The Cafe Girl

by Ian Loome

  She sucked on her tongue sardonically. 'I was wondering how a man of forty manages to gain weight on strict war rations. I was thinking that you must be cheating and buying goodies on the black market behind my back, but then it occurred to me that your scrupulous honesty would get in the way.'

  'And yet somehow,' he responded, 'despite the inclusion of the term 'scrupulous honesty,' that felt like criticism.'

  She took her hand in his. 'That is why I love you, my dear,' she said. 'You're so perceptive.' And then she poked his rotund belly with her forefinger. 'Watch how it jiggles, like a big bowl of hairy jelly.'

  'Bleh. What time is it?'

  'It's twelve-fifteen. You have to be at work in less than an hour.'

  'Yes, God forbid France goes five minutes without needing me to dig up dirt on my co-workers.'

  'You're the one that signed up for this, remember?' She had a sly smile when she said it; a nurse, Caroline knew how difficult public service could be, and how ungrateful, even when lives were at stake. It was one of the things Vaillancourt loved most about his wife. She'd lost relatives in both wars but had maintained her grace, humor and poise.

  By the time he'd risen and climbed into his grey wool suit -- the patches on the jacket elbows more necessity than affectation -- she'd made him breakfast of a boiled egg and warm oatmeal. Then she'd sat across from him at the cedar breakfast table, sipping tea while she watched him eat. If he tried to skip out without it, she'd make him sit back down and he'd have received a lecture about having enough energy to catch bad people. But it wouldn't sound like a lecture, because Caroline's face was soft and her voice gentle.

  Twenty minutes later, he was taking the green-and-white Citroen bus to work. Once again, he'd gone a week without a car assignment, which made it clear his cases were not considered priorities by his superiors. Habitually late due to a pedantic, observant nature that made him wander and lose himself, Vaillancourt was forced to admit to himself that the change -- and a lot of walking -- was doing him some good.

  The week had begun badly for city cops, with the execution of the three radicals in retaliation for the shooting of a naval officer at a subway stop. Using the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds to his advantage as cover, a communist agitator named 'Fabien' had shot the officer in the back, then escaped, which particularly incensed the Nazis. That the killing had been revenge for the Germans murdering one of Fabien's communist compatriots was, unfortunately, lost on them, and already, bloody retribution had been promised if the gunman was not given up. After lining three young men up against a wall and shooting them in full view of the public, the German High Command had decreed that the next execution would be of twenty resistance sympathizers. Protests had ensued but been quickly broken up by club-wielding SD thugs and their most sympathetic French police supporters.

  He thought about Caroline's needling. She meant well, doubtless concerned he'd follow his father into an early grave from overexertion. But the truth was Vaillancourt had always been portly, even as a boy. He spent half of his day out talking to suspects and sources, and it wasn't as if he got no exercise. Just like his father, no amount of dieting or sacrifice, no amount of activity piled upon by the police academy, no denial had been enough to turn the tide, and his waistline had continued to expand. He was not so much fat as short and squat, with a tubby midsection, a barrel chest, beefy pink cheeks and flowing, dark brown locks of hair.

  Why a woman as magnificent as Caroline had ever seen anything in him... well, that continued to puzzle Vaillancourt a decade after their marriage. Perhaps it was a general sense that he had been raised to be a good man, by good parents, people who taught him to rise above circumstance and to maintain good humor even in the face of corruption and selfishness. Vaillancourt had never felt the need to grasp for more, to gain at the expense of others. His father, an honest postal clerk by trade, had counselled him from early on to expect the worst from people who measured their happiness in acquisition, and to exhibit patience in the face of intransigent stupidity.

  At the precinct station, the front lobby and waiting area was the usual madhouse. An open room the size of a small restaurant, the wooden benches were screwed to the floor and the solid oak front counter was raised at least a foot above the head of the tallest visitor. People were not so much queued up to complain to the desk sergeant as they were an angry throng of more than a dozen in a small area, like a gaggle of uncontrollable lawyers vying for a judge's attention, each yelling over one another like crazed stockbrokers, each attempting to advance a singular cause; a woman in a black bonnet and dress was at the front trying to get a request in over the volume of those behind her, while the desk officer leaned forward over the counter to try and catch what she was saying, the din elevated by the small confines.

  Vaillancourt worked his way around the back of the crowd and found the corridor to his office. He followed the black-and-white checkered tile to the back of the building, where his tiny three-man unit was hidden away.

  Foucault and Desjardins, the other two members of internal security, were already tapping away on investigation reports. He hardly ever saw them leave the place which, given their role as policemen of the police, was not entirely surprising. No one wanted to be assigned to IS, Vaillancourt knew; no one but him.

  They shared a twelve-foot-by-ten-foot room with three wooden desks, each featuring a blotting pad, ink well, pen box and typewriter. The walls and glass light fixture were yellowed by years of smoking and the only window was a rectangle of inset thick glass near the ceiling, like a solitary transom long ago nailed shut. A mantle clock ticked more loudly than necessary, counting down, Vaillancourt presumed, the inevitable visit from the Angel of Death and the replacement of one or more of them, likely without anyone else in the building noticing.

  'You're late,' said Desjardins, the younger of the two -- not that it was any of his business. Neither man held rank over the others, and they worked different shifts. 'What a surprise.'

  'Yes, but I might actually bother doing my job and arrest someone this week, so fair is fair,' Vaillancourt shot back.

  Desjardins snorted derisively but remained otherwise silent.

  Foucault was an aging veteran of both the force and the first war with pipe-cleaner arms, a slight hump back and a tiara of grey hair. He did not even bother looking over his shoulder or turning to acknowledge Vaillancourt's presence. Instead, he gestured somewhat loosely towards Vaillancourt's desk. 'You've got another request from on high to look into the cigarette thing.'

  The 'cigarette thing' was the very definition of an annoyance. If there was one thing of which Vaillancourt was certain, it was that most adult Parisians were grateful for most elements of the black market and didn't give a sweet damn about contraband cigarettes. If the material in question was being diverted away from honest people at a decent price, it might have been different. But it was being smuggled in from outside the city, and the prices weren't too bad, and that made it a resource at a time when all resources were scarce.

  Nonetheless, the Germans weren't happy, because there were rumors a policeman was helping the flow of illicit goods. Additionally, the notion that their men might be spotted by avid party faithful while smoking anything but German or French cigarettes apparently incensed the High Command, and yet it was swiftly becoming a daily norm. Packets of Luckys, Camels, Pall Malls, Winstons, Dunhills and Benson & Hedges were as common in Paris as overnight affairs. And he had little doubt the upper ranks' offense only extended as far as needed to bully their subordinates.

  In a rare moment of camaraderie, Foucault added -- once again without turning around -- 'If it helps, I looked at the pattern of recent complaints from the Germans and nearly all of them have been American smokes. And then there's the fact that several mentioned the packets looking different; they lacked the tax stamp, was my guess, meaning they were imported illegally.'

  'Hmmm. Okay, thanks.' Vaillancourt had been a detective for several years before joining IS and a beat constable be
fore that. When it came to tracking down the source of a problem, he knew, it was usually best to start local.

  It was time, he decided, to go shopping.

  If there was a slightly puzzled expression on Giraud's otherwise content and smiling face, it was due to his surprise that he had not discovered the small park before then. He judged Pascal's youthful directions incorrect; it had been more like three kilometers than two. He spent much of his early career in the Tenth Arrondissement, just a kilometer away, and yet Giraud had never found cause to follow one of the five sloping streets that led to the dead-end greenspace in the Eighteenth.

  It wasn't much of a park, really; overlooked around most of its circumference by six multi-story apartment blocks, it was set back from each just enough to get some sun, essential to maintaining a few dozen square meters of grass, a few evergreen trees and two plain wood-and-iron benches, one of which doubled as a waiting area for the adjacent bus stop.

  'And does this little park have a name, Pascal?' he asked the boy.

  Pascal looked up. 'It is the Parc des Freres de Saint Martin,' he said. 'I asked the piano player at the cafe about it.'

  Indeed, just twenty meters away and across the road sat the only business in the cul-de-sac. On a concrete triangular lot, where two roads converged, was a cafe. The building was a typical Parisian behemoth that faced two streets simultaneously; but the patio at the end of the triangular property faced the small park, and afforded Giraud a perfect view of its tables and clients. And so he decided to watch the cafe folk come and go, and in their regular habits and preoccupations, he hoped to find a flow, a lyricism, some pattern that would inform his poem -- part of a larger work of romance -- and imbue it with a feeling of warmth and humanity that, increasingly, he felt he lacked.

  He blamed this emotional malaise on many things, not the least his background as a half-Algerian orphan and most certainly not the least the Nazis. Although he tried to maintain his outward sunny disposition, he felt that perhaps, most of all, his occasionally callous nature was due to the absence of love in his life. He had courted a woman, and he had slept with prostitutes, but when it came to love, he was clumsy and formal, stiff and stoic. He felt the betrayals of his youth simmering under the surface, pinning him down with the nails of awkwardness. He felt he understood people; everyone had a sense of reciprocity in war time, and anyone could be your friend if the offer was good enough. But women and love? That was as confusing as a Faustian contract, a maze into which he became lost with every graceless attempt.

  His eyes drifted again from the cafe, where perhaps a half-dozen people sat at the tables and chatted, to the park across the street.

  'This may, in fact, be perfect, Pascal,' he told his young friend. 'I must commend you upon your choice. Does your uncle know that he has such a smart and resourceful nephew?'

  The boy frowned at that. 'He is very stern with me. But I understand that he feels it is necessary for me to grow a thick skin. At least, that is what he says.'

  Giraud felt a momentary pang of sympathy for the boy. His own childhood had been the stuff of an orphan's nightmares in many respects, due to his father's drunken infirmity and his mother's sex trade, and the boy's uncle was right; it had made him resilient, less prone to panic in the face of the unknown. And there were many unknowns in war time; the trick was to care only just enough to get things done, and not enough to fear failure; to shut off the hurt before it could even gain a footing upon his downtrodden soul.

  They walked over to the bench, Giraud's bicycle chain clicking gently through its links. He leaned the bicycle against the side of the bench, wary of using the small, unreliable foot stand, which could not hold up to even small gusts of wind. Pascal sat down on one end of the long, rust-colored wooden seat, and Giraud on the other; the policeman withdrew a small notepad and pen from his inside pocket.

  Giraud gazed around the cul-de-sac, a quiet half-circle that had obviously been a high-class neighborhood before the war. Three of the large buildings were doubtless apartments or offices, but one had the cafe at ground level and another, to the left, a closed dress shop. That five shorter roads converged suggested the property owners had once had influence, perhaps in the age of gaslight and carriages. But that was long past, and the streets leading to the small park where barely wide enough for single-lane traffic, let alone the automobile age. Time and purpose had passed the cul-de-sac by, but it continued to beat on, a spurned corner of the city's heart.

  'What are you planning to write, monsieur?' Pascal asked. 'If it is not too personal to ask...'

  'I had planned on a new poem, something in the form of a classical romance, from the Vulgate period, perhaps as direct as Lancelot and a quest for purity of spirit. But this place...' He paused and looked around again. 'I feel something different here, the need to write a story. There is solid inspiration here. I can feel it. Something real and unrevealed.'

  Pascal smiled at that. 'And perhaps you can let me read it when you are finished?'

  'I will do one better my young friend: I will give you a copy when it is published.'

  The boy brightened at that, but for barely a moment. He seemed puzzled. 'But what if we are separated by the war?' Then he thought it through and said resolutely, 'I shall look for your name in book shops if you cannot give me a copy in person and, if I have the money, I shall buy a copy.'

  He seemed a nice boy, despite his troubles, and his large brown eyes shined with adoration. 'Thank you, Pascal; that is the nicest thing anyone has said to me this week.'

  Pascal tilted his head slightly, an idea forming. Then he jammed his tiny hand into his shorts' pocket and pulled out a wadded-up piece of paper. 'Will you sign an autograph for me, M. Giraud? In case you become famous? Or... for when you become famous?'

  Nice as well as tactful, Giraud thought. If the boy survived the war, he perhaps had great things ahead of him. He took the folded-up paper and signed it on top, with a flourish. 'But do not worry so much about us not seeing one another,' Giraud said, handing it back. 'I am sure you will come through this intact, as will most. The Germans are not long from winning this now.'

  'Now that they are dealing with the communists, you mean?' Pascal said eagerly.

  His uncle had indoctrinated him well. The boy was honorable, and loyal, and good. It was an exceedingly rare combination in Paris, given the times. Giraud reached around the edge of the bench and into his saddlebag, withdrawing a small bar of chocolate and handing it to the boy.

  Pascal's eyes were as wide as oceans. 'An entire chocolate bar? For me?' It was insanity to consider such a thing; a bar of chocolate was going for ten times its normal price. It was to be savored by a whole family, divided up over several days. And it was all his. He considered the opportunities; he could sell half of it and buy turnip and pasta for two good suppers. He could sell the whole thing for a half-carton of cigarettes and his uncle would be very proud. He could barter it with his young friends for any number of stolen toys or treats. The options were bewildering.

  Giraud knew what the boy was probably thinking. 'I gave it to you so that you could eat it and enjoy it, Pascal.' He said. 'Do not fret about it, okay?'

  'Yes, monsieur. Of course. But...'

  Giraud just shook his head gently and put a silencing finger to his lips. 'No more on this subject, eh?' Then he turned his attention back to the handful of cafe-goers.

  The boy looked at him with a sense of awe as Giraud considered the cul-de-sac like an artist studying a canvass. If M. Giraud could give away chocolate as if it were nothing, surely he was even more important a policeman than he seemed.

  The man wandering the platform was disheveled and dirty. His filthy black-and-off-white cotton shirt was torn at the neck and covered in small burn holes; his pantaloons, rolled up just below the knee, were so encrusted with dirt as to appear more solid than cloth, barely swaying as he moved. His espadrille shoes were held together with tape and newspaper.

  Anatole the Fish was a stoolie, a squealer
, a rat. In Paris, the veteran pickpocket was lower than dirt, reviled by pimp, prostitute and pilferer alike. And yet his information was always solid, his sources impeccably accurate. It was as if he existed in a world between this and some other, where a man's reputation was no barrier to trust or proximity. Either that or he spent a lot of time eavesdropping in suicidal circumstances.

  It mattered little to Inspector Vaillancourt. It only mattered that he came through, time and again, and earned his hundred francs here or there. A morphine and opium addict who, like his peers, struggled mightily to find product in war time, Anatole was little of the man he had once been. Before the war, he worked on the telephone lines, maintaining the network that allowed France to connect. He'd been strong, and upright and of good spirit. The drugs had become his sole focus, however, and his skin was blistered with sores, his ribcage jutting slightly through the fabric of his thin shirt, his lips chapped and blistered from the heat of the smoke and pipe stem.

  Vaillancourt knew most people hated Anatole the Fish, who had earned his name as a child swimming champion. But he felt only pity for the man, and grateful for his service.

  Perhaps it was their contempt that made him an effective stoolie. Few thought him any sort of threat, and that likely aided his inconspicuousness. Certainly, if he'd been uncovered as a source for numerous officers in the south of Paris, his throat would have been cut overnight and his body left in the gutter.

  Thus, care was required. Anatole had been pickpocketing commuters at the Saint-Sulpice metro stop for several months. When Vaillancourt needed to speak with him, he would leave a small blue handkerchief tied to the bottom of a railing from the stairs down to the platform. Anatole would know to be there at three o'clock.... at which point Vaillancourt would 'catch' him trying to pickpocket someone and 'take him in' in cuffs.