The Cafe Girl

by Ian Loome

  That made the newspaper editor frown. 'Fontaine? You don't really think he's still in the city, do you? I'd think he fled to the south at the first opportunity.'

  'You mean you don't know? I thought you were tapped into everything that is Red.'

  'Oh ha ha! Of course, they wouldn't tell a member of the press -- even their press -- about something so important. They know the Germans are going to arrest me at some point if I keep stirring things up. And they're renowned for extracting information, so...'

  'I understand,' Giraud said. 'You know it's not like we want to arrest them, Anton; I mean, not really. But they probably helped Fontaine and his family escape; they've shot three German officers in the last month and the retaliation executions now number in the dozens. This cell has become too large an issue for the SD to ignore; and Werner Best is running things now. He's a Gestapo insider. The Gestapo is not noted for its diplomacy.'

  Levesque took a deep breath. He fished into his inside pocket and took out a silver cigarette case, then opened it and withdrew a small brown cheroot. 'I suppose you've had someone following the young man by now, then.'

  'We have.'

  'Do you think arresting him will help your chances with the waitress to whom you never speak? Because I can assure you that it won't.'

  'I think no such thing,' Giraud insisted. 'I do not know if he will be arrested but I imagine that, yes, one of our officers has likely followed him by now to determine his place of residence. I imagine they have followed you, Anton, and anyone else who has publicly identified as a communist. That does not mean arrests are imminent. On the contrary, our job is to find Fontaine, a needle in a city-sized haystack, not to arrest people for their political views.'

  'Oh, but arresting them for their heritage or religion is acceptable?'

  Giraud sighed. 'You are very hard on me, old man. You do realize that, don't you?' He gestured back towards the cathedral. 'This is a place of worship, yes, but also forgiveness. I expect it from you, and perhaps you from me. What I do not expect, ever, is forgiveness from the Nazis. Turn the other cheek? To Werner Best? Sheer madness. Fighting them? Even more insane. But if I am on the side of law and order, then at least I can strike, rather than be the one who is struck; why can't you understand that, Anton?'

  'Because I do not wish to strike anyone, Giraud,' he said simply.

  'Neither do I. But it is one of only two options. To be struck, or to strike. To be struck from relevancy and perhaps even life itself by the Germans or to strike on their behalf occasionally, and retain my health and sanity.'

  It was not the answer the elderly editor wanted to hear, from his expression, which held a kind of resolute sadness. 'Perhaps this war will last longer than the Germans think; perhaps it will be because people tire of turning the other cheek. Perhaps it is not an issue of striking someone, Giraud, but of striking back.'

  'That's seditious talk,' Giraud said, wagging a finger at him. 'You start recommending things like that in your newspaper and you will end up in a German labor camp. I have seen what they are like, my friend, and you do not wish for that to happen. Not while you still have a wife.'

  'And will you be the one who arrests me, Damien?' he asked. 'Will you do your duty when you know that it is wrong?

  'Only if they ask,' Giraud said. 'I am based in Saint Denis, as you know. It seems unlikely...'

  'I didn't mean it quite so literally, Giraud,' Levesque said. 'But... perhaps we should go. My wife has a Sunday supper to prepare and I don't want to keep you from your duties.'

  'It was good to see you again, Anton,' Giraud said. He meant it. He felt no ill will towards the man.

  Levesque nodded once more, with a sense of finality, leaving the policeman wondering if their differences had finally proven too steep a slope to climb. Then he turned and joined his wife as they walked down the steps.

  29...

  Giraud went to work that evening with a sense of foreboding. The conversation earlier in the day with Levesque had worried him; then he'd gone to the cafe, to find Isabelle not there. Instead, Luc the piano player was filling in as a waiter; he seemed professional enough, with just a handful of patrons that evening. But he kept throwing odd, angry glances at Giraud from across the street.

  Eventually, he'd given up on seeing her safe, and had gone to work, where he sat behind his desk and a small mountain of paperwork.

  There was a knock on his door.

  Mombourquette. 'Come,' Giraud said.

  'Sir!' Mombourquette snapped to attention.

  'What is it?'

  'Sir, I thought it best to update you on a pair of matters. The SD sent out an alert that another German soldier has been killed by resistance types. They're officially blaming communists...'

  'Wonderful,' Giraud groused. 'And now we can expect a string of retaliatory executions. Where this time? The metro again?'

  'No. No, apparently this was just outside the city, near Vincennes.'

  He remained stoic; it had to be the guard he'd throttled. If the Germans wanted to blame unknown communist sympathizers, who was he to argue?

  'Fine,' he said. 'I doubt it will have much impact on us here. And the other issue?'

  'The other issue is directly related; we believe we may have a location on the cell that helped Fontaine. We are following through on information gleaned a month ago from an informer.'

  'And how do you plan to ensure you have the right house?'

  Mombourquette wondered about the question. 'By...well, by searching it, sir. How else...?'

  'Surveillance, followed by a coordinated raid designed to enter the building when as many people are there as possible.'

  Mombourquette hadn't considered the logistics of it. 'We had planned to go in right away...'

  'But now, having discussed it with me, you will wait to ensure there is actually someone from the cell in safe house, in order to have someone to arrest, yes?

  'Yes sir. Of course.'

  'And you will telephone me, day or night, to ensure that I know what you are up to before you do it, yes?'

  'Of course, deputy divisional superintendent. Absolutely, yes!'

  'Fine. Then about your business, Mombourquette! I have long hours of paper pushing ahead of me.'

  'Yes deputy chief. There is one other matter...'

  'Yes, Mombourquette?' He was beginning to annoy once more.

  'The SD sent out a bulletin looking for any confidential informants who may know of a young woman involved in the Vinciennes murder. Should I post it?'

  'Yes, yes, of ...' Something struck him.

  'Sir?'

  'It's... it's nothing Mombourquette. You may go.'

  'Sir!' The younger officer snapped to attention ago and Giraud dismissed him with a perfunctory return salute.

  Somehow, the Germans knew that Isabelle had been there. Perhaps the old lady on the bus, who had debarked at the same time? She had not seen Giraud, as he had exited early, to secret himself away from the cafe girl amongst the trees of the Vincennes Woods. But she would have seen Isabelle.

  And now the police and the SD would be looking for her.

  Giraud's stomach sank. He cast his mind back one night, to when she looked back in a brief moment of terror as she fled, and the soldier prepared to shoot her down. Had she seen him emerge from the woods and drag down her attacker?

  Could she identify him?

  He needed to find her, he knew. He needed to talk to her, properly; but it would neither be a conversation about mutual interest, nor hearts and flowers.

  30...

  The policeman returned home in the wee hours of the morning, uncertain of the path ahead. He had become infatuated with the girl, he realized, and that threw him off of his guard. Now he was being forced to make choices he could not foresee, and it so unsettled him that, even after a long and tiring day, he was too nervous to go immediately to bed. Instead, he sat ensconced in his favorite armchair, with a glass of sherry in his left hand, and tried to read his book, under the lig
ht of the old floor lamp.

  But he was torn; half of him wanted to find her and interrogate her, the other to warn her, to secret Isabelle away from the city and its ills. He had never considered himself a chivalrous or brave man -- or even a completely honest one, for that matter -- but he knew that it was a battle between the logic of caution and the passion of infatuation, between his head and his heart.

  In a sense, knowing that made it somewhat easier; Giraud had never been sentimental. He had always taken the smart, logical choice, or at the very least the one he could most easily rationalize, given available evidence and circumstance.

  But for the first time, he felt a swelling in his chest, a shortness of breath that visited upon him whenever he thought of her face. It was true that in his life, no one had ever really loved Giraud; not his parents, who abandoned him, nor his adoptive parents, who introduced him to the dark side of humanity, nor his sentimental peers, who considered him crooked and cold. Oh, he had many customers and friends who appreciated him. But he did not receive love, and he had never given it freely as a consequence. His stoic exterior contrasted so much of his life, and yet there were times when he was certain that it was his true self, impenetrable as stone, protected from the pain of love and loss and life.

  Elementally, he knew that if he did not make a decision, the Germans would make it for him. Eventually, they would find her, and they would turn her over to the Gestapo, who would torture everything she knew and more out of her, before ending her life with typical brutish efficiency. There was no guarantee that she would implicate him; but there was also no doubt that she would be caught.

  He felt his anxiety building once more, and he downed the glass of sherry. He got up and moved back over to the sideboard and poured another, then downed it, then poured a third and took it back to the sofa. Then he sat back down and tried to come up with a decision of what to do next.

  It didn't take long for the third sherry to go down, then the fourth.

  The phone rang. Drunk, Giraud considered whether to ignore it. Goddamn German. He'd had no choice, anyone could see that. Anyone. She could see it, certainly. If she'd seen him.

  Would she say...

  His attention was caught again by the phone and he raised himself to his feet, then stumbled over to the receiver and picked it up.

  'Boss? Boss, I have news.'

  'Mombourquette.' He chuckled. 'Don't call me boss...'

  The younger officer began to chatter and Giraud swayed in place half-listening, half considering the nearby decanter of Sherry, now three-quarters empty. He hung up the phone as Mombourquette continued to chatter, then he stumbled to the decanter and picked it up. He made his way back to the sofa, struggling for balance, and slumped back down.

  He woke suddenly, the phone ringing once more. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, immediately aware that his brain wasn't fully awake and that he was still fully dressed; he looked down at the glass decanter, sitting beside him on the sofa, almost empty. He glanced at the window to his left; the sun had begun to rise. He rose to answer the phone on the other side of the room.

  A few feet to his right, the front door sat a crack ajar. Had it been that way before he'd fallen asleep? Surely he'd closed it properly when he returned home?

  The phone rang again. 'Hello.' The other party spoke quickly, a rapid fire revelation, a call to action. Giraud nodded several times. 'Yes, yes, of course. Just... stay right there for now. I will... no! No, absolutely not. It's ... what time is it? The last thing we want is the Germans taking an interest before we can figure everything out.'

  What time had he fallen asleep? Giraud was unsure.

  The other party was jabbering in rapid-fire phrases and Giraud pinched his eyes, both to ward off tension and wipe away the gathered sleep. 'My God, haven't you listened to... just... just stop. Wait for me to get there. Unfortunately, this is something I must handle personally. I won't be long.'

  31...

  Anton Levesque sat on the park bench and watched tense scenes unfold at the cafe, where the piano player and the young communist, Jean-Max, had nearly twice come to blows while arguing. The old man had intervened, his deep voice and quick bark ensuring he didn't actually have to rise from his permanent position to deal with them.

  Now the two men were sitting on opposite sides of the patio from one another, both sullen, Jean-Max leaning over a large cup of coffee while the piano player nursed a beer.

  'What do you suppose has them so irritated today?' Levesque asked Giraud, who had been almost silent since arriving two hours earlier. 'Do you suppose it has anything to do with your favorite waitress?'

  'What do you mean?' Giraud asked, far too aggressively; the fatigue and his anxiety had combined to make him jittery. 'I do not know the woman, Levesque! Why must you persist...

  'Calm down, my friend! I was not being lecherous; I was merely suggesting that her absence today seems to have been unexpected, and noted.'

  'And you know this how?'

  'Because I was here before you, and the piano player seemed quite distraught just before noon. The old man had to calm him down. When her young paramour...'

  'We do not know that she has ever...'

  'Friend, then. When her young friend arrived, the piano player lit into him like he was an English lout. They were very close to blows, but the old man carries the respect of both men. But from the way he was behaving, I suspect the piano player believes Jean-Max to in some way be responsible for her absence.'

  Giraud wasn't sure what to make of that. He took out a packet of Gitanes and tried to shake one loose awkwardly. He'd dipped heavily into his private stash of fresh coffee, and his hand shook slightly from the mixture of weariness and caffeine. 'Have they considered that perhaps she is just ill, or has had other matters occupy her? It seems unreasonable to assume that something untoward has happened, or that she is injured or dead.'

  Levesque was taken aback slightly by the notion. 'Dead? I didn't go that far, Giraud. What on Earth would make you take such a morbid leap in logic?'

  His mind raced over the two days prior, the woods and the camp, the soldier with his eyes bulging in shock and horror, the sudden phone call just a half day earlier, his drunken, hazy memory of an earlier call. 'Has the city ever really been more dangerous, Anton?' he reasoned. 'Almost anything could have happened to her.'

  Across the way, the old lady walked out of the cafe to join her husband on the patio. She paused beside her director's chair, and gazed across to the park. Giraud could have sworn she was glaring right him, as if everything else in the world had faded, so that her eyes could burrow into his soul. They were black and hate-filled. It was like she could see right through him, see everything that had happened since Pascal had first shown him the little cul-de-sac and the quiet, unspoiled park.

  She broke her gaze and sat down next to the old man.

  'I suppose,' Levesque said, 'but it's rather depressing to assume the worst, Giraud. It's the policeman in you, I fear.'

  'Yes, of course,' Giraud said. 'I only meant that people tend to jump to such terrible conclusions far too quickly.'

  'On the other hand,' Levesque fairly spat, 'these days the SS has taken to rounding up random citizens and shooting them.'

  'A consequence of your movement's attacks on their officers,' Giraud countered. 'Werner Best has made it clear that for every officer communist resistors kill, the Germans will execute twenty civilians. And yet still, our 'brave' communist brothers stab Germans in the back at Metro stops.'

  'We are fighting a WAR, Giraud!' Levesque fairly shouted under his breath. 'Are you the only man in Paris foolish enough to not realize it?'

  'But we are NOT at war,' the policeman fired back. 'We have a government, under Marshall Petain, we have law enforcement, we have...'

  'We have a select group of far-right cowards who claim patriotism, yet spit on the very notion of what it means to be free, all for their own eventual gain!' Levesque said. 'For everyone else, this war means
lack and loss, and pain and death; it means suffering every day while those jackbooted jackals chuckle at our 'weakness' and 'decadence.' And if you do not recognize this, Giraud, you are not a man, you are a merely a dog they can bring to heel, whenever they wish.'

  'I am no one's lackey, old man!' Giraud was becoming genuinely angry at Levesque's barbed tongue. 'And if you persist in attacking me so, you will come to recognize that my authority and my influence is very real.'

  And then he caught himself, and realized he had overstepped his bounds. 'I... I am... Excuse me, Anton. I lost my temper.'

  Levesque's look was deadly serious, as if confronted immediately with a new reality about his associate, a side hitherto unseen. 'Giraud... you do not having anything to do with her absence, do you? I mean, in a professional circumstance?'

  Giraud did not meet his gaze. 'Of course not.'

  'It's just that when the conversation shifted to her you became that much more agitated. But look! Your hand is shaking so hard you can barely hold your smoke.'

  'This is ridiculous,' Giraud asserted.

  'Giraud?' Levesque's apprehension grew. 'Is there something you think I need to hear?'

  'No, Anton, I do not know where the girl is. What are you implying?'

  'I imply nothing. I simply note a change in your demeanor when she is discussed. I couple that with the concerns of her friends at the cafe...'

  'And you assume I have some nefarious role.'

  'If the jackboot fits...'

  'If the top hat is too tight... You're being absurd,' Giraud said calmly. 'I admit I am fascinated by her, by her beauty and how she carries herself. But I have always conducted myself as a gentleman, perhaps to degrees that even you would know understand...'

  But Levesque was older, and wiser, and he knew that the difference between good and evil was often one of nuance. 'One can conduct oneself as a gentleman and yet still kill someone in a duel, Giraud,' he said. 'Answer me this: do you know of any harm coming to Isabelle?'