Chapter 11

The sight that greeted the men entering the dark backroom must have been an unnerving one.

At the head of the square table, facing the door straight on and illuminated by a single sputtering lamp, sat Vidocq himself, his arms crossed on his chest over his embroidered sash of authority. To his immediate right sat a white-haired stranger with the torso of a bear and the ugly creased mug of a recidivist. (Valjean was under no illusions about his looks.) And next to him, under the dartboard, sat the recently deceased inspector Javert, now shaved clean of his trademark mutton chops. The mortal remains of the fearsome inspector were sucking morosely on a cigarillo and periodically exhaling small puffs of acrid blue-black smoke. His out-stretched feet formed a sort of blockade before the kitchen door.

"Welcome, welcome," rumbled Vidocq at the men entering the room and doffing their caps. "Take places wherever you find them."

Soon, all the seats on the benches around the main table were taken. Latecomers lined up against the walls, taking care not to step farther than absolutely necessary into the corner guarded by a visibly foul-humored Javert.

"Is everyone here?" asked Vidocq.

"Handles isn't, he went outside," answered a short blond fellow with a thin face pitted heavily with smallpox scars. Just as he said it, the door opened and admitted Valjean's old table-mate who bowed guiltily to Vidocq and immediately hid behind someone's back to avoid Javert's glare, which his mismatched eyes now made even more menacing.

"Well, Landot is here, but I'm not seeing our Flower-Girl," said Vidocq quietly, leaning back his chair and addressing Javert rather than the group at large.

"On with the program," said Javert from his corner. "If I'm in error, I'll answer for it."

Vidocq shrugged, righted his chair and surveyed the crowded room.

"Well, gentlemen, seeing as we only have a quarter of an hour, I'm going to skip all preliminaries and get right to the point. There are two main paragraphs on our agenda today: a bit of news, and a bit of new instruction. I'll begin with the news."

He paused and surveyed the room. The men were still and silent, regarding him with intent, obedient eyes.

"It's well known to you, I'm sure, that the official winds have been growing cool towards us and ours - although I confess, I was naive enough to expect our performance at the riots to have stalled the machinery at least for a short while longer. But from the looks of things, this isn't in the cards. I know they're already licking their chops up in Palais de Justice. It'll be a matter of weeks before I'm turned out."

The room erupted in growls, curses and hisses. Vidocq turned his head towards Javert and signed a silent inquiry with his eyebrows. Javert raised two fingers to his lips and gave two shrill whistles worthy of a highwayman.

Immediately, the men fell back into their seats, all eyes shifting to Javert.

"Peace," said Javert even though there was already perfect silence. "It might not yet be the end of the world. A commissaire of the suburbs is being demoted specifically for the purpose of adopting all of you scoundrels. A certain Allard. I've worked with him quite a bit over the years. He's not a bad sort. Granted, he has no more than a pigeon's nose worth of understanding about how the Sûreté functions, but that's where you fellows might come in, perhaps." he added, almost to himself.

"There is, also, a silver lining to this cloud," resumed Vidocq. "Gisquet has been giving me polite hints for some time now to take a break from active duty. Hold your questions until I'm done, Handles."

This was directed at Valjean's old table-mate, whose right hand had been drifting slowly upwards from behind another fellow's back, as though pulled by invisible string. The hand retreated from sight.

"Knowing as I already do which way this coin will fall," went on Vidocq, "I decided to step back a bit early and cede my place, for a while at least, to the agent of my choosing rather than Gisquet's. So, until the moment when I will be asked to formally relinquish the reins of the organization to another driver... tonnere! would you give it a rest, Handles?"

The string, it seemed, would not be denied: the restless hand had resumed its journey upward. The short blond gave Valjean's table-mate a shove in the ribs. The hand beat another hasty retreat.

"As I was saying, before I am shown the door officially, I am putting myself on unofficial leave. So until my replacement is named by the Prefect, you all will have the honor and privilege of being shepherded personally by Pharaoh. Isn't that swell? Floor's yours, Pharaoh. Here..."

With those words, Vidocq rose from his seat in front of the lamp, waved Javert over to take his place, unfastened his sash and draped it over the man himself, with a theatrically grave air.

Javert suffered his hands without protest. "Swell indeed," he said, when the sash was affixed. "Mind you, it's for a month or two at most."

Now at the head of the table, Javert leaned forward over it, palms gripping the edge - a pose that made him look vaguely like a perching vulture. His eyes traveled from agent to agent.

"But oh, what a month it promises to be!" he said. "Surprised, children? thought yourselves rid of me, did you? No such luck. Yes, my dear ones, Papa bear is out; Mama bear is in. And her first order of business will be tearing off your head, Handles," he growled suddenly, making everyone in the room crouch in their chairs. The outburst was not so much loud as it was penetrating, chilling every gut in the room. "Sodding hell! Whatever is gnawing at your insides, puke it up already!"

"You said 'might,'" said a familiar voice feebly from behind some backs.

"What?" (Javert, leaning even farther forward, as if straining to hear.)

"What?" (Vidocq, also leaning forward, as if ready to spring on the wretch undermining the solemnity of the moment.)

"You said, the new commissaire doesn't get how the Sûreté functions, but that's where we fellows might come in, perhaps," elaborated Valjean's table-mate's voice, as rapidly as an auctioneer. "Why might?"

Javert straightened out a bit again and turned to Valjean. "How do you like this vaudeville?" he asked. "A kingdom for a rotten orange!"

"What?" (Valjean, softly, his eyebrows raised.)

"What?" (Valjean's table-mate, with fear, still hiding behind taller men.)

"What?" (Vidocq, amused and now leaning back in his chair.)

"An orange! to throw at you, Handles!" growled Javert. "Dame!.. Can't you control yourself even for five minutes? What am I saying - look who I am talking to! - of course you cannot. Well, no matter." Javert rocked back and forth on his heels a few times as he surveyed the room once more. "So! No sense in beating around the bush. As I said, you fellows might be of use in adjusting Allard to his new job - and then again, maybe not. Why not? Because there is talk at the Prefecture of sacking every last one of you."

A panicked murmur drifted over the table. Javert nodded along with it, as if agreeing with the sentiment.

"Yes, yes," he repeated, crossing his arms on his chest and turning to Vidocq. "There's also talk to taking our little coat of arms, can you believe it? It'll be the damn rooster now. A truly fearsome hunter, by God..."

"The Gallic rooster is a fine symbol," retorted Vidocq. "You just have no patriotism in your soul, you damned foreigner."

Javert hmphed dismissively turned back towards the men.

"Now, I realize many of you will choose to be outraged at me personally about this. Not about the new coat of arms, the other thing. You might think, 'Wasn't it Javert's job to intercede with the Prefecture on our behalf? Wasn't he supposed to be our Mediatrix, as it were? wasn't he hired to vouch for us?'"

Javert began to stroll leisurely around the table. "'And now he's stabbed us in the back, that blackguard Javert - "

At this Javert stopped directly behind the chair of one of the seated men. The man paled and opened his lips, as though in disbelief, but Javert had already moved on to stand behind his neighbor.

"'That darkie Javert - '"

The neighbor inclined his head low to the table, as though ducking a blow. But Javert moved onward, continuing to circle the table, leaning over the men he passed.

"'That whoreson'... 'that cur'... 'devil's spawn'... 'pederast' - to this one I really do take offense - learn your Greek - I do not defile children."

His circumnavigation of the table complete, Javert took his place once more at the table and leaned once more on his palms, rocking back and forth slightly once more. Valjean could not help but notice that all the faces that looked gloomy and worried at the beginning of his journey now looked either terrified or, in the case of those Javert passed over, perversely enraptured.

"'Who does he think he is, coming in here, displacing our Mec and then sacking us all?'" Javert nodded a few more times. "I understand. Believe me. I know what it's like to do your job to the best of your ability, obey your duty, bust your hump for eighteen hours a day, line and reline old clothes without end, and still receive slaps instead of praises from your superiors. Here is the long and short of it: the authorities don't trust you. Whether this is deserved or undeserved - let us not speak of that right now. In any case, I have no orders to launch any new investigations. But here is my honest advice, to those who can set aside their grudges and hear it. The authorities want initiative from you. So when Allard comes in, - perhaps in a month, perhaps in two months - come and present yourselves at his office during open hours. Be nice, be polite. Be clean. Smell good. Dress in your best clothes - by which I mean, your most respectable clothes, not ones shot through the the most gold thread and hung with the most gaudy bangles. Leave your earrings at home - most of you look ridiculous with them in, anyway. Do not spit on the floor. Ask for a minute of Monsieur Allard's time, and don't leave the waiting room until you get it. When he sees you, bow deeply, and make a case for the police retaining you on their lists. Be honest about your contributions: neither boastful nor shy. Swear your commitment to the law. Something tells me that you stand a better chance of not being turned out if you actively push to be kept. Yes, Allard is eager to re-start the Sûreté with a clean slate. To him, that means getting rid not only of confirmed malefactors, but also of suspected ones. And you, my nice fellows, are all suspect by default. But if you go to him and make the case that you are honest, and want to remain so, your odds will improve tremendously."

He sighed.

"Of course, I realize that some of you - I will not name names, you all know who you are - will see it as licking the Prefecture's arse. Working for Vidocq allowed you to spy on your one-time comrades and accomplices not out of a late-blooming love of the law but out of spite and vengeance. This allowed you to retain a measure of self-respect: you were not police agents, just wronged pegres avenging yourselves and cleverly milking the city for it. Well, no more of this. From now on, you will need acknowledge a very simple thing: whatever you may have been in the past, henceforth, you are men of the police."

He leaned forward on his hands again, extending his neck once more over the table.

"And if that thought does not sit well with you - if being a police spy is not your cup of tea - if being perpetually squeezed by the society of lawful persons on one side, by the society of thieves on the other, living your life despised by both, - if that sounds like too raw a deal, too high a price for remaining in the clear... Then do not come back after you leave tonight. That way, we shall all know where we stand with each other. Of course, next time we meet, I might not be so sweet and pleasant. But if you return and then I find out that you've been playing me and the city false..." Javert bared his teeth. "Well. Use your imagination."

"Why do they want us gone now?" asked someone's sad voice. "Why not five years ago, when the Mec first resigned?"

Javert shrugged and sat back down. "Who knows. The magistrates of Paris are a whirling, ever-changing lot. This is why I always tell you: do not seek to placate them. The protector you might win today could turn into a millstone around your neck tomorrow. Set your course by the Code, and you will not fail. Well... ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you will not fail. The hundredth case is between you and your conscience."

He drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table.

"Those of you who read foreign papers, - I know a few of you do - remember how a few years ago there was all that hoopla about an English physician who was treating women in child-bed by sticking a little hose into veins on their husband's arms and letting some of their blood flow into their wives? Got fabulously rich off it, apparently. Well, a fellow tried doing this in France once upon a time as well. Not recently, but almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Only he tried it with animals. What? Don't look at me so. I read sometimes. Well, the man's first effort involved putting some lamb's blood into a feverish boy. The boy lived. So far so good. Then a laborer came to him, also ill. Sheep's blood for him. The fellow went back to work the next day, rejuvenated. And then a young nobleman was brought to him, at death's door. The good doctor decided on a dose of calf's blood and delivered that into his veins. The man seemed to get better - he awakened, he began speaking - hope was restored to his family. 'Well!' thought the doctor. 'If I can do this much with the blood of one calf, perhaps the blood of two shall cure him altogether!' But when more blood was poured into the patient, he began to grow feeble again, and before the procedure was finished, he died. Right there on the table."

The men looked puzzled.

"The point is this," said Javert and spread his palms sideways on the table, as if measuring a fish, or something rather less decent. "Twenty years ago, the police of Paris was very sick. Practically at death's door. Contagion was overcoming it. The city could not handle all the new people pouring into it, and all the malefactors that the crowds brought with them. Thieves ran wild. Who knows how far it might have gone, had Vidocq not introduced himself into the feeble arm-vein of the police and poured in some new blood. The police was rejuvenated - it became more alert, it was able to handle the illness of the city a bit better - enough to give the citizens hope. But years went by, and as the new blood kept pouring in, the citizen body began to reject it. What used to be a mechanism of rejuvenation became yet another illness. I am describing to you the opinion of the authorities, the best I understand it. So if my suspicions come to pass, and the Prefecture does turn you out, don't take it as a slight against you personally. At the end of the day, we all serve at the pleasure of the magistrates. And they want to drain some of that unsuitable blood back out. That's life."

"Easy for you to say," said one of the men brusquely. "If they decide to sack all the ban-breakers, you won't be kicked out of town."

"Is that what you think?" Javert snorted. "Believe me, if they want me out as well, something useful will turn up."

A heavy silence hung over the room. Not since Toulon had Valjean seen that many gloomy faces.

"Well!" said Javert, raising his eyebrows yet again and grimacing. "Now that I've sufficiently upset everyone, you're all dismissed for the evening. Except you, m'sieur Landot. Stay a bit - we'll chat."