All the Devils Are Here(30)

“Only one,” said Dussault. “A trip to Peru a year ago.”

“Peru?” asked Beauvoir.

“Big tourist spot,” said Dussault. “Machu Picchu. The Nazca Lines.”

“The what?” asked Fontaine, and Beauvoir was glad she was the one who showed ignorance. Normally that was his job.

He’d actually thought the Prefect had said “Nascar,” and was about to ask about that.

“Look them up,” said Dussault. “One of the great mysteries of the world.”

“Two hundred and fifty dollars Canadian,” Fontaine reported as she went through the wallet. “Seventy euros. Two Visa cards and”— she held up a white business card—“this.”

She handed it to Dussault.

He read the name on the card. “Stephen Horowitz. That confirms it. The dead man knew Horowitz. But how? Friend? Business associate? Must be more than an acquaintance to be in his apartment.”

“May I?” asked Armand, and held out his hand for the card. “Monsieur Plessner was much more than an acquaintance, to have this.”

He handed it back to Fontaine.

“Why?” she asked. “It’s just a simple business card.”

“But without an address?” said Beauvoir. “Not even a phone number or email? What business card has just a name?”

“Not just that,” Dussault pointed out. “Someone’s written JSPS after his name. What does that mean, Armand? ‘Justice of the Peace’? Is it an honorific?”

Gamache was smiling. “Not exactly.”

Bringing out his own wallet, he removed a dog-eared, slightly scruffy business card. The paper was thin and worn, but the printing was exactly the same.

Stephen Horowitz. And after the name exactly the same four letters. Written longhand.

JSPS.

“It’s something my grandmother Zora always called him,” Armand explained.

“But what does it mean?” asked Dussault.

“‘JSPS’ stands for ‘Just Some Poor Schmuck.’”

Dussault laughed. “Really? But ‘schmuck,’ that’s an insult, isn’t it? Why did your grandmother call him that? Was it a private joke, a term of endearment?”

“Just the opposite,” said Armand. “She loathed him. Did from the moment they met in the late 1940s. He was an easy man to dislike.”

Jean-Guy smiled. It was true. Stephen Horowitz could be a real piece of merde. And it wasn’t an act. It was genuinely who he was. But Beauvoir knew that was just one side of a complex man.

“How did she know him?” asked Fontaine. “Come to think of it, how did you?”

“My father hired him to do odd jobs. Stephen had nothing when he came to Québec after the war, but my father quickly saw his potential. They were roughly the same age, and only fate decided that one would lose his home and family, and the other would have both. My father had huge admiration for Stephen, but Zora hated him from the get-go. She called him—”

“Just some poor schmuck?” said Dussault.

“C’est ?a. And that was when she was being polite.” Armand smiled, remembering her muttering “Alte kaker” whenever Stephen showed up.

“Why did she hate him so much?” asked Fontaine. “What did he do to her?”

“Nothing, except to be born German. I think it was asking a bit too much of her, at that time, to like or trust anyone who was German.”

“But you told me he fought for the Resistance,” said Dussault.

“I don’t think my grandmother ever believed it.”

Armand glanced out the window, at the H?tel Lutetia. That was another reason Zora distrusted Stephen.

Because he chose to live right next door to the Lutetia.

It had taken Armand many years to understand her hatred of the beautiful hotel.

He knew he’d have to explain the complex relationships in his family, eventually. Now seemed as good a time as any.

“My father met Zora in Poland, in the final days of the war. She and her family had been deported from Paris and sent to Auschwitz. There were more than a thousand people in that transport. Three survived the war. Zora was one of them.”

He looked at Claude Dussault, who dropped his eyes.

Paris might have a lot of light, but there were also strong shadows.

“She never called it the Holocaust. It was, for her, ‘the Great Murders.’”

He’d been raised to consider Zora his grandmother, which he did to this day. She’d impressed on him that murderers had to be stopped. No matter the cost. That was, Armand knew, the reason he’d joined the S?reté.

To stop them. No matter the cost.

“My father was with the Canadian Red Cross and was helping with the ‘displaced persons,’ as they were called. Those liberated from the death camps but with nowhere to go. No home left. He sponsored Zora to come to Montréal. She lived with us and raised me after they were killed.”

“They?” asked Fontaine. “Killed?”

“My parents. Car accident. I was nine years old. Stephen was my godfather and helped raise me. He brought me to Paris once a year. I practically grew up in this apartment.”

He looked around, trying to recapture that sense of security.