At the Sudden Death Café

by Jerome Charyn

  His father’s trunk was as littered as the rue de l’Écuyer. Holden recognized a silk tie he had brought back from London for his dad, a fine cotton shirt gone yellow with age, a silk scarf, handkerchiefs that had lost their suppleness and sat like stiff little mountains in the trunk, and a scrapbook with the softest leather cover in the world.

  It startled Holden that his dad, always such a careful man, would want to document his own past. Here was a goddamn treasure trove; photos in color and black-and-white, photos that went back fifty years—more than fifty, if Holden could still use his bumper’s intuition.

  One such photo ripped his heart: his father in a military cop’s helmet, with a woman under his arm and a smile on his face that Holden had never seen before. Holden Sr. made it a policy never to smile. The woman had to be Nicole. Here Holden was, practically the age of a grandpa, and peeking at his own mother for the first time. She was a beauty, with dark hair and a sultriness that reminded him of Maria Montez, his father’s favorite actress, who flourished during World War II and died of a heart attack in her own bathtub at thirty-nine. Now he understood why Holden Sr. had mourned the actress so hard—Maria Montez must have reminded him of Nicole.

  Ah, his father had been cautious, after all. There was only that one photo of Nicole, that touch of sentiment in an unsentimental man. But Holden recognized someone else in another photo of the era—Jonathan Raab as a much younger man, with his bird’s beak and big ears. Raab must have belonged to the same gang of plunderers that had employed Holden Sr. and helped murder Nicole.

  There wasn’t a single photo of father and son, nothing of Holden Sr.’s life at Aladdin, nothing of Manhattan or Queens. But there was a small fortune devoted to Brussels: snapshots of the Métropole, with its plush green on green carpets, like a pale indoor forest; a snapshot of Holden Sr. in the Métropole’s basement breakfast room with a teenaged girl in blond braids—Holden wasn’t blind. This blond bitch was Louiza Boogarden. And on the back were scribbled two words: La Môme.

  9

  More memorabilia was in the trunk: tickets to exhibitions (Holden Sr. never went to a theater or museum in Manhattan), a little stained card advertising a café on the rue des Chartreux called the Greenwich, a soiled napkin from some supper club called the Léopold on the avenue Louise, or Louizalaan, as it was known in Flemish. Louizalaan, Holden muttered to himself, as if he were falling into a fairy tale.

  Suddenly, he felt like a bumper again, trying to solve his own mystery in his father’s secret town. He walked out of the Métropole, went down the boulevard Anspach, turned left at the Bourse, away from the Grand-Place, and arrived at the Greenwich. It was a little art nouveau palace on the ground floor, filled with chess players and their little circle of admirers. Holden had never seen so many chessboards in a single café. The Greenwich had an enormous cash register on display from some earlier golden age when customers drank coffee and beer without clutching a panoply of knights and pawns.

  Holden looked at himself in one of the Greenwich’s tiny mirrors: there was nothing of Holden Sr.’s smile on his face. Coffee here came with speculoos, and Holden decided on the spot that this was the best café in town. He’d brought the snapshot of Holden Sr. with Louiza and showed it to a waiter, who immediately summoned the night manager. And this night manager, a very fat man, began to shout at Holden in a variety of languages.

  “Mister, drink your coffee and go. We do not serve criminals at the Greenwich.”

  “What criminal?” Holden had to ask. “That guy in the photo is my father.”

  “Not him,” said the manager. “It’s the girl—La Môme. We have barred her from this café. She kills people for a living. You must get out, or we call the police.”

  A chess player arrived from the next table, calmed the manager, sent him away, and winked to Holden.

  “Arno is foolish, but you must forgive him. You see, La Môme—Louiza—practically lived here until she took advantage of our hospitality. She got into a fight with one of our kibitzers and knocked him senseless. He was in the hospital for six weeks.”

  “But I have to find her. It’s life or death.” And Holden took out the soiled napkin from that supper club on Louizalaan. “The Léopold, is that her new watering hole?”

  The chess player laughed. “The Léopold has undergone many face-lifts. I think it’s the Black Tower in its most current incarnation. I could call a cab, but you should try the tram. It is our greatest wonder in Brussels, like riding on the back of a bull’s tail. You won’t be disappointed.”

  And for the third time, Holden wasn’t permitted to pay for his food or drinks.

  10

  It was the ride of his life, on a trolley car that was both copper and gray, and looked like an armored beetle. At first, Holden was grievously disappointed, as the tram traveled underground from station to station. Anneessens, Lemonnier, Midi . . .

  And then that copper beetle rose out of its tunnel with a lurch and Holden was like a child whisking through the crooked streets of a commune called Saint-Gilles. He passed broken storefronts, heaps of rotten wood, riding on the beetle’s back, its spine bending to each curve and rut in the road.

  Holden must have rubbed some magic lamp, because the streets transformed themselves in front of his eyes into a neighborhood of marvelous blue houses with apotheken—pharmacies—at every corner. But he couldn’t find what he wanted on the Louizalaan. The Black Tower was a deserted hulk.

  He hiked back to the center of town and climbed the little mountain that led to the Mort Subite. But this bumper’s paradise suddenly seemed out of bumpers, and Holden returned to the hotel. He tried to call Jonathan Raab, but the concierge insisted there was no such room at the Métropole as 727, and no porter named Gilles.

  The little empire of stoolies he’d once had could hardly serve him now. Stranded in Brussels without a single snitch, Holden could rely on nothing but his bumper’s intuition. And that intuition told him to stick near the maid’s closet on the sixth floor. But his old coordinates were gone. Nothing moved in or out of that closet in two days.

  He might have stayed there forever, ordering sandwiches from the hotel, if he hadn’t been overwhelmed by a sudden itch for waterzooi.

  Holden returned to his room, soaked in the tub for half an hour, and wearing his best white-on-white shirt, he entered that restaurant in the Galerie de la Reine and found Louiza Boogarden sitting at his banquette without her menagerie of bodyguards.

  “I’m speechless,” he said. “I go for a quiet dinner, and you’re sitting in my spot.”

  “You’re mistaken. This is my spot. But I’ll share it with you, Holden.”

  And he sat down next to Louiza.

  11

  Her perfume quickened his blood, and Holden worried that he might fall for this lady bumper with scars under her mouth. He was convinced that his father had also been in love with La Môme, that she had been his teenage trick once upon a time in Brussels. But she didn’t flirt with Holden, didn’t clasp his thigh under the table.

  They guzzled champagne, and Louiza had salmon steak rather than waterzooi. Then they shared a bowl of coffee ice cream.

  “That’s kind of intimate,” she said, “sucking ice cream from the same spoon.”

  “Did you do that with my dad?” Holden asked like a little boy.

  “All the time.”

  And he felt his old gloom descend upon him, sit like a scavenging bird on his shoulder. “My father was in love with you, wasn’t he?”

  She laughed, and the scars rippled on her chin. “Sure, I was his gosse.”

  “His brat, you mean. His môme.”

  The rippling stopped. “Don’t call me that,” she said.

  “Isn’t that what my father called you? La Môme.”

  “That was different. That was personal, private to us. Now people call me môme behind my back, like I was this monster who began bumping people right out of the cradle.”

  “But he kept a photo of you and him, and he n
ever kept photographs. . . . You were his trick, weren’t you? His Brussels trick.”

  Her hand was trembling. She took her empty champagne glass and pressed its rim against his forehead, stamping Holden with a little round mark.

  “Holden,” she whispered in his ear, “do you have any expectations of leaving this restaurant alive?”

  “I have no expectations, Louiza. Tell me the truth. My father had a whole other life, apart from me. He’s a chauffeur in Manhattan and Queens, wearing a chauffeur’s gloves. He comes to Brussels, and abracadabra, he’s the little king of the Métropole. Why else would he keep coming here, if not for you?”

  “I told you. I was his môme—he never took a meal in Brussels without me. But I wasn’t his heartthrob, Holden. He loved only one woman as far as I can tell. Nicole.”

  Now Holden’s hand was trembling. “She was my mom,” he said. “My father never even told me that she looked like Maria Montez. . . . Nicole died a little after I was born.”

  “Holden, she’s still alive.”

  12

  Luiza really was his father’s môme. She’d copied Holden Sr.’s most important precept: never move along a straight line when you can follow a crooked one. She and Holden changed taxis three times, then rode the trolley beside some forest in a commune called Forest. And she told him a tale that his father had never bothered to tell.

  It was circa 1947, and Holden Sr. was still a military cop. He and Nicole were living in a tiny village between Brussels and Calais. And she wanted him to leave the gang of plunderers that had turned him into a high-priced slave. But the gang got wind of Nicole’s scheme through a spy it had planted in the village. And the plunderers didn’t see any profit in killing her. They knocked the sense out of her, broke her head. Then they kidnapped Nicole, and that’s how they kept Holden Sr. on a leash for the rest of his life.

  “And Jonathan Raab was the mastermind, wasn’t he?”

  “One of the masterminds,” Louiza said. “And the last who’s still alive.”

  “Oh, the bloodsuckers,” Holden said, biting his own fist. “And they let my father see Nicole every six months or so.”

  Holden and Louiza had come to a nursing home at the edge of the forest, on Jupiterlaan. There were no armed guards. None of Raab’s cronies were around. The plunderers, or what was left of Raab’s little gang, could relax after Holden Sr. dropped dead.

  “Who’s paying for my mother’s upkeep?”

  “That old miser in the Métropole.”

  “Raab could have dumped her,” Holden said. “She has no practical value to him right now.”

  “But that’s not his style. He’s gotten used to this arrangement. Some banker in Berne probably writes a check every six months.”

  The nursing home had the proportions of a palace. And Nicole herself had a queen-size room with a practical nurse who was brushing the long strands of her silver hair. Holden didn’t see any signs of a broken head. He could barely believe it. His mother hadn’t aged at all. She was Maria Montez with strands of silver hair.

  “Are you the butcher’s boy?” she asked in English as melodious as his own.

  Holden started to cry.

  13

  Louiza brought him like a baby to that café on the mountain—Mort Subite. She felt Holden’s despair and didn’t take a roundabout route. A single cab carried them up Waterloolaan, through the Porte de Hal, and into the heart of Brussels.

  She fed him hot chocolate from a wineglass, because she liked how the chocolate bubbled in the glass, under the dim light of the Mort Subite. And she held Holden’s hand, while her menagerie of bodyguards stood behind her, out of earshot.

  “Louiza, my own mom didn’t even recognize me.”

  “Yes, she did,” Louiza had to insist. “Didn’t she call you the butcher’s boy? Well, Holden Sr. was the butcher. He brought her sweets.”

  “Did you visit Jupiterlaan with my dad?”

  “All the time.”

  “And what did Nicole call you?” Holden asked, his lips covered with chocolate.

  “The butcher’s girl.”

  “And she was the butcher’s wife, but she never knew it after that blow on the head. . . . I have to kill that miser Raab in his hotel. Can you find me a Llama long or a Walther PPK?”

  “The police will pluck it right out of your hand and hide you in the basement of the Palais de Justice. . . . I’ve been punishing Raab for the last fifteen years. The one kingdom he has left is his own roof at the Métropole, and pretty soon he won’t even have that.”

  Holden looked up from his hot chocolate. Louiza’s menagerie of bodyguards had disappeared. They were all alone in that bumper’s paradise.

  He put his arm around the môme. Now she was part of his menagerie.

  “Louiza, we have to get out of here.”

  “And where will you take me, Holden? To some bordello in the Moroccan quarter?”

  “To the Métropole. We’ll rent an entire floor and charge it to Raab.”

  But it was already too late. As soon as he opened the door of the café, a little army fell upon him and whisked Louiza away in an ancient Packard that was as long as a tank.

  He was sitting on his ass outside the Mort Subite, with Raab’s personal porter, Gilles, leaning over him.

  “If you’re not a good boy, Holden, you’ll never see Louiza again.”

  14

  He was a bumper without resources. “The butcher’s boy,” as Nicole had called him. All his avenues had dried up. Ah, he hadn’t had any avenues in a long, long time. But he did have one last resource. Whenever he was abroad, he would use an international service, The Directory—a database for bumpers in distress. He dialed The Directory from his room at the Métropole. But the service was run by very cautious people. And it took Holden ten minutes to explain his particulars in the coded language that bumpers had to use.

  “Van Gogh,” a voice whispered at the other end of the line. “The Grand-Place.” And the line went dead. Holden cursed himself for adding one more enigma to his life. But he galloped to the Grand-Place. It was packed with tourists, and Holden began to worry about pickpockets. He couldn’t even enjoy the dazzle of sun on the golden walls of the guild houses.

  He circled the Grand-Place and its surroundings four times, and finally, on the rue du Marché aux Poulets, he found a gigantic puppet of Vincent van Gogh sitting on the sidewalk in a black beret. He might have lost his marbles if he hadn’t discovered the exact replica of this doll sipping coffee at a stand across the street. The Directory had pointed him to a mime who collected pennies like some truffle boy in a painted face.

  But Holden shouldn’t have bad-mouthed the mime. “Vincent” was a terrific tracker of women and men and could reason like a little devil from his frozen perches around the Grand-Place.

  “Maria Montez is the key to this whole business.”

  “But my mother is locked away in a palace on Jupiterlaan,” the bumper had to insist.

  “Holden, I swear to God. She will lead us back to Raab.”

  “Should we question her?”

  “Not a word. All we do is wait.”

  They drove to Forest and sat outside the nursing home in Vincent’s own minibus, with sandwiches, coffee, and a mountain of speculoos. They spent the night in the minibus. And at five in the morning, Vincent roused Holden with a flip on the ear. Raab’s Packard had arrived on Jupiterlaan. Gilles went inside the nursing home and brought out Nicole, half of her hidden in a shawl. And then the Packard drove off.

  “Holden, you shouldn’t dream,” said the mime. “We have to follow them.”

  “Relax. I could follow them in my sleep.”

  And Holden smiled for the first time in Brussels. His bumper’s intuition had come back.

  15

  The breakfast room, the breakfast room.

  That’s where Gilles had gone with Holden Sr.’s damaged bride, to meet up with the miser. Breakfast was free of charge at the Métropole. But Raab wouldn’t have his bre
akfast in the company of others; so he would arrive an hour early, with Gilles and all his bodyguards. It was his morning ritual. That’s where he must have met with Holden Sr. and the môme, long before she’d become a bumper. On rare occasions, Raab must have invited Nicole.

  It was Holden’s luck that Raab had clung to the same ritual; the old miser must have felt some comfort sitting beside Nicole, who still looked like a bride. And Holden didn’t have to crack any windpipes this morning; he sneaked around Raab’s bodyguards and sat down at the breakfast table.

  Nicole smiled at him. “The butcher’s boy,” she said. “Should I peel a peach for you?”

  Holden nodded to Nicole and watched the miser shiver in his gilded chair.

  “Raab, one whistle, one peep, and I’ll snap your rotten neck.”

  The old miser started to cry.

  “I won’t harm you,” Holden said. “I promise.”

  “You maniac,” Raab said. “You’re as unpredictable as your father. But I’m not crying over you . . . it’s Nicole. Look how gorgeous she is, untouched by time.”

  “The same old crocodile tears,” Holden said. “You’re the one who damaged her.”

  “It was an accident. We were all in love with the lady. But she was pulling your dad in the wrong direction, away from us. We tried to scare her. One of my lads went too far. He paid dearly for it. I had the privilege of shoveling dirt on his grave.”

  “What does Nicole call you, Mr. Raab?”

  “The butcher’s boss.”

  “That’s grand. And suppose I steal her from you, and you never have breakfast with Nicole again?”

  “Holden, what the hell do you want?”

  “La Môme. And all in one piece. Without a bump on her head.”

  16

  Nicole had peeled a peach for him like some incredible surgeon. And he had to keep from crying. His dad had traveled right under Holden’s radar. Holden Sr. didn’t wear a chauffeur’s uniform for his own protection. It was to protect Holden, to keep him away from the furor of his own life. And how disappointed he must have been that Holden had ended up a bumper at Aladdin. Manhattan and Queens were his dad’s disguise. Holden Sr. had come to Brussels year after year on his own strange pilgrimage to sit beside Nicole on Jupiterlaan. Raab never had a hold on him, not really. Raab was just the ferocious little man who paid all the bills. . . .