The Cafe Girl

by Ian Loome

  Giraud peeked guardedly through the nearest hedge. A handsome cab approached, the horses clopping slowly along at a walk, likely after dropping someone at the airport. He waited until a tree by the side of the road obscured the driver's view then stepped out onto the sidewalk and raised his arm. A few moments later, he was ensconced in the back seat and it was heading towards Saint Denis, and onto Paris. The ride would cost him what little money he had left, he knew, but it was a damn sight better than dealing with the SS.

  The aroma of the horse's near-full manure bag wafted past.

  'Where to?'

  'Durantin and Tholoze.' The intersection was a block from Anton Levesque's house. If anyone knew where Rousseau lived, it was the newspaper editor.

  The street outside Anton's home was empty, a stretch of cobblestones glowing faintly from moisture. The sun had begun to sink and it would be dark within an hour. It was cold and drizzling rain, and the wind blew harshly down Giraud's collar as he pulled it tight. Along the boulevard, the autumn leaves rustled in the trees as the handsome-cab horse cantered away.

  He pounded on Levesque's door. 'ANTON! ANTON!'

  The top half of the door swung open. 'Yes?' The elderly editor was in a smoking jacket.

  'Anton, you have to help me. It's Rousseau; he's absconded with my money.'

  'Has he really? Well, that does sound like a problem. And who is this Rousseau fellow, exactly?'

  What? Giraud's head bobbed from side to side slightly. Had the world gone mad? 'Rousseau, you old fool! Hubert Rousseau, from the CNEP.'

  'Well now I don't care for that language, sir. I... can't say the name strikes me as familiar. Have I met this gentleman at some point?'

  He'd lost leave of his senses. 'At the park. You introduced us, remember? He said he worked at my branch? Hubert Rousseau. For God's sake, man, you know each other well...'

  'Sorry. I think you have the wrong house. I don't think I've ever seen you before in my life.' He began to back away from the door and it started to swing shut.

  'Anton, damn you!' Giraud pushed the top half of the door open again. Then he heard the sound of boot heels. He glanced over his right shoulder. A small squad of German soldiers marched precisely by; he held his breath as they passed, looking Levesque in the face, knowing he wouldn't say anything to attract attention.

  He lowered his voice. 'Damn you, Anton, I can't abide your joking around now! This is important! I am in trouble and in need of a friend, not jokes! My future may depend on..'

  'Well, as difficult as that sounds, I must reiterate that I don't believe I've ever met you before. Good night to you, sir,' Levesque said, quickly slamming the upper door and bolting it.

  Giraud stumbled back a pace or two. It had begun to rain in earnest and he was getting soaked to the skin, small puddles forming on the cobblestone bricks, raindrops so hard and fast they jangled like a pile of coins.

  The son of a bitch; they were in on it together, he told himself. Was Rousseau even a banker? He had to be to cash that draft. That meant he could be tracked down, made to pay for such an indignity. And Levesque? As a communist, his already thin ice was about to break. He would report him as the traitor to the Vichy government that he was. He felt his anger simmering, the thought of the lost bank draft and his hundred thousand dollars eating at him.

  How long had they planned it? He'd only talked to Rousseau about the check a few days earlier, so it couldn't have been anything other than a last-minute ploy, a determined grab for what was his. He cursed himself for trusting the banker; like all his ilk, it seemed, wealth defined and obscured Rousseau's vision of right and wrong.

  Then he frowned. He'd forgotten about Isabelle. She was expecting him at the park within minutes and for him to have all of her problems solved. And yet he knew he would be lucky to get there without being spotted by the Nazis and taken in.

  He began walking in that direction, realizing he had nearly ten blocks to cover. It was not far but his ankle ached like the dickens. He looked back at Anton Levesque's front door and cursed the man's name.

  Eventually, he promised himself, the newspaper editor would pay for such an affront. He would pay for his betrayal.

  47...

  Giraud was fatigued, penniless and miserable by the time he reached the hill down to the cul-de-sac, fairly stumbling his way down the street. He'd been robbed, he was sure. Rousseau had walked away with his windfall; that much Isabelle would probably accept. But there was also the matter of his promise to get her out of country immediately.

  She would perhaps tell herself that it had always been too good to be true or that it was just a minor matter of the timing and that eventually they would escape together. And then they would have to face the abject reality: that the only way to get enough money together would be to empty the Nazi seizures fund the following morning and pray that the one daytime flight would have two seats available.

  At the bottom of the hill, he saw the park bench, empty. It was just as well. It had been days since he had seen the boy, and he did not want him involved in bad business. He gazed over at the cafe.

  But it was gone.

  Not closed for the night.

  Gone.

  Completely.

  No rail fences defining the pie shaped lot. No tables. No piano, even. Just a storefront and a triangular patch of sidewalk. Even the hanging sign was gone.

  Giraud practically ran across the street, a half-jog only slowed by his fatigue, by the pain in his ankle and a fear of making the wrong person curious. He scanned over his shoulder, twisting and turning in mid run to look behind himself, to ensure he had the right location, that he had not gone mad. He half-stumbled, but caught his balance as he reached the other sidewalk.

  He tried the front door to the cafe, just two feet from where the old man and old woman had sat together so often. It was locked, and he shook it angrily. He saw his own reflection in the window, his face sweating, clothes disheveled, the expression somewhere between rage and anguish.

  Behind the barred glass, a small hand-written sign said 'out of business.'

  'No!' he exclaimed, rattling the bars in frustration. It couldn't be right. He'd come down the wrong street, made a wrong turn somewhere. But that wasn't true, and he knew it. He looked back at the small park, then at the shuttered store. It was the right place; the park was across the street. The bus would be along soon. It was as if ...

  He took a few steps backwards.

  'Where is she, Giraud?'

  The voice behind him was calm and even, but nevertheless gave him a sudden chill. Not now, he told himself. Anything but another complication.

  He turned, the panic and confusion still shaking him to his core. 'I swear, Vaillancourt, I do not know. She was here earlier today. I swear it. The cafe was here and open, and she was here. We spoke; she was happy, Vaillancourt; she was happy...'

  'Ah, so she appeared, did she? Like a ghost, this woman I have never actually laid eyes on at this cafe that does not exist. Please, my old friend! Who do you take me for? Perhaps it is time for you to come clean with me, Giraud. The Germans are coming, too, and they have some questions for you about travel passes, as well as your work with the American, in Saint Denis. When I tell them about your interest in the girl, then they may also wish to talk to you about a certain dead soldier.'

  'Please, Vaillancourt... I swear to you, I'm being set up. It was Rousseau, the banker...'

  'Who?'

  'Hubert Rousseau, of the CNEP...'

  'I've never heard of him. Which branch?'

  'Why... the eighteenth! This one, just a few blocks from here.'

  Vaillancourt shook his head. 'We deal with them regularly. I do not remember any such man. Giraud, the American has confessed to supplying your black market operation. When they find the girl, she will be a second witness who places a man of your description on that bus to Vincennes, along with the conductor.'

  'Something is going on here...' Giraud said, suddenly beset with the acute sensation
that he was being toyed with. 'You think it a coincidence that the cafe disappears at the same time as the girl? Help me, Vaillancourt...'

  'We have played this game, you and I, this cat and mouse for a month now, and you have behaved with contempt. I know it was you, Giraud. I know you smuggled the Americans' cigarettes in, and I know you arranged for your former supplier to be arrested...'

  'No! It was an accident...'

  A Daimler pulled up to the curb. Three German soldiers climbed out, along with an officer. 'You are Damien Giraud?' the officer asked.

  'I am.' Giraud's heart-pounded and his breath became short. It was not asked as a professional courtesy, he knew. He had asked the same question of others and in the same manner, and it was never a mere greeting.

  'Monsieur Giraud, you are wanted for questioning by the authority of the German High Command. Come with me, please.'

  They would sweat what they wanted out of him eventually, Giraud knew. Or they would allow the torturer to prompt a confession. He would be poked with red-hot irons, or have splinters shoved underneath his finger nails, or any of the plethora of punishments the SS could dream up.

  He sat in the corner of the stone jail cell and looked up at the tiny barred window near the ceiling. He wondered when they would give up on curt conversation and move on to more unpleasant methods.

  He would not be able to stop it, of course, because he did not know what to tell them; although the suffering would doubtless cause him to admit anything they wanted to hear, so in the end perhaps it did not matter.

  But it was madness; the entire thing was madness. He sat and waited for them to return for a second round of inquiries. The room was near silent, due to the thickness of the fortress walls, but he could still hear the faint scratching of rats from inside the crevices.

  It had been Vaillancourt who questioned him the first time, a repeat of every allegation against him made to date, but no explanation of his arrest. The questions had been curt, to the point, as if the investigator had been checking off a list. Giraud expected the second round to be more typical of the SS, which had a reputation for sadism.

  The guard's keyring jangled as he unbolted the cell's thick, steel-banded wood door darkened with creosote and soot. Like the rest of the fortress it was old but sturdy, and the hinges creaked from the years of weight. The German officer had to duck his head slightly to enter the room, which had a ceiling of perhaps eight feet at most and a low-hanging door jamb. Vaillancourt came in behind him.

  The two men stood. Giraud was puzzled; why hadn't they just sent guards to get him and bring him to be interrogated?

  'Monsieur Giraud, I am Major Tomas Muller. You know Insp. Vaillancourt well, I understand.'

  Giraud was too tired to talk, too overwhelmed.

  'Monsieur Giraud, you are being formally charged with the crime of murder in the deaths of Isabelle Gaspard, a waitress, and Corp. Peter Fischer, a soldier in the Wehrmacht. Do you understand?'

  Giraud said nothing.

  Vaillancourt sensed the German's sudden unease at their captive's silence. 'Giraud, you have to say yes or no.'

  'Then, 'no',' Giraud said. 'I did not kill anyone, Vaillancourt. This is madness.'

  'I did not believe it at first either, I must confess,' Vaillancourt said. 'But the evidence is overwhelming, Giraud. Please... you must see that. Perhaps if you confess now, they will be merciful with respect to the firing squad...'

  'I see no such thing,' Giraud said. 'I see two men attempting to bully a French police officer...'

  Muller interrupted. 'The body of Isabelle Gaspard was recovered from the Parc des Freres de Saint Martin approximately fifteen minutes ago.'

  48...

  The color drained from Giraud's face. It was unimaginable. He had talked to her just a few hours before his capture. There was no way for someone to have committed such a crime in full view of the street in broad daylight, to have dug up the park and buried her.

  She had committed to him. She had committed fully to leaving, to flying away together. She could not be dead.

  It was inconceivable.

  Muller continued. 'Why did you kill her, monsieur? Was it because she rejected your affections? Or was it because you felt she would inform on your black market activities? When did you learn that she was an informer for the authorities?'

  'You're lying,' Giraud exclaimed. 'I am well aware that, like the National Police, the SD is allowed to lie if it does not elicit a false confession...'

  'If need be, we can show you her rotting corpse,' Muller proposed.

  'This... this is madness.' Rotting? Giraud's confusion grew. 'I spoke with her yesterday. We were going away together. I got through to her, you see! I reached her...'

  The two men frowned and peered strangely at each other. Vaillancourt's look had gone from one of contemplation to sheer pity. 'Oh... Giraud,' he said. 'You do know that she has been dead for at least a month?'

  Muller tapped his colleague on the arm. 'A moment?' he asked Vaillancourt. They stepped over to the door and lowered their voices, but Giraud craned his ear to hear. Muller was saying something about his health. '...committed? If the delusion is genuine perhaps...'

  They turned back to him. Muller looked at him harshly. 'You knew that she was working as a resistance informant for German intelligence, yes? So you killed her, and you circulated a rumor that she had gone to visit her aunt in the south of France, so that you could protect associates within the Resistance movement, yes?'

  Giraud's mouth hung open. What was he supposed to say? Both men had obviously lost their minds. He did not know the German, but Vaillancourt was an old foil and he turned to him. 'I tell you, I talked to her yesterday. And why would I help the resistance? I abhor communism.' Could the man not tell that he was truthful?

  Muller did not let up. 'You were helping to shield Laszlo Fontaine and his family. You learned that she realized their true identities and planned to inform upon them. So you killed her, or had her killed, and you buried her in the park late at night, when no prying eyes could disturb you. Yes?'

  'What?' The policeman felt lost.

  'Come now, Giraud!' Vaillancourt protested. 'Apparently it was an open secret in local communist ranks. You set them up in that little cafe in May, unassuming and away from main routes; you gave them a temporary operations permit, backdated to April...'

  'I did no such thing!'

  Vaillancourt reached inside his coat and extracted a sheet of paper, lined from being folded up several times. It was a document with Giraud's signature at the bottom.

  But... it was impossible, he told himself. That was his signature. On a temporary operations permit for the cafe, backdated to April of Nineteen Forty-One, just as Vaillancourt claimed. 'I... don't understand.'

  Muller continued. 'You hid them in plain sight, in a cafe no one would visit because it was in a cul-de-sac without any other purpose save apartments.' He reached into the file folder on the table and withdrew a group photograph. 'You did so in order to arrange travel passes for Laszlo Fontaine, his wife Irma, his two children, Martine and Pascal, their associate, Louis Cyr....'

  'Wait,' Giraud said. 'Pascal?'

  'Their twelve-year-old son.'

  Giraud remembered the first day the boy had brought him to the cul-de-sac from the other cafe. He had asked him for an autograph, for when he was a famous writer. He looked down at the permit, and the fold lines, and remembered the small scrap of paper the boy had thrust into his hands.

  He studied the photograph. The boy was a year younger, at least, but it was him, without a doubt.

  'I think I've made a terrible mistake,' he said.

  He recalled the old man who sat near the cafe door. He tried to picture him without the grey hair and beard.

  Laszlo.

  He considered what Herveaux had told him about Fontaine being a master of disguise. But if he was the elderly man then...

  His wife, who never seemed to leave his side.

  Irma.

&nb
sp; Their son, who brought Giraud to the park in the first place.

  Pascal.

  Their daughter...

  Martine?

  'Several mistakes,' Vaillancourt said.

  'No... I think I've been tricked. I...' The pieces danced around in Giraud's brain as he tried to put them together.

  Muller ignored the plea. 'You waited until you had travel passes, and then you used your authority to empty the Saint Denis seizures account at the CNEP; tens of thousands of Marks that were supposed to go to the German High Command. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. Gone in an instant. I should add theft to your charges, monsieur, but it would only prolong proceedings.'

  The account. How? His mind raced over the days prior. 'Do you have any evidence...?'

  Muller reached down to his valise and withdrew a few sheets of paper, which he placed on the table. 'The withdrawal slip. That is your signature, yes?'

  Rousseau. He'd needed a deposit slip to put the money into an account for Isabelle. Then he would transfer it to Giraud' s account. Then ...

  The withdrawal slip he'd signed to cash the bank draft for a hundred thousand dollars.

  'Oh. Oh my God,' he said. 'Vaillancourt, please. You have to believe me: I've been tricked. A hundred thousand dollars, Vaillancourt! She left it behind in her room. Anyone would have...'

  'What are you talking about, Giraud? What hundred thousand?'

  Giraud had a thought. 'The banker! Hubert Rousseau! Remember? I mentioned him outside the cafe. He's the one who tricked me into signing away the account. He was going to cash a bank draft for me, the one from the safe house.'

  Vaillancourt sighed. 'Giraud, we have already checked. There has never been a Hubert Rousseau who worked at the CNEP. The man you described to us... he is not known to anyone there.'

  'But... Anton Levesque... he introduced us...'