Brainquake (19 page)

“
Lafitte!
”

Lafitte turned his head into a massive fist, sending him crashing against his friends, taking three of them down to the floor with him.

Startled, he looked up at the stranger: a bearded King Kong who pulled a trembling woman out of the jam. She looked about forty, tubercular, drunk. She wore horrid red makeup to fake health. She coughed as the man hauled her up and pointed accusingly down at Lafitte.

“You tried to rape my woman!”

He lifted one foot high. The shoe, big as a tennis racket, came down on Lafitte’s face, but in the last instant before it smashed his nose to splinters, Lafitte flipped the tennis racket, throwing the assailant off balance. Lafitte stiff-legged a savage kick into King Kong’s groin.

The man doubled over.

Lafitte seized him by his long beard, got his other hand under his knees, and lifted him off his feet. The crowd around him made room as Lafitte carried the man to the front door and dropped him heavily to the sawdust. With one foot against the man’s backside he shoved him out into the street.

The crowd roared its approval and spilled out after them. Michelle followed.

King Kong lay sprawled on the street, groaning. Lafitte pulled him up to his feet, shoved him face-first against one wall of the bar. Paul was nearby, the baby still on the ground. The baby started to wail.

“See what you’ve done?” Lafitte shouted. “You see? You not only accuse me of something I would never do, which is insult a woman, you have made that fine infant cry.”

Paul had picked the baby up, was attempting to soothe him.

Lafitte turned to the tubercular woman, who was trembling beside him. “Did I try to rape you, angel?”

The woman wept, coughed. “I don’t know him, Anatole! It was to make you jealous!”

“Anatole?” Lafitte laughed. “With a beard like that?”

The men around him laughed.

“You want to apologize?” Lafitte said, twisting the giant’s arm behind his back.

“I apologize. I apologize!”

Lafitte cracked him hard on the back. “Take your woman and get the hell out of here!”

The man staggered off down the street. Lafitte turned to the bar.

“Drinks on me!”

The crowd roared again, headed inside. Lafitte let them go first, then put a foot over the threshold himself. Over the din, Michelle made herself heard:

“
Zozo!
”

Lafitte wasn’t sure that he heard it. But it did make him stop. He looked around for the source of the voice.

Lafitte saw her in the moonlight. Stepped toward her, squinting.

“What did you call me?”

“Zozo!”

It took him time to recognize her.

“Michelle?”

“Yes.” She pulled him over to where Paul had finally gotten the baby quiet. “I need your help.”

* * *

In the wheelhouse of the tug chugging through the night, Paul was on a bench, his back propped against the wall. He felt as much heard the throbbing of the engine. He watched Lafitte’s broad back at the wheel, and Michelle holding the sleeping baby beside him. He looked around him. Where was the backpack? He’d had it when they’d boarded, had set it down to help Michelle with the baby, had sat for a moment to catch his breath and drifted off, come to with a start… Where had he put it? It couldn’t be lost, it
couldn’t
—

Paul panicked. He heard the flute.

The brainquake hit. In pink he was dragging Eddie by the hair, both walking on the Seine. The baby was dancing on the river, playing
Frère Jacques
on the music box held above its head. Michelle was running along the Seine. Machine guns were firing red bursts
.

The brainquake only lasted a few seconds. Gone was the flute, the color of pink. The red lights he saw were from a passing sightseeing boat. And in their glare he saw the backpack, tucked in a corner where he’d left it. He stared at it, slowly forcing himself up, stumbled, lurched against Lafitte who, glancing over his shoulder, spoke in English. “You doing okay there, Hank?”

Michelle had introduced them on the way back to the river:

“Captain Lafitte. My husband, Henry Smith.”

“Yes. Sorry,” Paul said.

“You sound ragged. A snort’ll help.” Lafitte reached over to a cabinet, offered him a bottle.

“He doesn’t drink,” Michelle said.

“Bad liver?”

“Yes,” Michelle said.

Lafitte took a drink himself instead, a long slug. They could see it go down his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a buoy in rough seas. “Smith, eh? Every Smith I met in the war from Normandy to Paris said they were family to Captain John Smith. What I don’t understand is why an American like him fought us French.”

“Zozo, Captain Smith was British. They were fighting the French.”

“See what school does?” He put the bottle away. “You know, Hank, people think I’m related to Jean Lafitte. I wish the hell I was. I’d’ve inherited enough loot to own a fleet of tugs. As a kid, I used to see myself with Lafitte, the greatest pirate of them all. Me and Lafitte fighting for Andy Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans!”

Paul vaguely remembered his father showing him a fat book with pictures about Andrew Jackson getting help from Lafitte when America was still fighting the British.

The tug tied up behind Lafitte’s barge, moored solidly in a secluded area.

Paul dropped the backpack on the floor rug of the massive living room. Michelle placed the sleeping baby in a leather armchair. The windows had curtains. Through them penetrated lights from the other bank. A huge round mahogany table was in the center with matching chairs. In one corner an antique rolltop desk. Near the entrance on a clothes tree hung old slickers, an umbrella, an oilskin hat.

Paul glanced at framed photographs on the wall of Lafitte as a boy with his parents, as a teenager with DeGaulle, with some Resistance leaders during the war, Lafitte in his tug pilot house, Lafitte and a five-year-old blond girl on the barge.

“That’s me,” Michelle said.

Paul had to think about it. Hard to imagine this little girl growing up to become Ivory Face. He glanced at the galley, equipped with stove and fridge. A bar with whiskey, Calvados, vodka. A small wine rack.

On the other wall a battered lifesaver with the words:
JEAN BOURGOIS
.

Paul watched Lafitte carefully pouring a green liquid into three glasses, then adding water. The mixture made the liquid white. He gave each a glass, clinked his against theirs.

“Happy to have both of you aboard.”

“I told you he doesn’t drink.”

“This is not just a drink, Michelle.”

She smiled. “I know.”

“Then you should know this moment calls for absinthe.”

She glanced at Paul. He sipped his drink. Felt it in his throat, his chest. He coughed.

“Absinthe’s been illegal in France for many years, Hank. Like Prohibition in Al Capone’s day. Wormwood’s in it. Made with white and yellow flowers. Drink too much, you go blind—they said. Who said? Joy killers. I take a sip every day. My eyes are like a hawk’s. And poets wrote about absinthe. Take another sip while it’s alive. Don’t let it die.”

Paul didn’t let it die.

“Bravo, Hank!” Lafitte pointed to a bedroom. “My bunk.” He lifted the bulging backpack, carried it into the bedroom across the way. “Your bunk.”

Michelle carried the baby into their bunk.

It was a comfortably furnished room. Rug. Big double bed. Bureau. Two armchairs. A table. More curtained windows.

“Hope you’ll like it here, Hank. There’s no phone. No TV. No radio. No neighbors. No friends dropping in. Anyone I need to meet, I meet them at bars. I live like a hermit, and so will you. Hope that suits you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Michelle will show you the john. I’ll keep my door shut so you won’t hear me snore. You can sack down here as long as you want.”

He kissed Michelle on both cheeks. She kissed him on both cheeks.

“Good night, Michelle.”

“Good night, Zozo.”

He slapped Paul on the shoulder. “Good night, Hank.”

“Good night.”

Lafitte stared at him. “Got throat trouble, Hank?”

“Just the way I talk.”

“Whiskey’s good for a sick throat. Help yourself.”

Lafitte left, closing the door behind him. They closed their door. Michelle placed the baby in the middle of the bed. They spoke in whispers.

“How do you like him?”

Paul nodded.

“Any more attacks?”

“Short one. On his tug.”

“Bad?”

“Pink was redder.”

* * *

In the Brobant farmhouse near Omaha Beach, the woman screamed.

“
Citroen!
”

“Price?”

“
Twenty thousand dollars!
”

“Color?”

She passed out. What kept her from falling to the floor was the spike through her palm that had been driven into the wall.

Father Flanagan spotted a bottle of Calvados, poured it down her throat. She was still out. He pulled her head back by the hair and emptied the Calvados on her face. Her head dropped at a weird angle.

She was dead. He hammered the second spike through her palm, the third spike through her feet. The spike hit a bone. He kept hammering until it was deep in the wooden wall.

He folded his collapsible hammer that became six inches long, put it in a small bag in which he also kept his spikes, slowly removed his black kid gloves, neatly placed them into the small bag, and stared at her.

But his thoughts were not of her.

Where the hell could they have driven to? Paris? Berlin? Their forged passports could take them anywhere from Rome to Brussels or Helsinki or Madrid. It was so goddam easy to get lost in a big city—especially with ten million dollars to buy protection. They could buy it for the rest of their lives.

Once he’d tracked a bagman who took off with four million, lived very quietly in Dorset, got bored, began to spend money in London.

Paul had the widow and baby with him. He could pay an old lady to take care of the baby. A nice old lady in Caen or even Deauville who would be very happy getting a fat fee every week.

Since it was the closest, he started with Paris.

Lafitte had, in his own fashion, shut out the world. That intrigued Paul. In a way, Lafitte was like him. Lafitte’s barge was Paul’s shack in the Battery. Paul felt comfortable. They had something in common.

The sun breaking through clouds warmed the faces of tourists on the upper deck of the sightseeing boat moving down the Seine. The river was alive with more sightseeing boats, tugs pulling barges, barges moving on their own steam.

Through Lafitte’s powerful binoculars, Paul enjoyed studying the faces on the upper decks. A boy crying. A child laughing. A young couple kissing. An old lady sleeping. An old man taking in the sights. Couples there for the music festival, judging by their clothes and hair, the peace symbols on their canvas shoulder bags. Some with kids. A few with babies. It wouldn’t be hard to keep Michelle and her baby from standing out. Until the festival ended. Then what?

Michelle and Paul were in yellow deck chairs finishing coffee and baguettes smeared with butter. The tablecloth was blue. Under the red-striped awning the baby was dozing in a yellow hammock. Potted plants and boxed flowers made the wide deck of the old barge look like the deck of a houseboat. It was peaceful. Everything had the feeling of safety. The seclusion was perfect. Thick bushes and trees on both flanks hid their hideout. They were sitting in the open, but they were part of the landscape. Like sitting on the front porch of a mountain cabin.

He could watch many faces. None were watching his.

“Hank…?”

He lowered the binoculars, found Lafitte looking at him. “I asked if gambling’s a tough racket, Hank.”

“Yes.”

“Cards?”

“Horses,” Michelle said.

“How about going to the track one of these days?”

“Sounds good, Zozo.”

“It
is
good. You said you changed the color of your hair to change Hank’s luck?”

Paul heard Michelle talking about the ups and downs at the track for a professional gambler. Why had she told her friend that that’s what he did?

“How’d you get the bug?” Lafitte said.

This time Michelle did not answer for him. Paul knew it would be better if he answered.

“My father loved the horses.”

“Ever make a killing on a long shot?”

“Yes.”

Paul lifted the binoculars again, spotted a Harbor Police Boat, saw the faces of two cops as they passed. Behind them, a tug was pulling a barge loaded with coal. Going upriver, another barge loaded with lumber was on its own steam.

“Every day more barges are putting in their own engines,” Lafitte said. “But tugs’ll never be put out to pasture as long as the big ships need us to tow them in or out of harbors.”

“Why don’t you retire, Zozo?”

“I’m going to. The day after I’m pronounced dead.” Lafitte laughed. “Hank, that tug you’ve got your glasses on is about to tell me what time I haul a cargo today.”

Paul kept watching the tug. Its horn blasted twice as it was passing. Lafitte stood up, waved with both hands. The tug’s horn blasted once. Lafitte glanced at his watch.

“Two o’clock. We’ve got plenty of time, Hank.”

“Don’t want to be a bother.”

“Bother?”

“Don’t need to get us anything.”

“I’m glad to, Hank. I want to. Michelle’s baby—that’s like family to me.”

Paul turned to Michelle who shared his worry. The barge was their safest place. But clearly it would make Lafitte happy for them to go with him. And they were his guests; they had to keep him happy.

“Okay.” Paul stood up. He left the deck, went to their room.

Michelle came in. “He always locks up, Paul. No one’s going to get in here.”

He felt strange, not liking the idea of trusting the backpack alone. But carrying it around in the street was worse. Michelle picked up her shoulder-strap and blue diaper bag.

“Should bring money,” Paul said.

“He wants to buy everything.”

“I’m no freeloader.”

Paul swiftly dropped on his knees, crawled under the bed, dragged himself back with the backpack, opened it, clawed under the clothes, opened his bag, dug inside until he’d pulled loose a handful of bills, closed the bag, stuffed it back under the clothes in the backpack, shoved it under the bed until it reached the wall, rose, gave her the money.