by Troy Conway
“So. You are Damon. Le professeur. How she admired your work! We talked about you so many times. I feel as if I know you well! Here—right here in this very room. On weekends she stayed with me. Then she would go back to her Académie Sexualité.” Madame Lebeau made a disgusted face. “Why must the young things go to a school to learn how to be women?”
“It’s a generation gap, Madame.”
“Obscenity on their new ideas. Call me Brigitte. We have much in common. I see you too would like to avenge Danielle’s death or you would not have come.”
“Thank you. I would like to just know about her association with Gaston Corbeau. After all—” I looked around at the squalid surroundings. Brigitte Lebeau did not take offense. She was a woman of understanding as well as hot genes. Her thigh was rubbing my left hip away. Her heat would have defrosted a deep freeze unit.
“Even roses can bloom in a manure pile. But Corbeau is an old fool. My daughter was merely his friend. You will find nothing wrong in that. I doubt that it has anything to do with her murder.” She placed her hand on her heart and closed her eyes. “Danielle, Danielle! Ah, the agony of loneliness. Dear professor, I am a lonely old woman.”
“You aren’t old and I’m here now.”
“That is true. What can I do for you?” She opened her eyes and flung out her arms. Her full chest thrust out, trying to get past the folds of the housecoat. I wasn’t hungry yet and I was still looking for information. I stood up and indicated the room with its lean-to and small kitchenette. At least, the place smelled fresh and flowery.
“I’d like to help, Brigitte. If Danielle had any things here—papers, clothes, books, keepsakes—could I see them? We might find something of interest.”
She sighed and stood up, knowing now was perhaps not the time to play tiddlywinks. She gestured toward a corner of the room.
“Over there. The luggage. It is hers. The police claimed it on that day and returned it only yesterday. They seem to have found nothing. But feel free, mon cher. I need an aperitif. Join me?”
“A little, yes. This will only take me a minute.”
While the youthful-looking mother poured a couple of jiggers of cognac for us, I got to work on the suitcase in the comer. It was alligator-leather, no stamps or markings. What was inside of it was important. Again, I was in for a surprise. Danielle Lebeau must have been two women. What do acknowledged sweet young things want with a storehouse of masochistic sex-cult trappings? As Madame Lebeau passed me a glass, I puzzled over the contents of the suitcase.
In the order I found them, they were riding whips, leather gauntlets with steel knuckles, leather boots, black leotards with an applique across the crotch that spelled out the words, HIT ME, BABY in French, several truncheon-sized dildoes and last but not least, a long black leather whip, tooled in gold which had emblazoned across its thorny hilt, the name Danielle in script lettering. I held it up and turned to her mother.
Brigitte Lebeau shrugged.
“I was as outraged as you when I first saw them. But Danielle told me it was part of her study assignments at the Academie.”
“That’s not possible. It’s a love school not a hate school. If Madame de Jussac tried anything like that, it would have leaked out and she would have been kicked out. I was there this morning. Nobody gets beaten in that place. You never saw such healthy women in your life.”
“So—what can I say?”
“What about this?” I showed her the personalized whip.
“A gift from an admirer, perhaps? Corbeau? Who can say? Young women meet all kinds nowadays, do they not?”
“Yea, verily.” I was thinking about Madame de Jussac’s Lesbo curriculum. Regretfully, I dropped the whip back into the suitcase and snapped the bag shut. Then my eye caught a framed portrait parked on a low china closet to one side of the lean-to. There was something very familiar about it. Danielle’s mother saw me looking at it and laughed happily. A laugh of triumph and yeah, team!
“See for yourself,”-she urged. I did, picking up the photo in its gold-embossed frame. My memory meshed. The girl in the portrait was about thirteen years old, and in her elfin gamin beauty was all the vixenish, hoydenish, sheer sexiness of a much older woman. There was a signed message on the photo. To my Brigitte from her Emperor Nickie, who is her slave.
“So that’s who you are.” I stared at Brigitte Lebeau. “You little hell-raiser. I should have recognized you.”
She was pleased. Her chest swelled proudly.
“Now you know Fifi, eh? It is good. Yes I am she. Fifi Le Fleur, who at the age of thirteen seduced an emperor and won the admiration and disbelief of the world. Causing a king to forget his country, his wife, his children. That was a long time ago. Before I tired of courts and kings and came to Paris where I belonged. It was headline news all over the universe and I threw it all away for that fool of a Gaspard Lebeau. Curse the man and his infernally unforgettable wiggle! He drove me mad when we made love. Still—it was wonderful to be a courtesan. But I wanted babies—I wanted Danielle.” She sniffled and flung herself into my arms.
“There, there, old girl—”
“I am not old!” She bumped her pelvic cage into my ball park. “Dare you ask me to prove it?”
“Only a figure of speech.” I patted the firm, flexible muscles of her rump. “But first, we must investigate a bit more. Have we missed anything?”
“No—no, wait a moment—the book. That I did not give the gendarmerie. After all, if my dear daughter kept a diary, it was her affair. But it merely proved to be an address book. You wish it?”
“Most of course.”
She padded to an escritoire that was really an end table and came back with a thick, black leather memo-type book. She was right, again. Nothing but French names, addresses and phone numbers. I riffled through it, trying to spot a familiar item. I was beginning to feel more and more like Ye Private Eyes Spade, Noon and Shayne.
“Is it of any use at all, Monsieur Rod?”
“I won’t call you Madame if you don’t call me Monsieur. No, I don’t know.”
“Those names mean nothing to me. Though I recognize the bordellos and pimps and gay places. I suppose Danielle would have told me they also were part of her studies. Ah, the children of today! How they abuse all our own past experience at living! How did they imagine we lived this long? By living in a vacuum? Bah!”
She vibrated with sudden anger. I dropped the book into my side pocket. I sipped the rest of my giddy cognac. It tasted real fine.
“Brigitte, I have an idea.”
She had one too. The wrong one. Her eyes strayed to my belt buckle. She showed me her tongue. It flicked out like a snake tail.
“Yes?”
“I should like to begin a systematic search of these names. And places. You know—call up, go there, ask around. We could learn something.”
“We?”
“Sure. If you are free tonight, I will be your escort. When I am done we will come back here for some more understanding of each other. Okay?”
She almost giggled but her hands came up to my face and she planted a resounding kiss on my mouth, adding another erotic bump for good measure. Poor Emperor Nickie. The bastard never had a chance. “You do not think I am an old woman?” “Who me? Don’t be foolish.”
“That is good. You are wise, dear Rod. For that I will show you my gratitude.” Her hands came down from my face, roving for my waist. I grabbed her wrists.
“Later. Right now, pour yourself into your best bib and tucker and you’ll show me Paris. From the first page in the book on. Now, hurry up and get dressed. I’ll have some more cognac.”
She whooped ecstatically and came out of her widow’s weeds with a helluva yell. I got a flash of her derriere racing into the lean-to as she whipped off the housecoat. She had a rear end like a full moon over Miami. Or should I say, Montmartre?
I tried to like the cognac but I couldn’t. So I had a glass of water instead. Again, progress. I had met Danielle Lebeau�
��s mother, uncovered an address book the cops hadn’t seen and maybe, just maybe, the answer to her murder was among all those names, addresses and places. The secret agent schtick was going great guns.
Brigitte Lebeau nee Fifi Le Fleur was humming The Marseillaise as she flung a million things around looking for some battle clothes to wear to the ball. I was loaded with Walrus-moustache’s expense money so the sky was the limit.
Paris sky or not.
Danielle Lebeau’s address book led us a merry chase. We began with the A’s and worked our way through the alphabet. Madame Brigitte Lebeau was my girl guide. For the occasion, she provided herself with a feathered dress complete with spangles, which was about large enough to have covered a small owl. But the Madame was a wise old bird. She had the legs and breasts of a woman budding with life and she wanted to show off. I have to admit she looked like about nine million dollars. With her gleaming mini-dress, feathers and radiant face topped with the silver-streaked hair, she was a Parisienne knockout. I didn’t mind at all. She could also hold her cognac, kept close to my side and did all the translating for me with waiters, doormen and maitre d’s.
There were three A listings. The first one was a Theo Armand, who turned out to be a French bookie, currently in the Bastille for beating up a client. The second was a chick named Annie Allendon and it turned out that Annie didn’t live there anymore. Her concierge, a fat, fierce beldame, demanded to know if we would pay the rent that was overdue. Mlle. Allendon seemed to be a two-dollar or fifty-franc whore. The third A was a homosexual named Charles Alain. He waved his wrists limply at us in a sidestreet bistro and claimed he hadn’t seen Danielle Lebeau in months. He still couldn’t believe she was dead, he said, crying. Madame Lebeau sniffed the air and dragged me away from him. “These winged creatures!” she rasped.
I didn’t argue. I trusted Brigitte Lebeau’s nose now.
The B’s were even less fruitful. Five names later— all working prostitutes named Beloin, Barnet, Bubullay, Bousse and Borne, who just couldn’t be found, according to their streetwalker pals—Madame Brigitte and I paused in the evening’s occupation and decided to rest up.
I passed her the address book.
“Find a bistro under the C’s or D’s and let’s park awhile. We could run ourselves down this way.”
She nodded, her eyes gleaming.
“You know, my dear Rod, you always refresh my memory.”
“How so?”
“You saw the people we have already seen. What kind of people was my dear daughter interested in? Bookies, streetwalkers, les pansies. Sacré bleu! I remember now— there is a place she spoke of many times as a veritable laboratory for her studies. Under the D’s, I shall find the name I know it.” she thumbed the pages. “Ah! And here it is—a pervert’s paradise! Les Deuces. There all one’s inhibitions are attended to. They service the normal and the abnormal. What you would call a ‘mixed’ bordello. Of a certainty, we will find a clue to Danielle’s murderer there.”
“Lays and gays, huh? Would you be safe in a place like that, I wonder?”
She favored me with a glare. “I have lived. I can take care of myself.”
“All right. Where is it?”
Her smile was dirtier than the Seine.
“But three blocks from where we stand. Come, my American. You will really see the Paree underworld tonight.”
I followed her, convinced more and more that there was something about Danielle Lebeau that did not meet the eye. My research takes me to a lot of out of the way places too, but it’s different somehow when a vulnerable young chick, hardly of age, does it.
What was Danielle Lebeau really like?
Les Deuces was downstairs, under the cobbled streets of the city. No fooling. You took a manhole cover off the street, a doorman stuck his head out, Madame Lebeau slipped him a large franc note which I had supplied her with and down we went. When the manhole cover slipped shut over our heads, we descended a dark staircase that smelled of the sewers into another world. Underworld, my foot. It was a rathole with upholstered drapes and about twenty cubicles all roped off with velour trappings and carpets. The sewer stink disappeared once you got into the heart of the place. Incense was burning, along with about fifty gallons of fragrant perfume. The place looked like a cathouse, smelled like a cathouse and it was a cathouse. Even if it seemed to service the toms as well as the pussies.
Madame Brigitte Lebeau rubbed her hands together. I could see her breasts heaving. Her eyes had a supernatural glint.
“Ah, but this is a devil’s joyhouse! Look about you.”
I looked. Most of the cubicles had drawn drapes indicating a busy night but the floor of the strange place held enough half-naked whores to supply an army on furlough. There were brunettes, redheads, taffy blondes, purple heads and magenta heads, all lolling from hassocks and divans and ottomans. Nobody paid any attention to us. Some of the women were working. One particularly choice number with what seemed like a size 50 bust was languidly lying back against the wall, propped in a sitting position, while two long-haired young boys nibbled voraciously, one to each breast. The choice number couldn’t have cared less. She was doing a crossword puzzle above their hungry heads. About three dames over, another weird scene was being enacted. There, two lively young things were pretzeled together, doing honor to the ancient honored custom of soixante-neuf. It was okay except for the fact that it was but another version of boys will be boys. It was easy though to tell who the customer was. One of the boys was a fat flabby little guy and the other was a bronzed giant who could have been wrestling with a kitten. That made me nervous. The bronzed queer was a brute and if he ever took notions to take off after me with his tools of the trade I wouldn’t like the idea of fighting to save my ass.
I didn’t like the place at all but Brigitte Lebeau was in a visitor’s state of trance. In fact, she was in heat. Her painted fingernails were raking my arm.
“Look—if you’re hurting,” I said, “buy yourself a ride. We’ve got money to burn. But remember, we came here to learn what we could.”
“No, no—I’m all right. It is just that the sight of so much carnality, so much freedom, turns my head. Ah, look at that little thing—is she not something?”
“That little thing” proved to be a long, lanky Chinese girl with slanting eyes and slanting everything who was studiously making a fine meal out of the man standing before her. The poor customer had his eyes closed and was trying to remain standing up. It looked like a bet of some kind. Several of the whores lolling about were chanting and clapping their hands. Voices rose in a chorus of “Un, deux, trois, quatre. . . .” Before they reached ten, the poor guy went down to his knees and the lanky dragon lady sat back, wiping her gash of a mouth. She had taken one from A and one from B and finished off the customer. Again, what a way to go. She was licking her lips greedily.
“Who’s in charge here?” I whispered to Brigitte. She shook her head, still enrapt with the scenes of glory all around. I could see it was useless. We had wasted our time. Half the joint was smoking pot or using giggle-sauce and I didn’t expect to learn a damn thing down here. I’d seen it all too many times. Orgy without organization.
I took her arm. “Come on. Let’s vamoose. Down here we won’t get any straight answers. We couldn’t.”
“But, not yet . . . please, cherie . . . I get out so little these days!” She made me feel like a killjoy of a parent.
“All right. Five minutes more. I hate to be a party-pooper but even I’m not safe in a flytrap like this.”
The five minutes reprieve was a mistake. Brigitte Lebeau was so far gone that she lost her head. Oh, she didn’t rip her clothes off and make like the natives. Not that. It’s just that she spilled the beans. My beans. In a moment’s deep indiscretion, she climbed atop a hassock and shouted for all that underworld to hear:
“Listen, everyone! Listen!”
She had a bellow like a foghorn in San Francisco bay. All eyes and ears, even the occupied ones, swung
to stare at this bold, bawdy, magnificent dame crying for attention. I must admit, Birgitte looked marvelous. Like a French Lana Turner. The long-haired boys giggled.
“Cheries!” she exulted. “You have a famous guest this night! The great, the unparalleled, the unique, the man himself—Monsieur Rod Damon.i of America!”
That, as they say in police stations, did it.
The whores stopped lolling, the orgies slowed down, the atmosphere got electric, and pretty soon we were the center of a pinwheeling, excited mob of demimondaines, fairies and eager perverts, dying for a look, firing a million questions. My fame, you see, is world-wide. Sex is important to many, many souls in this beknighted world of ours and hadn’t I led the crusade for Truth and Experience down the dark ages of the Screwy Sixties?
What was worse, the bronze stud who had serviced the flabby little character came mincing over, muscles swinging, dong to the fore. His eyes were glowing and I didn’t even have to guess what he wanted to do. He was at least eleven inches of swinging male meat and he was a cinch to want to match sizes. I was famous, he wasn’t, except as a local marvel. You know the pitch. It’s like all those guys who wanted to test Jack Dempsey’s right cross in a barroom in the good old days.
Brigitte was in her glory. She cackled and crowed and pointed me out and I was swamped with clutching hands, mashing breasts and urging hipS. Somebody even thrust a ballpen in my hands to make with the autograph. I was in a crush of bodies and it wasn’t exciting. It was downright scary. We might not get out of that underground rathole with our skins intact. The dame with the 50’s was goosing me.
I tried to smile, grabbing Brigitte Lebeau and moving her to the exitway. The bronze stud was circling the crowd, trying to cut us off. The prosties were hollering in French, gabbling like so many chickens and then it happened. One of them, maybe it was the long, lanky Chinese number, recognized Brigitte Lebeau. Remembered the story and history of Fifi Le Fleur. And the jig was up. All the way up. I was forgotten about, quick like a bunny, and the beautiful mother of the dead Danielle Lebeau was in for it. Two-dollar whores and fifty-franc prosties have their own curious envies and jealousies. When a woman of their own kind can price it as high as a king’s throne, well, that’s one dame they do admire—and like to put down. It’s the only explanation for the mad balling scene that followed.