by Troy Conway
“Come on,” I growled. “No time for that. Get off him, Brigitte. We have to ask him a lot of questions.”
“Please, Monsieur,” Gaston mumbled, his eyes trying to find me from beneath the harvest of her goodies. “Do me the courtesy of letting me enjoy the same arrangement I was to give you before you died . . .”
“It is only fair, Rod,” Brigitte panted, eyes shining. “Yes, this one is not so bad . . .” What a woman.
“Up,” I demanded. “And now. There’s no time to lose. Come on. Later on you two can tango to your heart’s desire.”
Frustrated and dissatisfied, they broke apart. Brigitte rolled to her feet, brushing her bared gleaming flesh free of leaves, brambles and dust. Gaston straightened, looking about for his tall top hat. It lay crushed in the bushes, not too far off.
“Never mind your hat, Gaston. Talk.” I had taken the gun from Brigitte to level at him. “Who sent you to kill us?”
He shrugged.
“I am an assassin, Monsieur. I never see the people who hire me. It is the arrangement and a good one all around. They have nothing to fear from me and I have nothing to fear from them.”
I frowned. “Who gives you these assignments?”
He stiffened, not unproudly. “I have a reputation in the proper circles. I get a call on the phone from a contact. The contact is the one who makes the arrangement with the buyer of my services.”
“And who is your contact?”
“Monsieur—please. I cannot tell you. It is our code. And even my contact would not know. These things are planned by so many, what you call middlemen, no one would ever trace the monster back to its source. As it is with a snake with many heads.”
“Yeah,” I said sourly. “Well, tuck that snake back in your pants. I’m turning you over to the French police.”
“As you will.” He bowed toward Brigitte Lebeau. “In a way, I am not sorry I have failed.”
She glowed like a teenager with her first kiss. Her cheeks flamed red. She made a kissing motion with her lips.
“You see, Rod. A French gentleman. There is nothing finer under God’s sky.”
“I’ll bet. Now, if you don’t mind—”
What happened then was one of those things that literally comes like a bolt out of the blue. Blue, hell. It was another of those planned, awful things that assassins and assassin-hirers go in for. Monsieur Gaston didn’t have a chance.
He was never going to taste the full fruits of Madame Brigitte Lebeau’s garden of goodies.
A rifle shot, long, high and keening, came down out of the hills somewhere and Gaston coughed. Just once. When he stopped coughing, he had pitched forward on his face, full-length down to the ground. Brigitte cried out, hiding her face in her hands before she got enough sense to run screaming to hide in the thickets. I jumped under the stalled Daimler and made myself scarce. The rifle didn’t fire again. I think the hidden marksman had accomplished what he had come for.
Gaston was deader than the ten-cent bus ride in the United States. He didn’t bat an eye or move a muscle where he lay on the hot, dry earth. A bullet had found his vital organs just as one had put his partner Alphonse out of business.
The French vaudeville act was dead. And whoever had hired the two Frenchies to put Rod Damon out of action had sent along a spare gun to make sure that everything turned out okay. Maybe to kill the assassins too after they killed us—to really nail down the lid of secrecy on the whole affair. Peace Talks, hah. It was a real old-fashioned shooting war.
“Brigitte,” I called. “Get into the car. We’re getting the hell out of here.”
“I’m afraid!” It was a whimper of sound from the brush.
“Coast is clear. See . . . ?” I scampered out from beneath the Daimler and got in behind the wheel. It was not my plan to lug two dead bodies back to town. They could stay out here and rot for all I cared.
Brigitte finally found enough nerve to come pell-mell out of the brush like a naked Diana and barrel for the car. She hurtled in beside me and huddled against me. I waited a long moment while she got her hysteria under control. What a dame! She went from wails of fear to moans of ecstasy in a flick of her false eyelashes.
“Oh, cherie . . .”
“Now what’s bothering you? You were a brave girl. Offering yourself that way so we could get out of that sticky situation. So why are you coming apart at the seams now?”
“It’s all this killing,” she wailed. “Sacré! So many corpses. All for the Peace? Pah! And what will happen tonight at your grand affair at the Fourchette?”
“That remains to be seen. Get some clothes on. We’re going back to town.”
“Must we?”
“We must.”
Her ever-curious fingers were playing around my crotch, trying to unearth the old truths about me. Her breath had quickened and a lazy look was lidding her eyes.
“Very nice . . . may I? . . . only a moment . . . and then we can ride from this scene of carnage. . . .”
“Brigitte, you are absolutely insatiable!”
“Isn’t that nice?”
“Well—what the hell—be my guest.” Feebly, I sat back against the cushioned Daimler seat and relaxed. It was time to do some more thinking before I got my show on the road. The two new corpses and the murder attempt had made me see the coming party in a new and more terrible light. It wasn’t going to be all fun and games. It couldn’t be, not when somebody cares enough to send the very best assassins to murder you. And you can quote me.
The birds were back, humming and tweeting. Brigitte Lebeau had wangled one of her creamy incredible thighs over my lap so that all I had to do was angle a bit and the Gods of love could be served once more. What the hell. Life is for the living and I knew that Alphonse and Gaston would have changed places with me in five seconds flat if I had asked them.
So I angled and let Brigitte enjoy the sheathing of the greatest thing I have. She caught her breath and her eyeballs rolled again and her nipples hardened and we were off and running.
“Rod!” she gasped. “At the first entry, it is always like the first time. So new, so exciting . . . so wonderful!”
“You like me, huh?”
“Like? That is not the word. I am—how you say—nuts for you, baby.”
“Nuts it is, then. I’m not exactly sensible about you either.”
So once more we locked horns in that equal struggle we shared. My brain filed away the Daimler’s front seat as pleasurable, roomy enough and quite more satisfactory than Cadillacs, Fords, Plymouths or Buicks as a rolling motel to ball in.
But all the time my mind alas, strayed to the coming event of the evening. The Hotel Fourchette and my planned party. A big affair to trap the people responsible for Danielle Lebeau’s murder and all the skullduggery that was holding up the Peace Talks in Paris.
What a whacky life it truly is.
The fate of the world was resting in the hands of a man who felt that making love to women is all that everything is about.
Not the world I made, see?
Let’s keep the record straight.
“Rod . . . ?”
“Mmmmmmmmm?”
“Do you think my daughter’s murderer will come to the Hotel Fourchette tonight?”
“Brigitte, my darling . . .”
“Yes, my Rod?”
“Less talk, more action.”
She never did get the steak I promised her. But I didn’t leave her hungry. . . .
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The very important party held on the third floor of the Hotel Fourchette might have gone down in French history except for a few necessary particulars. It was a top secret affair but by the time it had endings that justified all my means, quite a few rugs were kicked back, many a chandelier was swung from and more than one private gong was kicked to hell and around. But more of that anon.
Firstly, let me say that my walrus-moustached miracle worker was just that. The sound camera equipment cleverly concealed on all the walls and
apertures of every room on the floor was an engineering feat worthy of Frank Lloyd Wright. Also, he had rounded up a sleepy-eyed little French camera genius named Rene Rolfe who was some kind of big deal with the Gallic cinema people and had won a flock of awards and badges for his highly documentary films. This ace I planted in a wall closet niche in the main room that my plan needed. The niche was covered with a thick tapestry studded into place with rhinestones. But there were openings between the studs and the wall and Monsieur Rolfe had a nifty camera with zoom lens and a thousand other niceties of modern photography. Before the guests came I gave him his instructions. He spoke English. With an accent like Louis Jordan.
“You know what you have to do, Monsieur Rolfe. I want everything. Don’t shrink from ugliness or the truth. This is for France!”
His cigarette was almost larger than he was. His pullover cap wider than his shoulders. He fit into the wall space like a piece of furniture.
“Monsieur Damon,” he sniffed. “I shot fifty miles of film for le documentaire known as The Sewers of Paris. What can you show me I have not seen?”
“Pardon, but this will be all about sex. It’s—rather different, don’t you think?”
He chuckled and poked his cigarette at me. “Not as much as all that. Show me your worst. I, René Rolfe, will film it.”
“You’re on your own. Stay out of sight no matter what you see and no matter what happens, keep grinding away.”
I closed the tapestry over his smiling face and went to the main door to greet my guests as they came on the scene. I was happy with my arrangement. The room was large, with enough divans, lounges and stuffed chairs to accommodate the chorus of the Folies Bergeres. The far wall held a twenty-by-twenty-foot movie screen, already in place, and the movie projector I had acquired through Walrus-moustache’s good work was already set up against the back wall on the big marble coffee table. I had held one thing back from my employer. When 1 was through with Brigitte Lebeau for the afternoon, I had driven to the Left Bank in the Renault and made a considerable dent in my expense money by buying several juicy reels of the lewdest and most torrid stag movie film I could find. The Black Market had charged me an arm and a leg, but it was all part of my plan.
I personally had mixed batches of martinis, gimlets and whiskey sours in three huge vats of the sauce, carefully spiking it liberally with the LSD which Walrus-moustache had grudgingly provided through the services of a local hospital eager to cooperate with the American government. Walrus-moustache would not be at the party, but on the floor above, carefully taking pictures of his own, along with tape recording equipment, to memorialize the occasion for his own files at the Coxe Foundation. The stage was indeed set. The party was ready. All I needed was the cast of characters. I kept my fingers crossed, hoping I had not misjudged Madame Annette and her weirdo playmate, Wan Lo. Time would tell.
A few minutes after the stroke of the hour, they began to arrive. I wasn’t expecting Brigitte Lebeau, as I had other plans for her.
Like all schoolgirls the world over, Mady Morrow and Viviane Fresnay were the first to show up. Punctuality was a habit with them already. They looked good enough to eat. Mady had poured her ample, curvy dimensions into an abbreviated cocktail frock of blue, while the more sophisticated, more classic Viviane was unforgettable dynamite in a pale orange thing that barely covered her body. In the blonde and brunette class, they were a pair of winners. Aces.
We kissed all around and I gave them some good advice.
“Listen. You must promise me. Don’t touch any of the hard liquor in this place except the champagne over there in the buckets.” When they made faces at that, I explained how I had drugged the rest of the hootch. Their eyes widened and they both giggled. Mady patted my best resting place.
“You for real?” Mady Morrow asked. “What kind of party is this?”
“I’m trapping Danielle Lebeau’s murderer and doing my damnedest to help the peace talks. That a good enough reason?”
Viviane shivered. “For that we will do anything. Not even taste hard liquor. Besides, who can argue when there is champagne?”
“Right,” Mady said breezily. “I kind of hinted to Madame, Rod. You can expect her with a couple of the girls from the Academy. Her kind of girls. I said you had made it kind of a come one, come all party.”
“Good girl. Look, both of you go nibble on some champagne corks. I want to be at the door when they come in.” They nodded, drifting off in clouds of loveliness. I expected them both to be a big help. The largest part of what was coming had to be Madame Annette and her Les Deuces crowd, plus the extra special guests I wanted. Without them, the whole idea would be a big bust.
She didn’t disappoint me, because about eleven forty-five, she came sweeping through the door in a fur-trimmed ermine dress that swept the floor as she came. With her was Wan Lo, radiant in loose-fitting mandarin jacket and pantaloons plus slippers. Behind them, Francoise Marnay and Mei Ling High entered arm-in-arm. They were bearing up nobly under the weight of enormous baubles, bangles and beads. Like love people. I had to shake hands with the bronze stud, choked to death in tie and tails, all harnessed up and sulky. Michel-Duval Fountainbleau himself. He couldn’t resist grabbing my shipping department as he walked by me so I kicked him in the fanny just to show him there were no hard feelings. And as the minutes ticked away, I hit the jackpot.
In marched Gaston Corbeau. Short, fat, his ambassadorial sash gleaming red and with him came the Viet Nam and Viet Cong characters I so desperately wanted to see. I couldn’t pronounce their names but I didn’t have to. Madame Annette came sweeping back, both hands holding cocktail glasses brimming with gin and everything was going according to plan.
“Rod, dear man, this is Monsieur Corbeau of the French government and these are two of my dearest friends from Asia.” She rattled off their names and they bowed, smiling. Two undersized little men, with lots of things on their minds besides peace talks. Right after that, a lady ambassador showed up. A tall, big-chested dowager type in steel harness and jewels, looking down her nose at me. Madame Kingston from the United Kingdom, Aussie style. She too it seemed was one of the gay beautiful crowd that loved what went on at Les Deuces. She was built like a steamrollered bra.
And then Madame Lilly de Jussac showed up and promptly stole the show. What waste it was. When a girl with a towering pile of flaming red hair and smoldering breasts, hips and eyes, pours it all into a sleek evening gown and then pours it all down the drain by being a Lesbian, what can you do but weep for mankind?
On each of her arms were two slender, willowly branched-out busty young damsels from the Académie Sex-ualité. The Mlles. Risseur and Blondelle. A pip of a pair and just the kind of ammunition needed for my plan. Both of them had lips like swabs.
“Coward,” Madame Lilly hissed as I led her into the heart of the room. “Why did you not tell me of this party today when we met? I had to learn of it from Morrow!”
“I like surprises.”
“And tomorrow? You will keep your promise about my challenge at Les Deuces?”
“There is no tomorrow,” I whispered like Charles Boyer. “Only tonight. Have a drink? Gimlet, martini, whiskey sour? Champagne?”
“Martini. I prefer gin to sweet drinks.”
“You would. Hang onto your playmates and I’ll be right back.”
Before I could get back, Madame Annette collared me and drew Gaston Corbeau and the Asian big wheels into a cross-fire conversation about sex, love and the peace talks. Wan Lo hung back, beaming. He was in his glory. The bronze stud, a bodyguard type all the way, wasn’t too far from Annette’s elbow. Things were going fine, though. Viviane Fresnay and Mady Morrow, highly decorative, were walking about the big room, admiring things, acting like a pair of lovelies with all the time in the world on their hands. Francoise Marnay and Mei Ling High ignored everybody else. Including me. They only had eyes for each other. The best part of it, though, was everybody was sampling all the spiked stuff. I only heard one champagne
cork explode before I got around to showing my stag movies.
But not before a lot more weirdos in odd clothes and long hair, so you couldn’t tell the boys from the girls, showed up, courtesy Madame Annette and her Les Deuces. They all wore billowing clothes and I wondered if these weren’t Annette’s secret cameramen who were to grind away when the party got more interesting. I was sure she was going to convert my party to her own rotten ends. But I was going to beat her to the punch.
Thanks to the LSD in the drinks and the cooperation of Walrus-moustache, René Rolfe and my two little agents provocatrices, Mady Morrow and Viviane Fresnay.
I waited until about twelve thirty when some of my famous guests began to reel, until Gaston Corbeau had decided that Viviane Fresnay was just the girl for him, and the two Oriental advisers were squabbling over the merits of Mady Morrow, one on each arm and pulling away.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I called. “Everybody take a seat, will you please? You are about to see a movie I made a long time ago. I promise you will not be bored. It’s rather a distinctive film.”
The guests all laughed and clapped their hands. Unless I was crazy, it didn’t look like the LSD had worked its magic madness yet. But you can never tell. It sneaks up on you, from what trip-takers say.
So everybody began to flop down in various parts of the room, facing the white screen on the far wall. I walked to the projector, adjusted it and asked Mei Ling High to hit the wall switch. She favored me with a toothy smile, because she was busy nibbling on Francoise Marnay’s right shoulder. So Wan Lo obliged, skipping to the wall like the proper elf he was and blowing me a kiss across his pudgy fingertips. Oh, how I wanted to kick his mincing ass all around the room. But I had bigger game to bag.