77 Rue Paradis (10 page)

“Autre cognac?”

“Oui.”

Splash.

He looked away from the bar at the suddenly naked woman over there through the fog between the heads and the tinkling tables, beyond the throbbing glare of red music, at the woman with the billy goat on the stage.

Good Lord!

He ordered another cognac, suddenly sober in the turgid scarlet interim of drunkenness.

They shouted out there amid the tables and the wild sound. They shouted for the billy goat. They shouted for the girl. They shouted and screamed for the both of them and everything went silent and he stood there listening to the slow, pulsing, whispering beat-beat-beat of the music, hearing them watching in the scarlet darkness and the whispering shriek of le jazz hot, the night, the patiently squealing night, and the slow, self-conscious laughter breaking like waves across the tables without applause, only laughter, the crazy press roll of the snare, the mad four-four steady rocking, and the sudden awakening of the waiters with fresh drinks.

He was reeling now in the shade of the moon beside a canal, the cement wall close beside him, dragging like sandpaper against his hand, still on his feet, still fighting the remembering.

He had met Paul Chevard during the war, long before any of the trouble, when he was in France. Paul had been in the air industry, even then, coming to it through his father. He had met Paul’s mother and Paul’s wife. He had lived at Paul’s home in Paris. Later, Chevard had come to America to visit him, bringing along his wife and daughter. He wanted to see Baron’s factories. And then during the Korean war, during the big mess, during the trials, Paul had written him that he must endure. If there was anything he could do he would do it, and at least he had friends who believed. In Europe, Chevard said, these things were of common occurrence, not so much importance was attached to them. They tried to free the seemingly guilty. They did not get excited, because they were used to sabotage. Sabotage.

He leaned against this new bar. The place was bright white with light. There was no sound. The barman read a newspaper at the far end of the empty bar. Baron staggered over there and read it, too. He read of himself, of Bette. Through a crazy blur of remembering and drunkenness, he read of Bette’s drowning in Florida. Of himself in France. On page three it was, down in the right-hand corner.

“The paper, monsieur. I was reading it.”

He hurled the paper at the barman and sprawled against the bar.

He looked at the woman who leaned over the bed. He was sick, viciously sick. He tried to hold his eyes open, won out, and kept watching the woman. A pretty woman, smiling, but anxious, too.

“Hello, Frank.”

Beyond her head sunlight shone across a smooth ceiling and glittered on the glass of a chandelier. He was fully dressed, lying across a bed. He gagged, tried to say something.

She laughed.

“Give him a drink,” somebody said. “He needs some hair of the dog.”

His head ached angrily and he fought his way up on his elbows on the bed. The room whirled, and he sprawled back. He heard the clink of a bottle neck against glass.

“How did I get here?” he said, listening to his own voice.

“Through the front door,” Paul Chevard said. He came close to the side of the bed and looked down at Baron. “You burst through the door at three-thirty this morning, Frank. Drunk as a lord. You smashed the lock on the front door.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Here,” the woman said. “Don’t you remember me, Frank?”

It was Paul Chevard’s wife, Jeanne. She held the glass out toward him and he watched the glass, trying to fight his way up through despair.

CHAPTER 12

Paul Chevard laughed.

“We sent the girl away,” he told Baron.

Baron looked up at him. They were seated at the breakfast table in the dining room of Chevard’s home. Jeanne was in the kitchen. Baron sipped at his coffee, not wanting to hear this.

“She was some girl,” Chevard said.

“What girl?”

Chevard shrugged, chuckling. “You brought her with you. You said she had an inferiority complex. You insisted you had to cure her of billy goats. She was a good-looking one, all right,” Chevard said, remembering. “An entertainer at some night spot. According to your story, she preferred billy goats to men. You were making strong attempts to teach her differently. She seemed to reciprocate, seemed to like you very much. You had her skirt off when you broke down the door, Frank. Yes, she was something. You insisted that we rent you a room so you could convince her that she was worthy of a man, that a man was better than a billy goat.”

Jeanne laughed from behind Baron’s chair. He felt the blood push into his shoulders, the sharp embarrassment.

“You were a picture!” Jeanne said.

“I must catch her act,” Chevard said.

“You will not!” Jeanne said. “You saw enough last night.” She rested one hand on Baron’s shoulder. “You know, Frank, Paul really and truly wanted to give you a room. He told me maybe you were right. He said perhaps the poor child was repressed, or something.”

“All she did was laugh,” Chevard said. “She’s a student at the Sorbonne, studying philosophy. Some philosophy.” Chevard leaned forward across the table. “Listen, Frank, was she really—”

“Paul!” Jeanne said.

Baron sat back. He knew they were trying to make him feel better and he thanked them for it, but it did not help.

He knew what he was here for. He was sick enough without that. In his drunkenness, he had made up his mind, apparently, and worked it out in his own way. He remembered nothing of the girl save the scarlet stage at the night spot itself and flashes of her laughter as she walked skirt-less through the night, her stockinged thighs flashing in the street lights. How long had that gone on? He must have returned to the place and picked her up. They had been in a park someplace because he recalled her lying on the grass with a fountain splashing over there through the trees and she was laughing even then.

He refused to try to remember.

“More coffee?” Jeanne said.

“Please.”

He turned and smiled at her. He was feeling some better now. Chevard’s wife was petite and plump, a small-boned redhead with one of the neatest figures Baron had ever seen. He knew she loved Chevard with a devotion seldom found. She looked lovely and fresh this morning, her eyes bright, her lips touched with laughter.

He drank his coffee.

“I’ve been looking all over Marseilles for you,” Chevard said.

Baron glanced at the man over the rim of his cup. He knew he should say something, but he said nothing. Chevard wore a dark business suit. He looked tired and harried, worn out, his red-rimmed eyes sunken in a frowning face. The face frowned even when Chevard laughed and joked. His lips were tight and he was a man obviously under pressure. His shirt collar was too loose and Baron knew the man had lost a good deal of weight. Chevard moved nervously in his chair, ignoring his breakfast plate, drinking great quantities of coffee. His hand trembled slightly whenever he raised the cup.

Baron was surprised that his own hand was steady.

“Spent most of the day yesterday inquiring,” Chevard said. “I read the story in the newspaper, about—” He paused. “You have seen the papers?”

“Yes.”

“About Bette.” Chevard frowned. “You know?”

“Yes.”

“This is truly awful,” Jeanne said. She came around and sat in a chair beside Baron and laid one hand on his arm, her fingers tightening. “What will you do?”

“There’s nothing to do. I cabled,” he lied. “It’s all true. There’s nothing I can do. Patricia is in Bermuda.”

“Did you hear from her?” Jeanne said.

“No.”

Chevard motioned to his wife. She turned and looked at him, gnawed her lip. “I’ll get some more rolls,” she said.

“Never mind,” Baron said. He took het hand, grinned at her. “Sit down. I know how you feel, but there’s nothing can be done.”

“Is that why you came here?” Chevard said.

“Partly.” He released Jeanne’s hand, reached for his cup, then did not pick it up. He could not trust that hand now. He was lying now. He was in it now and he had to go through with it. The perspiration began, he felt it popping out on his forehead.

“What is it, Frank?” Chevard said.

“I’ve been trying to get up nerve to look you up for days,” he said. “But I thought you were in Paris. I was checking a number in the telephone directory. I saw your name.” He sat there, waiting that one out. It was a weak one and he wondered if it would get by. It did get by.

He saw the look Jeanne shot her husband then. Jeanne rose abruptly from the table, moved away into the kitchen. Sunlight streamed through the windows over Chevard’s shoulders. It glanced off the brilliantly white tablecloth into Baron’s eyes. He wished Chevard would suggest they move to another room. He felt ill. His tooth was beginning to throb again through the throbbing of his head and his stomach felt rather evil.

“What did you want?” Chevard said.

“I wanted to see you.”

“Oh?”

“You’ll be late, Paul,” Jeanne called from the other room. “You’re late now.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Chevard said. He began nervously picking at crumbs on the tablecloth beside his plate. He saw what he was doing and stopped quickly. He let his hand lie quietly beside his plate. Baron recognized the effort in the movement and pitied Chevard.

He pitied the man for what he had to do.

“Are you going to return to the States?” Chevard asked.

Baron looked at the man. This would be the harsh beginning of the true lying and he did not want to begin. He wanted to walk out of this house and leave these good people. Unknown to them, they were embarking on a sure train to hell, and he was the conductor. He not only would punch their tickets, he would manacle them to their seats so they would be certain to arrive. Baron knew that when he began to speak now, it would mean the first mark toward destruction of all Paul Chevard lived for.

“Because of Bette? That what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“No, I’m not returning to the states. Not now. There’s nothing I could do.”

“Don’t you think you should contact Patricia?”

Baron glanced at his coffee cup. He shook his head. “We’ve managed this far without consulting each other.”

“Is there no hope for finding Bette?”

Again Baron shook his head. “According to the authorities, no hope at all. She has drowned and they haven’t found her body.” And saying this, watching Chevard’s face, he caught his breath and his mind stopped. Because he saw what it would mean. If he went through with Gorssmann’s proposal, and if he eventually came through alive, with Bette, Bette would have lost her identity. It was a thought that even obliterated the throbbing pain from his tooth and the muddled, headaching fog of the hangover. What a fine life was in store for her! A young girl, starting out in life, having to take a new name, perhaps a new country, even. Any dream she had would be lost, turned to mud.

“I know something’s on your mind, Frank.”

“Something is. This business about Bette has thrown me, I guess.”

Chevard said nothing.

“I thought she was perfectly all right with her mother. I find she hasn’t been with her mother at all.”

Still Chevard said nothing.

“But I’ll have to forget that.” He hoped he sounded convincing. He did not think he showed enough emotion regarding Bette. Lord knew, he felt the emotion, though not for the same cause Chevard suspected. Perhaps Chevard wouldn’t notice. Baron knew his friend was tied up in a snarl of his own business.

Sitting there, Baron suspected that if it had not been for the deep drinking of the night before and the brandy this morning, he wouldn’t be able to talk it through now.

“It’s just this, Paul,” he said. “I’ve come to ask a favor.”

“Anything. You know that.”

“Yes. I want to start over again. I’ve wasted time; pitied myself long enough. I’ve got somehow to begin, and make a way again. I’m going right back into the air industry. But I’ve got to have a way of beginning.”

Chevard watched him closely, listening. Baron began really talking then. He went through it all, covering every angle, hating himself as he preyed on the man’s sympathies. He found himself using every slight advantage he could think of. He talked it all out, in detail, and he watched Chevard’s face closely. “When I’m back in the game, one way or another, and can see a way to some money, then I’ll return to America and set up shop. In their faces. Somehow they’ll know I was not at fault. They’ve got to know this. I’m—I’m flat broke, you know. I have nothing—nothing at all.”

It was done. He had said all he had to say. If none of this worked, he would return to Gorssmann. He could do nothing else than this to begin.

He could not look Chevard in the eye right away then.

“You want me to help you?” Chevard said.

“There is nobody else. Nobody else I can turn to. They wouldn’t understand.”

“But your own country….”

“I couldn’t ask for help there,” Baron said. He tried to keep the tone of his voice level, fighting against the desire to spill it all, the whole story. “It would be placing whoever I asked in the same fire with me. Here it’s different. All I need is some kind of start.”

“It seems to me,” Chevard said, “that people in the United States would have cooled down about you by now. The war is over and they forget easily. You know that.”

Baron waited now. He said nothing. He knew that if he spoke at all, he might give himself away. Too much hung in the balance.

Chevard shoved his chair away from the table. He was a tall man, and Baron noted the extreme nervousness. Chevard stepped away from the table over to the windows, with his back to Baron.

Baron sat there listening to the movements of Jeanne out in the kitchen.

“You know why I am in Marseilles?” Chevard said.

Baron waited a moment, then said, “No. I thought you liked Paris fine.”

“I do.”

“I see.”

“No,” Chevard said. “You don’t see.”

Jeanne’s voice reached them from out in the kitchen.

“Paul, you’d better get going!”

Chevard did not turn from the windows, and he did not answer his wife. Baron sat there and suddenly saw how impossible it all was. How could Gorssmann expect him to work his way under Chevard’s guard? Yet Baron knew that he could; that their friendship would cover that. He thought that it was only a matter of time before Chevard told him and told him everything.

Again he began to talk. He told Chevard of his reason for being during the past two and a half years, of how he had trailed the man who had sabotaged his factories.

“I thought as much,” Chevard said. He turned from the windows, lit a cigarette, and stood there smoking quietly. The cigarette trembled between his fingers and his eyes looked haunted with worry and anxiousness. “And now?”

Baron shrugged. “I have not given up, if that’s what you mean.” And it was there in his voice, as it had been all this time, the defiance, the need to find this man. It was one thing he could never wipe out of his mind. Until he stood face to face with that man, his life would remain worthless. This he knew. “I’m going to go about it differently now. I’ve got to get back on my feet.”

“I expected the newspapers were wrong,” Chevard said. “I wish you had got in touch with me earlier.” He came to the table and dropped the cigarette into his half-empty coffee cup. It hissed out and he glanced over at Baron. “This isn’t easy,” he said.

Baron waited. He watched Chevard straighten, walk back to the windows, and stand there looking outside into the bright, sunny morning. And as he watched Chevard and thought about what he was doing, Lili kept creeping into his mind, and a sensation of warmth and confidence came along with thoughts of her. He must remember to tell Follet about Lili and what she had said—if he ever again saw Follet. Perhaps Follet would view him on the same slab where two days ago he had looked down on Elene, with her throat cut.