77 Rue Paradis (6 page)

“We haven’t had a chance to talk at all.” And then he had gone over there and placed his hand on her head. “Maybe someday soon,” he said, and she looked up at him, smiling, and then the smile vanished.

“Here’s Mother,” she said.

He turned. Patricia was driving into the yard. Bette leaned up quickly and hugged him and he kissed her good-by and left by the back door. He cut through the alley. And when he reached the street across the block, he looked back and Bette was standing there by the garden gate at the corner of the alley and she waved to him.

He remembered how the afternoon slant of sunlight had struck her hair, and fire seemed to shoot out of it, and he had wanted to go back there and get her.

Walking on around the corner of the block, to where his taxi waited, he realized they had said nothing to each other. The moments were gone and he hadn’t asked the questions he had scrawled on the back of the envelope in his pocket, as a reminder. He had found out nothing.

And then, climbing into the taxi, he knew he had found out something. Bette was still his daughter and she was a fine girl and she had not forgotten him.

He returned to his hotel and wrote her a long letter explaining everything in detail; all that he was doing, all his hopes for her. He called for a messenger and had the letter delivered to her hand only. He did not wait for a reply, because his plane would leave in thirty minutes.

Sitting here on the edge of the bed, thinking about it, he could still smell the honeysuckle and hear the gentle creaking of the rope on the hammock.

He rose and stared at himself once again in the mirror, remembering everything. Elene, and she made him ache some inside too, and what kind of effort should he make? He knew he must go to the police.

He grabbed a towel, went down the hall, and washed. He brushed his suit as best he could, hunted up a pin of Elene’s in the dresser, and fixed the tear in his trousers. He still looked raveled around the edges and swollen in the face. But they wouldn’t think he was a drunk staggering in from the gutter.

After turning out the lamp, he stood for a few moments in the darkness of the room. A cosmic breather, he thought. That will mean atomic power as sure as hell. Maybe Gorssmann has the name twisted. He must.

Standing by the window, he carefully drew the curtains and looked down on the street. He felt melodramatic, yet he knew he had to convince himself thoroughly that every move he made would be serious. They had allowed him freedom on the streets because they knew he was hemmed in, that he could do nothing. They had not reckoned with how he felt. It was the culmination of all events that did it. He would take the chance, go to the police, there was no other way. He needed help—now.

He knew Gorssmann would have somebody watching him. It had to be, that was all. There wasn’t even a question of doubt about this fact.

Funny about that girl Lili. Why had she done that? She certainly couldn’t expect…. But maybe she did. He stared at his palm in the gray darkness, remembering.

Searching the street through the window, he saw nothing unusual. Not too busy, but moving with nighttime traffic. There were always loiterers on Paradis. A girl here, another there, waiting for the nothing they always waited for. A couple pressed into a doorway beside a café.

He left the room, went down to the street. He was unable to breathe evenly. It was an effort to keep the wrong thoughts from his mind; the thoughts that would prevent him from going through with this. He turned to the right, walking up Paradis toward the Cours. He would pass the Palais de Justice, one block over. He tried to see if anybody followed him when he moved, but saw nothing.

This was the beginning. Because they needed him, they would not kill him immediately. But he had no illusions. They could make it uncomfortable and in the end there would be no chance for recovery of mistakes.

His palms were sweating and consciousness of the aching tooth began to return in sharp, painful waves. He couldn’t seem to walk smoothly. He was much too tense, too watchful. Face it, he thought. You’re scared stiff.

He wished he had a revolver. A gun of some kind. That was one thing he had to have. Just having a gun in your pocket helped.

He turned abruptly, crossed the street, and his breath lifted into his throat and caught. He saw the man. It was no one he had ever seen, but he knew the man was following him. As he turned to cross the street the man had stopped suddenly, wheeled, and faced the gray-glaring window of the closed bakery.

Baron paused in the middle of the street and looked at the man. The man kept his back turned, then suddenly sneaked a look at Baron over his left shoulder.

CHAPTER 7

Baron turned away hurriedly, forced himself to walk slowly toward the opposite curb. He reached the curb, and for a moment stood there in the grip of indecision. He broke into a nervous sweat, wanting to be as unobtrusive as possible and having no idea how. He suddenly felt that he needed more courage than he had.

Without actually staring at the man across the street, he moved on the sidewalk over into the doorway of a tobacco shop. It was closed, but a dim light burned at the rear of the store, the naked bulb dangling over a black steel safe. He turned his back to the man and peered into the tobacco shop, staring at the old safe. He knew very well that as soon as his back was turned, the man was watching him. He decided to go on up the street. Turning quickly, he tripped over a wooden box beside the shop doorway and nearly fell. His heels scraped and clattered on the sidewalk as he windmilled, seeking balance.

He stood absolutely still then, cursing quietly to himself. Then, turning, he stared at the man across the street. The man was gone.

Baron began walking. Immediately he saw the man again. This time the fellow was directly opposite him, on the far corner, leaning against a building.

A street girl came along on the sidewalk over there, and accosted the man.

Baron broke into a run, abruptly cut it off sharply, and walked into a café. He ordered a double brandy and drank it at a gulp. He left the café and started up the street again. He began to feel better. The brandy was a good thing. He knew he would have to lose the man who followed him, but lose him in a matter-of-fact way. It must not appear that he wanted to lose him. Because it shouldn’t matter to him if the man followed him.

Baron turned his mind off completely, or thought he did. He was perspiring heavily now. His hair was matted on his head, and his belt was too tight, and his trousers were soaked with perspiration. His shoes hurt, and there was a hole in the toe of his left sock. With every step he took he could feel his toe rubbing against the damp, rough leather of the shoe.

He had to reach the police. He had started it now and he would finish it. What would he tell them? He had no idea. Yes. He would tell them everything. The truth. They would simply have to understand and come to his aid.

There seemed to be no relief. He turned left on the next street, walked fast, cut across the street, and, entered an alley. He ran silently through the alley, very conscious of the toe in the shoe now, and came out on the small square before the prefecture. He ran across the square and around behind the building and turned right, still running, along Sylvabelle. There was no sign of the man. He cut across Sylvabelle and ran into another alley. He leaped breathlessly into the air, almost stomping on a man and a woman loving on the cobbled alley floor. The man swore and the woman groaned, her voice rising in monotonic waves, beating against the walls of the alley, following Baron as he ran. Reaching the end of the alley, he thought how odd it was that as he jumped over the couple back there, he had smelled the strong odor of tobacco.

Then he saw the taxi. He hailed it, rushing into the middle of the Rue Saint Jacques. The driver blasted the horn several times, the sound lifting merrily, wildly into the night. The taxi stopped. Baron hurried inside and sank back against the seat.

“Commissariat de police,” he said. “Vite, pour l’amour de Dieu!”

«Tres bien, monsieur.»

As they moved away and cut through a dark alley, the horn blatting viciously, he watched for the man. He saw no sign of him.

So this is how it is, he thought. This is how it is when you’re trying to get away, when somebody’s after you. He lay back against the seat, with his head by the window, watching, trying to get his breath and still the frightened thudding of his heart.

* * * *

A young man, an agent de police, met Baron as he entered the bare waiting room outside the office of the commissaire. The waiting room both looked and smelled like Baron’s old grammar-school rooms. The floors were worn boards, well oiled, and there were benches around the walls, well polished by many impatient behinds. The benches were knife-nicked along their edges, and here and there Baron saw black initials and dates carved into the old oak. There were three brass spittoons at three corners of the room, beside the benches. In the very center of the room, in line with the pebbled glass door signifying the office of the commissaire, was a straight-backed, cane-bottomed chair. The agent de police stood leaning behind this chair, a hand on either side of the back. He regarded Baron coldly and with the self-conscious, penetrating, supercilious stare of a young, new officer.

“I must see the commissaire,” Baron said.

The agent said nothing. Baron gave him a long look, decided the man was half asleep, and brushed past him toward the door.

“What is your business?” the man said. He had taken Baron’s arm as he walked by.

Baron looked at him again.

“Important,” he said. “Urgent. International.”

The agent did not change expression. He wore no hat. His cap was hanging on the inside doorknob of the door Baron had just entered. He had yellow hair, parted far down on the left side, just above the tip of his ear. The hair was combed flatly across his skull, toward the other side. It gave Baron the impression that the man looked out at him through a curved opening in a length of yellow pipe.

“Américain?”

«Oui. Vite, s’il vous plaît.»

The agent released Baron’s arm. “It is late,” he said.

Baron said nothing.

The man shrugged. “Wait,” he said. He lounged across the room and creaked through the door into the office. The door closed.

Baron stood by the chair. He walked around the room. He looked up at the cold glass windows that circled the walls of the room, revealing nothing but water pipes. The room was not near an outside wall, and the windows were dark beyond the elbows and joints and sockets of water pipes. The pipes ran all around the room behind the windows. He waited a long time, perhaps five minutes.

Abruptly he stalked toward the office door. His first step in that direction brought the door open. The young agent returned, closed the door carefully, lounged over to the chair, and put either hand on its back once again. He did not look at Baron.

“Come back tomorrow,” he said. “It is late.”

A plain-clothes man came out of the office, rapidly closed the door, looked at neither of them, put his hat on, and left the waiting room. He was trying to shove a sheaf of papers into his right-hand coat pocket and they would not fit.

Baron stepped quickly over to the office door, opened it, and entered. Behind him the agent said, “Very well,” and did not move. Baron closed the door.

The office was empty. There was a large desk cluttered with papers, and a black cheroot burned in a clean ash tray beneath a green-shaded desk lamp. Behind the desk large windows opened into an alley. The limb of a tree waved slowly behind the windows. On the left wall of the room was an open door and Baron heard somebody snorting in water in there. Then whoever it was coughed and spat and grunted.

Behind him the door opened and another uniformed officer entered. He walked quickly to the desk, put down an envelope, picked up another envelope, and left.

The commissaire came out of the washroom, drying his hands on a towel, still coughing. He stared at Baron, finished drying his hands, wiped the back of his neck under the open tunic, tossed the towel inside the washroom on the floor.

“What?” the commissaire said.

Baron started to say something, attempted something else, then stopped and said nothing.

The commissaire was bald. He was a stocky, red-faced man, with clear blue eyes, rather merry, Baron thought, and a wrinkled uniform. Under his eyes the flesh sagged in wrinkles, which went along with his dress. He moved decisively. He went to the desk, picked up the cheroot, poked at the envelope the other officer had left, coughed, and stuck the cigar in his mouth and chewed on it. Finally he drew a great puff of smoke, breathed it out, stepped up to Baron. He stared into Baron’s eyes and waited.

Baron opened his mouth and everything came out like water from a faucet. He told the commissaire the entire story, sparing nothing. Once it got going, he was not able to stop it for a moment. It rushed from him. Every word was a kind of pleasant relief and he drove toward the end, breathing hard, wanting to get it all out of him, onto somebody else’s shoulders. As he talked he imagined himself somewhere peacefully resting, on a bed perhaps, with no troubles in the world, with nothing to bother him, with only peace and contentment just outside his door. It was a feeling that grew and grew as he talked, and by the time he finished he was smiling and the perspiration had begun to dry on his hands and face. His palms had been so damp they were uncomfortably dry now. He wiped them against his trousers.

“It is very serious,” he told the commissaire. “You know of this Gorssmann? You know of Cassis?”

The commissaire nodded. He turned his back on Baron, went around his desk, and sat down in the large, high-backed, leather-upholstered chair. “Yes,” he said. “I know of you, too, monsieur.”

The commissaire stared at his desk and smoked his cheroot. Baron felt it becoming warm in this room again. His palms began to perspire again and something was starting all over again, down inside him. The moment of respite had been brief.

The chair creaked as the commissaire leaned back, smoking. He leaned forward, brushed the ash from the cheroot, rested it carefully on the tray, and leaned back again, creaking.

“Don’t you understand?” Baron said.

“Let me see your identification.”

Baron fumbled for his wallet in his jacket pocket, flung it on the desk in front of the commissaire.

The commissaire picked up a pencil and poked at the wallet. “Just your papers, please.” He poked the wallet across the desk, past the ash tray, beyond the cluttered papers on the desk.

Baron showed him his papers. The commissaire nodded, handed them back.

“Who are you?” the commissaire said.

Baron stared at him.

“Please,” the commissaire said.

Baron began to experience the same sensations he’d had when listening to Hugo Gorssmann. It was a feeling of complete enclosure and the sudden outrage down inside him sought for a way out, his mind instinctively feeling there was no way out.

“Why did you come here?” the commissaire said. “Providing you are Frank Baron, what can you want with us?”

“Don’t you understand?”

The commissaire looked at him, rocked slightly in his chair, creaking. He leaned far back in the chair and looked at Baron. “Have you your passport?”

Baron swallowed whatever he’d planned to say. He found his passport, flipped it across the desk to the commissaire. He watched as the officer glanced quickly through the passport, compared the picture with the man before him, and grunted. “I see,” the commissaire said. He handed the passport back to Baron.

“Obviously,” Baron said. “You’ve got to do something.”

“What are you doing in France?”

“Nothing in particular. Don’t you see? Until now—”

The commissaire pursed his lips. He rapped his knuckles on the desk and shouted, “Henri!”

The office door behind Baron opened and the blond agent entered. He closed the door and raised his eyebrows at the commissaire.

“I warn you,” Baron said, “you’re losing time.”

The commissaire looked at him and said to the young agent de police, “You will draw your pistol, Henri, and search this man.”

Baron stood still and waited as Henri searched him and discovered nothing but the roll of franc notes. Henri tossed the franc notes on the desk, trying not to watch them too closely.

“What are you trying to do?” Baron said.

“Security measures,” the commissaire told him.

“You doubt what I say is true?”

“It may very well be true.”

“Then for God’s sake, stop acting this way!”

“Anyway you look at it,” the commissaire said, “it is bad.” He picked up the cheroot, relit it from a greenish brass desk lighter, puffed, laid it in the ash tray, and leaned back in the chair. He scratched the back of his hand, swallowed, pursed his lips. “Your papers are not in order,” he said.

“You’re joking.”

“I assure you, monsieur.”