”
    “No.”
    “ Grâce à Dieu— I already fought with my wife this morning.”
    “Will you turn me over to the Germans?”
    “Worse than that, Casson, worse than that.”
    The detective read further. “Here’s your