Rake

by Scott Phillips

  Typical writer, head in the clouds, bitching and moaning about having to wipe someone’s ass but not putting any thought into how to get out of the situation. “All right,” I said. “I’ll come up with something. I promise, no more than a day or two more of toilet duty.”

  •••

  I got up ten-ish and went downstairs for a walk. It was time to give some serious thought to making my stay here permanent. If the film went over well, I might have a real starring career here. Look at Terence Fisher and Bud Spencer. Look at Eddie Constantine. All right, so they weren’t really Americans, but from the start they were sold as Americans, and that was the image they projected, even when the audience knew they weren’t. I could fill that niche now.

  I got to Les Halles without being importuned by any fans, for which I was grateful. I was also grateful, though, for the fact that people were making friendly eye contact and jostling one another to point out my presence among them. I stopped in at a café with a view of the Fontaine des Innocents, and as I drank my coffee I tried to imagine the place a couple of hundred years ago when it was still part of the old cemetery but already part of the food market, with prostitutes plying their trade amidst the open burial pits. What an amazing combination of basic human needs to be met in one insalubrious locale, and what a city this must have been in those days. I think I would have loved it even more back then.

  DIMANCHE, QUINZE MAI

  WHEN THE DAWN BROKE ON SUNDAY I WAS seated at the massive oak desk in the apartment, trying to think my way out of the mess I’d created. I’d awakened at five-thirty, suddenly and gravely troubled by the whole business of Claude and the question of what to do with him, and at seven on the dot my cell rang. It was Esmée.

  “I think I may be in some trouble,” she said. “I had a call from one of Claude’s business associates, and he’s not where he’s supposed to be.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They won’t tell me that. But they did tell me they thought he was in Paris a few days ago, just an overnighter. If he was, he didn’t let me know he was here. I’m worried.”

  “What do you suppose happened?”

  “I don’t know. But we’d better cool it for a while. I have a funny feeling he may have dropped out of sight just to track us and catch us at something.”

  “Understood.” On the one hand, I was frustrated at the thought of avoiding Esmée for what I knew was an unnecessary fear. On the other, though, this left me with only three women to juggle instead of four, and with all I had on my plate at the moment that was probably an advantage. “Call me if there are any developments.”

  •••

  I went down to the café and sat on the terrace drinking my usual double espresso and considering my options. This time when my cell rang it was Annick. I almost didn’t answer—it couldn’t really be good news, after all—but she’d gamely allowed me to put her into a difficult and possibly dangerous situation, and I owed her a response. Besides, I might want to pay her a visit later in the day.

  “How much longer is he going to be here?” she asked as soon as I said hello.

  “And a sunny good morning to you, miss.”

  “I’m not kidding. Your writer friend is creeping me out, and I’m scared we’re going to get found out.”

  “Everything’s going to be fine, just give it a day or two more to play itself out.”

  “Play itself out? Jesus, you really didn’t come into this with any kind of plan at all, did you? Just kidnap one of the richest and most dangerous men in Europe and dump him in a meat locker . . .”

  “Whoa, hold on there, missy. There was no kidnapping involved. He broke in and tried to kill me. I knocked him out and had to stash him someplace until I figured out what to do.”

  “That’s an admirably nuanced appraisal. I still need you to make something happen, pronto.”

  “Understood. Listen, I was thinking I might come over this afternoon.”

  “Good. Your friend could use some relief.”

  “I don’t mean that, I mean I’d like to see you, is all.”

  She laughed. “You’ve got to be shitting me. You’re not laying a hand on me until this whole business is dealt with, understand?”

  Then she hung up on me. I was a little miffed at the whole situation, particularly the suggestion that I’d kidnapped Claude, as though I were doing it for personal gain and not self-preservation.

  And then I began to consider the possibilities. How many groups around the world—right-wing, left-wing, fundamentalist, nationalist—had grudges against Claude Guiteau? How credible would it seem if one of these groups made some demands in the press?

  •••

  I went to a news kiosk on the Champs-Élysée and picked up my usual assortment of papers, plus one in Arabic and one in Hebrew. Just to keep things politically murky, I also picked up l’Humanité and Présent.

  Then I stopped into Monoprix and bought a couple of balaclavas from a very pretty blond shopgirl who looked like she was going to wet her pants at the sight of me. “I’m thinking about taking a little ski trip,” I said. She was really quite an attractive girl, it seemed to me, and I got her cell number, thinking that when this was all over and done with I might actually go on such a trip, and I might take this excitable young thing with me.

  Next I stopped into the FNAC and bought an inexpensive digital pocket camera, one I wouldn’t feel bad about throwing away if it became necessary once the photos I needed had been taken and uploaded. I signed an autograph for the mother of the clerk who sold it to me, and, using his own camera phone, one of his colleagues snapped a picture of us arm in arm, like the greatest of pals.

  •••

  In the taxi I worked on the Herald Tribune’s crossword and found myself stymied by several clues in the middle of the grid, though just as we arrived at the entry to the Luxembourg Gardens (couldn’t have a record of me being dropped off too near the building), I scored what I thought was a coup: “ramphorhyncus,” for “Winged Jurassic piscivore.” I crossed the boulevard a good distance from the dorm and skulked along the back streets with my dark glasses and cap on, still going over that damned crossword in my head.

  Where the tiny rue de l’Abbé de l’Épée meets the rue St. Jacques is the old Institution des Sourds-Muets, where the celebrated doctor Jean Itard treated and educated Victor, the wild child of the Aveyron, in the earliest part of the nineteenth century; Truffaut made a movie of it in the sixties. This I learned from a plaque affixed to its wall, directly across from which was a narrow alleyway that led to a rear door to the dormitory, which Annick opened at my signal.

  She led me down to the labyrinthine basement and to the meat locker, outside of which sat Fred, typing frantically on his laptop. He looked up at me, surprised, and grinned. “I’ve come up with some great stuff. It’s amazing how much good it does, a little change of scenery.”

  He went on about some plot twists he had in mind while I nodded intently, one eye still on the crossword. “That all sounds good to me,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, have you got anything for ‘Fassbinder’s ’89 nemesis’? Twelve letters, starts with a k.”

  He looked away. “You weren’t even listening. You were doing that fucking crossword puzzle in your head.”

  “I was multitasking. You have a nefarious art thief tangled up with a beautiful woman he enlists to seduce our hero to get the arms, and in the course of the picture she changes sides.”

  He let out a sigh, not completely satisfied but not angry anymore either. “Krysmopompas.”

  I thought he was cursing me. “Should I be insulted?”

  “It’s your answer. Fassbinder’s ’89 nemesis was a shadowy group called Krysmopompas. It’s a movie.”

  “Wasn’t Fassbinder already dead by ’89?”

  “It was made in ’82, the title was Kamikaze 1989.”

  I had him spell it for me. It fit perfectly, and the rest of the puzz
le was the work of forty-five seconds.

  “Glad to be of service,” he said. “Can we get down to business now?”

  •••

  I explained the plan to him and to Annick. “Shouldn’t we be holding guns?” she said. “In the picture?”

  “You’re right,” I said, “we should, but I don’t know where to get one, and anyone could spot a fake one. How about some knives?”

  “You know, I think there’s a drawerful somewhere of butcher knives. Let me go look.”

  She returned in less than five minutes with a pair of lethal-looking blades, though on closer examination they were dull as a child’s safety scissors, having gone unsharpened for more than half a century.

  Annick and I put our balaclavas on, hers with her long ponytail sticking out of it and hanging down her back, and I opened the meat locker. There sat Claude, still bound to that rotting old chair, the ball gag hanging beneath his chin, unfastened. There was a stench in the room as a reminder of what poor Fred had had to endure over the past couple of days as combination jailer and toilet attendant, and I was surprised to note an air of defiance in Claude’s eyes.

  “What now?” he asked, and I almost told him to shut up, but I kept my mouth shut. Logic should have told him that I was the one holding him, but I didn’t know how much the blows to his head had damaged his brain, and let’s face it, when you’re an arms merchant on his scale and you’ve been unconscious for a few hours you really can’t tell who’s taken custody of you in the interim.

  I reached down for the ball gag and reinserted it into his mouth, forcing it way back before cinching it tight. The insolence on his face got a little more pronounced; he might be helpless, but he would not be humiliated. His look of weary contempt reminded me of that old photo of Aldo Moro in the hands of the Red Brigades.

  And then inspiration struck. I asked Annick to go get a thick black marker, and when she returned with one I laid the newspapers out across the floor and wrote in large letters: KRYSMOPOMPAS.

  Annick and I stood behind Claude holding the newspapers while Fred took the pictures with my brand-new camera. When we were done we locked him back in and I thanked Fred for the good work.

  “Now which one of you wants to go to an Internet rental place, set up one of those anonymous e-mail accounts, and send these pics to the newspapers? I’d say of the two of you Fred’s the less memorable. No offense, Fred, it’s purely a question of tits and ass.”

  •••

  I stopped for lunch at a café across from the Cluny and thought about taking a tour, but my heart wasn’t in tourism at the moment. I had a film to produce, and I had just begun to consider that Esmée might not be able to free up Claude’s money in his absence. A lot of people were depending on me to pull this deal off, and I was determined not to let them down.

  I had finished my pavé de rumsteak when my phone rang. Normally I don’t take phone calls at table, but when you’re dining alone who’s to say what the rules are? It was my agent, exasperated.

  “Your audition’s tomorrow. Where are you?”

  “And a big sunny hello to you, too, Bunny, old chum.”

  “Cut the shit. Where are you?”

  “Across from the Cluny, finishing up a nice big lunch. You ought to come over and join me.”

  “This is it. You get on that plane and be there for that audition tomorrow or we’re through. Understand?”

  “You’ll be singing a different tune when I get this picture made, Bunny.”

  “Tomorrow, Sunset Gower Studios, Second Front Productions. 3:00 PM.”

  The son of a bitch hung up on me. I contemplated phoning him back when I saw that I had a text message. It was from Clive, of the Paris chapter of the British Ventura County Appreciation Society:

  “Wondering if this evening would be a good one to make a surprise visit—having a meeting with several of our Scots members present, and my Deirdre has just learned she’s losing a foot, so an appearance from you would be a most timely treat.”

  What had seemed like a ghastly prospect a few nights ago now sounded like a welcome diversion. I texted him back asking for directions, and once he’d responded I paid my bill, crossed the street, and took that Cluny tour after all.

  •••

  Clive and his wife lived in an ill-tended building in the tenth arrondissement not far from where Fred lived. I crossed the courtyard to staircase B and climbed up to the fifth floor, whose carpet was worn to the nub. I could hear a television blaring a football game from one of the apartments and what sounded like an elderly woman sobbing disconsolately in another. I wondered for a moment if it might be poor afflicted Deirdre, but the apartment number was wrong.

  At the end of the hallway was a door with paint flaking off it and a yellow note stuck to it next to the peephole. In English it read VENTURA COUNTY APPRECIATION SOCIETY MEETING, COME ON IN.

  I knocked, and from inside came a shrill, scratchy, British-accented lady’s voice, again in English: “Come on in, dear.” There was a Monty Python–esque quality to the sound of it, that of a man imitating a woman and rather badly, but I put that down to Deirdre’s dire medical state and pushed the door open anyway.

  The apartment appeared empty at first glance, the entryway dark and unencumbered by coats or shoes or even a doormat, and I walked through to the parlor to find it just as empty, a thin, diffused light coming in through moth-eaten curtains onto a bare and badly decaying carpet.

  “Just a moment, dearie,” came that voice from what I assumed was the kitchen, and I crossed the parlor calling for Clive.

  When I pushed the door open to the kitchen I took a bad blow to the temple that had me on my knees. A male voice, an American one, whispered in my ear from behind:

  “Next time I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch,” he said, and then came another blow, this one to the base of my skull.

  •••

  It was dark when I regained consciousness and pulled myself up to my feet. I still had my cell phone and called for an ambulance, and while I waited for it to arrive downstairs I took stock of the place. It was empty and looked to have been so for quite some time. The lock on the front door had been broken, and the note about the fictional Paris chapter of the British Ventura County Appreciation Society was gone.

  They took me to the Hôpital Fernand-Widal, where a series of jovial doctors and nurses, having quickly come to the as-yet-unsubstantiated opinion that nothing was seriously wrong with me, paraded before me, joking about having a famous doctor in their midst and asking me my opinion regarding various minor ailments of their own, to which I responded with a good cheer I did not honestly feel (the one exception being a rather attractive fiftyish nurse who, certain we were alone for a moment, flashed me her quite extraordinary tits, asked if I thought they looked normal, and, winking, passed me her phone number).

  At length the results of my MRI came in, and a grim neurologist explained to me that, despite his grim demeanor, I had sustained no concussion or serious injury and as soon as I’d spoken to the police I could leave.

  “The police?”

  “You were assaulted, monsieur. They’ll want to file a report.” He chuckled. “And they’ll want to be able to tell their wives they met you in the line of duty.”

  I certainly didn’t mind. Someone had gone to some trouble to set a trap for me, and I wanted to find him. “When do they get here?” I asked.

  “They’re waiting outside right now.” He tapped his clipboard on my knee and told me to get dressed, and as soon as I’d cinched my belt the door opened. There were two of them, both exuding businesslike indifference to the situation and my standing as a celebrity. If I didn’t know better I’d have almost said they didn’t recognize me, but the taller and younger of the two kept looking me up and down appraisingly, a common enough reaction to seeing a two-dimensional acquaintance in three dimensions for the first time.

  The older one cleared his throat and introduced himself as Inspector Bonnot. “The doctor says y
ou sustained no serious damage. That was lucky. Getting knocked unconscious in real life is a lot more dangerous than it is on the television.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “I’ve been hit on the head so many times on the TV my character should be a drooling vegetable by now.”

  “Tell us how it happened.”

  I started with the first text message, which I’d saved. At his request I forwarded both messages to his mobile, and he read both quietly while his partner murmured how much his wife enjoyed Ventura County.

  “This Ventura County Appreciation Society—is this something you’ve heard of before?”

  “Not that I know of. There are a few fan clubs here and there, though.”

  “Have you received any sort of threat recently? Credible or otherwise?”

  I thought about Bruno, and about Claude, but neither seemed a likely suspect. Bruno seemed to be on a leash for the moment, and I knew for a fact that Claude was the sort to take matters in his own hands, beside the obvious fact of his current indisposition. Besides, my attacker spoke English like a native.

  “No, nothing.”

  “All right. We’ll check the apartment, run down the information on the phone the texts were sent from.”

  “I appreciate it. It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just for a simple assault, Inspector.”

  He smiled for the first time, a wearily ironic expression. “Normally we wouldn’t put these sorts of resources into such a case. But the divisionnaire’s wife is a great fan, and he sent word down that every effort was to be made on your behalf.”

  •••

  Outside the hospital awaited a gauntlet of reporters, print and television, and I was relieved to see Marie-Laure waiting for me by the barrier behind which they stood.

  “You lead an interesting life, my friend,” she said.

  “Lately I do.”

  “Answer one or two questions as vaguely as possible, then say the whole story’s going to be on the network news tomorrow night, right before Ventura County comes on.”

  I stepped out into the throng and tossed out brave, insouciant replies to the questions being shouted at me, then made the announcement as requested. Then, arm in arm with Marie-Laure and not terribly concerned about the effect on her marriage of those clicking cameras and the pictures in tomorrow’s papers, I got into the network’s waiting car and rode away.