Soma Blues Read Online Free

Insinuations are always made by the policeman before he gets down to cases.”
    “I have no time to read detective novels,” Hob said. “I’m too busy detecting.”
    “And in your spare time?”
    “I read Proust.”
    “Who was that fellow under the tarpaulin?”
    “Stanley Bower.”
    Fauchon looked annoyed. “You really are poor at this, Hob. You are supposed to say that you never saw him before, and I point out that your eyes widened when you looked at him, and then you admit that you might possibly have seen him once or twice, but couldn’t claim to actually know him, and so on and so on until I get you to admit that he was in fact your long-missing brother.”
    “Inspector Fauchon, please be serious. Or if you can’t, at least take me out and buy me a decent dinner.”
    “Marielle does not provide?”
    “Our arrangement is that we split all costs. Unfortunately, I have no money.”
    “What about the famous check from America?”
    “It still has not arrived.”
    Fauchon clucked in mock sympathy. “So Marielle pays for you both?”
    “That would be against her principles. It would mean that she was keeping a younger man. No, Marielle buys food for one and assumes that I eat out on my own.”
    “What do you do?”
    “I wait until she’s gone to sleep. Then I eat what’s left over. Fourth-day lamb or veal roast with the fat nicely congealed around it is always a treat. Stale cheese with green mold for dessert.”
    “My dear fellow, you have my sympathy. Women’s ability to deal out humiliation is only succeeded by man’s ability to take it.”
    “Who said that, La Rochefoucauld?”
    “My father, as a matter of fact. He had some great stories about the Ouled-Naïl dancing girls who used to come to his command post at Sidi bel Abbès.”
    “I’d love to hear it,” Hob said. “Preferably over a glass of white wine at Au Pied du Cochon.”
    “Stanley Bower, I believe you said?”
    “Yes, his name popped into my head as soon as I saw him. Pity I can’t remember anything else about him.”
    “Where did you meet him?”
    “Blank,” Hob said, tapping his head. “They say that hunger makes a man forgetful.”
    “Hob,” Fauchon said, his voice making the transition nicely from jesting to menacing, “do not toy with me.”
    “Is that a line from one of your detective novels?” Hob asked. “Of course I’m going to toy with you. I’m hungry, and I don’t want to go back to Montparnasse and make chili. How the hell can you French think chili is a gourmet dish?”
    “It is our special gift,” Fauchon said, “to equate the exotic with the desirable.”
    “Oh, God,” Hob said, lowering his head into his hands.
    “You’re so pathetic,” Fauchon said, “I find it difficult to be cross with you. Come along then. Perhaps a plate of pâté will refresh your memory.”
    “Follow it up with maigret of duck,” Hob said, “and I’ll tell you what they did with Judge Crater.”
    “ Comment? ” Fauchon said, choosing that moment to become French again.
     
    They didn’t go to Au Pied du Cochon. Instead they went to the Brasserie Lipp, because Fauchon was in a mood for choucroute garnie. The Lipp was one of the famous old restaurants on the boulevard Saint-Germain, across the street from Deux Magots. It was a palace of tinted mirrors and amber lights, chandeliers, tuxedoed waiters, and stylish people, who were becoming more and more difficult to tell from the people merely trying to be stylish. There were the inevitable German tourists, of course, and the inevitable British tourists, and the many other tourists who were also becoming inevitable, notably the Japanese. Hob also ordered the choucroute. It was large, spicy and filling, and the best the Lipp had to offer. Where the French ever got their passion for sauerkraut and knockwurst was beyond him. These were things the guide books never told you.
    Fauchon ordered a white Bordeaux. Hob thanked God for France, where even police interrogations