77 Rue Paradis

by Gil Brewer

  Baron just stared at her.

  “All right,” he said. He whirled around, all the way around, then faced her again. It would be easy to walk out. He could not do it. He had thought for an instant that he would be able to leave it this way, let them soak in their own stinking broth, let them lose everything. He could not do it.

  “Just get word to him. Will you try to do that much?”

  “Yes, but as I tell you….”

  “Never mind that. Tell him to wait. Tell him things are under way. Tell him that I am going to do everything I can, that— Oh, hell!”

  “I understand,” she said. Her face became abruptly kind, serious. “I do understand, believe me.” She stopped speaking French and spoke perfect English. “I have been through these things, Mr. Baron. I know about them. I promise to do all I can to persuade Louis Follet.”

  “Thanks.” He reached out and took her hand. She smiled at him.

  Then she shrugged. “But Louis is stubborn. He thinks you did a wrong thing.”

  Baron nodded. He could think of nothing else to say. He left, running across the sidewalk to the Fiat.

  Damn Louis Follet, he thought. Damn them one and all, singly and together Damn them.

  * * * *

  Hugo Gorssmann stood on the porch of the sprawling stone house on the Corniche. As Baron turned the Fiat’s engine off, he glanced up toward Gorssmann. The big man was nearly dancing up there, rocking back and forth, from one leg to the other. He reminded Baron exactly of an elephant dancing at a circus.

  “Success?” Gorssmann called carefully from the porch.

  Baron said nothing. He climbed from the car, walked toward the porch. Gorssmann wore a light tan suit and it looked spanking new. He also wore a large-brimmed felt hat of pale gray and it looked fine and rich in the midmorning sunshine. He could hardly wait for Baron to reach him. He had his hands stretched out, waiting, his tongue batting his lips.

  “Baron—Baron, did you—”

  Baron clipped up the steps, stared at Gorssmann.

  “Baron!”

  He walked on past the huge man, into the house, on into the sprawling living room. He stood over by the fireplace and waited.

  Gorssmann came slowly into the room. He paused by the door, looked bright, then sad. He was afraid to ask anything now. He moved across the room, moving effortlessly, it seemed, like a battleship coming into dock.

  Abruptly he turned his gaze to the floor.

  “You have failed,” he said quietly. “Something went wrong.” He looked at Baron, then suddenly tears sprang into his eyes. His shoulders shook, his chins shook. He folded his hands in front of him, as if he were praying, took a single step forward, and stood like that, his face thrust slightly forward, tears streaming from his eyes. He wrung his hands, weeping, his lips curling like a baby’s, curling down with his chin puckering. It was a sight.

  “Take it easy,” Baron said.

  “Oh, Baron!” he cried. “Baron, Baron, Baron!”

  “You poor son-of-a-bitch,” Baron said. He was awed. He could say nothing else, do nothing.

  Gorssmann trembled and tried to prevent his chin from puckering. With all his might he tried. Nothing seemed to help.

  Baron reached inside his shirt, wrenched it around, came up with the papers. The envelope was soggy. He stripped it off like damp, rotten cloth, let it drop to the floor. Then he banged the sheaf of papers and blueprints against his other hand.

  “Here they are,” he said.

  Gorssmann said, “Oh, Lord!”

  “Arnold!” Gorssmann called. “Arnold!”

  “You want to know something?” Baron said. He backed away until he was pressed against the fireplace. Gorssmann kept coming, lumbering, wiping his eyes dry, smiling now. “You make me sick.”

  “Give them to me,” Gorssmann said. He had changed again.

  “Stay away from me,” Baron said. “I’m warning you.”

  “What is it?” Arnold said, coming across the room. Joseph followed behind Arnold. They both saw the way Gorssmann was acting and saw the papers in Baron’s hands. Arnold made a happy sound. Joseph just kept coming.

  Baron drew the gun and pointed it at Gorssmann. “Stay right there. All of you,” he said.

  Gorssmann stopped. He observed the gun closely, then nodded. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Tell us about it, Baron.”

  “All of you sit down,” Baron said.

  Gorssmann looked at Arnold and Joseph. Joseph stopped walking and looked at Arnold. Arnold made a sign. They all went and sat down, Gorssmann in a chair and the two men on a wooden settee.

  Baron relaxed.

  “Please,” Gorssmann said. “Put the gun away, Baron. I was excited, nervous. Have you not been this way? A great deal depends on this. Excuse it, please. Now, the gun—I do not like seeing the gun, thanks.”

  Baron thought about it, put the gun back in his pocket.

  Everybody was very still. There wasn’t a sound. Then coming through it, spearing it, was Gorssmann’s breathing. It was angry breathing, mad breathing, and Baron looked into the man’s eyes and he saw the evil there.

  “Where is Bette?” he said.

  “Bette?” Gorssmann looked at him. He folded his hands in what lap he had and looked quietly, almost sadly, at Baron.

  “When I see Bette, you get these papers,” Baron said.

  Gorssmann waved his hand. “Come, come, now,” he said. “Such a bargain, Baron. Is that any way to talk to me? How do I know what papers you have there? They could be any sort of papers. I have to see them.”

  “You’ll see them. When I see Bette.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t come to terms this way. Bette is, I assure you, Baron, in perfectly excellent hands. Lili’s, to be exact. You certainly can trust Lili, can’t you?”

  “I don’t know, frankly.”

  Gorssmann did not even smile.

  “But I do know this: Until I see Bette in this room, you don’t see these papers.” He stood there by the fireplace. To the right of him, on the settee, Arnold watched him, his face quite sober. Joseph stared straight ahead.

  “I mean it,” Baron said. He stepped forward and looked down at Gorssmann. He was trembling and he could not help it. He felt like kicking Gorssmann in his fat face. He did not like the man’s composure.

  Gorssmann seemed to be debating about something. He looked up at Baron, then down at his feet. He unfolded his hands, then folded them again.

  “All right,” he said, shrugging. “Arnold.” He nodded his head, waved his hand toward the rear of the room and the stairway, leading up to the balcony.

  “Are you sure?” Arnold said. He rose from the settee, looked at Baron with slow amazement, then at Gorssmann.

  “Go—hurry!” Gorssmann snapped.

  Arnold frowned, walked on across the room. Baron watched him go, watched him start up the stairs. His heart beat and beat inside his chest, he could feel it beating, feel the push of blood and the heat of it in his neck and shoulders.

  He heard Gorssmann’s chuckle. At the same instant he felt the arms come down around him. He fought with crazed frenzy, knowing the arms were Joseph’s, that he had been tricked. At the same time, he told himself he had to hang onto those papers. He kicked and cursed Gorssmann, trying with all his strength to get loose from Joseph.

  Gorssmann nodded at Joseph. Baron was released. He sensed it, then felt it. A harsh, smashing blow caught him across the back of the neck. He flew sprawling past Hugo Gorssmann’s chair into abrupt darkness.

  “He moved. Arnold, simply hold a gun on him. He knows there’s nothing he can do. Ah, yes—these are the papers we wanted!”

  Baron looked up from where he lay on the floor. His head throbbed dully, and when he moved his head, his neck hurt. Otherwise, he was the same as before. Joseph stood a little way from him, watching him. Arnold sat on the settee with a gun resting on his knee. Gorssmann was thumbing through the sheaf of papers and the blueprints.

  “You know, Baron,” Gorssm
ann said, “I just thought of something. It would take some daring, of course. And I won’t do it now, because I’ll have enough money from this to tide me over for some time. But the thought did occur. To me, that is.” He peered down at Baron, and strummed the papers across his enormous belly. “I could have perfect facsimiles made of these papers. Then I could sell them to different persons I know of all at the same time.”

  Baron said nothing. He knelt, then stood, rubbing the back of his neck. He stared at Arnold, looked around the room. There was no sign of Bette. He went dead inside.

  “Where is she?” he said. He sprang toward Gorssmann.

  Joseph stepped in, grabbed his arm.

  Gorssmann shook his head at Baron. He took his hat off, laid it on the chair, began waddling slowly up and down the room with the sheaf of papers in his hand. As Baron watched, Gorssmann seemed to expand in girth, if that was possible.

  “Where is she?” Baron shouted. He cursed Gorssmann. He shouted curses at the man, feeling the futility of it deep inside him. Gorssmann did not even bother to look at him. “Tell me, damn you! Tell me! Where is my daughter?”

  “Please,” Gorssmann said. “Relax, Baron. I always hold to my bargains. Believe me, yes. Always, thanks.”

  He tried to get hold of himself and his voice leveled out. “All right,” he said. “Tell me where Bette is!”

  Gorssmann did not answer.

  The big man moved across the room to an empty bookcase beside the fireplace. There was a phone on one of the shelves. He looked across at Baron, grinned, and began a phone call that endured in a steady muttering from that corner of the room for over an hour.

  Baron went through all the hell possible during this time, or thought he did. Arnold did not once move from the settee, and Baron lifted Gorssmann’s hat, dropped it to the floor, and sat down. Joseph came across the room and sat in the chair opposite Baron. They looked at each other and waited while Gorssmann muttered and mumbled and argued over the phone.

  He was trying to settle some dispute.

  Baron began to know then what those papers meant to these men. To Gorssmann in particular, but also to Arnold, and very likely to Joseph. He could not tell what kind of man Joseph was. There was really no telling. The deaf-mute’s immobile features gave no inkling of what went on in his head. He hardly ever looked at anybody, only seemed to wait and stare solemnly into space.

  Baron tried to force his mind away from the one fact that drove him close to insanity during this time. If they would not produce Bette now, then it must be that they could not produce her.

  He refused absolutely to admit that she was dead. They could not do such a thing. And Lili? He slumped in the chair, listening to the interminable, indistinguishable mutter of Gorssmann’s voice at the phone, trying in his mind to find some solution to the way these men acted.

  He refused the obvious.

  Finally Gorssmann hung up, returned to the center of the room, then came over and stood in front of Arnold. Baron knew better now than to try anything. It was hopeless. He did not want to admit this hopelessness, but it was there.

  “It’s all settled,” Gorssmann said. “I had a time, but it is settled. Their radios were not in perfect order—something. Anyway, we have little to worry about now.”

  Arnold gave a big sigh, relaxed on the settee. “I was worried, to tell the truth,” he said. “The man is unpredictable.”

  “I know,” Gorssmann said. “A truly bad man to deal with.”

  “You’re certain?”

  Gorssmann shrugged, paced back and forth between the settee and the fireplace. “As certain as it’s possible to be. Of course, we must allow for the chance.”

  Arnold stared at Gorssmann’s feet.

  “Come, come!” Gorssmann said. “Think optimistically. Be like our good friend Baron.” He glanced at Baron, frowned. “What? You are no longer so optimistic, Baron?”

  Baron said nothing.

  “Hugo,” Arnold said. “How much longer? This waiting kills me, it tears the heart out of me.”

  Gorssmann drew out his watch, glanced at it, put it away. It was a fat silver watch without a chain, carried in his vest pocket. It had a silver chain fob, very short.

  “We can’t do a thing until dark. Until at least seven.” He cleared his throat. “Of course, I will go before then. Just before dark, that is.”

  “You.”

  Gorssmann nodded.

  “Alone?”

  Again Gorssmann nodded, paying no attention, it seemed.

  “I might have known,” Arnold said. He was wearing a neat blue suit, light colored, and a yellow tie. His hair was very smooth and slick and dark. He seemed to turn into himself, sadly, forlornly.

  “What?”

  “What about me and Joseph?”

  “You will wait here—with him.” He pointed at Baron and Baron saw the man’s eyes and knew the only way Gorssmann would ever be any good was dead.

  “I see.”

  “Listen, you fool!” Gorssmann snapped. “I have never let you down, have I? Do you think I am such a fool as to run out on you now, to try to? You ass—you unspeakable fool! Don’t you know I could never rest if I did? Don’t you know how— Listen. I will go and I will come back and we will have the money. I guarantee it.”

  “All right, Hugo.”

  “Yes. I planned this, and I planned it well. Things must progress in an orderly manner from start to finish.”

  Things progressed very slowly. The afternoon passed in this manner and Baron realized that he walked a narrow ledge. He did not once move from the chair.

  Joseph remained perfectly calm, only taking an occasional stroll around the room. Arnold had fits of bad depression, and held long arguments with Gorssmann that Gorssmann always won, one way or another.

  “Listen, Arnold,” he said at last. “Understand me. It is getting later and I must depend on you. I must return here. You must trust me.”

  “Where is Lili?” Baron said finally. It was the first time he had spoken in hours. Gorssmann had begun to show nerves now and his head snapped around at Baron.

  “Kindly shut up,” he said.

  Baron did shut up. There was nothing to say, nothing he could do.

  By the time dusk fingered the windows, Gorssmann was in a bad state. He had placed the papers in a brief case, and he marched up and down the room with it, taking long swinging strides.

  “I am going,” he announced at last.

  Arnold came off the settee, running. He ran across the room and stood before Gorssmann.

  “You won’t come back!” he screamed. “I know you. You will leave us here and we will sit with that person all night and all tomorrow and you will never come.”

  Gorssmann swung the brief case hard. It caught Arnold across the side of the head with a loud splat, sent him spinning over against the wall with the gun dangling from his arm.

  “You are a fool,” Gorssmann said slowly. “An utter fool!”

  Joseph had not moved in his chair. He turned then and glanced toward Arnold. Their eyes met and Joseph nodded. Baron began to feel more ill than before. He had been thinking of Louis Follet. He knew now that Follet would not have waited at the café, even if he had ever come.

  For fifteen minutes they sat there after Gorssmann left. Then Arnold rose and began to pace the floor with the gun in his hand. Occasionally he stood before Joseph and talked to him with the quick gestures of sign language. Whatever it was Joseph said, it seemed to frighten Arnold.

  Baron knew that if he expected ever to do anything, it had to be with these two men and it had to be right away.

  “He’s not coming back, you know,” he said to Arnold.

  “Quiet,” Arnold said. “Don’t talk that way.”

  Baron shrugged.

  And sitting there like that, he summoned the ‘last of his strength and courage in an effort to think it out clearly, and face the issue the way it stood. He was certain now that Bette was not here. He could never admit to himself that
she was dead. Why didn’t they kill him?

  Somehow he had to get away. Right now Gorssmann was starting out to meet the head man, the same man Baron had been after all these years. But where? It was like a solemn voice inside his head threatening dark laughter.

  “It’s true,” he said to Arnold. Arnold turned and came over and stood in front of him with the gun in his hand.

  “What is true?” Arnold said.

  “I’m not trying to frighten you,” Baron said. “But Hugo Gorssmann is not coming back. Can’t you see that? Why should he return here? It is foolish and you are a fool, just as Gorssmann said. Where is Lili?”

  “She is gone. She has gone to Belgium. Hugo sent her on an errand.”

  A piece of Baron chipped away. He swallowed, forcing a grin. “How do you know this is true?”

  “Because!” Arnold cried. “It has to be true.”

  “Sure. Where is my daughter, Bette? She was here, wasn’t she?”

  Arnold looked at him and said nothing. The wheels were beginning to turn around inside his head, faster and faster. Baron could see this easily. He wished he could get his hands on that gun. Arnold carried it very loosely, carelessly. Joseph was preoccupied with some inner conflict. The man’s face twisted this way and that way and his gaze was glued to the ceiling.

  “One thing,” Arnold said. “You can forget your daughter.”

  He turned swiftly away, went over to Joseph, and began waving his hands again. He set the gun on a table by Joseph’s chair as he talked with the man.

  Baron came out of the chair running. He struck Arnold across the back, reached for the gun, got it in his hand. Joseph was already lunging at him. Baron moved backward, tripped, sat down on the floor.

  He took careful aim and pulled the trigger of the gun three times. He saw the slug tear into Joseph’s right knee. He saw the shock on the man’s face, the abrupt demolishment of satisfaction and orderliness, and Joseph sprawled on the floor. He clutched at his knee, felt of it, lay back and rolled and twisted on the floor with his mouth wide open, his tongue working in wild, silent screaming.

  “Don’t move!” Baron said to Arnold.

  Arnold did not move. He stood quite still, watching. His eyes were very bright, intense, his face deadly pale.