by Gil Brewer
He entered one he knew and ordered cognac.
The bartender, Pierre, was very thin, gray-faced, with a long lock of hair hanging down the side of his face. He stared at Baron, frowned.
“You sick?” he said.
“No. The cognac, Pierre.”
“Bon.”
He paid the man, yanked one of the notes from the bundle. It was a five-hundred-franc note. Pierre stared at it, then stared at him.
“What you owe?”
“Sure, take it out.”
Pierre rang it up, gave him back ten francs, and smiled broadly.
He drank the cognac. It was like water. He looked at the glass.
“Pierre. Did you see Elene tonight?”
“Elene? No. She was in early, not late. She came in, bought cigarettes, and went away. That was all.”
He turned and left. He moved on up the street, walking in a kind of vacuum. He turned in at Number 77, went up the long flight of black stairs lighted only by the dim saffron glow from the downstairs hallway. The stairs creaked. The house smelled of old cognac, old wine, old fish, old bread, old years, and old love.
His door was open. He had not locked it. He went in, pulled the tasseled cord on the 1927 lamp with the wild angled shade. It glowed once again with that scarlet light. Elene’s idea. “Better for the eyes, chéri,” she had said.
The bed was unmade. It was sway-backed, a double bed that smelled like an old double bed. He limped across the room and stared at himself in the big, mottled mirror over the dresser. He leaned on the dresser with both hands, looking at himself.
He was a mess and he certainly did look sick. Joseph had spared his face, though. There were no cuts on his face, only large swellings along either jawline and beside each eye by the temples. It changed his appearance considerably. He looked as though he had his cheeks full of cake. His eyes were muddy and harried.
He returned to the bed, slumped down on it. He stared at the threadbare, colorless carpet on the floor. The sagging, faded curtains on the window fluttered in a small wind. Somebody out on the street shouted at somebody else and a girl laughed high on the scale, cutting it off sharply.
He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, at the stretches of peeling paint he and Elene had often counted. Twenty-seven spots, there were. Five spots had appeared since he had lived in the room. You never saw them come; they appeared as if by magic.
He had to go to the police. He knew this. He knew that no matter how long he remained here on the bed, he would eventually get up and go to the police.
He began to perspire, just lying there.
He could not stay on the bed. It had become already a kind of cell, a method of imprisonment, because of his strong sense of being so completely trapped. He was surrounded with a bulwark so strong and so neatly rigged that there was no possibility of a loophole.
He knew Gorssmann and the rest of his clan would allow no loophole. Since they had spent months arranging things, they certainly had overlooked nothing.
He came to his feet from the edge of the bed in a rush. He limped to the dresser, fumbled in a cluttered ash tray for a decent-sized cigarette butt, lit it, and began to pace the room. He paced consciously. He tried to keep on the move, attempting in some way to find enough nerve to take action. Nerve, that was it.
He had never thought of himself as a courageous man. He would stand up to whatever he had to, but, too, he had never clearly expected to find himself in a position such as this. How could he have been such a fool as to spend the past two and a half years and every bit of his money trying to locate somebody he didn’t even know? He must have been mad.
Did he still want to find this man, this person, this existence? He asked himself the question, standing in the center of the room, staring at the small cigarette butt. Yes. The answer was there, all right, waiting.
He had come this far, he would not stop now. He went over and sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the scarlet lamp shade. But how? How was he to find a way? He dropped the cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his foot in a light fury of exasperation.
They were more than clever. And he was more than absurd.
He had to treat it ail logically and very slowly. And he must hang onto whatever presence of mind he possessed.
This thought brought laughter to his lips. But the laughter vanished when he suddenly recalled what Gorssmann had said about Bette. How was it possible than men could weave such a perfect web about another man? It was done, he believed Gorssmann. Bette was in their hands. What should he do? What could he do?
He remembered that afternoon in Atlanta when he had last seen Bette. She had been with her mother at Patricia’s father’s home and Patricia had been out.
He remembered how Bette had looked, there on the big old gallery. The honeysuckle was in bloom, and her eyes were glowing with freshness and happiness at seeing him.
“Don’t you want to see her?” Bette said. “She’ll be back shortly.”
“Not if I can help it, honey.”
“I understand.”
“I’m glad you do. I’m going to Europe. I wish you could come with me. It’s been six months since I’ve seen you.” And he tried to discover how she lived and what boys she was going with, what she did for fun, how Patricia treated her, without asking it outright. And all the time his mind had been clouded with the thoughts of his trailing.
And he had learned little or nothing from her. Just that she was healthy and young and vital, and that she wanted to be with him.
“Aren’t there some arrangements you can make?” she asked. “Can’t you do something?”
“You know what your mother would do.”
“Yes.”
She was sitting in the hammock, lying back against the pillows, swinging idly. He watched from his perch on the gallery railing, where he could see the drive, in case Patricia should return unexpectedly. Bette was truly a beautiful creature, and he felt a father’s pride and it wrenched him some inside, knowing he could not enjoy time with her. Blue-eyed, blonde, fresh, and vitally young. Talking with her made him feel old, stale. He knew that if he could be with her more often this feeling would vanish.
“I read the papers,” she said. “You’re a heller, aren’t you? Frank Baron’s prolonged bat. Where does he get the money? You know what they say, Dad? They say you should have been shot.” She paused. “But it’s dying out, lately. If you only wouldn’t get yourself into the newspapers like you do.”
“Sophistication doesn’t become the young,” he told her.
“Phooey,” she said. “Don’t you worry about me.”
“I mean the way you talk, Bette.”
“I have to be sophisticated,” she said. “You should see the circles we travel in. Mamma is a dear.”
“A dear what?”
“That’s a good question.”
“Do you believe what you read in the papers?”
“Certainly not. I know what you’re doing.”
“What does your mother say?”
“Good riddance.”
He watched her, drinking her in, because he had no idea when he would see her again. She was growing up so suddenly. The last time he’d been with her, she had not talked this way. She had been a little girl then. She was greatly changed and it had seemed to happen overnight. There were so many things he wanted to know about her and he wasn’t finding out anything. He supposed other fathers had been through the same situation.
The one thing he was happy about, that had troubled him more than anything else before seeing her, was that she somehow had not grown away from him. If anything, they were closer than before. She was a wonderful girl, soon to be a woman, and he was proud of her. He was proud of her beauty and of her mind and—well, of her. He wondered how she had managed to miss Patricia’s stamp. He had worried about that, too.
“You know,” she said, “you arrived here a little over an hour ago, and you’ll be leaving soon. I don’t like it.”
He shrugged. He wanted to talk, to get really close to her. But there seemed no way. Right now was as close as they would ever get.
She had gone very serious just then. The expression on her face changed and her eyes had become inquisitive and sober. She stopped rocking back and forth in the hammock and the skirt of her brightly flowered dress was stilled and he could smell the honeysuckle.
“You’re not letting what they did get you, are you, Dad?”
He shook his head.
“Really, why are you traveling all over like you do? Why do the newspapers print what they do?”
Again he shrugged. There was no way of explaining. So long as she knew the stories weren’t so, that was enough. He could not tell her what the truth was. It would be too laborious.
“Are you trying to rectify it?” she asked.
He said nothing.
“You are, aren’t you?”
“What makes you think that?” he said.
“Because that’s what I would do. I’m darned if I’d let them lie the way they do. Mother believes it all, you know. But I don’t. I want you to know that.” She smiled. “It gave me a hard shell.”
He laughed and she laughed and he went on staring and smelling the honeysuckle, wondering in the back of his mind if Patricia would return. Maybe he even wanted to see Patricia. See what she looked like. Know what Bette was up against, because he knew Patricia now.
“It’s almost like that story, ‘The Man without a Country.’ People believe it that way.”
“It’s nobody’s fault,” he said. “These things happen, and let’s forget them. Someday it’ll be all cleared up.”
“I hope so. But I’ve never had a chance to talk with you about it.”
“We haven’t had a chance to talk at all.” And then he had gone over there and placed his hand on her head. “Maybe someday soon,” he said, and she looked up at him, smiling, and then the smile vanished.
“Here’s Mother,” she said.
He turned. Patricia was driving into the yard. Bette leaned up quickly and hugged him and he kissed her good-by and left by the back door. He cut through the alley. And when he reached the street across the block, he looked back and Bette was standing there by the garden gate at the corner of the alley and she waved to him.
He remembered how the afternoon slant of sunlight had struck her hair, and fire seemed to shoot out of it, and he had wanted to go back there and get her.
Walking on around the corner of the block, to where his taxi waited, he realized they had said nothing to each other. The moments were gone and he hadn’t asked the questions he had scrawled on the back of the envelope in his pocket, as a reminder. He had found out nothing.
And then, climbing into the taxi, he knew he had found out something. Bette was still his daughter and she was a fine girl and she had not forgotten him.
He returned to his hotel and wrote her a long letter explaining everything in detail; all that he was doing, all his hopes for her. He called for a messenger and had the letter delivered to her hand only. He did not wait for a reply, because his plane would leave in thirty minutes.
Sitting here on the edge of the bed, thinking about it, he could still smell the honeysuckle and hear the gentle creaking of the rope on the hammock.
He rose and stared at himself once again in the mirror, remembering everything. Elene, and she made him ache some inside too, and what kind of effort should he make? He knew he must go to the police.
He grabbed a towel, went down the hall, and washed. He brushed his suit as best he could, hunted up a pin of Elene’s in the dresser, and fixed the tear in his trousers. He still looked raveled around the edges and swollen in the face. But they wouldn’t think he was a drunk staggering in from the gutter.
After turning out the lamp, he stood for a few moments in the darkness of the room. A cosmic breather, he thought. That will mean atomic power as sure as hell. Maybe Gorssmann has the name twisted. He must.
Standing by the window, he carefully drew the curtains and looked down on the street. He felt melodramatic, yet he knew he had to convince himself thoroughly that every move he made would be serious. They had allowed him freedom on the streets because they knew he was hemmed in, that he could do nothing. They had not reckoned with how he felt. It was the culmination of all events that did it. He would take the chance, go to the police, there was no other way. He needed help—now.
He knew Gorssmann would have somebody watching him. It had to be, that was all. There wasn’t even a question of doubt about this fact.
Funny about that girl Lili. Why had she done that? She certainly couldn’t expect…. But maybe she did. He stared at his palm in the gray darkness, remembering.
Searching the street through the window, he saw nothing unusual. Not too busy, but moving with nighttime traffic. There were always loiterers on Paradis. A girl here, another there, waiting for the nothing they always waited for. A couple pressed into a doorway beside a café.
He left the room, went down to the street. He was unable to breathe evenly. It was an effort to keep the wrong thoughts from his mind; the thoughts that would prevent him from going through with this. He turned to the right, walking up Paradis toward the Cours. He would pass the Palais de Justice, one block over. He tried to see if anybody followed him when he moved, but saw nothing.
This was the beginning. Because they needed him, they would not kill him immediately. But he had no illusions. They could make it uncomfortable and in the end there would be no chance for recovery of mistakes.
His palms were sweating and consciousness of the aching tooth began to return in sharp, painful waves. He couldn’t seem to walk smoothly. He was much too tense, too watchful. Face it, he thought. You’re scared stiff.
He wished he had a revolver. A gun of some kind. That was one thing he had to have. Just having a gun in your pocket helped.
He turned abruptly, crossed the street, and his breath lifted into his throat and caught. He saw the man. It was no one he had ever seen, but he knew the man was following him. As he turned to cross the street the man had stopped suddenly, wheeled, and faced the gray-glaring window of the closed bakery.
Baron paused in the middle of the street and looked at the man. The man kept his back turned, then suddenly sneaked a look at Baron over his left shoulder.
CHAPTER 7
Baron turned away hurriedly, forced himself to walk slowly toward the opposite curb. He reached the curb, and for a moment stood there in the grip of indecision. He broke into a nervous sweat, wanting to be as unobtrusive as possible and having no idea how. He suddenly felt that he needed more courage than he had.
Without actually staring at the man across the street, he moved on the sidewalk over into the doorway of a tobacco shop. It was closed, but a dim light burned at the rear of the store, the naked bulb dangling over a black steel safe. He turned his back to the man and peered into the tobacco shop, staring at the old safe. He knew very well that as soon as his back was turned, the man was watching him. He decided to go on up the street. Turning quickly, he tripped over a wooden box beside the shop doorway and nearly fell. His heels scraped and clattered on the sidewalk as he windmilled, seeking balance.
He stood absolutely still then, cursing quietly to himself. Then, turning, he stared at the man across the street. The man was gone.
Baron began walking. Immediately he saw the man again. This time the fellow was directly opposite him, on the far corner, leaning against a building.
A street girl came along on the sidewalk over there, and accosted the man.
Baron broke into a run, abruptly cut it off sharply, and walked into a café. He ordered a double brandy and drank it at a gulp. He left the café and started up the street again. He began to feel better. The brandy was a good thing. He knew he would have to lose the man who followed him, but lose him in a matter-of-fact way. It must not appear that he wanted to lose him. Because it shouldn’t matter to him if the man followed him.
Bar
on turned his mind off completely, or thought he did. He was perspiring heavily now. His hair was matted on his head, and his belt was too tight, and his trousers were soaked with perspiration. His shoes hurt, and there was a hole in the toe of his left sock. With every step he took he could feel his toe rubbing against the damp, rough leather of the shoe.
He had to reach the police. He had started it now and he would finish it. What would he tell them? He had no idea. Yes. He would tell them everything. The truth. They would simply have to understand and come to his aid.
There seemed to be no relief. He turned left on the next street, walked fast, cut across the street, and, entered an alley. He ran silently through the alley, very conscious of the toe in the shoe now, and came out on the small square before the prefecture. He ran across the square and around behind the building and turned right, still running, along Sylvabelle. There was no sign of the man. He cut across Sylvabelle and ran into another alley. He leaped breathlessly into the air, almost stomping on a man and a woman loving on the cobbled alley floor. The man swore and the woman groaned, her voice rising in monotonic waves, beating against the walls of the alley, following Baron as he ran. Reaching the end of the alley, he thought how odd it was that as he jumped over the couple back there, he had smelled the strong odor of tobacco.
Then he saw the taxi. He hailed it, rushing into the middle of the Rue Saint Jacques. The driver blasted the horn several times, the sound lifting merrily, wildly into the night. The taxi stopped. Baron hurried inside and sank back against the seat.
“Commissariat de police,” he said. “Vite, pour l’amour de Dieu!”
«Tres bien, monsieur.»
As they moved away and cut through a dark alley, the horn blatting viciously, he watched for the man. He saw no sign of him.
So this is how it is, he thought. This is how it is when you’re trying to get away, when somebody’s after you. He lay back against the seat, with his head by the window, watching, trying to get his breath and still the frightened thudding of his heart.