The Stiff Upper Lip

by Peter Israel

  “With what?” I said. “Brown sugar in his luggage?”

  “Cocaine, Monsieur,” he replied dryly. Then he referred to his notebook again. “Atherton, William, born ninth July 1955 at Fresno, California, U.S.A. Nationality: American. Residence permit issued by the Sixième Bureau, Préfecture of Police, Paris. Do you know him, Monsieur?”

  “I know the name,” I said. “Another basketball player. Wasn’t he one of the ones at the P.U.C. gym? When Grimes was killed?”

  “No, he wasn’t. But he is an athlete by profession, under contract to play professionally for a French sports club.”

  “Don’t tell me who owns the club,” I said. “Let me guess.”

  Again, the farting-in-public reaction.

  “Well,” I said, “at least your Spanish counterparts, as you call them, are on their toes.”

  “They arrested Atherton,” Bobet replied, “only because we asked them to.”

  “Oh? And how did you know to ask them?”

  At this, Frèrejean started to interrupt, but Bobet waved him off.

  “We have our sources of information,” he said calmly. “I haven’t talked to Atherton yet—I am going to Barcelona this evening—but we are hopeful, under the circumstances, that he will agree to tell us some things we need to know.” He closed his notebook. “For reasons I won’t go into, it is important we also talk to Hadley. Very important. From his point of view as well. We are counting on you, Monsieur, to convince him of this.”

  “If I can find him,” I said.

  Neither of them seemed worried about it. Then Bobet stood up, tall and gaunt and with a pointed forehead on which, to my surprise, I could make out small beads of sweat.

  Frèrejean was on his feet too.

  “We’ll be with you at every turn, Monsieur,” he told me. “Right beside you. Don’t try to elude us this time. You won’t succeed. As of this moment, you are under constant surveillance.”

  “I hope so,” I answered.

  After they left, I sat down to wait. Maybe that was a funny thing to do when the people who were counting on me on both sides of the Law were already out there beating the bushes, but it was the only idea that came to mind—under the circumstances, as Bobet would have said. I opened the windows to air the place out, and I waited, with the Glenfiddich for company, and I made a couple of long-distance calls, which only confirmed what I already knew.

  Until, that is, the telephone rang of its own accord, late, and it was time for me to go to the movies.

  8

  If I’ve left out the background to those long-distance calls, it’s because they added up to nothing. The fact is that even before Odessa Grimes got killed, I’d started fishing the California waters in regard to Roscoe Hadley, or Jimmie Cleever, as he was remembered out there. I’d been handicapped from the start, though, by the loss of my major source of information on the West Coast scene. Freddy Schwartz, a scholarly old rummy of a Jew who’d once worked on the Times, had given up the ghost and gone on to hacks’ heaven.

  Lacking Freddy Schwartz, I’d called two people. One was a private investigator I used to know in Van Nuys who had pretty fair mob connections. The other was a one-time Assistant District Attorney. The onetime Assistant District Attorney had since gone on to better things in Sacramento, but he’d built a political career on the headlines he’d made in the Southland as a “Fearless Young Prosecutor.”

  Both had left messages while I was a guest at Dédé Delatour’s. Now, for want of anything better to do, I called them back. And got the same answer twice: the Jimmie Cleever affair was ancient history, buried by several years’ worth of fresher scandals. According to the private eye, the “interested party” we’d talked about couldn’t care less about it. Unless, that is, somebody was trying to revive it? Somebody like me, for instance? The onetime Assistant D.A. said he thought the statute of limitations had expired in the Cleever case. There might be ways around that, he agreed, but nobody’d he’d sounded out on the side of the Law, either in Sacramento or Los Angeles, saw potential in reopening it. Unless, that is, I could tie it to something current?

  I told them both I’d be in touch. The private eye started to bargain about his fee. I told him to send me a bill.

  I’d already gotten the same news through Delatour: nobody in California gave a royal fuck about Roscoe Hadley. This meant that either Roscoe himself had been lying or somebody had sold him a bill of goods. I leaned toward the bill of goods, and for the somebody I voted for Odessa Grimes. The laylight faded into darkness, and I toasted the late Brother Grimes on having won the election. Then I toasted myself for having voted for the winner.

  Only why would Brother Grimes have laid the spooks of the past onto his alleged soul- and teammate?

  The calls, in any case, proved one thing. I heard the telltale clicking both times, and it wasn’t ice cubes, and knowing the Police Judiciaire’s predilection for overkill, it wouldn’t have surprised me had they plugged into the whole hotel switchboard. So that when the phone rang, several toasts later on, and I picked up the receiver, I answered in English, saying:

  “Whoever you are, if you can’t be good, be careful. This is a party line.”

  “Comment, Monsieur?” It was the evening hotel operator. She had an incoming call for me.

  Who was it? I wanted to know.

  The lady wouldn’t give her name, the operator said. All she knew was that the call was from outside Paris.

  I told her to put it through. Then, when I heard the clicking: “Be careful what you say, honey chile. Dis heah’s a party line.”

  “Is that you, Cage?”

  “No, Ma’am. Massah Cage is gone out. Dis is dah butlah speaking.”

  “What is it, Cage? That’s you, isn’t it? Have you got someone with you?”

  “With me?” I said, in what sounded like my normal voice. More or less. “No, not right now. I’m expecting some of the boys up later for gin rummy. Roscoe said he’d come by, and …”

  “For God’s sake, are you drunk?”

  “Drunk?” I hadn’t thought about it that way. I thought about it. “No, I’m not drunk. Just a little fuzzy around the rims.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sure I’m all right. The last time I counted, I had two good legs, two good arms. Just one good eye, but who needs two? The nostrils are hanging in there. If you hold on, I’ll go count again. All I got is a broken …”

  “Stop it, Cage.”

  “… a broken heart. I guess it’s the parties. I guess I’ve been to too many stag parties lately. I was up all night at Dédé’s. You know Dédé Delatour, don’t you? He throws a mean party, does Dédé Too bad you missed it, you’d’ve had a …”

  “I said stop it!”

  I liked to think I heard hysteria in her voice then. Just a touch, but genuine.

  Time passed. Not a lot of it.

  “Are you still there, Cage?”

  “I’m still here, baby,” I said, semi-soberly.

  “Did they hurt you bad?”

  “Only when I laughed,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. But tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, I’ll be in St. Quentin.”

  “St. Quentin? Isn’t that some kind of cheese?”

  “I’m not joking, for God’s sake. It’s a city.”

  “Sure it is. Where is it?”

  “Look on the map.”

  “If I’ve got a map.”

  “You have a map. Just follow the Autoroute du Nord.”

  “All right. And how am I supposed to find you when I get there?”

  “Look for a white 504.” I started to laugh then. Like how many white 504’s did she suppose they turned out at Peugeot? “It’ll be parked somewhere near the railroad station. Ten o’clock. The license number is 995 BCD 75. Have you got that?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Did you write it down?”

  “I don’t have to. If I forget, the guys listening in will remind me.”


  “Never mind that. Repeat it”

  I repeated it.

  Her voice relaxed then. That was passing strange. Anybody listening in with the right equipment could have long since traced the call, but it didn’t seem to bother her. Unless, that is, she was calling from outside the country. She chattered on. She was filled with solicitude about what I was going to do that night. I said I thought I’d go to bed. She said if I went to bed then, I’d be wide awake at three in the morning and nobody to talk to. She said I should take a cold shower, eat a proper meal, and go to the flicks. Hadn’t I said I’d never missed a Di Niro flick? She said there was a Di Niro flick playing in the Latin Quarter, original version, I’d have plenty of time for the midnight show if I got started. Then leave a call for eight, and I could make St. Quentin in an hour and a half maximum.

  “O.K.?” she said.

  “I’ll give it some thought,” I answered.

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “O.K.,” she repeated. Then, in French: “Je t’embrasse, Cage. A demain.”

  I heard a catch in her voice, but I had no way of telling if that was genuine or not.

  “I embrace you too, baby,” I said in English.

  I ran the conversation through after I hung up. Then I checked the movie schedule, took another shower, and washed the excess Glenfiddich out of my pores. Sure enough, Taxi Driver was playing again in the Latin Quarter, original version. I’d missed it, first time around. It had gone over big in Paris.

  The thing was: I’d never seen a De Niro flick.

  9

  I got to the theater a little after eleven. It was one of those four-in-one jobs on a little street just off the Boulevard St. Michel. There was no line waiting for Taxi Driver. It had turned colder during the day, there was a chill wind swirling papers in the gutters, and, like the lady had said, the next showing was at midnight.

  I looked around for a restaurant. There’s no shortage in that neighborhood. Every other storefront calls itself one, but the best you can say about them is that theirs is not the cuisine that made France famous. Finally I went into a self-styled Greek joint, meaning mainly that the remains of some animal were turning on a spit in the window. I ordered a steak and French fries, a green salad, and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. The steak and French fries showed up about half an hour later, minus the salad, and in the end I left most of them for the next customer.

  Back at the theater, the Taxi Driver line had begun to form. I saw nobody I recognized. I got on at the end and became, thereby, part of the captive audience.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against panhandling. I’ve been stopped on the street and told my share of hard-luck stories, and if the youth of this world are so up against it that they want to try their luck on me, there’s at least a chance I’ll kick in. But that I should have to listen to their fake Dylan voices for the privilege and their one-chord guitars, well, like they say, there’s always TV.

  The pair of troubadours working the Taxi Driver line were quaint enough as such couples go. The guy had on a thick wool cap pulled down over his ears, a wool sweater that looked like his kid sister might have knitted it, a pair of hugger jeans, and sneakers with no socks. He stamped his feet a lot, though whether to keep time or because of the cold was hard to tell. The girl was a little bit of a waif in a long, shapeless cotton dress and goatskin vest, and at a distance she looked like it was way past her bedtime. Less so, close up. What was quaintest about them, though was their instruments. The girl’s was a recorder. The guy’s might have been a recorder too, except that somebody had bent the end of it into a curve. With disastrous results for the tone. I felt like taking up a collection to get them to stop, and put them down mentally for a couple of kids from the sticks who’d decided to try their luck in the big town and needed somebody to tell them they weren’t going about it the right way.

  Finally the ticket window opened and the line started forward. By this time the guy with the bent recorder was playing alone, bareheaded. The girl was working the line with his cap. When she got to me, I fished in my pocket, annoyed but resigned, and dropped in a franc. Instead of moving on, though, she jammed the cap against my chest.

  “I already gave,” I said in French.

  She glanced up at me briefly and spoke, low but clear, then turned away to the people behind me.

  I’d expected some wisecrack about Parisian cheapskates. What I got, though, came out in flat American English.

  “When the flick starts,” she’d said, “go to the john.”

  I bought my ticket and went inside. I had a few minutes to think over the pros and cons of it. The lights were on and they were showing some commercials on the screen, like for chocolates that wouldn’t melt in your hand, while a couple of usherettes patrolled the aisles with their candy baskets, trying to peddle the stuff. They weren’t getting much business. Down in front to the left of the screen were twin doors with a neon sign above, saying: “SORTIE—TOILETTES.”

  The theater filled up as much as it was going to. The usherettes disappeared with their baskets. I glanced around for people who might have seemed more interested in me than the screen. I didn’t spot any. This didn’t mean a thing. Then the curtains closed on the commercials, and the lights went out, and then they parted again on the first images of a cabbie weaving through traffic in nighttime New York.

  The guy who’d been playing the bent recorder was waiting for me just inside the twin doors. He had his cap back on.

  “Follow me,” he said, and he took off down a deserted cement corridor.

  I ran after him, but he was quicker with his feet than with his instrument. I thought I heard footsteps behind us. The cement corridor forked off into another one, then up a flight of stone steps. I took them two at a time, chased by the image of the Law and Delatour’s wimp sprinting behind me, and by the time I got to the top the recorder player had already banged open the metal exit door with his shoulder and was holding it open for me, panting and gesturing.

  “You ever ride on one of these things?” he shouted at me.

  We came out into the shadows, around the corner from the theater entrance. Parked on the sidewalk was a shining Yamaha 350. The girl who’d been with him before was nowhere in sight.

  “Where are the helmets?” I hollered back at him.

  “Fuck the helmets!” he answered, and jumping into the saddle, he tromped on the starter. I climbed on behind him, grabbed him around the waist, and off we went in a roar of wind and engine.

  The truth is that, back in my ill-spent youth, I’d mucked around with the two-wheelers for a while, but out where I came from the roads were long and mostly straight, and paved with macadam, and you could see the bumps coming up a mile away. Whereas in Paris, half the gutters are still cobbled, and at the intersections that don’t have lights it’s priority to the right, which means, practically, first come first served. Then too, I’d never ridden behind a death-defying nut like Billy Wheels. He stopped for nothing, moving or stationary, dark or lit, and he gunned at the red lights, and though there was no way we could have been tracked short of helicopters, we were way over on the other side of Boulevard Arago before he deigned to turn on his headlight, and he didn’t slow down then either. It was Paris-By-Night all right, but a wild, tire-squealing, squeeze-your-nuts version, with the wind blasting you off your perch and the lights of the night city zooming in on you like flying saucers on a kamikaze run.

  We came out somewhere around the Porte de Gentilly. They’re building big out that way, and the dark high-risers loomed in on us like tomorrow’s dinosaurs. Then it was the Périphérique, the autoroute that circles the city. We went under it, and into the southern suburbs, and quickly I was lost. Totally lost.

  Maybe that was the point.

  Out beyond the Périphérique, Paris gives way to a ring of what were once small towns—Malakoff, Montrouge, Ivry—but now form an undistinguished magna of warehouses, small industries, and cheap housing, old and
new. It’s where the onetime Paris proletariat now mostly hangs out, and as nowhere a place as you could hope to find.

  Maybe that was the point too.

  We wove and swerved through unlit streets, and emerged finally on a block of small one-family houses, known locally as pavilions. My driver slowed, then stopped, and balanced us with one foot in the gutter.

  He didn’t turn off the engine.

  “Here’s where you get off,” he said over his shoulder.

  “What about your?”

  “I’ve got to pick some people up.”

  Lucky them, I thought.

  “Go on,” he said, “walk right in. They’re waitin’ on you.”

  I got off unsteadily. It was nice to be still alive, but the nerve ends in my pins were jumping like they weren’t so sure.

  “Who’s they?” I called after him.

  By then, though, he was already at the corner, and I watched the red of his taillight disappear into the blackness.

  The pavilion in question was a small cube of a house with the shutters pulled to and blacker than the suburban night. It was separated from the street by a fence and a narrow yard. The fence had a gate in it. The gate was open. I walked in, through creepers and vines and an undershrubbery that as near as I could tell was mostly garbage. Somewhere a cat yowled, and far off I could hear traffic. Then there was a scurrying in the undergrowth, like I’d disturbed the local night life. And then nothing.

  Silence.

  I found the front door, listened, hunted for a bell, found none. I knocked. I listened some more. I knocked again, louder.

  Nothing.

  Maybe it was a surprise party.

  I gave the doorknob a twist and a push.

  The door gave, reluctantly at first.

  I walked into a hallway. The hallway was dark, empty, but light diffused dimly out of an adjoining room. It came from a single bulb in the ceiling, but the bulb had been wrapped around with cloth and all that got through was a weak purplish glow. I could see layers of smoke hovering, immobile, in the glow. They were as thick as in the basement smoker of the old Yakima Elks Club, only the Yakima Elks never lit up stuff like this. The smell was thick, acrid, pungent, like grass burning on a prairie. You had a choice between a free high and asphyxiation.