77 Rue Paradis

by Gil Brewer

  Baron waited, trying to keep the air from the cavity in his tooth. It ached horribly now.

  “You follow me?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Well, that’s it. You commence by going to Chevard. He and his family are in Marseilles. It should be easy.” Gorssmann stood, coming off the bed in a powerful lunge. For a moment he stood there, breathing rapidly, the breath hissing like air escaping from a punctured balloon.

  “What about Elene?” Baron said. “Are you going to continue to hold her?”

  Gorssmann moved silently toward the door of the room, turned, and stared through the darkness at Baron. Finally he said, “We will see.”

  You son-of-a-bitch, Baron thought. You vile son of a killing murderous son-of-a-bitch.

  “Arnold!” Gorssmann called.

  Arnold stepped in through the door from the hallway.

  “Good-by, Baron,” Gorssmann said. “I’ll keep in touch with you. Don’t rush things, but also, don’t waste time.” Gorssmann turned toward the door, then back to Baron again. “By the way, Baron. Your daughter, Bette, has arrived in France.”

  Baron came out of his chair. He started to speak, shaken with sudden anxiousness. Gorssmann stood for a moment by the doorway, then turned and left the room. Baron listened to Arnold and Gorssmann descend the stairs. Then he heard the street door open and close.

  Bette was in France. He wondered if he could believe Gorssmann. If she were in France, very likely she was in Marseilles. He began to pace the room, but stopped abruptly. He had to stop acting the way he did. He went over and lit the lamp, the scarlet glow burning in the shadows, and with his hand still on the cord he remembered Elene’s face there on the table in the morgue. He wanted to cry out. Because there was so little he could do. There was nothing to bring against the conflict that surrounded him; nothing but himself. There was no way to fight back. Every move he made was watched probably by both the secret police and Hugo Gorssmann. Either party could annihilate him. His life was an open book to all concerned; they knew everything of his personal life. He no longer had a personal life. His room might even be wired; how could he tell?

  This thought stirred him into action. He canvassed the room, turned it inside out, and found nothing. He flung himself on the bed and he was truly sick inside.

  Elene dead, because of him. And Bette in their hands. Follet had been right, of course. When all of this was done, Gorssmann would see to it that no traces were left. He would be the single element that must be destroyed because he would not alone be useless, he would be dangerous.

  Sitting up on the bed, he stripped off his jacket, then his shirt. He drew his undershirt over his head and frowned down at his arms and chest. He was covered with bruises, cuts, freshly forming scabs. He was a mess. He rose, stripped, found his bathrobe, took a towel, and padded down the hall to the shower. It was some shower. It was more like a piece of very old pipe, possibly early Roman, with a leak in it. He stood beneath the trickle, soaped himself, rinsed off, dried with the towel, and returned to his room.

  He hurled the towel at the dresser mirror, flung himself on the bed. Almost immediately there came a timid knock on his door. He rose carefully, his body smarting from the soap and water, and went to the door and opened it.

  The girl Lili gave him a single quick, sly look, then hurried past him into the room.

  “Quickly,” she said. “Close the door, monsieur!”

  He did so, turned and frowned at her.

  “Don’t look at me that way!” she said. “Please!”

  He could not help grinning. This irritated the toothache, but he grinned on. She was such a damned nice-looking piece, this sly one. And he would never be able to remove from his mind the memory of what she had done to him in greeting that afternoon.

  “I should never have come,” she said. Her voice was very emphatic, very serious. She was altogether serious now, and extremely nervous. She snapped two more quick glances at him, then walked swiftly to the window. She stood beside the window, out of range of the street, and pulled down the shade. Then she looked at him again, and this time she waited.

  She wore a light tan coat, flaring open across a tight, dark green dress that revealed something of the body beneath it. From what Baron could see, the body was excellent, and promising. She carried a black beaded purse in her left hand. Her right hand was jammed into one deep pocket of the coat. Her hair was certainly the blackest Baron had ever seen, and in the scarlet glow from the lamp it was beautiful, as were her dark blue eyes. As he watched her, she touched her teeth to her lower lip, and for that single instant Baron thought she might cry. She did not cry, but obviously she came close to it.

  “Lili what?” he said.

  “Does it matter?”

  “I think so.”

  “Laurent. Lili Laurent.”

  “Does he know you’re here?”

  “What? Who?”

  “He sent you, is that it, Lili?”

  “I might have known you would be like this.”

  “You the modern Mata Hari?”

  She said nothing. She just looked at him. It was not a nice look, and Baron wished he did not feel as he did. How could he trust this one? What did she want with him?

  “Or did you come to collect?”

  “Collect?”

  “On your promise, your little agreement, Lili.” He stepped toward her. She did not move. She did not stop looking at him, her head tipped up, the sly light in her eyes showing through all the seriousness even though she might not have meant it to be that way. As he came up to her, he smelled the perfume again, as elusive as ever, and as sweetly good. “You know what I mean, Lili.”

  She nodded. “Oui, I know.” She swallowed, searching his eyes. “If that is what you want….” she said softly; then she said, “I am so sorry about your face. Did Joseph do damage?”

  “How do you mean? He didn’t cripple me. He hurt me, goddamn him, but that’s all right.”

  “I am very sorry,” she said.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” He whirled, went over and sat on the bed, held his head in his hands. “Why are you here?”

  He heard her heels on the floor. They reminded him of Elene. He glanced quickly at her, to make sure, unable to control the movement, then put his head in his hands again, staring at the floor. She came close to him and he could see the tips of her black shoes on the floor, the smooth curve of her ankles and calves. He could hear her breathing.

  “I wanted you to know,” she said. “That was the only way I could make you notice. By doing that. I am sorry, I—”

  “Don’t be sorry. My God, there’s nothing to be sorry about. I can think of nothing more— I can think of nothing.”

  She laughed shortly, but when he looked up at her her face was once again serious.

  “Anyway,” she said, “that’s why I did that, to your palm, that way. I—I had to let you know.”

  “What? Let me know what?”

  “That I am of them, but not with them, Monsieur Baron.”

  He stared at her and for the first time in all of this he began to sense warmth. He leaped at it, dragging at it with both hands, with all of him, giving himself to it. He was starved for any kind of reasonableness whatsoever. Was she a reasonable person? My God, how could he be sure? He rose, walked all the way around her, came back to the bed and sat down again. It could not be true. There was a catch to it. There had to be.

  “Did it trouble you, what I did?”

  “Yes. It might have troubled me still more, but I was in pretty bad shape.”

  She said nothing and he looked up at her again.

  “Are you telling the truth?” he asked.

  She nodded. “That’s why I’m here. I had to let you know, you see? Back there, I could say nothing. I could think of no other way to startle you into thinking of me, so I took the quickest one that came to mind, the—”

  “Never mind,” he said. “Quit trying to explain. I understand.”

  “I
’m glad.”

  She had not moved. She was so damned serious. He didn’t know what to make of her, except that he liked her immensely. He couldn’t help liking everything he had seen of her.

  “I followed Gorssmann, the pig,” she said. “And Arnold. And when they went out, I came in, you see? I had to find a back way, through the alley. I came upstairs the back way, and here to your room. But you were in the shower. I—”

  “How did you know I was in the shower?”

  She blushed slightly. “I peeked,” she said. “Truly, that shower is not of much worth. Is it?”

  “This is the damnedest,” he said. “The very damnedest.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You are right.”

  “You know all about what I’m supposed to do?”

  “And more,” she said softly. “And still more.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are we friends?”

  He reached out, took her hand, and drew her toward him on the bed. She sat beside him, pulled one leg up under her, and leaned back against the foot of the bed. She laid her purse beside her and folded her hands in her lap.

  He wanted to believe her. He felt that he should. He felt she must be truthful. But in the back of his mind, how could he believe? He thought of something.

  “How is the girl Elene Cordon?” he said. He did not look her in the eye. He could not. It would give him away. She would know he knew something. “Do you get a chance to speak with her, Lili?”

  When she did not answer immediately, he looked at her.

  She was staring down at her folded hands. He watched her lips. They formed words several times, but she did not speak. Then finally she said, “The girl is dead, monsieur.”

  “Dead?” He knew the tone of his voice was not as it should be, and because of the quick look she cast him, he knew she suspected something. She would not know what.

  “Yes.”

  “How?” He tried now to put anxiousness, worry into his voice. But it wouldn’t work. He knew Elene was dead and he was not much of an actor. He was a very lousy liar. He had known this for some time. He wondered if Lili lied, and he found himself hoping strongly that she told the truth.

  “They said it was an accident, monsieur. I don’t know who did it. But”—she turned her gaze once again to her folded hands—”you can be sure it was no accident. Did she mean so much to you?”

  “She was a good woman.”

  “I suspected as much. I’m sorry, monsieur.”

  He said nothing.

  “You knew, didn’t you? You knew she was dead.”

  “How could I know?”

  She shrugged. “I can tell. You were not surprised. Did the pig tell you?”

  He shook his head. He wanted to avoid telling her anything much as yet. He wanted to take her into his confidence, but he was afraid to. If Gorssmann had sent her to keep tabs on him—which might easily be the case—he had to be wary.

  “Listen, monsieur,” she said. She leaned forward on the bed, unfolded her hands, and laid them palms down on the bed as she looked at him. Her eyes seemed to become even a darker blue and very intense. “I know what is in your mind. But you must trust me. You must!”

  He rose from the bed, walked over to the window. He turned and looked at her. She was still seated as he had left her, facing toward the head of the bed, where he’d been sitting.

  He began to perspire again. Gorssmann was smooth. Every angle known to smart operation was in his command, and Lili could be a top mark on the page.

  “I cannot escape them,” she said. “There is nothing I can do. I have nobody, monsieur. You are the first one I have believed I might be able to trust in a long, long while. This is why I come to you. Between us, we must do something. Gorssmann must be stopped.”

  He still said nothing. Lord, how he did want to believe her! Not only that; he felt a strong desire to take her in his arms, and hold onto her, to crush her. It was a desire that had lurked in the back of his mind ever since she had entered the room. There was something quietly sincere about her and he hated the barb of doubt that clung there inside him, reminding him to take no chances.

  “You work for Gorssmann?” he asked.

  “I have been forced to do certain things, the same as you are being forced. I know all about you, monsieur. They have talked of nothing else for months. I have seen pictures of you. I have read the papers of your life. I know all about you. I know where you have been, what you have been doing. And I know that I can trust you, monsieur. That is why I am here.” She looked across at him now and she seemed very small and lonely, seated there on the bed. He wanted to go over to her and tell her he understood and that they would work something out together. But he could not do this. The gnawing worm of doubt was there and he could not evade it.

  “You cannot bring yourself to believe in me, can you?”

  He turned his back, stared at the lowered shade over the window. He moved to the dresser, peered into the mirror. He could see her back, the thick mass of coal-black hair with the red highlights from the lamp, and the sag of her shoulders beneath the tan coat.

  “Just after the war,” she said, “Gorssmann contacted my father, who was a lens maker. He did something to him, I do not know what, and my father was forced to do something in turn. To work for him. My father nearly went mad, and my mother died of a stroke when she discovered that her husband was working with the enemy. The same enemy that had taken my brother and shot him, during the war. When I learned how serious it was, I told Gorssmann that I would do things for him, if he would only give my father freedom. Gorssmann lied. My father was very ill. He took me and trained me in various things. For instance, the painting of chinaware. It is a code, monsieur. An everyday code with which the agents in different cities and towns are kept posted on what is going on. What they are to do. It is extremely practicable. My father is in Austria now. I do not know where. Gorssmann insists that I stay with him, do what I have been doing, or my father will be put to death. It is very simple. I love my father. He is a fine man, but possibly as dead now as if he were buried. I think something must be done. I must make a sacrifice. But just leaving Gorssmann is no longer enough. Vengeance is not nice, but I must do something.” She paused, turned her head, and looked at him very intently. “Between us, perhaps something can be done.”

  “I want to believe you, Lili.”

  She turned, rose from the bed, walked across to him. She stood very close to him, her head tipped back, her sly smile and her serious eyes somehow more than appealing.

  “Also,” she said, “I have no man, monsieur. This is continually on my mind. I am frank with the other, I shall be frank about this.”

  He could feel himself weakening. He could do nothing about it. He thought even of Elene just then and of what she would think, and Elene would have said, “It is to laugh,” and he heard Lili speak again.

  “Did you hear me, monsieur? I feel as if I have known you for ever so long. I do not want just any man.”

  “You’re a very peculiar person, Lili.”

  “No,” she said. “I am simply honest, monsieur.”

  They were silent and she stood very close to him and he could sense her body and smell the perfume and her hair looked soft and rich and he wanted to sink his hands into it and grip it between his fingers; he wanted to crush her against him, and even with the thought, the desire, the want, he was doing just that. Her coat flared open and her body came against him, pressing close and tight and warm, and her lips opened almost wildly beneath his, damp and heating with the pressure. She trembled violently in his arms and he could not recall ever having kissed a woman’s lips that were so sweet and angry, and he had never held a woman so anxiously tortured with desire. She was like something untame, savage, in his arms. As though she were starved. Before his hands caressed her, her body caressed his hands as she came close against him, demanding, certain, frank not as Elene had been frank, but with a dangerously wild abandon that sent Baron plunging toward an understand
ing of her. She trembled and whispered frantically. Having seen her calm, he now realized her passion. He gripped her, wanting to hurt her, wanting with sudden bright anger to have her in hot forgetful endlessness.

  She thrust herself away from him, backed to the bottom rail of the bed, and leaned there, breathing rapidly, watching him.

  “I must go,” she said. “I am sorry. I should not have come so close, monsieur. I cannot stay, not now. They will be wondering and we must be careful.”

  “Lili, please—”

  “Yes. I know, but I cannot stay. Besides, you do not know if you believe in me as yet. Until you do, this would not be good. It would be good, but not perfect.”

  “Lili, that’s just a woman’s— You want to be honest, you say. You know that—”

  She smiled, then laughed outright. It was nice laughter. It was laughter that did not often occur and he recognized the fact that she laughed seldom.

  “They will want to know where I have been. I must go.” She turned and walked over to the door, then looked back at him. “Monsieur,” she said, “I will be the person that takes care of your daughter. I will let you know how she is. À bientôt!”

  She was gone, quickly, and the door closed. He stepped hurriedly across the room.

  “Lili! About Bette—”

  She turned in the hall, smiled at him. “Don’t worry, please. I will let you know.” Again she smiled, and strode off toward the rear of the house, the back stairs. He started out after her, then stopped in the shadowed darkness of the hall. For a time he stood there, listening, waiting, and becoming conscious of all he waited for and of how small his chances were.

  He returned to his room and stood for a long time staring down at the bed, thinking about Lili and what she had done and said. Then he lay down on the bed and consciously sought sleep. Somehow he missed sleep, though. It eluded him and he spent most of the night remembering Elene and how honest Lili had seemed. And in the back of his mind it gnawed and gnawed at him. Could he trust Lili? And he began to get Lili and Elene mixed up as he drew closer to sleep, until they merged and he slept.