"Mm."

"Damned inconveniencing."

"Yes."

"And him babbling the whole time."

Vidocq pours himself another glass. And this one he doesn't drink.

Just sets it on the table.

"Babbling? I thought he was gagged."

"I took the gag off, didn't I? See if he had any gold in his mouth." "And what exactly was he babbling?"

"Christ, I don't know. Something about . . ." Poulain's eyes spring

open. "He's here. He said somebody or other was here. Said it over and over, like a fucking parrot."

The silence, the essential silence of the wineshop pours round us once more. This, I realize, is when you've given Vidocq the most. When you shut him up completely.

"He didn't tell you who was here, did he?"

"No. And I wasn't about to stick around and get a name, thank you very much."

Vidocq nods. He nods again, at half the speed.

"Very well, Poulain, you have this body hanging off you. What next? "

"Well, what else? Pry him loose and take off."

"A h ."

"You think I want him getting a read on me? Saint Peter chucks 'em back sometimes, doesn't he? He turns this one back, it's La Force for me."

Vidocq looks up at the ceiling, as though any minute a body might come crashing through the timbers.

"The money," he says. "From the wallet and the watch. What'd you spend it on?"

"Ran through it at Mere Bariole's. Me and Agnes had ourselves some sport."

And then an unexpected thought draws his voice into a new, a wondering register: "I should've bought me some new boots."

"Nothing for the baby?" asks Vidocq.

"Why? "

Vidocq opens his mouth to answer, but the Widow Maltaise is glaring down at him now, lambent with rage.

"Finish your business, Vidocq. Or I call the police."

There it is: the strange mystique that surrounds him. He is considered apart from everything-even the Prefecture that nominally employs him. The law is one thing, Vidocq another.

THE BLACK TOWER 49.

He pats her arm. He clucks in her ear.

"Just a few more minutes, my sweet. Oh, and the veal was an astonishment to the senses, did I mention?"

By now, Poulain has had time to work out a new tone. He's the beggar at the gates of Saint-Sulpice.

"See here, Monsieur," he says. "I've been straight with you, haven't I? Answered everything you asked? Seems to me I shouldn't get any time for this."

And Vidocq, he is now the designated representative of Saint-Sulpice, sad in his duty.

"Oh, I see your point, Poulain, I do. But there is the little matter of you stealing. From a nearly dead man. And confound it, you've had such a busy career, I'm not sure Monsieur Henry can look the other way this time." He pours the thief one last glass. "I'll certainly speak to him, if you like. Tell him what a help you were."

Poulain stares into his glass, unskeining the path of his future. And having followed it as far as he can, he scratches his chin and rubs his scalp and looks up, dark-eyed, hard-mouthed.