Leper Tango (27 page)

“
Non, mais, tu rigoles
. I'm not moving until I'm finished.”

“The police are here.”

“I don't care if it's the police.
Non, mais, stop! Tu me fais
mal
!”

After I threw her out, I sat down with Duboeuf.

“So, what's this about?”

“The
Société Générale
has contacted us concerning a number of bad cheques.”

“The SG? You've got to be kidding. What, have they run out of Jews to spoliate?”

“This is no trifling matter, Mr Robinson. The hotel management is treating this with the gravity it deserves.

They are performing their own audit of your accounts as we speak. I understand they are considerable.”

“I don't see the connection. I'm an Amex man. Plastic.”

“You'll have ample time to present your case. In the meantime, I'm sure you' ll understand, the best thing would be for you to leave the hotel.”

A sullen girl working the desk at the Clauzel told me Millie had disappeared with six months of back rent owing. I tracked her down on a short stretch of
rue St

Honoré
walk-ups which had escaped demolition during
the razing of
Les Halles
. Her walk
-
up squat amounted to a room and a half, equipped with a hot plate and an elephant's foot toilet that wouldn't look out of place on the streets of Sanliurfa. Since I'd last seen her, she had lost a bicuspid, and another one — her eye tooth — had turned a viscous maroon in the interim. She had been pushed down a stretch of St-Denis with the older hookers, just off
rue des Lombards
. She poured out a coffee, pulled out a pack of Gauloises.

“Where have you been?” “My fat mouth, Franck. Some Kosovan girls tried to move in on my clients. I fought back, and they brought in someone. A real motherfucker, Franck. Some kind of Uzbek. Never mind. I'm glad you came by. What can I do you for?”

“Nothing.”

“You dropped by to hear more about
la gamine
?”

“No, I'm done with her.”

“What, you didn't hear about her?”

“Hear about what?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“See for yourself.”

She threw yesterday's copy of
Le Parisien
onto the table.

“Page 17.
Fait Divers
.”

There was a picture of her, wearing a beret. I had bought it for her in Biarritz. I felt a gnawing at my stomach. Unidentified girl found mortally wounded in Père Lachaise. Followed by a brief article:

Qui est la mystérieuse?

A group of American schoolchildren touring Père Lachaise was confronted with the discovery of the recently murdered body of a young, unidentified woman in the South end of the cemetery. Inspector Thierry Duboeuf of the
Police Judiciaire
described the young woman as unusually beautiful, “more fit for the catwalk than a cemetery. Not someone who you could forget, even in death.” Anyone with information is invited to contact the
Unité de Police de quartier
, rue Gambetta, Paris 20
th
.

“It doesn't say anything about cause of death.”

“She died because her time was up. Franck, I warned you. She was bad news.” I fingered the newspaper, just letting the news sink in. “She's just a piece of white trash. Good looking piece of white trash with a couple of good angles and a real mean streak in her.”

“No, she was more than that.”

“Sure, Franck. Did she tell you her father fought in the war? Indochina, Algeria. Et cet-er-a-ba-bla-bla.”

“So?”

“So? You know how he lost his arm, Franck? He was an armed security guard for Brinks, and got into a car accident. A fender bender. Five miles an hour. Fell out of the truck. Broke his arm. Broke it, Franck. In France.

Like any good drunk, he put off getting it fixed. When he finally went in, the doctor fucked up the operation, and it became gangrenous. So, he and his daughter invented all that shit. End of story. End of the war.”

“Whatever. She still deserves a funeral.”

“Of course, Franck. You've never followed my advice.

I mean, why would you now?”

“You haven't given me any.”

She stashed the gauloises into her blouse pocket, pulled a pack of Drum tobacco from the shelf and tossed it onto the table, then spread some of the tobacco onto an old copy of
Midi-Matin
and rolled herself a smoke.

She gazed out the window, which looked down on a four-square-metre, inaccessible courtyard. I had seen her only six months previous.

“Not exactly the Clauzel, is it, Franck?”

“Couldn't you make an anonymous phone call? Ask whether a friend can throw a funeral?”

She lit the cigarette. The roots of her hair white, and it didn't look like the hair dye budget was healthy.

“Game, Franck. Life span of an Iguana.”

“Out in the wild? Or pet.”

“Pet.” “Forty years.”

“Twenty. What about a turtle?”

“Fifty.”

“Over a century, Franck. Now, human realm. What's the average career span of a player in the National Football League?”

“Easy. Twelve years.”

“Four, Franck. Now, getting a little closer to home, let's try a heroin addict.”

“Five years. With luck.”

“I said averages, Franck. Eighteen months. Now, whore, Franck. How long?”

“Let me put it this way. You look like shit, Millie.”

She smiled. Several dozen tricks worth of dental work publicly exposed.

“People over here, they just aren't like us, Franck. I mean, they've got fucking white skin, but shit, man, that's about it. Besides, I'm a Cherokee. But they're not like us, Franck. I mean, you're a scumball, Franck, and I'm a whore. But we both like Stevie Ray Vaughan, and we both ... fuck it, Franck. I have a friend back home, Larry, he's a transvestite dancer, but, I used to babysit his kids. He lives in a trailer camp outside Chicago. I'm thinking of calling it a day.”

She shook her head.

“You ever seen a 300
-
pound linebacker in a tutu? Tell you what; it ain't the Bolshoi, Franck.”

“He could always try the
Nutcracker Suite
. Any way, if you're homesick, that at least solves that.”

“Actually, it doesn't at all, Franck. He has no phone, so I somehow have to scrape up enough cash to get back.

Fuck, Franck, this would have been a snap six months ago.” “What happened to you, Millie? I mean, nothing personal, but you look like you caught something. You know, like something viral.”

“I have no idea. I think it's cancer, or something. Besides, without ovaries, you're not a woman anymore. You get old overnight. Then, these damn teeth problems, Franck. Don't contact the police, Franck. They will fuck you, and they will do it well.”

“There's something else at stake.” She shook her head.

“Franck, don't you get it? I thought you were a criminal lawyer. They couldn't care less who killed her! On the other hand, if they nail someone, and I mean anybody, Franck, it's job security for life. You know, like ‘I'm the one who caught the prick,' or even better for the grandchildren, ‘It took me three days, but, I broke the killer of
la gamine
.' Come to think of it, maybe I should be the one cross-examining you. I mean, who the fuck are you, Franck, when it comes down to it? Some asshole john. Anonymous. Desperate, capable of any thing. I should be watching what's left of my own ass for a change.”

She looked out the window. Her cigarette had gone out. She wiped her right eye. Maybe, it was just dust.

“ What do you want to know, Millie? I'm an open book.”

“Well, how about, where were you on the night of ...” She reached for the paper.

“August 22.”

“All right, I see what you mean. Depends on how you look at it.”

“On how you look at it!! You've been skulking your way around bordellos asking about her, like some kind of stalker. About 25 girls in and around the street could testify to that. While we're on the topic, what the hell
were
you doing on the Seine the night Alena died?”

“The usual. Out drinking with Tranh.”

“Out drink ing with Tranh. Damn, I mean, shit, Franck, do you know who this Tranh character is? Has he ever told you what he did, before, Franck? Do you really want to know, or not?”

“Not. Sheba deserves a burial. She was always big on rites.”

It was good to get out on the street again. Everybody had their thoughts, and Millie was doing her best, but she was a little too focussed on her return ticket to the States. It seemed like we were both more or less tearing pages out of the same book. And it wasn't the rule book.

Little by little, doors seemed to be closing, outside of those leading to the peep-shows. I was probably on my way to becoming some kind of dirty old man. But it was a little late to think about moving onto anything else.

On one level, I felt like I was just getting started on things. If Sheba had shown me anything, she had demonstrated that sex had nothing to do with the appendages hanging from our bodies. Labia, penises, tits and ass, they only had importance
per se
if you were operating in a particular zone which held no interest for me. Fucking was the central goal, but I was more attracted to the self-abasement aspect. I mean, the knowledge that your preferred daily activity involves the unguent, pulsating, pestilent climes of the cunt and other unnameable corners of the body, obviously there was something life itself was offering up that was far worse.

Plus, there were other conclusions that I'd more or less come to. I still hadn't figured out what sex was, but I knew that in its pure form, it could only be a place of desolation or an animal act. The only thing that counts is what you are thinking exactly at the point of orgasm. If you could master that, you became a church of one, without any need for parishioners and collection boxes to keep the operation going.

And then it came to me, and the thought made me angry somehow, not for feeling it, but for taking so long to figure out what it was. I'd only said it to her once, after that incident with the Baron, but the fact was that I loved her. So now, I'm realizing that I was in love with this young French broad who is dead in Père Lachaise, and I know that I'm going to be heading down to the 20
th
arrondissement
precinct, and making the day of some 105 IQ type in the Police Judiciaire, and that the odds of him seeing things from my point of view were similar to betting the farm on a syphilitic nag in the fourth race at Vincennes.

But, I still wanted to give her a funeral. I'd never lost a case. Maybe I could talk some sense into the boneheads down at the precinct.

 

Dear Hervé,

I was released five days ago, no thanks to you. They've obviously never heard of
habeas corpus
in this country. Preventive detention in La Santé prison is no picnic, and forty-five days is a long time to discover that the State had no case against me.

It might have gone differently if you had answered my one phone call, and hadn't frozen my French bank accounts, friend. It's one thing to kill people around here, but don't get involved in really serious shit like passing bad cheques at five star hotels. Even if you do know the staff.

I've had some time to think about this, Hervé. Just so it's clear, I can smell a man covering his decrepit, poxy backside from ten thousand kilometres away. Trust funds or not, it was my call, and I'm starting to wonder whether you're not giving it to Tillman. Viagra pretty well makes anything possible, doesn't it? What's old Margaret like, Hervé? I can picture her teeth rattling like a player piano, and you sticking that root vegetable of yours up her twat.

So, as long as we're discussing farm products, if you have a
grain
of decency, Hervé, in that seedy old mind of yours, you might free up a couple of thousand dollars
of
my own
money
and wire it to me, Western Union, Place de l'Odéon,
illico presto
, as I have a few outstanding accounts with some work ing girls in these parts, and at least
their
accounts should be honoured.

Did I tell you that Sheba died? She left me a note, Hervé, so it must have been suicide, but the boneheads down at the 20
th
precinct said it was impossible to determine. Because there was only one shot. No reference to six hours per day of sadian sports, no repentance, no nothing. Although she did mention that she had satisfied the criterion to be buried in Père Lachaise, i.e. dying in Paris. And, then, get this, asking me to take care of her daughter. Me, Franck Robinson, whoremonger, man on the run, deadbeat dad.

I was the only person who knew her at the funeral, but I brought along everyone from Number 2, rue de Mulhouse. De Vecchi and I had spent the morning knocking back Pastis, so he was three sheets to the wind. Ducastin-Chanel was in her glory, wearing a floppy hat the size of a direct broadcast satellite. Bazin was impeccable. Even Lafontaine showed up, and render unto Caesar bla-bla-bla, he didn't jack off during the ceremony. This may sound funny coming from me, Hervé, but these people have a core decency about them. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone like them in North America, if you scoured the place for a decade.

The interment itself started out very
pro forma
. Ducastin Chanel screeched out a few lines of the Ave Maria and then went into full drift. At one point, she lifted up her dress, and for a good five minutes fixated on scratching a corn off her thigh. The officer of the 20
th
arrondissement
stuck to his job. It was routine, which was fine, but when he paused at her name, something got to me. It was a fill in the blank rite, pure boiler plate, Hervé, but still. I tore the sheet out of his hands, and started my own oration. Argued my best trial ever. Talked about a handful of scumbags taking over the planet, thinning out populations, twelve year old children being buried to their waist in excrement and stoned to death, Presidents getting their cocks sucked in sub-basements. I really went off on a tangent, Hervé. Admittedly, I'd had a few drinks that morning, but I was still ranting when the police arrived and dragged me down to the station. As a material witness.