Katie called Catherine and told her their plans to fly to Marseilles, asking if she’d like to go along. Catherine said there was no way for her to leave Paris because the spring fashion shows were coming up the following week and she’d be busy covering them for CNN. Catherine said she’d keep Katie posted on any news about the hotel crimes.
         David meanwhile asked Borel for any contact he might have in Marseilles, and he also called an old colleague on NYPD who had worked on cases that involved the Marseilles Mob, which was referred to as Le Milieu and even les beaux voyous, which meant “good fellows.” In fact, David’s friend, who was named Teddy Ryan, had worked on the so-called French Connection case that was the basis of the movie of the same name.  Arrests in that case had decimated the Marseilles mob, which was now more or less controlled by the Unione Corse, or Northern Corsican union and the Brise de Mer, also Corsican.        
     Armed with contacts from both Borel du Boss and Ryan, David and Katie packed, checked out of their hotel and took the one-hour flight out of Orly that got them into Marseilles that afternoon. On the plane they read about the city, about Prado Beach and the yacht basin and streets named after fish, like Sar’din, and about the city’s signature seafood stew, bouillabaisse, served in every restaurant near the port.
         They pre-booked rooms at Hôtel Saint-Ferréol on Rue Pisançon near the Old Port, which they walked around for a couple of hours before dinner at Michel on the Rue des Catalans. They, of course, ordered the bouillabaisse, marveling at the depth of the seafood soup and its garlic-rich mayonnaise and the perfume of fennel and saffron, along with a bottle of flowery Provençal rosé wine.
         “Wish we could stay here carefree for a couple more days,” said Katie.
         “It’s a great-looking city,” said David. “I’d love to come back here someday. Maybe do some fishing.”
         “I didn’t know you liked fishing.”
         “Loved it since I was a kid. My father used to take me to fish along the Long Island Sound. I’ll always remember the old men throwing their lines over the City Island Bridge. They’d be there hour after hour, maybe catching sunnies. Sometimes we’d rent a row boat and go out into the Sound to catch bluefish when they were running. Not much to fish for in the Hudson River yet, though the river’s coming back to life. I think I could be happy here for a few weeks or months a year. Did you ever go fishing, Katie?”
         “We took a house in Stony Brook for a couple of summers, but I was pretty young. I don’t think we ever went fishing. It wasn’t something my father had time for. But I think I could live in Marseilles for a while.”
         “How about we set up a detective agency here?” asked David. Our last names would fit right in: Cavuto and Greco, private eyes for hire.”
         “Or establish an English-language newspaper. We could call it the Shoestring Gazette and you could write a column on fishing.”
         “You’re forgetting, I’m not a writer.”
         “Minor detail at the moment. Hey, did you know that the actor Louis Jourdan (below) was born in Marseilles?”
         “The rich guy in Gigi? Pretty suave actor.”
         “Kind of a pretty boy and he couldn’t really sing,” said Katie, “but it was a great musical.”
         They then began to discuss the next day’s activity. David had spoken to Borel’s contact in Marseilles, whose name was Philippe Iacomino, who worked for the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police that handled mob crimes, and he had long acquaintance with the workings of the various gangs and would know more about individuals than there was in the official records.
         There was fog in the port the next morning, and by six David was watching some of the fishing boats leaving for the day’s catch, keeping their horn-blowing to a minimum out of courtesy to the town’s sleeping populace. He went down for coffee and brioche in the lobby, then strolled along the harbor, returning to find Katie having her breakfast.
         “We’re so close to Italy I thought I’d have a cappuccino,” she said. “It’s really good after all that French coffee in Paris. So where are we meeting Iacomino?”
         David put on his reading glasses and said, “The concierge said his office was just a ten-minute walk.”
         “So, let’s take a leisurely stroll,” said Katie, collecting her things and taking David’s arm.
         They showed up early at the police headquarters and Detective Iacomino came out to meet them. David thought he looked exactly the way he thought a cop on the French Riviera should look: Stocky, in his fifties, with a salt-and-pepper goatee and thick eyebrows, his white shirt was clean, his tie askew, his trousers a bit shiny. He asked the Americans if they wanted coffee.
         “So, you know mon ami Michel, eh?,” he said, bringing them into his small office, which he shared with another detective. “He said you worked with him a couple of times? Michel is a good man, but he’s stuck in that damn Paris bureaucracy. Down here, they say we take too long to get anything done, but up there they waste too much time going through—what do you call it?—‘red tape?’ They get nothing done. We get a little done. How does that go in New York, Monsieur?”
         “Oh, there’s plenty of red tape,” said David, “but somehow some things get done. It depends a lot on who’s the mayor of New York.”
         “Ah, politicians. They’re all corrupt, every one of them down here. And I tell you the truth, mes amis, a lot of the cops are, too. The mob is not as strong as they used to be, but they still have their teeth in the politicians.”
         “Michel said you were as honest as they come,” said David.
         Iacomino laughed and said, “Ah, oui, as honest as they come, meaning maybe I am more honest than most, eh? Anyway, you want to talk about this guy Marciano because he left a glove under a bed in a hotel?”
         “Well, the bed was in one of the hotels that got hit with the virus,” said Katie, “and Marciano had checked in that afternoon and seems to have left that same night.”
         Iacomino shook his head this way and that and said, “Not much to go on, eh? You came all the way to Marseilles for that? Your magazine pay for all this?”
         “No,” said Katie, “David and I are here on our own. We’re on vacation but doing a bit of snooping.”
         Iacovino didn’t know whether Katie and David were romantically involved, but if they were, he thought David a very lucky man. He said nothing.
         “Alors, let me give you a quick lecture on the state of the Marseilles mob at the moment—and it’s always changing, one group kills a member of another group, the other group retaliates, then we have peace for a while, then it happens all over again. At the moment things are peaceful. But just a year ago some members of the Corsican gang called Brise de Mer (right) escaped from prison by sending fake faxes from a judge ordering their release. I’m pretty sure the judge knew all about it, but we were told not to look too closely. Then Brise de Mer pretty much eliminated its rival, the Armata Corsa.”
         “By killing them off?” asked Katie.
         “Pretty much. They kill a few, the rest run away. They’ll be back in a year or two.”
         “So, is Marciano involved with any of the mobs?”
         “Marciano is what you call a low-life who owns three garages and mechanic shops. He also owns a couple of pizzerias around the port. Our files on him consist of one sheet of paper. We’ve never been able to arrest him for any major crimes, but we know he helps the mob steal expensive cars on the Riviera and has them shipped to South America and the Middle East, where they will pay anything for them. He probably helps the mobs to hide cocaine in cars to be shipped out of the country. His shops are right on the port, so, the cars come in, swish, swish, overnight they get loaded on the ships and they’re gone the next morning.”
         “Ever look in the rocker panels for drugs?” asked David.
         “The rocker panels? What is this?”
         “I’m sure you saw the movie The French Connection”—Iacovino rolled his eyes—“and the cops get a car they know is dirty but can’t find any drugs anywhere in it.”
         “Ah!” said Iacovino, slapping his forehead, “The rocker panels along the bottom of the car door! Oui, they pry it open and the cocaine is inside. I forget. No, I don’t think we’ve been looking in the rocker panels. I don’t even know if cars have them anymore.”
         “Anyway,” said David, “you don’t think Marciano’s one of the mob?”
        

        “Oh, I’m sure he is, but he’s not one of the big guys.”
         “So, it’s not likely the mob would hire him to commit the hotel crimes?” asked Katie.
          “No, he might, because he’s not the kind of smart guy who could mastermind such a crime all on his own. Where would he get the virus? A lot of crazy things go on in Marseilles but I don’t think anyone’s selling vials of virus.”
         “What if an outside nation wanted the mob to do such a job for them?” asked Katie, then told Iacovino about what she called “The Russian Connection.”
         “Oui, it’s possible. If the Russians hired the mob—and there are Russians crawling all over the Riviera—they might set it all up and just ask the mob to choose a guy like Iacovino to deliver the virus. But there were three hotels, oui? Three different perpetrators?”
         “It seems likely,” said David. “But Marciano is the only one we have any kind of lead on at all.”
         “One plastic glove, eh? I don’t think we can arrest him for that.”
         “Can you  bring him in on suspicion, ask him what he was doing in Paris?”
         Iacovino looked at David as if he was a little naïve. “Mon ami, if I brought in everyone if Marseilles who went to Paris for any of a thousand reasons, I’d have to bring in the whole populace. Michel would have a better chance of rounding up everyone who stayed at all three hotels in Paris.”
         “But you don’t mind us talking to Marciano ourselves?”
         Iacovino puffed on his lower lip and said, “It’s still a free country, more or less. You want his address? Let me know what you find. I’m here if you need me.”
         Katie and David thanked the detective for his help and left the headquarters to discuss a plan to interview Marciano.
         “Can you tell him you’re working on a story about the renovation of the Marseilles waterfront?” asked David.
         “Not unless I’m working undercover,” said Katie, “just the way you couldn’t tell a suspect you want to speak to him about the New York waterfront unless you really were. Rules of the game prevent me from doing that. I’d need approval from Alan.”
         “Well, we can’t exactly go up to him and ask him if he committed the crime in Paris.”
         “Maybe we can work around him. Speak to people in the neighborhood? Maybe Iacovino can put us in touch with some friendly mobster?”
         “You mean one who will tell us that Marciano does jobs for the mob? That I doubt. But, listen, Katie, I’m not working for McClure’s here and I’m not a cop over here, so let me bend the rules a little.”
         “Well, then, let’s just go over nice and innocently and ask him some auto mechanic questions and see where it leads.”