The Cafe Girl

by Ian Loome

  Giraud opened his top desk drawer and dropped the pearls into it. Then he looked at the ring. Just how desperate was she? He looked up and their gazes met; he moved to take the ring.

  Madame Distin reached out and blocked him. 'Uh uh, no!' she said. 'Just the pearls, for now. When my husband is released, you get the ring.'

  It was more than fair, he had to admit. As dangerous and costly as the exercise would be, his potential profit was ten-fold. 'Fine.'

  'How will I contact you?' she asked.

  'Don't. When I find something, I'll get in touch,' he said.

  She was biting her lip, trying not to cry. 'Thank you, sir. You do not know what this means...'

  He held up a hand to stop her. 'Please. I am just attempting to do my duty in difficult circumstances,' he said. 'If this was possible for free...But there will be substantial costs...'

  'I understand,' she said. 'Thank you again.'

  He rose and escorted her to the door. 'Let me worry about this, Madame Distin,' he said. 'We'll see him safe and sound to you yet.'

  He had no idea, of course, if it was true and in all likelihood, Giraud suspected, Bernard Distin was already as good as dead. But she needed hope and she needed help.

  And she came bearing gifts.

  15...

  The night watch ended at four o'clock, but Giraud could not immediately go home. By forcing him to work to the wee hours, the Germans had also changed his delivery and pickup schedule. Most of the items involved were small and he could handle them himself, with perhaps a half-dozen at most to get in before daylight came and patrols became more active.

  But a few involved a truckload or large objects, and for these he employed Henri and Jacques Filbert, a pair of former dockhands from Bordeaux he met while in the Foreign Legion.

  Most great men, Giraud knew, had served as warriors at some point; and at his first opportunity, the teenager fled his humble home and joined the Legion, accepting a post in Algiers, where met the brothers. The Algerian capital was a haven to Frenchmen and other foreign nationals, who had come to outnumber the local Muslim residents. Initially, it seemed the perfect decision: though training and life in general in the legion was hard, their skirmishes with Muslim insurgents were minimal, and much of his downtime was spent arranging illicit past-times for his commanding officers, drawing him into their sphere of influence.

  But after just eighteen months, Giraud's unit was redeployed to the dangerous Rif conflict, battling Berbers alongside the Spanish in a two-pronged defense of colonialism. Rural Morocco was nothing like his dilettante life in Algiers. Day after day was spent either encamped in the verdant foothills, a target for the ethnic Berbers' long rifles or in small-scale battles with underpowered, undermanned opponents in the mountains themselves. Other battles took place in the narrow, confined canyons where the foothills met the desert, under brutal one-hundred-and-ten-degree heat.

  The Riffian Berbers were fierce warriors, angry after being removed from much of their land by a Spanish iron merchant, under the guise of colonial enlightenment. They were tribally divided and often fought amongst themselves, with rifles that could be described as at best unreliable; fortunately for the Berbers, Spanish society was also so divided by class that only the most lowly recruit was deemed necessary for the African war, and they were armed as poorly as their local opponents. It took the aid of France, which controlled the rest of Morocco, and a campaign of brutal mustard gas bombs to finally drive the Riffians to heel.

  By then, Giraud had seen all of war that he wished to see. A young man of just twenty-four, he was already nearly numb to the horrors of the battlefield, rejecting his memories of the dead innocents, entire villages wiped out without mercy for age, gender, or infirmity. It was clear to him that although he possessed a wandering spirit, it had taken him to a land undeserving of civility and prosperity and peace. Like his coarse, alcoholic stepfather, it had bruised his image of both the noble savage and the colonialists who preyed upon them.

  The Filbert brothers had most assuredly fallen into the second camp; but they were reliable as long as they felt well-paid. Typically, a truck of goods would arrive at the brothers' warehouse in the northeast, and the three of them would unload it, then load smaller lots into three more innocuous cars, fuel-converted Citroens with hollowed-out back seats, cars stolen from the myriad of bureaucrats who propped up the rationing and fee systems, repainted and given stolen plates. At most, it took three trips each to empty the temporary storage spot, and a couple of hours for drop-offs. With the curfew in effect, being in a moving vehicle escalated the risk factor vastly; but the money involved was substantial, enriching even in a time when the Franc was pegged at one-twentieth of the globally ridiculed Reichs Mark.

  On this particular early morning, Giraud had gotten off work a little early, at three, just to be safe. The truck sat in the cavernous facility, loaded with exactly what his fence contact Francois had promised just a few weeks earlier: cartons of American cigarettes. The burly, short and balding Henri extended a tattoo-covered, muscle bound right arm to pull back the canvass tarp, which covered tubs of rendered animal fat on the trip from Portugal. The barrels each had a false bottom.

  'Ten cartons per case, ten cases of each, Luckys, Camels and Chesterfields,' Henri said. The older Filbert generally took the lead; he was a behemoth of a man, well over six-feet tall, with rope-knot neck muscles and biceps like bocce balls. 'That's a whole lot of cigarettes, boss.'

  'That's a whole lot of guinea pig,' said Jacques, his shorter, but equally muscular sibling. Both men had crooked, flattened-out noses from multiple episodes of violence. 'Maybe I'll even join one of the train convoys out to the farmers in the country, buy some real beef, and cook some real food again for a change, eh?'

  'You're fooling no one,' Henri told his brother. 'You'll spend it all on whores and wine and we'll be back here next month loading and unloading more shit for people who actually have money.'

  'Don't get ahead of yourselves,' Giraud cautioned. 'We still have to move all of this stuff and we have...' He checked his watch. '... all of two hours to do it.'

  Henri shrugged.

  'What is that supposed to mean?' Giraud demanded.

  'You know we can move these in half an hour if we want.' He'd never struck Giraud as anything but a pragmatist, from the bad side of the city, where men would gut each other with fish knives over honor or money with equal zeal.

  Giraud scowled. 'We are not selling any of these smokes to the Germans. I don't care how much they pay. I promised the man who supplied them that much, and he has gotten us an incredible bargain.'

  'That is very true,' Henri conceded. 'This is a contact we should not offend. Is he also the source of the...'

  'The coffee from last month? Yes, absolutely,' Giraud said. 'And more to come if we don't mess this up.'

  'Shit, if I ever taste another cup of that barley-chicory concoction I shall have to kill myself,' Jacques offered. 'Okay, so if not the Germans, then who?'

  'Don't worry,' Giraud advised. 'I have offers for the lot. We'll just have to do some quick, careful driving, that's all.'

  'Shit,' Jacques said. 'You know I hate taking that kind of risk.'

  Giraud ignored the comment. He took the three pieces of paper from his back pocket. 'Here's a delivery list for each of us. Address, first name, agreed price. That last part is important as I cut the best deals I could with each, so there's a lot of variation.'

  Henri stared at the list. 'You're going to make a lot of money off this, Boss.'

  'That I am, Henri, that I am.'

  'But you're not paying us a whole lot.'

  Giraud had to be cautious. They didn't have time to get into a debate, and he really didn't want to escalate it to another level, not with two such men. He hadn't had to draw his service weapon in two years, and had no inclination to start in the middle of the morning, with the chance of gunfire alerting every sleeping Nazi from Paris to Berlin.

  'When I set the deal with
you guys, I hadn't moved the stuff yet,' Giraud said.

  'We want half,' Henri said. 'We're taking as much risk as you.'

  'I fronted the buy,' Giraud said. 'So don't be absurd. I'll give you ten percent, plus the original thousand francs promised.' With his purchase price removed, Giraud still stood to make twenty-five thousand francs profit. It wasn't as much it once had been. But it was still a hell of a lot of money, he knew.

  'Okay,' Henri said. 'But we also get to keep any cartons if someone can't pay and sell them ourselves.'

  It was a shrewd ploy. 'Half,' Giraud said. 'And I will be making inquiries.'

  'Done,' Henri said. The two brothers did not offer to shake hands on it. They had never been large on social graces. Giraud was glad for it; he doubted either had washed in a week.

  'We meet in three days for the split,' Giraud said. 'Be careful, boys.'

  16...

  At four o'clock in the morning, the Seventeenth District slumbered in the pre-dawn quiet, the murky, misty streets empty save for the odd police patrol, searching for vagrants or thieves, and the spectral tendrils of fog that hung just above the cobblestones. While normal people feared the curfew and tried to maintain normal schedules, the hours just before dawn fell under the purview of those with authority, or those with nothing to lose at all. As usual, there were no street lights; the blackout saw to that. In alleys cloaked by moonlit shadows and the stairwells of stone buildings that dated to antiquity, the desperate and the damned plied their trade or huddled in anonymity, a wary eye cast in the direction of any movement, knives and pistols ready.

  In a few hours, the streets around the Avenue des Champs Elysées and the Boulevard Saint-Germain to the south would teem with Parisians going about their daily life; in bright sunlight, the cafes would fill with wine and beer drinkers; the Germans particularly encouraged the appearance of normalcy near the national monuments, where an American photographer from Life or The Herald-Tribune might chance to see how gratefully the French had accepted their overlords. The Germans would smile, and glad-hand, and light cigarettes for local girls. Their hosts would sit alongside them for awkward social photographs.

  But for as long as the sun was down and the moonlight cut by clouds, the somber side streets and alleys became off limits by German order to the people who made the city home; the risk of trouble elevated-- not just of arrest, torture and even execution at the hands of the Nazis, but of running into the kind of men who were not deterred by pain and death, or the need to deal in either.

  Paris by day was a conflicted city, as divided as ever between ideologies of left and right but also split on whether giving in to the Germans had been the right strategy. Coupled with the terrible devaluation of the Franc caused by being tied to the Reichs Mark, the food shortages and the constant presence of their glib oppressors, the tension was written on every face, from the mother of two who, at twenty-nine and with dark circles under her sad, brown eyes, looked twice her years, to the old man who fought and lived through the horror of the First War, never expecting to become a prisoner of capitulation in his own fair capital.

  It seemed desolately empty at night, and yet so much more dangerous. During the day, perhaps the only people who smiled regularly were the German soldiers themselves. Whether good, bad, haughty or humble, the average German soldier in Paris knew two things: he was in charge, and the frontlines were many miles away. That, and the orders that normalcy be maintained, made them all smiles during the day.

  But at night, it was a different story. To be caught by an SD patrol at night was to risk a better-than-average chance of being shot. After the death of the naval officer, Moser, the Germans had shot three captive Frenchmen and had promised more were to come. They had itchy trigger fingers.

  Giraud had no intention of facing a firing squad but the money to be made from contraband was worth the risk. He expected, however, that the early morning hours would test his fortitude and his blood pressure. He drove slowly along the back alley route they'd devised, away from all of the obvious roads the Germans used for sector patrols. The car's headlights were out and its brake-light bulbs unscrewed. When necessary, he restrained the vehicle to a crawl, creeping up the curb a block at a time as languidly as a man could walk, his eyes on the road ahead, the mirror, checking the sidewalks. At any sign of movement, or even just the misperception of such, he would step on the clutch and brake and bring the car to a halt, then duck down until safe to proceed.

  He had four stops and two were already passed, the goods dropped off safely. There was no exchange of money; he'd arranged with each buyer to handle that in advance, so that there was no actual transaction taking place, nothing to involve him except his presence.

  He checked his pocket watch; it was four-thirty-five in the morning. The German patrols were minimal at the earliest hours and, with the exception of outside government buildings, most were in vehicles, not on foot. He had seen two on the adjacent boulevard, a block away, his heart pounding both times in the silence as he waited for them to pass. He'd been about to pull away from the curb again when they'd been followed by a foot patrol a few seconds later and Giraud found himself paralyzed, unable to breathe, terrified for just a moment in the realization that his rank and privilege meant nothing if caught, but exhilarated as well as he listened to their boot steps echo away.

  He gave the foot patrol a few minutes to get ahead, then drove a block slowly, turned left, and crossed the same boulevard, driving three more blocks past grey concrete apartment buildings, then turning left down a narrow, dark alley. He glanced through the windshield at the shadows, dense as black holes, like his car might disappear if he breached their perimeter. His contact, a former baker named Bouchard, had specified the location and he'd checked it beforehand on a map. There were two exits, so it would be difficult to box them in. And if caught on foot, there were many buildings into which he could temporarily disappear. Giraud would not have gone so far as to call it secure, but it seemed a sensible location for a switch.

  The car disappeared into the shadows and he pulled it over next to the wall of the next address. He turned the engine off; across the alley, a door swung open and two men came out. He knew Bouchard, with his thick moustache; but the other man was unfamiliar. He was younger and stocky, wearing the same kind of apron as Bouchard, perhaps an assistant.

  Giraud got out of the car. He nodded to the unfamiliar face. 'Who's this?'

  'This is my cousin, Yves,' Bouchard said. 'He is apprenticing at the bakery. My back is not so good these days, so he said he'd unload and load for me.'

  The cousin held out a hand. 'Yves...'

  Giraud shook but did not introduce himself.

  'Okay,' Giraud said. 'Let's get this done...'

  But the younger man interceded. 'No! Not here. We're too close to the street.'

  'We agreed here,' Giraud said. What was the young man up to?

  'Yves has a truck,' Bouchard said. 'He found a good spot a few blocks east of here. Totally private.'

  'Bouchard...' Giraud began to say.

  'It's not a problem friend,' Bouchard said. 'He is my uncle Daniel's boy, the one who worked at the gallery. Look... don't worry. You know how grateful I am to you for setting this up. I have a family to feed, a young baby girl who needs formula and vegetables. With the money I make from this...'

  Bouchard, who was known to hang around cafes in the Eighteenth, had mentioned his nephew a year earlier, Giraud remembered, when the boy had done something spectacular in school. He could not recall what, nor did he care. Changes made him uneasy. 'We only have twenty minutes before the next patrol comes around....'

  'We'll be done well before that, I promise,' Yves said. 'Off your car, into my truck and away.' He smiled calmly when he said it, like he held supreme confidence. Giraud's unease grew. Something felt off. The boy was smiling, too confident. It felt like a hustle.

  Bouchard approached him and lowered his voice. 'Look, my friend, I understand the kid probably makes you nervous,
but Daniel raised him to be a good Catholic; he's not going to get us into trouble, he just doesn't want to move the truck over to here. Less chance of the car being spotted, right?'

  That was probably true, Giraud knew. He wasn't one to ignore his own concerns, but there was a lot of money involved to flush it over where they loaded. 'Okay, but I'm keeping an eye on him. Anything goes wrong...' He patted the pistol holster on his hip. 'Eh?'

  'I understand,' Bouchard said. 'But we will be fine, you'll see.'

  The kid looked at them timidly from a few feet away. 'I'm sorry if I make you nervous, mister,' he said. 'That happens a lot, I suppose. I hope that once you get to know me you realize I'm an okay guy.'

  Giraud gave a half-nod then turned back to the car. 'Where to?'

  'Head out the other end of the lane,' Yves said. 'Take a left, two blocks past the old bank, and then another quick left into the alley by the closed newspaper stand. It's private property back there so we won't be bothered.'

  'Can we just ride with you?' Bouchard asked.

  'No,' Giraud said. 'On the off chance that I'm stopped, I might be able to bluff my way out if I'm on my own, but not with you two aboard.' He gestured in the general direction of the truck location. 'You two walk ahead, I'll be along in a few minutes.'

  If there was a surprise waiting, he'd already decided, perhaps they would trigger it prematurely. Either way, he was going to take his time and be very, very careful.

  17...

  He'd waited for perhaps ten minutes, as discussed, and there had been no tell-tale gunshot or whistle, or any sound at all except for the barely perceptible breath of the cool early morning wind. They had perhaps forty-five minutes until the Sun began to rise and he could wait no longer.