And if I never worried overmuch about that other Dr. Carpentier . . . well, grant me this. Even my father wanted nothing to do with

him.

"When did he flop?"

That's Vidocq's voice, black and guttural, pulling me back to the here and now. I stare at him, uncomprehending.

"Die," he explains. "This papa of yours, when did he die? How long has he been eating dandelions by the roots?"

If you want death broached from an oblique angle, Vidocq is not your man.

"A year," I tell him. "A year and a half."

"What a fine empirical mind you've got. A year. A year and a-"

"Eighteen months, will that do? And twenty-one days and-eleven hours . . ."

Frowning softly, he fingers his Saint-Louis cross.

"Not much fuss, I expect, with the funeral," he says.

"He didn't want any. At least Mother didn't. We had a little service, it was five minutes, no more."

"Who was there?"

"No one. Mother and me and-and Charlotte, that's all."

And someone else. A fourth figure, stirring now from memory's vault. Shrouded and comma shaped, leaning over the open coffin and breathing in that peculiar odor of wool and paraffin . . .

"Father Time."

"Ohh," snarls Vidocq. "It's to be allegory, is it, Doctor?"

"No, he's-Father Time's a friend of the family, that's all. He has a real name. . . ."

"Which is?"

"Umm, Professor Racine, I think. No, wait, it's Corneille. . . ."

And then another thought comes hard on, surprising me with its force.

I wish my father were here.

"There were no notices in the newspapers?" asks Vidocq, in a quieter tone. "No memorial services?"

I shake my head.

"So . . ." He removes his shako, glances heavenward. "Word must have been slow to reach the-the lamented Monsieur Leblanc. He went to his death looking for a man who was already dead. The angels weep."

And now another voice enters the picture. Not the voice of angels.

"Good afternoon, Monsieur Hector."

Nankeen stands before us in a cloud of swallowtail, framed almost perfectly by the Pantheon's portico. Gold buttons and a lace jabot and a trailing indolence-he must have just slept through a lecture on torts.

"You're not going to introduce me?" Smiling, he angles his spectacled nose toward Vidocq. "May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?"

"You'll have the honor of my foot up your ass if you don't move along."

It's important to point out he hasn't raised his voice a fraction, but his intent is clear enough to mottle Nankeen's pale brow. Who would have expected this from a veteran of Louis XV's army-who, by the looks of things, is eighty if he's a day?

"See here." A bitter smile crawls across Nankeen's face. "I don't believe there's any call for that."

Vidocq seizes him by the lapels of his swallowtail coat and hoists him straight up in the air. Nankeen's boots, suspended a foot above the ground, execute a pas seul. His eyes twitch, the very threads of his clothing recoil . . . but the smile never quite unfixes itself, even through the gale of Vidocq's roar.

"Was I unclear? Was I unclear? "