“Messieurs et mesdames,” I said, “thank you very much. It has been a pleasure to entertain you. What about a nice round of applause for the orchestra?”
From the darkened auditorium there came the sound of one person clapping. The houselights came up. There was only one man in the audience. He stood up and walked toward the stage, his steps slow, deliberate, theatrical.
When he got to the stage, I saw that he wore a dark blue blazer with a white pullover under it. He was perhaps in his forties, a tall man with a look of intense intelligence. I needed no introduction to know that this was the famous Gerard Clovis, enfant terrible of French cinema.
“Excellent,” he said. “You are American? I congratulate you on your air of bewilderment, your projection of naïveté. I especially liked the way you stumbled over the power cable. Your face, too, has that homely innocence that identifies you as a fall guy. All in all, you are a perfect type, one who might have sprung full-blown from the forehead of the estimable Jim Thompson.”
“Who?” I asked.
Clovis’ lower lip curled in an indescribably derisive expression of scorn. “You do not even know the works of America’s premiere writer of policiers noir, the famous Jim Thompson?”
I conceived an instant dislike for Clovis, along with a grudging admiration for his effrontery.
“No, I don’t know any Jim Thompson,” I told him. “I’m trying to trace a friend of mine who has gone missing. I was told that you had hired him for your movie.”
“What is his name?”
“Alex Sinclair. An American.”
Clovis’ expression brightened. “Ah, of course, my newest discovery. He was quite perfect for the role. Do you bring me word of him?”
“I was hoping you knew where he was.”
“He began working for me a few weeks ago. He didn’t come to a costume call last week. He doesn’t answer his telephone. And I begin shooting day after tomorrow. Frankly, I am in trouble over this.”
“Sorry to hear it. I’ll call you when I find out anything.”
Clovis nodded in a vague sort of way. His mind was already far from Alex. He gave me a penetrating look. “Might I know your name?”
“I’m Hobart Draconian.”
“Do you have any acting experience, Mr. Draconian?”
“No, I’m afraid not. Acting’s not my line at all.”
“Perfect,” Clovis said, pronouncing it “parfay.” “I despise the so-called professionals in this business. Big stupid faces and mincing diction. Antonin Artaud pointed the direction. I am the first to take it. Mr. Draconian, I would like to cast you in my movie.”
“That’s very kind of you,” I said, “but it’s out of the question.”
“Never accuse me of being kind,” Clovis said. “I have been called a pragmatist of the transcendental. And why is it out of the question? Do you have something more pressing over the next week or so than to participate in a film that is certain to make cinematic history?”
“Well, gee, I’d like to,” I told him, “but I really have to find Alex. It’s not only friendship, Mr. Clovis. It’s a job.”
Clovis mused. “Alex was very friendly with my camera crew. One of them might know something. And you should really talk to Yvette, the script girl.”
“Great. How do I meet them?”
“That is a little difficult,” Clovis said. “Everybody is scattered over Paris at present setting up my locations. But you will meet them all while you are working in my movie.”
“Mr. Clovis, I admire your persistence, but I’m not going to be in your movie.”
“But of course you are,” Clovis said. “You seem to me a rational man. Working on my movie will give you access to all the latest Parisian gossip. You will meet several people who knew Alex well. I myself will assist you with your enquiries. And there is this to consider: perhaps some agent or producer will see your face when the movie is released, and will come to you with an offer of further work. This could be the beginning of a brilliant new career for you.”
“I already have a career,” I told him. “I’m an international investigator.”
“Mmm, no doubt, but is it a brilliant career?”
I had to admit that, careerwise, the best was yet to come.
“Furthermore,” Clovis said, “I pay in real money; francs you can spend right here in Paris, perhaps to improve your wardrobe.”
That hurt. It’s true that my Levis are a trifle tattered, and my blue workshirt has shrunk to where I can’t button the sleeves, so I roll them back at the cuffs for that suave look of contrived nonchalance. And my Clarke desert boots have seen better days. Still, there was no reason to get insulting about it.
As for a career in the movies—that was the craziest idea I’d heard in a long time. It was so crazy, in fact, that I was more than a little amazed to hear myself say, “OK, you talked me into it. When do I start?”
“Day after tomorrow I begin shooting. I want you at dawn at Le Sélect, a bistro on the corner of the Boulevard Masséna and the Porte d’ltalie. Seven sharp.”
“OK, boss,” I said, ironically, I hope.
THE ATTACK
16
i took the Métro back to Châtelet-les-Halles. There’s a cinema on one of the lower levels which plays new and experimental films. I checked the program to see when they would be showing something by Clovis. In a week, I read, I would be able to catch a Clovis double bill: Flesh, Desire and Squalor, starring Simone Signoret, and Orange Sunset, with Alain Delon. I was keeping pretty good company in my new career.
I got on the escalator to return to the street level. That’s when it happened.
This guy was riding the down escalator. Big, blond crew-cut type with tanned muscle and preternaturally white teeth. He was wearing surfing cutoffs, rubber flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt, looking no more freaky than anyone else in the Forum des Halles, so I didn’t give him another thought. That turned out to be a mistake.
Just as he came even with me he jumped across the border, or whatever-you-call-it between the up and down escalators, and came at me with his fists. He was muttering something, but I didn’t register it at the time. I was too busy trying to figure out what to do.
As I have already mentioned, I am not one of your martial arts people. In fact, I do not believe in fighting. Therefore, if people insist upon thrusting a fight on me, I feel completely justified in utilizing unfair tactics.
As he came at me, I put out both hands to square him up, then kicked him clean in the crotch, or crutch, as the English say, the toe of my desert boot impacting nicely on the genital-laden inner thigh, just as old Lao Tse had taught me back in my student days at the Hokkaido Crotch-Kicking School.
Joe Dangerous collapsed head downward on the escalator steps, looking like something knackered. I received a nice round of applause from the crowd, but beat a hasty retreat because the next move after the Crotch Kick is the Full Speed Retreat, in case you’ve missed the sweet spot or encountered a steel cup. Retreat is always in good order after you kick a man in the crotch, unless you plan to go all the way and kill him, in which case you’re well advised to do it there and then, before he has a chance to recover. Crotch-kicked men tend to be unbelievably violent.
It was a pleasure to come out onto the streets again. Suddenly it came upon me that I was in Paris. I had been so preoccupied with Alex that I had forgotten to take in the savoury immediacy of the nowness of my situation, drifting through the streets filled with amiable pleasure-seekers, some arm-in-arm, with the ubiquitous French policemen here and there, les flics, as we call them, walking in pairs, their short black capes billowing out behind them in the afternoon breeze. Cafés were on all sides of me, and the café is the ultimate civilized institution. People have tried to introduce them to the United States, but the results are mediocre. A blond college student who says, “Hi, I’m Harley,” as he leads you to your table is not the same as the professional French waiter who comports himself with a dignity bordering on both s
ides of disdain.
No, the scene does not transplant. If you wanted to get the atmosphere just right in your Café de Paris in Heartland, U.S.A., you’d also have to import a couple of Moroccans in long robes to go from table to table selling souvenir drums. And you’d have to explain to the customers that nobody actually ever buys a souvenir drum, since these vendors are supplied by the Mairie de Paris to lend local color.
It is curious how we are always trying to obtain the virtues of There, the charming foreign place, for our uses Here, in the dull old hometown. Modern life consists of living Here and importing the important things from There: romance, fashions, lifestyles.
Here and There are eternal categories, never to be abolished or subsumed one under another. No matter how far you travel, you always live Here. And the place you’re trying to get to, where the romance and adventure are, and the culture, is There, out of reach.
When you transport yourself physically from Here to There a curious condition ensues. First there’s the illusion of having arrived There at last, where the good things are. You even get to enjoy a brief period during which time There retains its pristine quality, when things stand out in all their uniqueness; but the decay of strangeness is already taking place, perceptual fade-out, habituation, and soon what you behold is no longer charming, but merely quaint. All too soon, There turns into just one more Here.
One good thing that happens is that Here, after you absent yourself from it long enough, reverts to its There state. This is automatic, just like all Theres become Heres after you occupy them.
Here and There. You and It. Eternal categories, opposition, struggle. You versus It. The conquest of It by You. The eternal law by which strangeness is converted into familiarity.
I was musing on these and similar matters, as I strolled the sidewalks of the inner city which lies at the center of the City of Light. For mark my words, the area which I call Châtelet-les-Halles, between the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Étienne-Marcel, and further bounded east and west by the Boulevard Sébastopol and the Rue du Temple, is a miniature hypermodern city where the ancient and the contemporary are thrown into constant abrupt juxtapositions. Interpenetrating in a small space of no more than several acres, you have a major modern art museum, a rail and subway terminus, a street of sex shops, a fountain filled with fire-swallowers and glass-eaters (tough-looking gentlemen accompanied by their girlfriends, who carry the lunch and the bottle of gasoline). Stone façades both ancient and modern connect on different levels. There are open spaces and closed spaces, all bound together by curving concrete walls and incorporating, here and there, an ancient structure. The South Americans have their own cafés in this quarter, places to meet in the ever-renewing exile that is the fate of modern South America. They come to Paris with their songs and their politics, and they are but the latest wave. Still here are all the other exiles, from the Maghreb and black Africa, from Iran and the Arab countries, from wherever dissidence is punished by long jail sentences or death.
Burdened with my thoughts, I ate dinner in one of the little restaurants on the Rue des Blancs and returned to my hotel room. I had been planning to freshen up and then go out again, to savor the Paris night and perhaps turn up a lead or two about Alex. Instead, I decided to lie down on the bed and indulge in melancholia. As I fumbled for the wall switch, a voice said from within my room, “Don’t bother with the light just yet, mon vieux. It’s much more comfortable here in the dark.”
THE INTRUDER
17
Although the voice hadn’t said so, I assumed that its possessor was carrying a gun. I would have been, if positions had been reversed. So I decided to make no precipitate movement, nothing that would alarm the voice (though he’d sounded cool enough) into firing prematurely, or, shall we say, mistakenly. Nor, given my assumption, was there any efficacious action for me to take at the present moment. I had already closed the door behind me. There was nowhere to go.
“May I sit down?” I asked.
“Suit yourself,” said the voice. He was speaking English, but with a French accent, as I might have expected. Moonlight streamed in through the tall, white-curtained windows, throwing a patch of yellow light on the floor and lending a ghostly illumination to the entire room. The armoire crouched in the corner like a fabulous beast. An armchair suggested itself out of the gloom, and I sat down in it.
After a suitable interval I said, “OK, are you going to tell me what this is all about or do we just sit around in the dark?”
“I’m acting on behalf of some friends,” the voice said.
“Just what does that mean?” I enquired.
“It has come to our attention that you’re looking for Alex Sinclair.”
“That is correct,” I said.
“Perhaps my friends could help.”
“Sure. I pay for information. Tell your friends to give me a call. Early afternoon is a good time. Or leave me their number on your way out and I’ll call them.”
“I think it would be best if we went to see them now.”
“I’d love to,” I said, “but actually I’ve got a date in a few minutes. Why don’t we set up a meeting? Lunch tomorrow sound good? I’m buying.”
“Nice try, M’sieu ’Ob, but no go. My friends insist upon seeing you now. Are you going to come along nice and quiet, or are you going to give me trouble?”
“That depends,” I said, “entirely upon whether or not you are armed.”
“Make no mistake,” he said. “I am armed.”
“That’s easy enough for you to say,” I said. “But am I just supposed to take your word for it?”
“All right,” the voice said. “Turn on ze light.”
I complied. The overhead light revealed a man of middle years and sinister mien. His face was sallow and pocked. Blue stubble showed beneath his jaundiced skin like the bristles of a steel brush poking through an olive-drab bedsheet. He was wearing a long black overcoat and a black fedora. He looked like an intellectual dressed up as a thirties gangster; the sort of thing the French do so very well. In his right hand, a blued steel automatic winked wickedly.
“I’ll assume it’s loaded,” I said. “There is such a thing as carrying credulity too far. Where are we going, and are you going to keep that pointed at me in the street?”
“It will be in my pocket,” the guy said, pocketing the automatic. “Don’t make me fire, thereby ruining two suits of clothes, to say nothing of your health.”
And so out we went into the June night.
Paris is well known to be an exciting city, especially when you walk through it with a gun in your ribs. Thoughts of escape ran through my mind like small gray rabbits. What was to prevent me from suddenly breaking into a sprint, running up an alley, into a theater, or a bar, or a sex shop, or even ducking into the gendarmerie past which our footsteps were now leading us. Reluctantly, I put aside the idea. The black swans of caution brought me back to my senses: any sudden movement on my part could touch off this galoot’s adrenalin-charged reflexes. If there were a hair trigger beneath his tensed trigger finger, a sudden move on my part might cause him to shoot me even before he had time to decide not to. And of course, he could probably get away with it since no one pays attention to noise in Paris unless it is loud enough to be a bomb or repetitive enough to be a machine gun.
And so I walked on. And as I walked, I thought. One of the advantages of taking an evening stroll with a gun in your ribs is the way it promotes a very real appreciation of even the most evanescent sensory pleasures, such as the sight of an old friend on the sidewalk, his face painted white, mimicking people.
“Hi, Arne,” I said as we passed, hoping he’d read the note of desperation in my voice.
Arne made an exaggerated bow, stuck his hand into his right hand pocket in imitation of my abductor and fell into step beside and slightly behind us. What a time for him to play the fool! Arne’s face took on an expression of worried evil. His eyes slunk back and forth. He did furtiveness to perfection, and
my abductor didn’t like it. He made a menacing gesture at Arne. Arne returned the gesture with exaggeration.
That was my chance. During the few moments that this byplay took, I managed to slip away.
Or rather, I would have managed to slip away if I hadn’t noticed, in the crowd, the indisputable plum shape, dark blue suit and red carnation of Mr. Tony Romagna.
I decided that I was faced with too many mysteries and that I’d better solve at least one of them immediately.
“Put away that silly gun,” I said to my abductor. “Lead me to wherever you’re taking me.”
“I am just supposed to trust you?”
“That’s right.”
He gave me an ironic look, but he did take his right hand from his pocket.
“You know,” he said, “they told me you were a little different.”
“I suppose I am,” I said.
“What they didn’t mention is that you are downright silly. My name is Etiènne. Come and meet the boys.”
And so we marched onward into the night of terminal ironies and faint transparent ecstasies, the accordion-haunted night of Paris, our lady of the roasting chestnuts.
ETIÈNNE
18
EtiÈnne was a little nervous. It may have been his first abduction. But he was working hard to stay cool. “Come on,” he said, “we’ll take a cab. And don’t try to kid around with me. I still ’ave ze gun.”
A taxi stopped and we got in and Etiènne gave an address in the thirteenth arrondissement near the Porte d’Italie. No sooner were we underway than we heard something growling from the front seat, passenger side. Then we noticed the large black French police poodle sitting there. It was looking at us hard with its glittery attack dog eyes and making those scary sounds dogs make when they peel their lips back over their teeth and come on like King Kong having a seizure.
The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian) Page 6