Really the Blues

by Joseph Koenig

  “I’m sorry,” Madame Gilbert cried. “They forced me to let them in. I wouldn’t have, but they threatened to arrest the boy. I’m sorry—”

  The stranger clapped a hand over her mouth. Eddie was sorry, too.

  They put him in a car without markings. “What do you want with me?” he asked them.

  Noisy a minute ago, they had nothing more to say. He was almost relieved when they parked at a police station. A sweeper with handcuffs dangling from one wrist pushed his broom the length of a corridor, redistributing the dirt. In a room stinking of cigarettes and anxiety, an Inspector Goulart asked him if he was the Eddie Piron born in the United States and employed as a musician at La Caverne Negre on Place Pigalle.

  “Yes to all of that. What do you say I did?”

  “You are accused of criminal assault upon a young woman.”

  He didn’t comprehend. In his New Orleans Creole French, the words meant one thing. In Paris, something else. They had to. How else to understand what he seemed to have been told?

  “You mean rape?”

  “This is what the victim says. What do you say for yourself?”

  “I have no idea of what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you would not.” Goulart placed a cigarette pack in his lap. Without lighting up, he leaned his head back and inhaled deeply, as if he could obtain the nicotine he craved as easily from the air.

  “When am I supposed to have—Where did it happen?”

  “At this time last night. In the kitchen of your jazz club.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Are there so many?”

  “Not even one,” Eddie said.

  “You don’t know who would bring the charge?”

  “No clue.”

  “You will be informed of the accuser’s name along with the details of the crime in due course.”

  “I’d like them now.”

  “Now it is five o’clock in the morning. What else have you to say for yourself?”

  Was he being goaded into talking about the Goudsmit woman? The police weren’t shy. If they knew about her, they wouldn’t have knocked or invited him to discuss a rape that hadn’t happened.

  He was lodged in a pen with a couple of dozen mecs like those he rubbed shoulders with on a daily basis on Place Pigalle. No one stopped snoring, or rolled over to make room. It could have been worse. There wasn’t anyplace where he would rather be charged with rape than Paris, France. Where he came from, a mob already would be gathered outside the jail, braiding a noose and slinging it over the bough of a tree while a fire was stoked underneath it. He squeezed into a spot near the bars and sat with his back against them, closed his eyes trying for sleep. Yes, it could be worse. Instead of sheep, he counted his blessings.

  A prisoner farthest from the bars stirred, and a tidal wave of motion swept over the sleeping pile, catching him in its drowsy currents. The men found their shoes and laced them, combed their hair with their fingers, demanded breakfast, which arrived on a trolley cart that he declined to go near. The only appetite he had was for his freedom.

  One of the men checked the time on a Bulova diamond wristwatch. Every few minutes Eddie grabbed his arm and pushed his sleeve above his wrist. The expensive watch didn’t keep time well. Days, weeks seemed to go by before the prisoners were called for questioning and to meet with attorneys and relatives. Many had returned to the pen by the time Eddie heard his name, and a turnkey led him in handcuffs to a room identical to the one in which he had been questioned the night before. A new investigator, also identical to the previous one, was there. Eddie didn’t ask his name. Getting out was all that interested him. He said, “You’ll inform me of everything now?”

  The new man shook his head. “You will inform us.”

  The investigator stepped out and in a moment was back with a woman whose face was buried against his shoulder while she wept. He stood over Eddie, glaring as if to say, Bastard, look what you’ve done to her. Then came actual words: “She wants to talk to you first. I will be outside.” He tugged at Eddie’s cuffs to satisfy himself that they were secure. “You are not to try to touch her. Keep your hands on the table.”

  Was this how rape was prosecuted in France? By leaving the alleged victim alone with the rapist? A strange practice, thought Eddie, unless the police were attempting to reduce a backlog of cases by encouraging forgiveness and reconciliation. Even marriage. His accuser was well-built, dressed stylishly. If he were ever to consider rape—

  He’d been locked up too long, listening to a bad element, and pretending to be like them in order to get along. Soon he wouldn’t be pretending. Being here was affecting his mind.

  Eddie recognized her right away. He didn’t remember her name, then remembered that she hadn’t given it to him. She said in English, “Don’t pretend you don’t know me.”

  “Not the way you claim I do.”

  “I say otherwise,” Mavis said.

  “We’ve never been more intimate than now.”

  “That’s your story.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “You’re going to Devil’s Island, or like there, for a long stretch unless you come up with ten thousand in cash, American money, to make me . . . make this go away.”

  He tilted his head, looked at her from various angles.

  “Think it’s funny?”

  “Am I laughing?”

  “On the inside,” she said, “which is not where last laughs come from. If I was in your shoes, I’d be telling me right off the bat that I could raise the money but fast.”

  “Even though I can’t?”

  “A famous entertainer such as yourself? Please.”

  “Fairly famous,” he said. “Not rich. There’s little money in jazz.”

  “There’s going to be plenty in crying rape.”

  She began to sob, banging her head on the table. He didn’t know what to make of her. Then he heard a click, the door being shut all the way. Mavis looked up-dry-eyed.

  “You’re screwed, buddy.” She raised her voice so they could hear her outside, in particular the English-speaking detective who had rehearsed her in how to get her assailant to incriminate himself. “Did you enjoy yourself doing those disgusting things to me? I bet you—what’s this? You say I’ve got the wrong gent? You were the right one, all sweetness and smiles, when you invited me backstage for drinks. Funny, you don’t know what I’m talking about when so many people saw us together.”

  “None of them saw you attacked.”

  “Thank God,” she said. “What could be more humiliating than being seen in that, those compromising positions?” She leaned across the table, seductive again, but businesslike in her tone. “I don’t need eyewitnesses. With your criminal record in the States, who’s everybody going to believe? Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re a regular Paris institution. And me, who am I, just a tourist. After they find out you’re colored, been lying about that, it’ll be another story.”

  “It’s different here,” Eddie said. “The French don’t care what I am.”

  “They’ll care that you’re a liar. Nobody likes their kind.”

  If anyone had been raped, Eddie would tell the judges, it was him.

  “Know how many years they hand out for rape in France?”

  “Not offhand, no.”

  “You’re gonna,” she said. “Oh, are you ever gonna.”

  Maybe he’d ask her to marry him. A wife couldn’t testify against her husband under French law. Could she? Probably Mavis could tell him. She had all the answers.

  The tears began again, and she began to wail. He knew what was coming, but could only sit tight as the door flew open and he was surrounded by flics who held him as she was helped from her chair and escorted out while he waited to be hauled back to the pen.

  The holding pen emptied and was refilled with sad characters indistinguishable from those they replaced. He was the veteran, but with none of the honor accorded to old-timers in more venerable institutions. The food t
rolley came and went. Better to starve than to be made of the foul stuff served up here. The inmate with the Bulova surrendered it to a hard case, and then both were gone. Eddie hadn’t any sense of the hour when his name was called, and he elbowed some men out of the way and trampled others to get to the bars. Already he fit in.

  He was cuffed again and taken to another floor. Expecting a fresh round of questioning, he was marched to a two-man cell. A prisoner with zodiac tattoos on his hands and arms, his Adam’s apple in the pincers of crab, told him to keep quiet or he’d kill him. Alone with his thoughts, Eddie wanted him for a friend anyway. A depressing commentary on his situation.

  A turnkey was at the bars when he looked up. Given papers, and no time to read them, he put his name everywhere he was instructed. If he were signing a confession that led directly to the guillotine, he had no complaint. It beat one minute more in a cell.

  Roquentin was waiting on a bench with two umbrellas, his pants legs plastered against his thighs. He gave one to Eddie, and they unfurled them walking out into a driving rain.

  “How did you know where I was?” Eddie said.

  “One of my mecs saw you in the pen.”

  “He didn’t say anything.”

  “Claude LeGare. He had throat cancer. Evidently you don’t speak sign language.”

  “Who did you bribe to get me out?”

  “You know I haven’t any money for bribes.”

  “How—?”

  “I posted your bond.”

  “For that you have money?”

  “I put up La Caverne.”

  “You must be nuts,” Eddie said. “What if I scram?”

  He’d meant it as a joke, but Roquentin looked at him gravely. Before he could assure him that he wasn’t going anywhere but back to work, Roquentin put a hand on his shoulder and said “I wish you would.”

  “You are really going too far. I will appear in court at the proper time. You’ll have the money back.”

  “If you run, it will be the SS’s loss. Not mine.”

  “You changed your mind?” Eddie said. “You took them in as a partner?”

  “They changed it for me.”

  “Don’t tell me. At the point of a gun.”

  “They were gentlemen,” Roquentin said. “They told me that Frenchmen are needed in Germany, and asked how would I like to go there to work for them.”

  “To open another jazz cl—” Eddie slapped his forehead. “Jail makes me stupid, you know?”

  “To work in a salt mine in Brega,” Roquentin said, “digging my grave. Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t blame yourself. They are getting nothing. It’s I who put one over on them.”

  “You haven’t asked me who I raped,” Eddie said.

  “Tell me after I tell you about the little green men I saw coming out of a spaceship on Place de la Concorde.”

  At a bus stop they waited ten minutes in the rain, and then Roquentin said “It seems they’ve stopped running, but I have a few francs for a taxi.”

  “Have the Germans taken over from you already?”

  “The paperwork hasn’t been started,” Roquentin said. “You know how they are. They won’t do anything till all the t’s are crossed, the i’s dotted. The club remains mine until their attorney notifies me it’s theirs.”

  Every cab passing by was full. They fought the storm all the way to Place Pigalle. Eddie was surprised to see Pierrot Gilbert in front of La Caverne Negre, holding a trumpet case to his chest with both hands while he studied the garish neon.

  “I apologize for burglarizing your apartment.” He handed over Eddie’s horn. “You need to lock your windows when you go out. Monsieur Roquentin said you will not call the police on me.”

  Eddie dug in his pocket. Every centime was gone for small favors at the jail.

  “Pierrot works for me,” Roquentin said.

  With his hand on the boy’s head, he steered him to a table up front to which he directed a steady flow of soft drinks and snacks. Pierrot led the applause as Eddie came on stage during the run-up to “Milenberg Joys.”

  Eddie’s stomach growled as he put the trumpet to his lips, a sweeter sound than came from the horn. He surrendered the lead to Weskers and played weakly behind him. The boy was as embarrassed for Eddie as Eddie was himself, but waved his arms like a cheerleader when Eddie pulled off a neat four-bar solo after the drum break. A shame that Pierrot was hearing him for the first time fresh from jail. He rarely sounded this flat in his nightmares.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  In Weiler’s arms was one of the elegant beauties common to the French capital who turned racial science on its ear. Dark-haired and petite, she was of a different species than the broad-hipped giantesses venerated in Berlin as the machinery to expand the Aryan population into the far corners of Europe. The superior species, in Weiler’s estimation, although he kept the treasonous thought to himself. Ice maidens, if this one was typical, immune to flattery and gestures of affection. When the music stopped, she slipped from his embrace, her mechanical smile earning an immediate place in the arms of a new admirer. Weiler sat out the dance at the table where Colonel Maier was nursing a glass of Riesling from Rhenish cellars.

  “I just had the most peculiar experience with a Frenchwoman,” Weiler said to him.

  “On the dance floor?”

  “It went no further. We danced two numbers. In that time she didn’t say two words while I whispered sweet nothings in her ear.”

  “Have you considered that she despises you?” Maier said.

  “She doesn’t know me. I gave her no reason for her negative attitude.”

  “Other than your uniform? The insignia on your collar? Not all these women are crazy for Germans.”

  “No one put a gun to her head and forced her to come.”

  “You asked?”

  “I will now.”

  Maier lifted one finger from his glass. It kept Weiler in his chair until he was asked to move by a carpenter carrying an installation for Le Bolchevisme Contre L’Europe, the next exposition at the Salle Wagram. Tonight’s affair was the first annual Paris-Berlin joint chamber of commerce dinner dance with entertainment provided by Les Bourgeois Gentilhommes, a society orchestra featuring French and German music-hall favorites put over with a leaden touch.

  “Aside from the women, you are enjoying yourself?” Maier said.

  “Aside from them, what is there to enjoy?” Weiler said. “Are you?”

  “I’m not here to enjoy myself.”

  Weiler didn’t have to be told.

  “I’ve been speaking to some of the oligarchs favored to take control of Jewish businesses in the occupied zone under the Aryanization campaign.”

  “A few look rather Semitic themselves.”

  “For the right price, they can be whatever they say they are,” Maier said, “until we say they are not. Here is one whose lineage isn’t in doubt.”

  He tilted his glass toward a man in a tailored dinner jacket whose brilliantined silver hair framed a sad, handsome face.

  “He looks familiar,” Weiler said.

  “He is the quintessential French aristocrat out of a portrait by Ingres,” Maier said.

  “Something more recent.”

  “He has been in the news. You may have seen his picture.” Maier stood up as the man came over. “Major Weiler,” he said, “I wish to introduce you to my new friend, Carl de Villiers.”

  Weiler glanced first at Maier, whose face gave nothing away. But then it never did. The newcomer’s features, now that he had a name to go with them, confirmed what Weiler had been thinking, that there was a close physical resemblance to photos he’d seen of the young woman who had killed herself. A mourner’s button was further evidence that he was right.

  “Monsieur de Villiers represents a consortium of investors proposing to take over the Goldfadden cinema chain. After cancelling Goldfadden’s contracts with the European distribution arm of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, they’ll be granted exclusive rights to pictures m
ade at the UFA studios in Berlin, which they will dub into French, absorbing the cost of the new prints themselves.”

  “And they say that we Germans are efficient,” Weiler said. “This is an excellent plan that gets rid of two Jewish birds with one French stone.”

  De Villiers said, “You are the Major Weiler who promised an investigation of my daughter’s death. We spoke several times over the phone.”

  “I am unable to prosecute the case,” Weiler said, “as it doesn’t touch upon matters of security. A tragedy nevertheless. I appreciate this opportunity to extend my condolences in person.”

  “You can do more. The bastard responsible for Carla’s hanging herself assaulted another girl, and again was set free. This cannot stand. He is a danger to all Frenchwomen. I demand that he be jailed immediately.”

  “A case of rape falls under the jurisdiction of the Sûreté,” Weiler said. “Trust them to see justice done.”

  “They haven’t lost a daughter to a black animal. In Germany he would be prosecuted to the fullest extent with predictable results.”

  “This is France,” Weiler said. “It isn’t that easy.”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  Weiler doubted that anyone ever would. He was ready to send de Villiers on his way, but Maier indulged his anger, encouraged it.

  “Why has the Sûreté toyed with this miscreant time and again?” Maier said. “Might not a way be found to bring pressure to bear against him so that Monsieur de Villiers can sleep well?”

  “I want more than pressure brought to bear, damn it,” de Villiers said.

  Weiler couldn’t have heard right. No one, no Frenchman, no SS officer, not his wife if the colonel had one, dared to talk to Colonel Maier like that. He circled around until he was looking into de Villiers’s face, and could also read his lips.

  “I want the blade of the guillotine brought against him.”