More than $100,000 worth of escargot were stolen from a farm in a village in northeastern France just as the prime holiday snail-eating season began.
The New York Times
We put the tree up right before Thanksgiving–a little early, I know, but my little girl Babette loves everything about Christmas: the over-indulgence in sweets, the presents, the annoying carols you can’t get away from, the treacly television specials that make O. Henry short stories look like a Bildungsroman by Thomas Mann.
And of course my wife Yvette and I love it too, vicariously; through her, we relive the Christmases of our childhoods, flipping through Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs as soon as they arrived in the heat of the summer, wondering what doll or plastic firearm we’d find under the tree. I allowed myself a moment of reverie–I took a sip of my scotch, closed my eyes, and in my mind I was a little boy again, looking out the picture window of our home, watching snowflakes falling gently, waiting for Santa to . . .
“Daddy!” It was Babette–as you might have guessed.
I opened my eyes but instead of a joyful face I saw . . . tears! “What’s the matter, sweetie?” I said as she jumped in my lap.
“They’ve stolen all the escargot!”
She held up her copy of My Little Gourmet, whose screaming headline confirmed what she was crying about: “ESCARGOT HEIST ROCKS FRENCH VILLAGE!” it read, and underneath it, a sub-head to break your heart: “Many Face Snail-Less Christmas.”
I hugged her as tight as I could, and tried to comfort her. “There, there,” I said as I stroked her chestnut-brown hair. “I’m sure Mommy has an industrial-size can somewhere in the pantry.”
“It’s not the same!” she whimpered through sobs. “Christmas without freshly-caught or farm-raised escargot is like . . . a mime without whiteface!”
We are justly proud of our little girl’s mastery of figurative language at such a tender age, but it’s no accident of nature or DNA or whatever; we enrolled her in pre-school at L’Academie Francaise at the age of two so she could absorb metaphors and tropes and synecdoche with her 3 p.m. snack of Escargot Rinds, and we hope it will pay off when she aces the entrance exam at La Sorbonne. We are, unfortunamment, advantaged neither haut ou bas (high or low). We don’t come from old money, or the pet classes of the goo-goo liberals of today. We must make it on our own.
“Don’t you worry, sweetie,” I said. “I’ll find those missing escargots if it’s the last thing I do.”
“You promise?”
“Every one will have a slippery, slimy, Christmas dinner, just like always.”
Her tears stopped, and she looked up at me with those big brown eyes she inherited from her mother. “I love you, Daddy.”
“Now off to bed with you, mon petit escargot!”
“You should spell it ‘petite’–cause I’m a girl snail.”
Amazing. She’s so sensitive to language she caught me mis-gendering her without seeing the words in print; I didn’t have the heart–or the biology chops–to explain to her that most land escargot are hermaphrodites. I didn’t want to get into asexual reproduction with her quite yet.
“Okay, ma ‘petite’ escargot, up to bed!”
I watched her climb up the stairs, finished my scotch, then got a sinking feeling in my stomach; how, exactly, was I going to track down the perpetrators of the biggest snail heist in French history? I wasn’t sure, so I decided to head off to bed myself, hoping that, after a good night’s rest, my brain would be ready for the daunting task ahead.
If you have children, you know what it’s like to give them false hope with empty promises you think they’ll forget before you’re called on to make them good–the promises, not the children. “Maybe we can get a pony someday, if you get into Wellesley College first,” you say. Or “If you practice real hard, maybe you’ll end up playing in Carnegie Hall–or the Super Bowl!”
I went into the kitchen to put my glass in the sink and stood there for a minute, looking out the window, trying to think of what to do.
“You okay?” my wife asked in that tone of concerned sympathy wives use when they want to make sure you’ll be supporting them for another twenty years, and not drop dead before you’ve bought a lot more life insurance.
“It’s Babette,” I said over a lump in my throat. “She’s all worked up over the Great Escargot Robbery.”
“Aren’t we all,” my wife said. “You didn’t tell her you’d find the thieves–did you?”
“Soft of. I didn’t want her to go to bed unhappy.”
“Finding the culprits who made off with $100,000 in snails isn’t something you’re particularly suited for.”
“I’m not sure anyone can solve a case this big.”
“How about Emile Miromesnil?”
“Who’s he?”
“The notary down at the Kwik Kopy place.”
I tried to recall who she was talking about. “The little guy with the desk in the back?”
“Right. Down the aisle with the bubble wrap and manila folders.”
“What’s he got that I don’t have?”
“Well, he’s French for one thing. And he was a licensed private detective in France.”
“What’s he doing in America?”
“He took an acknowledgment over the phone in France, and was stripped of his notary license.”
“But he’s a private detective too?”
“Cindy used him to track down her ex-husband Jeff.”
“The one who claimed he had to go away on weekends to tend to a snail farm?”
“That’s the one.”
I couldn’t believe my good fortune; a p.i. with expertise in escargots. And a notary license in case I needed to sign a mortgage.
“You think he’d take the case?”
“I think he has to take just about any case that comes his way–he’s pretty much a broken man.”
“Great–I mean, too bad he’s a broken man, but I’ll go down there first thing in the morning.”
Our local Kwik Kopy franchise is a dismal little place; it’s a Staples-Office Depot wanna-be, without the nationwide advertising budget to support it. It’s not as pricey as the big box stores and it shows. Where employees at their most successful competitors are simply indifferent, Kwik Copy wage slaves are rude, slovenly, and incompetent.
I spy with my little eye as I walk in le homme I’m looking for; Miromesnil cuts a sad figure behind a metal desk directly underneath an exhaust vent. His notary seal and stamp are at the ready, but he has no customers, and so he must keep himself busy making photocopies, directing customers to sale items such as used office desk floor mats, explaining to them why their orders aren’t ready, etc. Surely he has time for me.
“Excusez moi?” I say as I approach him.
“Yes.” He speaks perfect English.
“I am looking for assistance of the private detective type.”
He inhales sharply, and places a cautionary finger across his lips.
“This I cannot do on ‘company’ time,” he says quietly. “Meet me outside at my ‘smoke break’.”
“When is that?”
“10:15.”
“See you then.”
I go outside and turn my collar up against the cold December chill, and Miromesnil emerges from the store promptly at the appointed hour.
“So what is it you wish for me to privately investigate?”
“A hundred thousand dollars worth of escargot are missing.”
“They are very slow creatures, it shouldn’t be hard to catch them.”
“They’re not the only slow creatures around here.”
“Turtles?”
“No, you! Haven’t you heard about the Great Christmas Snail Heist?”
He was chastened, and silent. “I cannot afford to buy the newspaper, and I have no TV set.”
“Okay, sorry. Any way, brazen thieves made off with a lot of snails, and we need to get them back in time for Christmas.”
He looked at his watch, or more precisely, the little date number over by the 3 o’clock hour on his watch. “You have only two weeks.”
“Is that enough time?”
“We can only hope,” he said, as he crossed himself. “I will need a substantial retainer before I begin.”
“How much?”
“$49.95, I’m having a pre-Christmas sale.”
I reached in my back pocket, took out my wallet, and gave him two twenties and a ten. “Keep the change.”
He gave me a warm smile–I got the impression that business had been slow lately. “Merci,” he said, “and Merry Christmas to you.”
“When can you start?”
“I get off at five.”
*******************************
I met Miromesnil after work, and bought him dinner at the “Two Guys Burger & Fries” outlet next door. Not exactly cordon bleu, but it would have to do.
“So what are you thinking?” I asked.
“That the food here is disgusting.”
“No, I mean what do you think about the case?”
“I am thinking a ‘sting’,” he said, his eyes narrowing to cunning little slits.
“Like the Paul Newman/Robert Redford movie?”
“Exactement. Because I work at Kwik Kopy I can make all manner of outdoor banners.”
“You’re a bit of a poet, aren’t you.”
“I like to think so, but the editors of your little literary magazines disagree.”
“Well, we’ll show them. Hit me with your best shot, as Pat Benatar would say.”
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, as if to get a little divine afflatus in his lungs. Then, from the unseen depths of the soul from which bad poetry emerges, like a fish rising to a hole in the ice of a frozen lake, he began to speak:
If you have lots of escargots,
We have lots of cash.
French folk love ’em, as you may know,
Americans think they’re trash.
“Not exactly Robert Frost, but it’s a start,” I said, then helped Emil place his signs around the perimeter of the shopping plaza. “Now what?”
“Now, we lie in wait.”
“So . . . a stake-out?”
“Correctez-vous.”
“You want a cup of coffee and a donut?” I asked. “That’s how American cops and private eyes fortify themselves for a long night of surveillance.”
“Eh–I’m sure it is not as good as a croissant and a cafe au lait.”
“Are you kidding–Dunkin’ Donuts has both French vanilla coffee and French cruller donuts!”
“All right–with one Sweet ‘n Low artificial sweetener please.”
“You got it.”
When I returned with our orders we got in my car and took basic steps to conceal our identities; sunglasses, “scally” caps pulled down over our eyes, etc. There were a few “false positives” right off the bat; a biology class looking for dissection subjects, a kid with an aquarium. “We’re buying snails, not selling them,” I had to tell them both.
“Sorry, mister–geez, you don’t have to be so crabby about it.”
“Scramez-vous!” Emil snapped at him. “We’re trying to bust a six-figure escargot ring.”
Our coffees grew cold and we ate the last few crumbs from our donut bags. We were beginning to become despondent when a suspicious-looking vehicle slowed down, then turned into the parking lot.
I gave Emil a jab in the ribs with my elbow.
“Ouch–why’d you do that?”
“See that truck?”
“Oui. So?”
“That’s a live fish transport.”
“It’s a good thing, since it has ‘Live Fish’ painted on the side. Of what interest is that to you . . . or me?”
“There’s no shortage of fish around here–we’re right next door to an ocean.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess. The Atlantic?”
“On the nosey. That ‘fish truck’ may be a trick, a charade, a ruse–for something smaller.”
“Like escargots?”
“We’ll see.”
The truck circled the lot, then came to a stop beside us. “You guys lookin’ to buy some snails?”
“We’re buying, if you’re selling,” I said.
“We got some A-1, prime quality escargots here.”
“Have you got papers for ’em?”
“Papers? We don’t need no stinking papers.”
“Yes you do.”
“No we don’t–a snail’s a snail.”
“You said they were ‘prime’,” Emil corrected him. “In L’Etats-Unis”–
“Speak English,” the truck driver snapped.
“In America, that means the US Department of Agriculture certifies that the snails are young, well-fed, tender and juicy with a rich flavor,” I said. “Surely you have the proper stamp to prove the quality of which you speak–unless these escargot are stolen.”
It’s not exactly easy to go from a standing start–or stop–to full throttle in a live fish transport, but the snail thieves did their best. Unfortunately for them, my 2012 Chevy Equinox was quicker off the mark, and I blocked the only exit from the parking lot before they got there.
“Get out and put your hands up,” Emil barked at them as he pulled a starter pistol from his pocket. “You are under citizen’s arrest for grand theft escargot. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. If you have any documents you need notarized, I can provide that service, the charge is $2 per signature.”
******************************
The snails had to be returned to their rightful owners, of course, but I asked them if we could keep just one of the little gastropods for Babette.
“Absolument,” came the reply. “They are best broiled with garlic butter . . .”
“She wouldn’t eat it, she’s been asking for a pet for Christmas.”
“Ah, so she is a capricious little girl–how charming.”
On Christmas morning Babette came running down the stairs into the living room, but she went right past her stocking, a bicycle and clothes, and made straight to a glass terrarium that contained her new little friend, whom she named Mimi.
“Daddy,” she said as she picked up the slimy creature and snuggled it, “this is the best Christmas ever!”