Francesca

by Stephen Marlowe

  M. David shook his head in protest. “Nonsense. Your Howard Ridgway is as good as behind bars awaiting extradition right now.”

  The phone rang. M. David picked it up. His end of the conversation went like this: “Oui. Oui. Eh? Formidable! Non. Non, mais non. Ah, oui. oui.” When he hung up he avoided my eyes. His hand was shaking. He sighed, cleared his throat, lit a Laurens Green, went to the window, where pellets of ice were rattling against the panes, and spoke to the darkness three inches in front of his face:

  “Howard Ridgway gave his tail the slip in Evian. They don’t know where he is. Evian, it is less than fifty kilometers from the Swiss frontier. But they’ll stop him. They’ll see his passport and stop him.”

  I said the English equivalent of merde.

  “They will stop him.”

  “He can, cross the lake to Swiss territory in a boat. There are a hundred places he could land to avoid a passport check. There’s no iron curtain in the Lake of Geneva, M. David.”

  “The storm. He could never—”

  “Okay, he’ll freeze his ass off for a couple of hours. Don’t you think it’s worth it—for three million bucks?”

  “Artichoke farmers,” M. David said sadly as I left. I caught the night bus to Geneva. The roads were treacherous.

  chapter fifteen

  “ARE YOU with EUROSAR or INTERSAC?” the room clerk at the Du Rhône asked me.

  I asked him to come again. He did so and added: “Munich has its Oktoberfest, Cannes its Carnival, Seville its Holy Week. But Geneva is crowded to the rafters all the time, sir. If it isn’t one international conference, it is another. We cannot accommodate you. Indeed, I fear any attempt to find a hotel room anywhere in Geneva this week would be doomed to failure.”

  Giving him a quick once-over, from his glossy toupée to his manicured fingernails that were drumming on the counter between us, I said: “For a guy who dresses as carefully as you do, you sure don’t know how to arrange a display handkerchief.” His head dropped in surprise and his eyes darted to the breast pocket of his gray sharkskin jacket. His display handkerchief was navy blue, bore the monogram R, and was arranged artfully in three starched Alpine peaks. I reached for it and tucked a twenty-franc note behind it. He beamed at me and studied one of those leather-bound card folders that let you know what rooms are available. “We have a very nice single facing the river, Mr. Drum,” he said, and called a porter to get my bag. As I was heading for the elevator, he patiently gave the Oktoberfest story to three birds with INTERSAC buttons in their lapels, to explain why they would have to triple up.

  It was almost midnight. I called Axel Spade from my room, and an answering-service operator said he might or might not call me back. He did, inside of twenty minutes.

  “I was able to reach my man Hoffmann at the Union Bank Suisse,” he said. “I do considerable business with them, and I’ve always treated Hoffmann well financially. Should either my daughter or Howard Ridgway attempt to withdraw a large sum from a numbered account, there will be an administrative delay and Hoffmann will inform me.”

  “Good thing you moved so fast. Ridgway’s on the loose. Probably in Switzerland by now. I don’t know where Helen is.”

  He clucked his tongue. “Hoffmann’s co-operation must remain our secret. He would face criminal action were it known to the authorities. Will Helen co-operate with Ridgway, do you think?”

  I didn’t take time to mull that over. “He was poison to her after he took a shot at her, but—”

  “What? What did you say?”

  So I had to give him the story on that, leaving out the part where Helen had been ready to commit murder at Ridgway’s side. He made worried-father sounds. “It was just a scratch,” I finished. “Hardly even a flesh wound. You can rest easy there, Mr. Spade. But I think he could change Helen’s mind. She’s got it bad for him. If he can convince her taking a pot shot at her to get at Havill was an accident, she might play on his team again.” I asked: “Francesca been in touch with you?”

  “Is she here in Geneva?”

  “Search me. If Piaget’s stashed the stag-party pictures here, she is. Or else she’s on her way. She learned where they’re kept. You have any ideas on that subject?”

  He didn’t. But he told me: “There is a blonde woman named Gina, who owns the Café Rendezvous. She and Yves Piaget are very close friends. Why not see her? I would like you to help Francesca if you can. That is, if you still are in my employ?”

  “Pourquoi pas?” I asked in French. Then I went downstairs and through the rain to the Rue des Étuves.

  Juli was playing a final number on his squeeze-box when I got there. The plate-glass window was steamed over, and the door opened to let a few glassy-eyed Genevois take their brandy breaths out into the cold, dark street. The fat blonde who ran the place was making some lazy passes at a table with a sopping washrag. A domino clattered on the dirty wood floor. I looked down. She looked up.

  “I remember you,” she said with a vague and tired smile. “But we are closing. Midnight. It is the law.”

  She spoke French. I answered in French, slowly and with an accent that would have made the Berlitz people shudder. “Yves Piaget took a trip to France. Chamonix. I was there. He is in trouble. Jailed. The police, Gina. Bad trouble.”

  Clutching the pendulous bulge of her left breast through the black dress she was wearing, she cried: “What are you saying? What are you telling me? Yves? The police?”

  Juli strapped his accordion case shut. He winked at the only other occupant of the café, a young and pretty brunette who sat primly, her knees close together, on a wooden chair. She was wearing a. gold dress. Suddenly she moved and it shimmered in the overhead light, the fabric clinging to her. She crossed her legs and smiled at me, a smile not as tired as Gina’s but more jaded.

  “Yves hid something,” I said. “A package, not very big. If the gendarmes get to it before he can, he’s in even worse trouble. That’s why I’m here. I hoped you could—”

  “Now I remember you,” Gina cried. “Now I remember exactly. Earlier this week. You had a fight with Yves.” She snorted. “And now you claim you wish to help him. I know nothing of any package. You will leave now. We are closing. It is the law.”

  I couldn’t budge her; she was furious. I nodded at Juli, who looked through his rimless glasses and through me. The brunette crossed her legs the other way and smiled at me again.

  Back through the rain, toward the Place St. Gervais and the Hotel du Rhône on the quai beyond. Francesca would show up, I thought. With or without the film. She had no reason to hide, and Axel Spade had no reason to worry, not with Piaget behind bars across the French frontier.

  Just as I reached the head of the narrow Rue des Étuves, where it opened on Place St. Gervais, I heard footsteps click-clacking behind me: a woman, and in a hurry. I turned. She was wearing a black trenchcoat and a red kerchief over her head: the pretty brunette from the Café Rendezvous.

  “Monsieur,” she called. “You will wait.”

  I’m not a hard guy to get along with. I waited. She came up, wobbling on her high heels, almost running. She took my arm. “First I need a cigarette and a drink,” she said.

  “First? And then what?”

  She smiled up at me, a shy smile and not so jaded as before. She was small, hardly more than five feet three in her heels, and well turned out in the snugly-fitting trenchcoat. “I am a beeznis girl,” she said simply. From Hamburg to Naples, from Sherbourg to West Berlin, the term business girl, used on visiting Americans, means prostitute.

  “Honey,” I said. “I’ve had a long day and not too much of it fun.”

  “My name is Caroline. I am very good,” she said earnestly.

  “I’m sure you’ve got great credentials, kid. But with EUROSAR and INTERSAC in town—”

  “Hah!” she said. “And with every beeznis girl from Paris, from Zurich, from Germany, even from Barcelona, here in Genève to do beeznis! There are too many. Genève, it is crowded to the lak
e and the mountains with Beeznis girls. I know one girl from Paris, Kiki is her name and she is good but old, twenty-eight at least, who stays two weeks in Genève and does no beeznis. None, monsieur. She takes the train in disgust back to Paris, where she is a beeznis girl of long standing on Boulevard Raspail. Too long,” Caroline added, and laughed.

  No harm in that: I laughed too. Caroline didn’t look like a beeznis girl. She had a small, heart-shaped face, pretty and innocent. She looked like a kid from one of the finishing schools up the lake.

  “I do not like Yves Piaget,” she said all of a sudden in an angry whisper. “Once I like him, but pas main-tenant. Not now. The other day I see you. You are fighting with him. This I like. It is true that he is in prison in France?” she asked hopefully.

  “I’ve got cigarettes and we can get a drink at the Du Rhône. Come on.”

  A few EUROSAR and INTERSAC people were sitting hunched over their drinks at the American bar, telling each other stories about other conventions and conferences in other cities. Caroline and I took a table. The waiter hid a faint smirk behind a polite request for our orders: he knew what business Caroline was in.

  “I think a pernod and water,” Caroline told me. I gave her order, and mine for a cognac, to the waiter. Pernod is usually an apéritif, not an after-dinner drink, and I took a stab:

  “Too bad ouzo’s so hard to come by in Switzerland.”

  “Ouzo? But how do you ever know I like ouzo?”

  “You’re a friend of Francesca Artemi’s,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Francesca, she teaches me to appreciate ouzo and pernod, yes. But how did you ever—”

  “I’m a sleuth,” I said lightly, and had to explain that in French. “Why don’t you like Piaget?”

  “Don’t like him? Oh, but I hate him. If his liver it dries up tomorrow, for me it would not be soon enough.”

  “How come?”

  “I am a beeznis girl. Expensive, as I am young and have this look of innocence. Four hundred francs for the whole night, that is not bad, is it?” Eighty bucks for the full treatment. I was impressed. “One customer a night, three or four nights a week, he is sufficient. But I have expenses—what beeznis girl does not? There is my little sister, in school in Montreaux. If she knows what I do, she would the. A dress shop, she thinks a dress shop. There is my mother, with a bad thing of the chest. In Davos. There is—”

  Tears of self-pity gleamed in her eyes, ready to spill over. “I get the idea,” I said gently. “What about Piaget?”

  “Yves, he is a very big man, he tells me. He can get me in the cinema.”

  “Oh no, not again,” I said. “Stag-party pictures?”

  She did not understand, and I knew I was wrong. “It will take time, he says. But it is a certainty, he assures me, and then your little sister will be proud of you. Meanwhile, come and live with me. Beeznis girls, they are fools about such things: I accept his offer. Weeks pass. Months. He does nothing for me, he has no intention. But I sleep in his bed and I do no beeznis on the side. I am not that kind of girl,” she said, contemptuous of those who were. “One day, finally, I have it out with him. He can do nothing for me in the cinema, I realize that. What names I call him I will not repeat. A beeznis girl should not have a foul mouth. He beats me. He thrashes me. Then he is afraid. I am moaning. All over I am bruises. He calls Francesca on the telephone. When she come, it is clear she does not like him but also clear she must do as he instructs. She takes me home with her, to the Quai Gustav Ador. She takes care of me. At first she does not like me, but soon she does. I am pleased, as she is a famous cinema star. But one day she tells me, Caroline, I must be fair to you, you will never arrive in the cinema, you do not project. Once more I am a beeznis girl. It is not a bad life when one is young and the price is high. Francesca I like. Yves Piaget, if his liver dries up tomorrow—”

  “That package I mentioned to Gina. They’re stag-party pictures, Caroline. A movie Francesca made when she was younger. It could ruin her career.”

  Caroline forgot that a beeznis girl should not use a foul mouth. She both described Piaget and told me in explicit and impossible detail what she would like to do to him.

  “Well,” I said, trying not to grin, “you’ll have to let the French gendarmes get in their licks first. Would you have any idea where Piaget might have stashed the package?”

  She frowned. “No, I don’t—mais oui! Certainement! His mother. It would be with his mother if anywhere. She owns a boulangerie, a bakery, on the Rue” Ferdinand Hodler. She also is, how you say, a receiver of stolen goods.”

  “A fence?”

  “Oui, a fence. She lives above the boulangerie with her sons. Yves Piaget’s brothers. Three of them. They are huge but brainless. The mother is huge, also. The father is dead a long time. It is said she killed him with her bare hands in a fight over a woman. Only Yves is small, like his father was. But of them all he is the toughest.”

  Caroline gave me the address on Rue Ferdinand Hodler. I told her she could have another drink if she wanted it. She said it was not good for a beeznis girl to drink too much. I went upstairs after my Magnum. When I returned to the lobby, I looked in at the American bar. Caroline was in rapt conversation with a EUROSAR or INTERSAC delegate. He was bald and had plump, pink hands. One of them was resting on her knee. It looked like my beeznis girl would get her four hundred francs tonight after all.

  chapter sixteen

  I TOOK A TAXI across Mont Blanc Bridge and along Cours de Rive to the Rue Ferdinand Hodler. It was a wide, cobblestoned street. Number thirty-nine was a small boulangerie. Rain rattled against the empty display windows. Through them I could see that a dim light glowed in the back of the shop.

  “Ici, monsieur?” asked the cabbie in surprise.

  “Yes, here.” I paid him and got out. He drove off, tires whining on the wet cobblestones. I pulled my hatbrim down and ran across the wide sidewalk through the rain. I pounded on the door of the boulangerie. The windows above it were dark. I pounded again. The door shook in its frame.

  A silhouette appeared through the plate glass of the door, against the dim light in the back of the shop: an immense woman in a robe, the sleeves rolled up. She came slowly and ponderously toward the door. She was better than six feet tall and only about half as wide. She opened the door a few inches and glared at me. Her features were coarse and masculine, with a heavy ridge of bone over her eyes, a high, hooked nose and a jaw Sonny Listen might have fractured his knuckles on. She looked mad enough to yank the door off its hinges and hurl it at me.

  “Oui?” she demanded in a voice like a wood rasp tearing into oak. “What do you wish this time of night?” she asked in French.

  “If you open the door and let me in out of the hot sun,” I replied, “I’ll tell you.”

  “Je ne parle pas anglais,” she rasped, and started to shut the door. I got a foot in it.

  “I am called Geoffrey Havill,” I said in slow French. “Yves sent me.”

  She opened the door enough to let me slide in. She banged her hands, which were caked with flour, against her great flanks. Her forearms were enormous. They did not jiggle with fat. They were solid muscle.

  “Yves is in prison. In France,” she rasped softly.

  “I know. I was there. Yves sent me,” I said again.

  “Havill,” she admitted grudgingly. “I have heard the name. What do you wish?”

  “A package Yves once gave you for safekeeping. About like this.” I held my hands up with a space between them the diameter of a can of film. “He needs it now.”

  “In France? In prison?”

  “He doesn’t plan on spending the rest of his life there.”

  “He’ll get out. Sooner than you think,” Madame Piaget assured me.

  “With the help of the package,” I said.

  She smiled and shut the door behind me, not locking it. “You really think this, M. Havill? Then come with me.”

  I followed her huge bulk behind the shop’s
single counter, through a curtained doorway and up a dark flight of stairs, leaving the smell of baking bread below me. Madame Piaget groped on the wall at the top of the stairs. A light came on overhead. We were in a small vestibule with three doors leading off it. I thought about those three brothers, all big, maybe as big as their old lady and maybe bigger, Caroline had mentioned. The bulk of the Magnum under my left armpit was reassuring.

  Madam Piaget opened the door opposite the landing. Her big hand hit the wall again and brought electricity to a large kitchen with cracked linoleum on the floor, a scarred, porcelain-topped table, five chairs, an old gas range with a rubber hose that fed gas to the burners, a sink, and a small refrigerator that purred asthmatically.

  “How big did you say the package was?”

  “You mean there’s more than one?”

  “Yves, he is always leaving things with me.”

  I showed her with my hands again. She nodded and went to a cabinet over the sink. Her right forearm disappeared in it. I heard something clatter as her hand groped on the shelf. Leaning an elbow on the top of the small refrigerator, I waited. I began to congratulate myself on how easy it had been. Francesca’s worries would be over, though not Axel Spade’s.

  Madame Piaget turned, heaving her bulk away from the sink and in my direction. The only package she had was in her right hand. It was an automatic, and the business end was pointed at my chest.