77 Rue Paradis

by Gil Brewer

  “I’ll kill you,” Baron said.

  “Yes.”

  Baron rose carefully from the floor, looking at Joseph. The man still lay there, twisting and groveling like some kind of animal, his mouth wide open screeching and screaming horrible silence. Blood trickled down his pants cuff and onto the floor, and as he moved about, it trailed in a bright stain on the flagstones, as a snail leaves a trail.

  Baron pointed to Joseph. “Tell him not to try anything. That if he does, I will kill him.”

  Arnold talked quickly to Joseph, above his face, with his hands. Joseph watched the hands and answered. Arnold turned to Baron.

  “He says to go ahead, to kill him. He asks it, please. He cannot stand pain. He is of the type that cannot bear pain, any pain.”

  Baron stepped up to Arnold and slashed the gun across the man’s face as hard as he dared. He was worked up inside, coming closer and closer to a crazed pitch of wild hate, and this helped.

  “You see,” Baron said, following Arnold as the man stepped back, holding his face. “I know you. I have watched you carefully and I know you don’t want your face smashed. Well, I am going to smash your face,” he said slowly. He followed the cringing Arnold. “I am going to break your nose and your teeth. With this!” He held up the gun, never ceasing the prowl after Arnold.

  “Please, no! God—mercy, mercy!”

  “I will do this, then—unless you quickly tell me exactly where Gorssmann went, and where the meeting is to take place.”

  Arnold’s voice was steady. He looked straight at Baron. “He would kill me.”

  “All right. As you choose.”

  “I will tell you. He takes a motor launch from the Vieux Port to the Château d’If. You know of this place?”

  “Yes, yes. Tell me.”

  “God save me.” Arnold looked across the floor toward Joseph. Baron followed his gaze. Joseph was lying peacefully on the floor, staring at the ceiling. There was a large puddle of blood pooling around Joseph’s foot.

  “Well?”

  “On the other side of the island, he meets a ship—a yacht, that is. The Esmeralda. This is the name of the yacht.”

  “And the name of Gorssmann’s boat?”

  “I cannot.” Arnold moved past Baron and went over to the settee. He sat down quietly and stared at the floor. He did not move. Then he looked up at Baron and his mouth opened. It closed. He looked at Joseph and he said, “The Sea Grape.” He put his head down in his hands and rocked himself back and forth.

  “When?”

  “At ten.”

  “Precisely?”

  “Oui.”

  “You do not lie?”

  He rocked and rocked and rocked and said nothing. Baron went over and stood in front of him. He touched the muzzle of the gun to Arnold’s head. Arnold flung his head back as though he’d been shot, his eyes horrified.

  “If you lie, you know, things can happen. I am very mad,” Baron said. “I am mad enough to kill without worrying at all, you know?”

  “I do not lie,” Arnold said. He let his head down into his hands again. “But it does not matter. It no longer matters.”

  “Is Gorssmann’s boat a big boat?”

  “He is hiring it, renting it. No, not so large. Large enough—large enough to go to Italy.” He rocked and rocked and rocked. There was no sound at all in the room.

  Baron went over to the phone and finally managed to get through to the café. He expected the woman to answer. Instead, he recognized Louis Follet’s voice over the crackling wire.

  “This is Baron,” he said. He talked rapidly, told him everything to date, and where the meeting was to take place, and when.

  “You expect me to believe this?” Follet said.

  Baron said nothing.

  “You recall how the last turned out?”

  “You know the papers are stolen? I have made the delivery to Gorssmann!”

  “Chevard has put in the alarm, yes. All right, I will try.”

  Baron hung up and looked at Arnold.

  “Take care of Joseph,” he said. “Try to stop the bleeding.”

  Arnold looked up at him from where he sat on the settee.

  “He would not have come back, anyway. He would have gone on with everything,” Arnold said. “Tell me that is so, monsieur.”

  “He would not have come back,” Baron said. He looked at the two of them, the one on the floor and the other one on the settee. Then he went on outside. The Fiat was still there. He saw no other car. It was very dark and the wind from the sea was a dead wind. It barely moved and it was sick and slow and moist. He looked up at the sky and saw the stars burning in the black ceiling, but they gave no light.

  He returned to the house. He did not want to do what he had to do. He entered and walked across the large living room. Arnold and Joseph were as he had left them. He went up the stairs and went through the rooms and he found where Bette had been. For a moment he sat on the bed in the room where she had been, seeing her clothes, and he wondered that he was able to feel anything at all. He searched the entire house, then, but Bette was not there.

  He went on outside and looked back toward the house. One light was lit in the big living room. He supposed he should have done something for Joseph. He did not have time. He supposed he should have tied them up. He knew somehow that they would remain there, that they would do nothing.

  Somehow he knew that they would stay right there and wait. And wait….

  CHAPTER 21

  He found the Sea Grape down the quay. But he saw Gorssmann first. He parked the car and moved over onto the side of the quay. Gorssmann was pacing up and down beside a large launch, perhaps a fifty-footer, with a long deck cabin. As Baron looked, a man stepped from the launch to the quay and brandished his arms at Gorssmann. Gorssmann said something loudly, and his voice carried on up the quay.

  All he knew was that he had to get aboard the boat. He saw only one way, and decided to use it. Several rowboats were moored close to the side of the quay where he stood. There were no oars in them, but he did not need oars.

  He let himself down into one of the boats, released the mooring rope from the huge iron ring fastened to the quay, pulled himself out beside another boat, then slowly turned his boat and began working it down the quay in the slow, dark, still waters of the harbor.

  He came in against the side of the quay and dragged his hands along the old pilings, working the boat slowly and softly. There was no wake at all in the water that he could see and he was in deep shadow. As he reached other boats, he worked his way around them.

  If the launch Gorssmann had hired left before he reached it, he did not know what he would do. He worked in a kind of frantic vacuum now, not allowing himself to think very far beyond the present, yet holding the future there in the back of his mind as a kind of promise.

  The big boy. The head man.

  This was the promise. And after that—Gorssmann. He wondered, as he pulled himself along, whether or not Follet would manage to come. He told himself that certainly the man could not afford not to come. But he could not be sure. Follet was peculiar.

  Bette was dead. He was certain of this now. Bette and Lili too, probably. The whole thing was shot to hell. Chevard knew by now, knew of the whole sordid mess, and he wondered vaguely what Chevard thought of him. It no longer mattered. Nothing mattered save that he somehow be on hand when Gorssmann made the delivery of the papers out there on the sea.

  He was nearly there now and he could hear Gorssmann talking with another man.

  “One engine, two—who cares how many engines?” Gorssmann said. “I have hired this boat. Listen, we must go now. You hear, now!”

  “Very well, monsieur. But the other engine, it works not well. It works not at all.”

  “You have one engine?”

  “Ah, oui.”

  “Then let us go.”

  They were standing on the quayside, talking. Baron gave the rowboat a hell of a push, thrusting it away from the quay and u
nder the bow of the launch. It was a big boat, all right. A beauty, though the paint was flaking. Gorssmann’s back was turned to him and the tide was low. Neither of the two saw him. He remained in shadow and the rowboat slowly slipped beyond the launch’s bow. It kept right on going, toward the middle of the harbor.

  Instantly he was frantic. Panic had him and he swung wildly in the boat, trying desperately to grasp something on the launch. He did not succeed. The rowboat bumped solidly against something, commenced to turn very slowly around, and bumped again and yet again.

  It was a buoy. Baron felt for it in the darkness, caught it, his hand grasping slime and sharp barnacles. He held on tightly, cursing under his breath, trying to see what they were doing back at the launch. The two of them still stood out there on the quay, talking.

  He felt the buoy anchor. He pulled on it with all his strength, and the rowboat swung and drifted toward the hull of the launch again.

  He came in amidships and caught the launch with both hands, holding the rowboat from slamming against it. His heart rocked and his mouth tasted brassy. The launch rose, lifting high with his slight weight. He felt the rowboat back away from him. He reached, clawing up the side of the launch. The rowboat continued to slip faster back into the water as he desperately tried to find a hold, any hold at all. He was a bridge now, with the water below him. If he slipped now, all would be gone, and the toes of his shoes clung to the side of the rowboat and he felt the ship’s rail.

  He grabbed it, swung his feet to the side of the launch. The rowboat splashed, gurgled, and slued around. They stopped arguing there on the quay.

  He waited, hanging dismally to the rail, his feet dragging in the black water. There was the strong, biting odor of dead fish and garbage and creosote and somewhere cognac. It hung in the air like a cloud.

  They began to talk again.

  “We will go,” the one man said.

  “Good,” Gorssmann said.

  “Double the money, for certain,” the man said.

  “For certain,” Gorssmann said. “Double the money.” Then he said in English. “You conniving bastard, you! You have stalled the other engine, to hold me up for more money.”

  “What is this?” the man said.

  “It is nothing. I was saying a prayer,” Gorssmann said.

  They came aboard. Baron swung himself up over the rail, lay on the deck. Beside the deck cabin, on the deck, was a dinghy. It was tied down. He rocked it up on its side and looked beneath. It seemed all right. He crawled in there and lay panting, wishing his feet weren’t wet.

  He lay there and thought about Bette and of how he had failed her. He had failed everybody so far, including himself. There wasn’t much left to fail at now. There was something, though, and it was all he had left. He wondered in a kind of daze whether or not he would fail at this. He lay on his back and stared into the blackness.

  Underneath the dinghy, he could see out onto the harbor and far up the harbor toward the town. The lights of the Cannebière and the specks of people walking up there by the cafés. The women and the men and the both of them together. There were still some fish stalls left out there on the sidewalks in front of the shops and the cafés along the harbor.

  He saw a sailor wrestling with a girl against the side of a brick wall, a café wall. He was wrestling the hell out of her. But she was a wise girl and wanted her price first, apparently. She brought her knee up quickly and the sailor stepped back, doubled over, his cry reaching down the harbor in a string of obscene cursing, and the girl ran, and Baron heard and felt the engine turn over, catch, and burst loudly across the harbor.

  The sailor turned, still bent over, still in pain, still cursing, and looked to see what the hell kind of boat was making all the racket at night.

  And watching so, not thinking about anything, because the nerve exhaustion was too great, Baron felt the rocking and looked and his nose was not three inches from Gorssmann’s feet. The feet were planted well apart, just on the deck beside the dinghy.

  Something crawled over Baron’s hand. He did not move. It stopped on the back of his hand and preened itself. He wondered what it was. It took great care with the preening, and he watched Gorssmann’s feet, hoping it was only a beetle.

  Finally whatever it was started off his hand, then decided to have a look around. It paused, came up to the wrist, and must have taken a good look up the long dark tunnel of his sleeve.

  The man down in the boat someplace shouted something.

  “What?” Gorssmann said.

  The man cursed.

  Gorssmann muttered something and rocked from one foot to the other. Then he stood quietly again and the engine of the launch wound up and the launch took headway, away from the quay. Baron felt the throbbing and the movement of the launch on the water and he stared out under the dinghy at Gorssmann’s feet, thinking, I could pitch him over. He would sink. No, he would float. He would float out and meet the Esmeralda. He wouldn’t even get the papers wet. He wondered if Gorssmann carried the papers.

  Whatever it was on his hand wandered on up his sleeve clear to the elbow. He tried to squash it against the deck by pressing his elbow. It wouldn’t work. The thing got out of the way fast, and went on up to the shoulder and down by the collarbone, exploring slowly and preening.

  Baron itched horribly. But he could not scratch. The thing wandered down onto his chest, making slow headway now because of the low ceiling, then it suddenly was gone and he knew it had somehow gone out the front of his shirt. The relief was so enormous he nearly shook.

  He waited patiently, perspiring, expecting whatever it was to crawl into his ear. But nothing happened and Gorssmann did not move, either.

  Baron lay there, thinking about it, about everything. He could not move and he dared not try to sleep, although sleep would have been good. Bette is dead, he told himself. I hope she is dead, because…. But I do not hope she is dead. But she is, he told himself. And Lili? She is dead too. If she is in Belgium. That story was weak in the knees. It was a rotten one, all right. She is not in Belgium, unless that canal where they found Elene is called Belgium.

  He lay there imagining Lili lying half in and half out of the water of the canal, on the bank, on the abrupt fall of the bank where her face gleamed in the moonlight with her throat…. You’ve got to stop, he thought. Because you can’t take any more of this, because you’re done, you’re finished.

  Not yet, he thought. Not by a long damned bloody shot.

  Why did he have to go and love her? Why was it that such a thing had to happen? Why couldn’t she just have been another one in the bed? She wasn’t, though. And he guessed somehow now that he could trust her. Place the trust after the thing you trust has vanished, he thought.

  He looked and as he looked Gorssmann’s feet moved. The launch was moving swiftly out of the harbor now. The lights were dimming and he saw the bridge over the water and they were fast leaving everything behind.

  He lay there quietly blinking into the darkness of the overturned dinghy.

  They don’t have to tell me, he thought. She’s dead and that’s all there is to it. It’s a good thing that I understand about that, anyway. That when it’s done, it’s done. He rolled over under the dinghy, then rolled back because there wasn’t room enough, and he lay there and, looking out now, he could see nothing. God, she did have wonderful hair, soft and black, like this night. And did she love him, wherever she was?

  “We are here,” the man said. “This is it.”

  “All right,” Gorssmann said. “Good.”

  “What shall I do now?”

  “Don’t do anything.”

  The man was exasperated, plainly. He thought it was a fool’s errand, coming out here at night, and aside from that, he was extremely suspicious of Gorssmann. He did not like Gorssmann.

  “Anchor the launch,” Gorssmann said.

  “The depth is great.”

  “I don’t care about the depth.”

  “Monsieur, must we just sit here?
”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  “We sit,” Gorssmann said. “Please, with the anchor.”

  The man cursed.

  “What?”

  “I was praying,” the man said.

  * * * *

  He heard the sound of the other engine coming close. He heard it through the converging blackness underneath the dinghy and he knew that this would be the Esmeralda.

  It seemed hours and hours ago that the anchor had splashed into the sea. The launch rocked and Baron twice had been able to make out the dark thrusting outline of the Château d’If, and he had lain there going over the story of the wily Count of Monte Cristo.

  “Merde,” the man said.

  “Look, a ship,” Gorssmann said, and the excitement was in his voice and Baron wished he could see. He heard the yacht coming closer to them.

  “Flash a light,” Gorssmann said. “The flashlight.”

  “Here.”

  “Merci. It doesn’t work!” Gorssmann’s voice was edged with fear.

  “The button, push the but— There! See how it lights?”

  “Out of the way, thanks.”

  The man cursed. Baron saw the light flash out on the water. A spotlight splashed brightly from some distance, and dashed him coldly in the face under the dinghy. He instinctively shrank back, though he knew no one could see him under here.

  The yacht came in close and Baron saw her sides and the ports yellow out there.

  “Hello,” Gorssmann called.

  Somebody shouted something.

  “A boat?”

  “No, fasten to the side,” Gorssmann said. “I can’t—” He stopped, then said softly, “How could I get into a boat?”

  “We can’t hook on,” somebody said from the other boat. “It would make things very bad.”

  “All right,” Gorssmann said. “What shall I do?” he asked the captain of the launch.

  “My boat leaks,” he said, apparently referring to the dinghy.

  “You’ll have to come over here,” Gorssmann said.

  “Is it ready?” somebody said.

  “Certainly.”