by Phil Keith
The German pestered Bullard enough times about the Nazi flag that finally the proprietor had enough. Just before the bout with Schmeling (which Neusel would lose in a ninth-round TKO), Neusel finally bugged Bullard one time too many. Bullard was puffing a cigarette at that moment, and he calmly blew smoke in Neusel’s face and told him to leave the gym—for good—or else. Neusel backed down, probably more out of concern for his hands and his upcoming fight than taking on the gym owner, but it was a moral victory for Bullard nonetheless. The Nazi flag never went up at the Athletic Club, and Neusel never came back.
Not long after the Neusel confrontation, Bullard and his longtime friend Opal Cooper were having a beverage or two at the Costa Bar. They were drinking and chatting at one end of the metal bar when a large man, who announced he was from New Orleans, approached and asked, “Are you Eugene Bullard?”
After Bullard replied that he was, Cooper reported that “the big guy hauled off and took a big swing at Gene. Gene ducked and the big man hit his fist against the metal bar. If he had ever hit Gene, he would have killed him. As it was, the man broke his hand. Gene jumped on the big guy and almost beat him to death. Gene beat him every kind of way you could think of.”
Neither Cooper nor Bullard ever discovered exactly why the Louisianan came after Gene. As the man lay moaning on the floor, there was a mumbled reference to a “lost girlfriend,” thanks to Bullard, but no one could quite figure it out.
He was probably safer in his own club with Blink McCloskey keeping a wary eye on him. L’Escadrille was actually smaller than his gym and more of a cabaret than a “grand club.” It was wedged in between a boulangerie and a branch of Credit Suisse. The comforting aroma of fresh-baked bread on one side mingled with the smell of money on the other. The cabaret contributed the sticky sweet odor of spilled champagne, stale cigarettes, and the brass polish from the band members’ instruments. It was a heady mix and it all bespoke good times despite the dawning realization that there could be another war only one generation removed from the last debacle.
To make his cozy space seem much larger, Bullard had emulated a look he had learned to appreciate at the old Zelli’s: many of the wall spaces were mirrored, which added almost another full dimension to the space. The restroom doors and walls were completely covered with mirrored glass and the cleaning and polishing of all these surfaces was a daily, nagging chore.
The effect was powerful, however, and many of his well-heeled patrons enjoyed catching glimpses of themselves laughing, chatting, or gliding across the cramped and often crowded dance floor. Had Henri Toulouse-Lautrec still been painting, he undoubtedly would have found the tableau at L’Escadrille perfect for one of his colorful, crowded, dizzying canvases.
* * *
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany. Imagine the irony: the president of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg (who would die the following year), former supreme commander of all German forces in World War I, was essentially handing over leadership of the country to a formerly obscure German Army corporal from Bavaria. Hitler’s rise to international power and his quest for world domination began that day.
In Paris, Bullard picked up a copy of Le Monde, with its banner headlines on Hitler, and started a slow, fearful burn. Since 1923, when Herr Hitler first broke into the world’s consciousness with his “beer hall putsch,” Bullard had been telling anyone who would listen that the Germans would be coming after France yet again. For a decade, many of those who bothered to listen had scoffed. No more.
Some in the French government believed likewise, but early preparations for war took various forms, some productive, some not so much. One effective effort revolved around an organization called the Deuxième Bureau. The French military, prior to World War II, viewed operational intelligence as a key to good preparation. The general staff of the army had two external departments devoted to intelligence collection operations. The first, or Premier Bureau, was responsible for gathering vital information on the strength and capabilities of France’s own forces, plus those of her potential allies. The second, or Deuxième Bureau, revolved around counterintelligence: discovering what France’s potential enemies were capable of doing, where their spies were located, and all about their cryptanalysis and code-breaking capabilities.
To assist in its efforts, the Deuxième Bureau enlisted the help of many members of both the territorial civilian police forces and the metropolitan police in the major cities. The Deuxième Bureau, history has shown us, did serious and effective work on the home front, especially during the late 1930s as Europe hurtled toward another continental war. It did not embark on its mission a moment too soon. By 1937, over 17,000 Germans, most of them members of the Nazi Party, were living and working in France under various guises, but all, in effect, were spying for either the German intelligence operation reporting directly to the Wehrmacht, known as the Abwehr6, or the Nazi Party and its notorious spymaster Rudolph Hess. The Deuxième Bureau had most of these intelligence gatherers under surveillance, a huge effort requiring a lot of man (and woman) power.7
In June 1938, a metropolitan police inspector by the name of George Leplanquais came into the orbit of Eugene Bullard. By January of ’39, Bullard was referring to him as “a dear friend of mine.” Leplanquais was more than a local cop. His official title was “Inspecteur Special près des Commissariats de la Ville de Paris” which in Scotland Yard parlance would make him equal to a chief inspector and in New York an officer ranking just below deputy chief. One of Leplanquais’s most important, behind the scenes responsibilities, however, was to recruit Parisians to keep an eye on Nazi activity in the city. Aiding him in this mission was a cadre of local operatives scattered throughout Leplanquais’s arrondissement (the 18th or Montmartre). The inspector had dearly wanted Bullard to join his network, and he joined eagerly, once he was assured his daughters would be protected if something should happen to him. Assigned to assist Bullard, as well as to coordinate “other activities,” was a lovely, seductive, trilingual Alsatian, Cleopatre “Kitty” Terrier.
Born in 1912, Kitty Terrier was the third child, and only daughter, of solid middle-class farmers from the city of Colmar, in northeastern Alsace. The area had been, for centuries, a picturesque French riverfront farming community bordering Germany. After the disastrous (for France) Franco-Prussian War of 1871, Colmar, as well as Metz, Strasbourg, Mulhausen and Diedenhofen, plus 93 percent of what had once been the Alsace Region (and 26 percent of Lorraine), became German territory. Kitty’s grandfather had been the mayor of Colmar before the conflict. The ever-efficient Huns soon began rearranging and erasing all semblance of France in the conquered territory, right down to changing the street names and all municipal regulations. German became the official language, and local magistrates were allowed to fine the citizens for speaking even a single word of French.
As soon as the Great War commenced, in 1914, the Alsace-Lorraine Region became hotly contested territory once again. The French were determined to recover their ceded, sacred soil. Wherever the French Army was victorious within the region, German citizens were rounded up and placed in camps. Special attention was paid to any German veterans of the ’71 war, even though these old soldiers were well beyond middle age and of no real threat to warring against the French. The Germans, for their part, where they held sway, were constantly arresting what they termed francs-tireurs, or “terrorists.” The Germans were not terribly discriminating, which is how Kitty’s totally innocent father was arrested one day, tried the next, and placed up against a wall and shot by the end of the week. Kitty was six years old at the time.
The murder of her father engendered in the young girl a lifelong hatred for Germany and all things German. She vowed, someday, to get revenge. She spoke French, of course, but also became fluent in German to aid her cause. In school she also mastered English as well as a bit of Italian. She was extremely bright and once past her secondary school studies she enrolled in th
e “Centre d’études Diplomatiques et Stratégiques” (Center for Diplomatic and Strategic Studies) in Paris. Her goal was to become a member of the French Diplomatic Corps and fight German expansion and colonialism everywhere she could. She was halfway toward her graduate degree when the Nazi threat to France become all too real. She set aside her studies (at least temporarily) and joined the Deuxième Bureau. Her initial commandant became George Leplanquais.
* * *
1 Bricktop would open another nightspot but it, too, could not endure. She remained in Paris until Germany invaded Poland, and then she sailed for the United States. She continued as an entertainer there, and after the war she returned to being an international chanteuse. After she died in February 1984 at age eighty-nine, in her Manhattan apartment, three hundred friends and admirers attended her funeral, Mabel Mercer and Bobby Short sent letters read at the service, and Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra sent flowers. Her grave can be found in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
2 After quitting Paris, Joe Zelli opened clubs in New York and Palm Beach before buying into the wholesale food business. He died in 1971, age eighty-three, in Hillsdale, NY.
3 “Cakewalk, couple dance that became a popular stage act for virtuoso dancers as well as a craze in fashionable ballrooms around 1900. Couples formed a square with the men on the inside and, stepping high to a lively tune, strutted around the square. The couples were eliminated one by one by several judges, who considered the elegant bearing of the men, the grace of the women, and the inventiveness of the dancers; the last remaining pair was presented with a highly decorated cake. The cakewalk originated earlier among American black slaves who, often in the presence of their masters, used the dance as a subtle satire on the elegance of white ballroom dances. It contributed to the evolution of subsequent American and European dances based on jazz rhythms, and its music influenced the growth of ragtime.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018).
4 Lloyd, 108-109.
5 Bingham was originally from Jamaica, but had spent several years as a longshoreman in San Francisco before migrating to Paris; thus, the nickname “Frisco.” Like Bullard, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and spent three years in the trenches. After the war he, too, settled in Paris and began entertaining. He was a popular singer and dancer, and with backing from Bricktop and Josephine he opened and ran his own nightclub, “Frisco’s,” from late 1929 until the Nazis invaded in 1940.
6 The organization, which existed as part of the German Defense Ministry, was active from 1920 to 1944.
7 By contrast, the French counterintelligence effort in Germany in the late 1930s numbered less than five hundred.
ACT V
The Spy
15
THE OBERST
During the spring and summer of 1939, the team of Eugene Bullard and Kitty Terrier were especially cordial to their German “friends” and casually eavesdropped on any and all conversations the Boche had in L’Escadrille. They listened for anything that might be fruitful, plucking all they could for Inspector Leplanquais and the Deuxième Bureau. Apparently, there was a great deal of information to be had, and the pair was kept quite busy.
On the afternoon of June 30, 1939, Bullard was at his gym sparring with a boxer friend when Leplanquais, unannounced, arrived for an “inspection.” This was highly unusual. Feigning a need to “see Mssr. Bullard’s records,” the two repaired to Bullard’s private office and shut the door.
“Mon ami,” Leplanquais began once he was sure no one was within earshot, “I have some very interesting news. We have just learned that you are going to be receiving some very important guests tonight.”
“Ah, who might they be?”
“You have a reservation, I’m told, for eleven o’clock? Table for ten? Under the name ‘Otto Steinwehr’?”
“Why, I believe so, yes. Otto’s a regular in our German crowd, as you know. He’s dropped some valuable tidbits, that one has.”
“Well, he’s coming back tonight with a new friend, Colonel Walter Scheer.”
“Do we know this Scheer?”
“Indeed we do. He’s the newly appointed military attaché at the German Embassy. We also know he’s a member of the Abwehr. This is his first week in Paris and he’s making the rounds. Tonight, he wants to party, and he’s heard of your famous L’Escadrille.”
Bullard leaned back in his chair and smiled before responding. “Then we shall make sure he gets our very best champagne—and our most special attention.”
“I was hoping I could count on you for that, Gene. Of course, Kitty will be there. It should make for a most interesting evening.”
The two comrades stood, shook hands and Leplanquais completed his “inspection” and left. Bullard returned to sparring, his partner noting that the owner’s punches had more power to them.
* * *
That night, in a display of typical German punctuality, three Mercedes sedans wound their way up the cobblestone pathways of La Rue Fontaine, pulling up in front of L’Escadrille at precisely eleven o’clock. Oberst Scheer, with two aides in tow, emerged from the middle car and strode into the club.
A steel blue tobacco haze hung over the brightly lit center section of the dance floor. Every table was occupied—except the one large banquette reserved for the important party then entering. The band was backing Bricktop as she belted out Cole Porter. The singer’s misfortune with her own club had been L’Escadrille’s gain, and Bullard was glad to be reunited with her immense talent. As she sang, he banged away enthusiastically on the drums.
This was Paris, not Morocco, but reality was eerily following fantasy that sultry night, foreshadowing the plot of the movie Casablanca, which would be released to much acclaim in the United States three years later. With only a few twists of the imagination, L’Escadrille was Rick’s Café. It could have been Eugene Bullard as a black Rick Blaine, the role played by Humphrey Bogart, with German spies and Nazi officers in mufti coming through his door. Ilsa, the role that would go to Ingrid Bergman, could be played by the equally mysterious and charming Kitty Terrier. The gallant—and ultimately righteous—Captain Louis Renault’s part would fall to Inspector Georges Leplanquais. Colonel Scheer would fill in for Major Heinrich Strasser. In perhaps the oddest twist of all, the role of Sam was being filled that night by Dooley Wilson, who would actually play the part of Sam in the movie. As it happened, Wilson was visiting friends in Paris, and Bullard was only too happy to have him make a guest appearance at L’Escadrille.
As the Germans settled in, Bullard put aside his drumsticks and played, instead, the attentive host to his special guests. Kitty became the coquette and flirted suggestively with the Oberst and his men. The best champagne flowed freely, and the band continued deeper into its playlist. Leplanquais lurked in the shadows of the club, in case “trouble” decided to make a guest appearance.
It nearly did. At two in the morning, the Germans had finally had enough. Colonel Scheer was ready to depart. A group of rowdy Frenchmen and Corsican toughs, from gangs in the neighborhood, had also been in the club and imbibing heavily. Their resentment for the haughty Germans had been building with each round of drinks. A knot of about eight of them got up to follow the German contingent into the street.
Leplanquais grew frantic. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation between regular patrons at the club and the Germans. If there was any nastiness, the Germans might not come back, and that would be a blow to his productive counterintelligence work at the nightclub. Leplanquais signaled Bullard that disaster was afoot. Instantly grasping the severity of the situation, Bullard rounded up several members of the band, all of whom were fiercely loyal to their employer and physically fit thanks to their free privileges at Bullard’s Athletic Club. The hulking bouncer “Blink” McCloskey was alongside his boss.
As the Germans began to get into their cars, the toughs hit the
door at the front of the club. Bullard and his crew were right behind them. With choreography worthy of the club’s dance floor, they placed themselves between the departing Germans and the drunken Frenchmen and Corsicans. Bullard personally thanked Oberst Scheer for coming and helped the unsteady colonel get into his car. Some shoving occurred and some threats were tossed at the Germans as they left, but there was no damage to them, or the spying operation.
Some of the Corsicans involved were members of a local gang called Les Corses, who operated throughout Montmartre and provided “protection services” as well as drugs and prostitutes. Justin Pereti was one of the leaders, and as drunk as he was that night, he still managed to notice how friendly and accommodating Eugene Bullard seemed to be toward the hated Nazis. It did not sit well with Pereti, and he made up his mind then and there that Bullard would have to be made to account for his actions.
16
“REMEMBER YOUR PROMISE!”
So, this is how it ends, Eugene Bullard thought to himself as he squirmed in agony, eyes tightly shut, tears of pain streaming down his cheeks. Having been seriously wounded twice before, in the Great War, he knew the coppery smell of blood, and he could sense his own life ebbing from the wound, puddling on the floor underneath the gurney.
All around him, people were shouting. Nurses were screaming for a doctor. The gendarmes were clamoring to get at him, to question him. Kitty was bent over him, protective, bravely holding back tears. The bullet had probably torn up his insides and his entire gut was on fire.