After he had related yet another fascinating anecdote about his life in Paris—and to be fair, his stories were fascinating—we zeroed in on the real target.
“Mr. Melon,” I said, “we have a French friend who’s wild about a blues singer who used to live in Paris. I’d like to get her some of his records, but I can’t find any of them for love nor money. Do you know anything about him? Little Rube Haskins was his name.”
He burst into high-pitched, derisive laughter. “‘Rube’ is right, ma chère. He was right off the boat. What the children in Chicago used to call a country nigger. To paraphrase that Ozark woman’s song—a little bit country, a little bit rhythm and blues.”
“You mean you actually met him?”
“Once or twice. You know what they say—if you stay in Paris long enough, you meet everyone in the world.”
“Did you ever hear him perform?” asked Andre.
Melon rolled his eyes. “Yes, child.”
“No good?”
“Good and bad didn’t come into it. He was ridiculous. He could play that guitar well enough, I’ll give him that, but his songs about his mule jumping over the moon or some such were so derivative and falsely primitive as to be preposterous. None of the sweetness, none of the heart, the grace of the rural Negro—no blessedness. And I should know, child. I’m a proud country nigger myself. I just found the man vulgar, to be candid. But then again…oh, I don’t know why I’m fussing so much. I suppose he was just trying to enjoy the party, like the rest of us. To be fair, he did have a following here for a hot minute. But he was a footnote to a footnote, at best. I can’t imagine that anyone let him make any recordings.”
“When did you know him?” I asked. “How long ago?”
“Ah. Well, that’s not so easy to say. Fifteen—eighteen—twenty years? Time doesn’t mean a great deal to someone like me, you know. Not anymore.” He laughed that marvelous deep laugh again and took the fresh martini the barman handed him.
“Might I just show you something?” I said.
“Of course. Show me everything, dear girl.”
I retrieved the glossy photograph from my bag and held it close to his hand resting on the bar.
“Is that what he looked like?”
“Have mercy!” he said in wonderment. “Yes, that was him. Don’t tell me your friend carries his picture around?”
“Well,” I said, “she does adore him. All she’s ever heard are a couple of badly recorded tapes of him. She found this in one of the stalls on the Seine.”
He turned the photo over in his hands a couple of times. “The French are peculiar, n’est-ce pas?” he said philosophically. “Wonderful—but peculiar. And would we have it any other way?”
After a moment’s appreciative laughter, Andre asked, “What happened to Haskins, Mr. Melon? We heard he died young.”
“Umm. I think that’s true. Died young and died tawdry, if I’m remembering it right. Let me see—must have been a drunken brawl somewhere—no—it was a jealous husband—or a woman scorned—something like that. He was shot to death in a car perhaps. Something absurd like that. He didn’t have the decency to just choke on a pig’s foot.”
I couldn’t help it: I let out a shriek of laughter.
“Oh, I’m mean, child,” Mr. Melon said. “I’m just terrible, ain’t I?”
Melon slid smoothly from his barstool, cane and all, when a party of five came barreling in, shouting their greetings at him.
I had to get in just two more quick questions before he took his leave of us.
“By the way,” I said, “did you happen to know any of Rube’s lady friends? One in particular called Vivian?”
“Oh dear, I don’t think so.” He pursed his lips then. “The only Vivian I recall from those days was a young man, not a young lady. A British chap, and the less said about him the better.”
“Last question,” I said. “Any idea if Rube Haskins was his real name? I mean, did you ever hear people call him by any other name?”
He shook his head “Just ‘fool.’ You two children should have some of that St. Emilion before you leave tonight. It’s delicious. Ask Edgar to pour you some.”
“He’s something, isn’t he?” Andre said when Melon was out of earshot.
“He’s a stitch. But I wouldn’t want him to read me. He’s got one sharp tongue.”
“What now?”
“Yeah. You got that right. What now? We know for sure now this is Haskins. But where does that leave us? How did he go from Ez to Rube—or vice versa? And which one was he when Vivian went picnicking with him?”
Andre began to speak, but he stopped short when Morris Melon reappeared at the bar.
“Is it true what I hear, children?” he asked us excitedly.
We looked at him blankly.
“That’s right, play it coy, babies,” he laughed expansively. “Don’t be so modest! Some friends tell me you two are the talk of the town. They say le tout Paris is buzzing about the duets you’ve been performing. You must favor us with something.”
His slow, steady clapping caught fire and before we knew it the whole restaurant was filled with coaxing applause.
After a brief consult with the pianist, we started with the old Nat Cole arrangement of “Just You, Just Me.” A real up number. Everybody seemed to enjoy it. Then the old musician removed himself to a table and left us on our own.
Andre’s beauty obligato for me on “Something to Live For” seemed to come out of nowhere. Gorgeous. I was inspired, and tried to return the favor for his solo work on “I Didn’t Know About You.” Someday you’ve got to hear that on the violin. We closed with “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.”
I guess we killed. Applause like thunder. The waiters began to anoint us with complimentary drinks.
Andre and I recaptured our places at the bar and Morris Melon hurried over to clink his glass with mine. “You children are too beautiful to live,” he cried in delight. “I want you to promise you’ll come and play for us at least once a week.”
Andre began to stutter.
“I won’t take no for an answer,” Melon pressed. “We’ll feed you right, offer you our finest wines, and you can put your own tips bowl out on the piano.”
Andre and I looked at each other and shrugged. We nodded okay at the old man.
“Babies,” he said, grinning, “I couldn’t be happier.”
If you don’t know what boulevard St. Germain looks like at four in the morning as you sit outdoors at the Deux Magots…I won’t spoil it for you by talking about it.
We had received all those strokes from the fabulous Morris Melon; the street crowds had been supergenerous; we’d stopped at one of my old haunts, an all-night place, for a perfect little meal; I was actually living on rue Christine, my street of dreams; the low sky was showing Paris pink around the edges; and, not least, this beautiful man I was in love with, was in love with me, apparently to the point of stupidity.
Again, heaven seemed almost within my grasp. But I couldn’t be happy. I couldn’t rest. We were no closer to finding Vivian. She was, if anything, slipping further away.
“You gotta do something for me tomorrow,” I said, turning to Andre.
He polished off his almond croissant. “You mean today, don’t you, sweetheart?”
“Right. Here’s the thing: Vivian knew this guy Rube Haskins.
“Check.”
“Only he had a different name.”
“Check.”
“And he was murdered—maybe over a woman, maybe by a woman.”
“Check—Wait a minute. You don’t think your aunt was the woman—or the woman scorned?”
“The pig’s foot, so to speak. Of course I don’t know that she had anything to do with it. But at any rate, it had to be in the papers, right? There has to be some kind of investigation when anybody gets murdered. And Haskins was a public figure, even if he was a really minor celebrity—Mister Footnote. We have to find out if the police ever got the whole story. If the
y arrested anybody. Maybe somebody from his family came over here to claim the body. Maybe Vivian’s name turns up as just someone the cops contacted for information.”
“Maybe,” he said. “So what is it you want me to do?”
“The murder happened, what, almost twenty-five years ago. I’m going to make a run to the library tomorrow, and make a phone call or two to some of the newspapers. I’ll comb through the back issues. Not Le Figaro, it’s too proper and conservative. But the tabloid types. That stuff’s got to be on microfiche now, just like in the States. I’ll try to find one of those books in English—you know, those music encyclopedias—Who’s Who in American Music, or something like that—and see if Haskins’s bio is there, and maybe his real name: Ezra Something, or Something Ezekiel—or whatever.
“What I need you to do is try to find back issues of the most obscure kind of music magazines you can think of. Canvass all your street player buddies and ask them if they own such things, or where to start looking. Maybe one of those music journals did a memorial piece on Haskins. Hell, maybe something a little more mainstream—like an early issue of Rolling Stone. Those shouldn’t be too hard to find. Anything you can think of, no matter how nutty it seems. It’s worth a try.”
Try we did. None of the arcane, or nutty, sources panned out. But, as I had speculated, there was mention of Little Rube Haskins’s death in the police blotter sections of the conventional press. The only report of any length turned up as an ordinary news item in a Paris paper that had long ago ceased publishing. Minimal information emerged on Haskins’s career and background—not even where he was born. He was referred to as a black American folk singer who lived at a modest hotel in the 11th arrondissement. In the last report on file (the story had run for two days) Inspector Pascal Simard declared that police were still looking for the vicious killer who had left Monsieur Haskins’s mangled body in the one-way street where he resided.
I kind of enjoyed playing the puppet master, dispatching Andre to do this or that spadework. While he was following up one potential lead, I gigged on the street all by myself, which was kind of scary but thrilling. But then the rest of my afternoon was shot, as I had to go hunting for pantyhose long enough for my endless legs. I finally found my size at a little lingerie store where only nuns shopped.
Controlling my other operative, Gigi Lacroix, was a tad trickier. It was tough getting an appointment with him before sundown. He kept hours similar to my friend Aubrey’s—the vampire schedule. Daylight must have been rough on his sensitive skin. He finally agreed to meet me at what he daintily referred to as tea time.
Gigi was waiting for me at a sedate “lady food” sort of café near the Louvre. The place was one of those unfortunate pissy hybrids of French and British culture where the waitress sneers at you if your shoes weren’t made in Belgium. No trouble spotting Gigi among all the newly coifed girlfriends in that joint. But at least, thank the baby Jesus, the lovely Martine was not in attendance.
“I have a little news for you,” he said, using his napkin to wipe a spray of powdered sugar from his mustache. “Don’t get your hopes up too high though.”
“What is it?”
“A friend who works the Eiffel Tower says he thinks he knows Tante Vivian.”
“What!”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean he works the Eiffel Tower? What kind of work?”
“He’s a pickpocket. I’m going to see him tomorrow. Chances are he’s full of shit and just looking to make a few francs for nothing. But I’ll give you a report.”
“You won’t have to. I’m coming with you.”
“No, no, my friend.”
“Yes, yes, my friend.”
“I said no!” he snarled, without a trace of his usual rueful charm. “It’s no fucking place for you, where I’m meeting him. You’ll only be in the way. Besides, you’ll attract attention to yourself—and me. The last thing I need.”
“Well, what about what I need, buster? What the hell kind of place is this where you’re meeting?”
“No more questions. You’re better off just letting me do what you asked me to do. Anything could happen—entendu? You’re a Yank, remember. No matter how fancy your French accent is. How would you like to end up deported? Who’ll rescue your sweet old aunt then?”
“Why do you put it like that—my ‘sweet old aunt’? What are you trying to say, Gigi?”
His laugh was almost as nasty as one of Martine’s. “I’m not so sure. But my friend says if this aunt of yours is the same woman he’s thinking of, she’s up to her old tricks again.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Hey! Don’t break my balls, ’pute. Those are not my words. They’re his. Like I said, he may just be giving me the runaround, anyway. I’ll call you. Here…try one of these.” He proffered his plate, which was crowded with cream-filled delicacies. “A girl with an ass like yours doesn’t have to watch her weight. Am I right, petite?”
“Gigi,” I said in exasperation, “get the fuck back into your coffin.”
CHAPTER 8
Mountain Greenery
There it was. Etched in stone: LE PALAIS DU JUSTICE. The palace of justice, eh? I’d be the judge of that.
Actually, police headquarters, which is where I was headed, is next door to the palais du justice. The lettering on the police building didn’t say a damn thing about justice.
If I’m not mistaken, a number of famous French people—real and fictional—have been associated with the Quai des Orfèvres. The quai was where Inspector Maigret was based, of course. At the urging of my high school French teacher I had read all those George Simenon novels about the eccentric detective. And quite near police headquarters, someone had told me, Simone Signoret and Yves Montand had for years maintained an apartment, in the place Dauphine.
Gigi’s news had set me off; although he’d told me to keep cool, that his friend’s information might turn out to be bullshit, I couldn’t just sit and wait. The more I thought about it the more agitated I became.
Yes, I was standing on the sidewalk looking up at the rather forbidding grandeur of the huge building, the uniformed flics buzzing and circling in their evil-looking capes like so many gossiping wasps. But no, I had not decided to throw in the towel and seek police help in finding Vivian. Not yet—not exactly.
I presented my valid passport and an old NYU identification, and I told the liaison officer my story: how I was an American law student doing a paper on police procedure in New York as compared to Paris. I would not presume to take up the time of any of the hardworking detectives on the force today, but I was wondering if he could put me in touch with an Inspector Pascal Simard, whose name I had come across in some old newspaper reportage. Surely the inspector was getting on in years now? and mightn’t he have a little time on his hands these days?
Just enough of the truth, mixed with a few Nanette-type whoppers, to be believable. Or so I hoped. My reluctance to involve the authorities stemmed in part from the fear they’d discover Vivian was doing something not on the up-and-up, and the last thing I wanted to do was bring any heat down on her. On the other hand, if they embarked on some kind of investigation of me—so what? I had my passport, airline ticket, and ample spending money. I was staying with a nice young man in a borrowed apartment in a nice part of town and we had done nothing wrong.
The French had invented bureaucracy. Were they proud of it, or embarrassed? I didn’t know. But at least their red tape appeared to work, sometimes with remarkable efficiency. After the requisite number of phone calls and hours spent waiting in this queue or that anteroom—and the inevitable break for lunch—I was told that Inspector Simard, who had retired to his home in the Loire Valley, had agreed to speak to me. I was given his address and phone number in a town near Amboise, some two hundred kilometers southwest of Paris.
Andre had never actually been outside the city limits and I was letting him know how unParisian I thought that was. After all, you have to spend
time in the provinces before you decide you hate them, right? So, wary as he was of my latest plan, he agreed to make the trip with me. First of all, Andre put no faith in anything Gigi or Martine said. He didn’t believe I’d ever get that “report” on the Eiffel Tower pickpocket’s tip. And second, he probably would have insisted on going with me to Simard’s place anyway, to prevent me from doing anything too dumb. We had not been together very long, but already he had taken on the role of fool catcher: grabbing me by the shirttails and pulling me back to safety whenever my enthusiasm had me stepping off into the abyss.
We caught an early morning train at the Gare d’Austerlitz and in about two hours we were in Amboise. A local bus took us to the edge of Inspector Simard’s village. We made a call to him from the tabac, and from there, following the good inspector’s directions to the letter, we walked the velvet-plush paths until we arrived at his home.
Monsieur Simard had a full head of silky white hair under the panama hat he tipped to us when we found him in his garden. He must have been in his early seventies but there was no suggestion of a stoop in his bearing. He was as tall and upright as Andre.
Before inviting us inside he turned to me with a questioning look on his face. “I wonder if you know any gardening secrets, mademoiselle.”
“Me? Less than nothing.”
“Pity,” he said. “I have the feeling these flowers need more water. But then again one doesn’t want to risk drowning them, you know. I’ve always liked the garden so much, but it was really my wife who tended to it. I’ve been slowly killing off one of her prized bushes after another ever since she died ten years ago.”
As he invited us inside I thought I saw a mischievous little smile at the corner of Inspector Simard’s mouth, but I couldn’t be sure. So I just nodded my head in sympathetic understanding.
In less than twenty minutes I had come clean with the inspector. Simard, retired or not, had not lost his touch for eliciting confessions. I told him first about our interest in the Rube Haskins case, and this led inevitably to the saga of Aunt Vivian and my reluctance to involve the authorities. The only thing I left out was the Gigi Lacroix angle. It might be okay for me to make a clean breast of things, but I knew I had no business implicating anybody who’d been in trouble with the law.
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