Get Off At Babylon

by Marvin H. Albert

  Gillian Gale registered Sonia and camera in that instant. “Get the Monster!” she shrieked at her press agent. “Smash her fucking camera!”

  He shoved Murielle away, with some difficulty, and charged at Sonia, who turned and sprinted off up the side street. He raced after her but didn’t have a chance. The three things any member of the paparazzi needs are to be quick with a camera, to have absolutely no conscience on the job, and to be fleet of foot. The Milanese Monster qualified on all three counts.

  The press agent gave up the chase after half a block. By then Murielle had slipped inside the brasserie and out of sight. Probably to lock herself in the toilet until Sonia came back for her. Jacquier had taken Gillian Gale’s arm and led her down the Croisette, murmuring soothing words of reassurance to her. The press agent came back past my table, breathing hard, and hurried around the corner after them.

  I stood up, left money for the snack that still hadn’t arrived, and tailed them along the Croisette.

  Chapter 11

  Jacquier parted from Gillian Gale and her press agent in the lobby of the Martinez. They went into the lounge for an interview with a journalist, the actress still cursing under her breath and the press agent trying to calm her down. Jacquier went to the desk and picked up his messages. He read them, stuffed them in his pocket, and strode back out to the Croisette.

  I followed, not trying to catch up at first because there was a chance he was going to a secret out-of-the-way meet with someone who’d be of interest to me. He didn’t. He turned onto the terrace of the Carlton Hotel, speaking briefly to people he knew at several of its tables before settling down at a table bearing a “reserved” sign with his name on it. If it hadn’t been reserved for him, he wouldn’t have had a table. During film festivals the Carlton terrace is the place to be. Every table that wasn’t occupied had a sign.

  Nobody was waiting for Jacquier there. Whoever he was waiting for, he was in plain sight of hundreds. No secret. Not my kind of secret. Not even the movie industry type of secret. I moved in on him as a waiter went off to get his drink and the terrace lamps went on to defeat the gathering dusk.

  He looked up at me with a polite smile that said he didn’t know me but did know I wasn’t anyone important in his professional world or he would know. Polite, nevertheless.

  I said, “Good evening, Monsieur Jacquier. Your former wife, Libby Arlen, suggested I drop by to talk to you.”

  “Libby? My God, it’s been almost a year since I’ve seen her. How is she?”

  “She was fine when I saw her.”

  “When was that?”

  “This afternoon. At the restaurant in Eze.”

  “And she still looks marvelous, I’m sure. Incredible woman. Please—sit down, for a few minutes only, I’m afraid. I’m expecting some people on business.”

  As I sat down Jacquier said carefully, “If it’s about working for me you’ve come, my new film won’t even have a production schedule worked out for some months. So I haven’t begun casting yet or—”

  “I’m not in your business,” I told him, and I gave him my card. One of the French ones with “Pierre-Ange Sawyer—Agence Privée de Recherches.” I had another pack of cards that read “Peter Sawyer—Confidential Investigations.” It was a matter of judgment, deciding which version to use. A lot of French people figured they were getting something more authentic if you let them know you were an American private eye. But Charles Jacquier didn’t look that dumb. In fact, he looked damned intelligent.

  He read the card, frowning a bit. Puzzled, not worried. “Are you working on something for Libby?”

  “And her present husband. They’re worried about his daughter, Odile. Odile Garnier, she calls herself now.”

  I was studying him while I spoke, but there wasn’t a flicker of anything in his expression to set off alarms inside me.

  “Does she?” Jacquier said, with a mixture of amusement and annoyance. “That girl has always been a worry, from everything I’ve heard of her. Refusing to live with her father, for example. What’s her trouble now?”

  “They haven’t been able to locate her. She’s not using her Paris apartment nor a small place she has in Villefranche. And she hasn’t returned to school since Easter. No one seems to know where she’s living at the moment. As I said, her father and stepmother are worried.”

  “I can certainly understand that. But—why did Libby send you to see me?”

  “She thought you might know something that could help me find Odile.”

  Jacquier looked more puzzled. If it was an act, it was a solid performance.

  “I don’t understand why she thought that,” he said. “I’ve never met Mulhausser’s daughter. Not once in my life.”

  “I assumed you had some contact with her. At least through your daughter. She’s been trying to get in touch with Odile.”

  Now he looked mildly surprised. “I didn’t know Chantal had any sort of contact with Mulhausser’s daughter. You could ask Chantal. She has a suite next to mine. Though I doubt she’s there at the moment. Chantal is spending most of her time with her fiancé. He keeps a residence here in Cannes.”

  The waiter brought his drink. Jacquier signed the bill and told me, “I’m sorry I can’t offer you something, but my business guests could arrive any moment.” He started to hand me back my business card.

  “Keep it,” I told him. “If you happen to hear anything about Odile Garnier, I’d appreciate a call.”

  “All right.” He looked at the card again before moving to put it in his pocket—and paused. “Sawyer—your name is familiar, somehow.”

  “It’s been in the news recently. Involved with the arrest of a drug dealer in Nice, and with his subsequent murder while in police custody. A man named Bruno Ravic.”

  “Of course—you’re the private detective who caught poor Bruno.”

  “‘Poor Bruno,’” I repeated. “You knew him?”

  “Well, I was acquainted with him. Professionally. Back when he lived in Paris, he was trying to become an actor. I gave him roles in several of my pictures. Bit parts. He’d had no training, but he did have a good, strong face, and it came across on camera.”

  Jacquier sighed and shook his head sadly. “It’s a shame, what happened to Bruno. I’ve been wondering if I’m not partly responsible.”

  “In what way?”

  “Those roles I gave him. I had him playing young gangsters. With that face and temperament, Bruno was perfect for it. I told him so. Perhaps that’s why he finally decided to become a criminal.”

  “Ever see him again after he moved down here?”

  “Once a year. I always come down for the festival. He always looked me up.” Jacquier glanced at me curiously. “I don’t understand—what has Bruno Ravic got to do with Mulhausser’s daughter?”

  “Nothing at all,” I lied. “My involvement with Ravic was pure accident. Looking for the girl just happens to be a job I’ve been hired for since. No connection. But it turns out you can’t help me trace the girl, so that’s that. And since I did have a hand in Ravic’s arrest, I’m naturally interested.”

  I watched Jacquier carefully to see if he knew it was a lie. But he seemed to accept my explanation.

  “Of course. Well, the reason Bruno always came to see me at the festival was what you’d expect. He wanted another role in films. I had no idea he’d become a criminal. I assumed he was still working as a waiter. And each time I had to explain to him that I couldn’t put him in a film because I wasn’t making one.”

  Jacquier gave me a bitter smile. “You see, my last couple of pictures lost money. It’s taken me years to find anyone willing to finance me in making another. But I suppose you know about that.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t have much contact with the movie business.”

  “You’re better off. It’s a heartless business run by stupid people.
A couple of failures and suddenly everybody regards you as a permanent has-been. People who used to fawn on you won’t even answer your phone calls. They don’t believe you can ever come back.”

  “Could make you pretty cynical.”

  “Oh, I’ve been that for a long time. I learned very early in my career.” Jacquier looked at his watch and then toward the Croisette. Failing to see the people he expected, he went on. “Funny story. It was when I was making my first picture, with very little funding. My agent took me to lunch with a banker who sometimes backs films. I told the banker about my years of being broke and my struggle to get started. After the lunch my agent begged me never to tell anybody that again. About having been broke.” Jacquier’s laugh wasn’t too humorous. “I pointed out that everybody has been broke at one time or other. He said that was true, but nobody ever mentioned it. In the film business it’s considered a contagious disease—ever having been broke. Like saying you’ve had AIDS. People avoid you.”

  At that point Jacquier spotted a newcomer arriving on the Carlton terrace and immediately dressed his face in a charming smile.

  The newcomer was one of the top comedians of French films and television: Pascal Guillot. A fat man with a bald head and bulging eyes that stared at the world with a permanent professional incomprehension. He was followed by a small retinue: three gofers and one of the Riviera’s highest-priced call girls.

  Guillot paused at our table to grab Jacquier’s extended hand in both of his own. The Hollywood handshake, now used by movie people the world over: proof of sincere affection, bestowed on business associates, strangers, and professional enemies with equal fervor.

  “Charles!” he gushed. “Congratulations on your new picture.”

  “I haven’t started it yet,” Jacquier said, keeping his smile warm, “but thank you anyway.”

  “With you doing it, it’s a sure hit. I’ve been telling everybody.”

  “I’ll try not to disappoint you, Pascal.”

  “You won’t. You’re a genius, Charles. The best.” They beamed at each other some more. Then Pascal Guillot lumbered off with his retinue to pump a few more hands before disappearing inside the hotel.

  “See what I mean?” Jacquier muttered darkly. “I put him in his first picture, gave him his real start. For the last three years he’s been acting as though he had trouble recognizing me. Now that I’m back in action I’m his genius pal again.”

  A couple of other newcomers appeared on the terrace. Jacquier regarded their approach with a poker face that betrayed neither warmth nor hostility.

  Both men were in their early thirties, and they shared an emotional deficiency you came to recognize immediately in my trade because you saw so much of it. An utter indifference to other people’s pain.

  One had a lean, strong figure in a beautifully tailored silk suit, with his cream shirt unbuttoned to show a heavy gold chain dangling across the well-tanned skin of his hairless chest. He had the darkly handsome face of a Renaissance princeling, flawed by a too-thin mouth compensated for with a neatly barbered mustache. He also had the eyes of a man who wouldn’t take two steps to pull a drowning puppy out of a pond.

  The guy with him looked like the one who threw the puppy in there. He had the build of a pro fullback: a massive bruiser with a dangerous blend of brutality and cleverness in his meaty face. His hands were extra-large, with flattened knuckles. His denim jacket was open over a body shirt bulging with thick muscle layered like armor over his heavy bone structure.

  They parted at Jacquier’s table. The bruiser walked on into the bar, light on his feet for a man that size. The handsome one offered me both hands and a smile full of perfect teeth that glittered with reflected lamplight under the mustache. I let him squeeze my hand between his.

  “Wonderful to meet you,” he told me. “I’m Antoine Callega, Charlie’s co-producer.”

  I had news for Libby Arlen. She’d won her bet about where Jacquier’s financing was coming from. But Fulvio Callega wasn’t doing it just to add a touch of class to his family name. He was also using it as a way to add a move into the film business to his other “legitimate” interests.

  “No, you’re not,” Jacquier told Tony Callega crisply. “Your title is associate producer.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Not quite. And you can stop impressing Monsieur Sawyer. He’s not in the business.”

  Tony Callega dropped my hand and his smile. He stood there and frowned down at Jacquier. “You mean neither of those distributors has shown up?”

  “They will, don’t worry. Where’s Chantal? I thought she was with you.”

  “I dropped her off at the Martinez.” Tony Callega settled into a chair. “She needs a couple of hours to make herself look good for the dinner tonight.” There wasn’t a hint of affection in his tone when speaking of his bride-to-be.

  Jacquier told him, “Monsieur Sawyer is the private detective who caught Bruno.”

  Tony Callega shot me a brief, wary look. Then he said indifferently, “Is that so?”

  I asked him, “Did you know Bruno Ravic?”

  He hesitated. Jacquier answered for him. “Bruno was the one who introduced Tony to me.”

  “That’s right,” Tony Callega said. His voice was still indifferent, but he was having to work at it.

  The trip to Cannes hadn’t been a waste of time after all.

  Chapter 12

  “How well did you know Ravic?” I asked Tony Callega.

  “I didn’t really know him. He was a waiter in a restaurant I used to go to for a while, that’s as much as we knew each other.”

  “Is that where he introduced the two of you?”

  Jacquier answered, “No, that was here in Cannes, at the last film festival. I was buying Bruno a drink and explaining why I still couldn’t hire him as an actor. Tony happened to pass by, and Bruno recognized him. So he introduced us.”

  “Looks like that turned out to be a lucky chance meeting, for both of you.”

  Tony Callega looked at me with narrowed eyes, his thin mouth getting thinner. I figured it was supposed to be his dangerous stare. “Why are you so interested?”

  “Just curious,” I said. I gave it a second’s thought and took a swing. “What I’m really interested in is Egon Mulhausser’s daughter. Odile. She’s missing, and I’m trying to find her. I understand you know her pretty well.”

  I’d just decided: If he knew about a connection between Odile Garnier and Bruno Ravic, I didn’t mind him realizing that I knew it, too. I wanted to see how he handled it, and whether it provoked him into making any interesting moves afterward.

  Jacquier was saying to Tony Callega, “I wasn’t aware you were friendly with Mulhausser’s daughter.”

  “I’m not, not the way you mean. She’s just a girl I run into now and then, just to say hello to. I haven’t seen her in almost six months.”

  It was already paying off. I asked him, “Where was that—where you saw her last?”

  He shrugged. “A bar in Paris. We said hello, had a drink, said goodbye. Why?” He was giving me his dangerous look again.

  “It would help me if you knew some of the places she goes to, or who her friends are.”

  “Sorry,” he snapped. “I’ve got no idea.”

  “What bar was it you met her in, that time?”

  “Just one of the bars in Paris. Around St. Germain. I go to a lot of them, I don’t even remember which one this was.”

  “You’re not much help,” I told him.

  But I had a feeling he was going to be, one way or another.

  Jacquier nodded toward the Croisette and told Tony Callega; “Here they come now.” He got his professional smile ready as he told me; “You’ll have to excuse us.”

  “Sure.” I stood up as the film distributors came across the terrace from the sidewalk: a pair of heavyset men in dark s
uits. Tony surged to his feet, giving them the Hollywood handshake and saying, “Wonderful to meet you, I’m Antoine Callega, Charlie’s co-producer.”

  I went back along the Croisette to the Martinez.

  * * * *

  Chantal Jacquier was in the hotel’s beauty parlor getting her hair restyled. I left word for her and went into the lounge off the Art Deco lobby. Tried the same order: croque madame and rose. This time it came promptly. I’d had my snack and was refilling my glass with the last of the wine when Jacquier’s daughter appeared, wearing her brand-new hairdo and a flower-print blouse with a peasant skirt. She glanced around the lounge uncertainly and then asked the barman for me.

  He pointed, and I stood up and went to meet her.

  She was tall and slim, with small features and a healthy, youthful complexion. She didn’t have her mother’s looks, but few women got to be screen stars in spite of minimal acting talent. Libby Arlen was a freak of nature. Her daughter wasn’t just a normal-looking young woman.

  The only thing I found unattractive about her was the lack of self-assurance in her expression, and an accompanying defensiveness. It looked like a chronic affliction.

  Maybe she’d overheard too many people say “poor Chantal”—too often and too young.

  I complimented her on the way her hair looked and asked if I could buy her a drink.

  “No,” she said hesitantly, “I really don’t have much time. I have to get ready for a dinner appointment and—”

  “I know,” I said. “Tony told me.”

  She brightened a bit. “Oh, you’re a friend of Tony’s?”

  “I just left him and your father. At the Carlton terrace, getting involved with those distributors.”

  She relaxed another notch. “They’re the ones we’re having dinner with. We’re all supposed to meet at Tony’s house tonight.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “But that leaves you enough time. Are you sure you won’t have just one drink? A quick one?”