77 Rue Paradis

by Gil Brewer

  He parked the Fiat and climbed out and stood there in the parking area. It was quite early. He felt certain Chevard would not be here now. There were few cars in the parking area. He was glad of that, because seeing anyone would raise hell with what little composure he had.

  He started walking across the parking area toward the dispatcher’s office. They apparently had expected no one in this early and weren’t watching, because no jeep came tearing across the area toward him.

  He was scared deep down inside now. But he kept walking steadily, not allowing himself to think beyond the first move. His heels echoed across the nearly empty parking area.

  The place was so large. So very large. He had known this, but now it seemed out of all proportion. He knew he would have to go deep underground, to Chevard’s office, to reach the safe. Worse than that, he must return calmly and drive away, past the parking area, past the gate with the close-lipped guards.

  He opened his mind freely because he couldn’t stand it any more and admitted the fear. It came into him like a kind of wisp of smoke, like a new kind of soul, this bright fresh vital fear. A nation’s right to live and grow crossed the floor with him, walking along with him. Bette’s life and liberty and perhaps Lili’s happiness; surely his own, if Lili….

  The dispatcher was sleeping at the desk in the front office. He lay across the desk with his head on the telephone. Baron closed the office door, took the first jeep at hand, and pushed it straight out into the tunnel, without starting it.

  When he figured he had gone far enough, he jumped in and turned the ignition on and drove on down the tunnel, then finally turned into the artery leading to Chevard’s office.

  He parked the jeep. He had turned off the motor quite a way back and coasted to a stop before the door in the artery wall.

  Now he sat there in the hard-seated jeep and stared at the windshield folded down across the hood. He gripped the steering wheel hard, and perspiration oozed from between his palms and the rim of the wheel. He wiped his hands on his trousers, then took hold of the wheel again, just sitting there.

  Every muscle in his body was tense and aching. He tried to relax, but he couldn’t. He did not know what was on the other side of that door and he had to go in there and find out and he was afraid, damned well afraid.

  He breathed deeply. The breath shuddered his whole body.

  He climbed out of the jeep and stood there. He looked up and down the artery, toward the main tunnel far up there, and down into the blackness, the other way. Right now somebody might be standing down there watching him. But he had done nothing, so far.

  All right, goddamn it! He walked over to the wall and found the chain under the dim bulb and pulled and the door swung open.

  Lucinda looked up from her desk. Georgette was typing. She kept right on typing.

  It was a horrible shock and he almost faltered, but somehow he went right on in with the swing of the door. If it hadn’t been for the door, he knew he would have stopped. He had not expected them to be here. It was perhaps seven o’clock now, and he had not planned for them to be here, to see him.

  He kept right on walking. He walked over to the barrier and stood there, looking at the blonde Lucinda. She turned in her chair, crossed her legs with a professional hiss, and smiled broadly at him.

  “What is it you desire?” she said in very brisk French.

  “Monsieur Chevard in yet?”

  “Not yet, my cabbage.”

  He gripped the edge of the wooden barrier, then pulled his hands away. She kept watching him and then Georgette looked over at Lucinda and then at him. Georgette winked at him.

  They both watched him now.

  “Well, guess I’ll wait for him.” He grinned at them both, turned, and walked at a medium rate into Chevard’s office. He felt their eyes and he felt them strongly. He somehow managed not to look back and to keep moving all the time, and got inside the office and closed the door.

  The door leading into the room where the safe was was open. The guard was sitting in there, wide awake, reading a magazine, and looked up at Baron. He said nothing, he did not smile, he simply looked. He was not the same guard that had been there the night before. Baron tried to remember whether he had ever seen this man before, and then he remembered that he had been on duty the first morning he was here. It was a stroke of luck, and it was something he had not counted on at all.

  He waved to the guard. “Morning!”

  The guard did not even nod. He stared for a moment longer, then began reading his magazine again.

  “Just waiting for Chevard,” Baron said. He went over and stood in the doorway. He watched the guard. The guard immediately began to fidget. He could not read the magazine, yet he must somehow keep his eyes on it because for some reason it was embarrassing with Baron standing there. It was embarrassing because the guard knew the door should be closed and he should speak to no one and he was conscientious, or maybe frightened, and too young for his job. He also knew Baron was Chevard’s friend and perhaps if he closed the door in Baron’s face, or ordered him away, Baron would say something to Chevard and the guard would lose his job, or be reprimanded, or both, and he could not take that. He was too young. Baron saw all of this with a kind of cynical satisfaction.

  “Must get boring, sitting there all the time.”

  The guard’s head jerked up, then his eyes went back to the magazine. He said nothing.

  Baron tried hard to hate the guard. He called him names in his mind. Nothing worked. You jerk, he thought. You crazy dumb young jerk of a guard, don’t you know what I’m here for? Haven’t you got the guts they’re depending on? Get the hell over here and order me away, close the door, pull a gun.

  He walked into the room, over to the small table, and sat on the table, watching the guard.

  It was too late for the guard to do anything. He was young and he sat there, still pretending valiantly, violently, sickeningly, to read. It was painful to watch him. He was beginning to perspire beneath his cap.

  Baron waited a little longer, watching the suffering.

  How could Chevard have been so dumb as to hire a guard of this sort? A young, helpless, honest, trustworthy, faithful jerk?

  The guard deserved death, at the very least.

  The guard was positively in agony now, seated there with his fool magazine. There was perspiration running down his nose and he did not even trouble—could not trouble—to wipe it away. He could not move. He was trapped and Baron knew it.

  Baron left the table, went over to the door and closed it, and drew the gun from his pocket and walked back to the guard and shoved it in his face.

  “Get up. No, sit still!”

  The guard’s mouth came open and remained that way. Baron could see that the guard had many fillings in his teeth and that he needed a filling badly in one tooth at the front of his mouth. The magazine fell to the floor. Baron reached down quickly, took the guard’s gun, and slipped it into his pocket. He kicked the magazine under the table.

  Time, time, time! It shrieked at him abruptly in the back of his head and his ears began to buzz with the tension he did not really realize he was under.

  “Do not move, not a hair. Don’t even breathe,” Baron said slowly, in his best and most precise French. “If you do, I promise you, I will kill you. I mean that. You understand?”

  The guard’s head bobbled like a puppet’s and Baron kept slowly moving around the chair behind the guard. Now came something he had to do and suddenly he stood there not able to do it. He stared at the guard’s head and he could not do it.

  He began to think the guard’s cap bothered him. He knocked the cap off onto the floor. The guard’s shoulders jerked, but he said nothing and he did not again move.

  Baron stared at the man’s head. He had brown hair, straight, and combed in a very neat part. All around his head Baron could see in the shining grease the man used the imprint of where the cap had been.

  He had to strike this man on the head with the gun.
He had to knock him unconscious.

  How in all hell could he do it? He remembered everything he had read. He tried to think of the war, thinking back, but he had never in his life struck anybody on the head. They claimed that if you struck too hard it would kill. Hell, he did not want to kill this jerk.

  Where should he hit him?

  Behind the ear? That’s what he had read someplace. He looked behind the ears and goddamnit, he could never hit a man there with heavy steel! There was a hump of bone behind the ear and he knew it would go crunch and that would be that.

  The guard said something. Whatever it was stuck in his throat and it scared Baron.

  Baron’s arm came up, holding the .32, and he brought it down with everything he had, just under the bump on the back of the skull, where it turned in to the neck. It made a hell of a noise and the guard sat there stiff and straight and Baron did it again, still harder, with that almost maniac-like violence with which you kill a mosquito in the middle of the night.

  The guard sprawled out of the chair, face down on the floor, out cold.

  He went over and opened the safe door and began searching. He found the envelope he was looking for. He had not felt anything at all when the door opened. He did not even think, This is great! Suppose the door had been locked?

  He tore the envelope open and tried to make out what was in the folder. Blueprints, all sorts of plans, and a sheaf of solid manuscript, and it was the breather, all right. My God, yes! Now it came to him hard, reaching him with the solid, substantial force of something accomplished and a hell of a way to go yet. He shoved the stuff back into the envelope and checked on through the safe. There was some correspondence pertaining to the industry, signed documents, a lot of loose papers, but nothing else pertaining to the breather. He closed the safe door, as it had been, and wiped it free of his fingerprints.

  Then he opened his jacket, undid his shirt, and pushed the envelope and papers into his shirt and around the back, so his belt held them securely. He rebuttoned his shirt, put his gun away, and stood there breathing like a small steam engine.

  He quickly went over and inspected the guard. His head was bleeding. Baron turned him over. The man was out absolutely cold. Baron felt of the pulse. It was weak and slightly erratic, but it was there. He took the chair over and leaned it against the wall. He was laughing to himself now, down in his throat. He knew he was a bit mad. He dragged the guard over to the chair and pulled him up and sat him there, with his head hanging, his arms hanging. He got the magazine and propped it on his lap and looked at the guard.

  How long would he stay unconscious? Would striking him again help? He knew he could not do it, anyway.

  You are no longer a jerk, I am sure of that, he thought. When you wake up, you will be a man, and you will trust nobody. You will probably become so goddamned belligerent you’ll never make another friend in this world.

  He turned, walked rapidly across the room, out of the door into Chevard’s office. He closed the door and went on out into the outer office and looked at Lucinda and Georgette.

  He closed Chevard’s door. The papers in his shirt seemed to crackle with every move he made and he was certain they bulged his coat out, so anybody could see them plainly. It made him walk oddly, sort of sideways, and he realized this and knew he had to act natural.

  “I believe I’ll go on outside,” he told Lucinda. “If Paul comes in, tell him I’ll be back.”

  She nodded and smiled broadly at him. He did not look at either of them again. He strode toward the outside door. As he stepped up to it, it opened, and Chevard walked in.

  CHAPTER 20

  “What in God’s name are you doing here?” Chevard said.

  Baron made the effort to speak. The words caught in his throat and he swallowed with doom ticking in his ears. He waved his hand back at the two secretaries and grinned, then his voice broke through strong and clear.

  “Came by a little early.” He looked at Chevard. “But I’m going home, Paul. I feel lousy. After I left you last night I stopped for something to eat. Must have been bad. Awful stomach cramps this morning. They just seem to be hitting me.” He grimaced slightly, and avoided Paul Chevard’s eyes.

  “I’m pretty much of a mess myself,” Chevard said. “Hope I didn’t cause you too much trouble last night. I must be in terrible shape, the way that cognac hit me. Ordinarily, I can drink brandy all night long.”

  “You’re tired.” Somehow or other, he had to get Chevard away from the office, manage time enough so he could get away from the plant.

  “I guess I am tired.” He stepped closer to Baron, and Baron saw the anxiousness in the man’s eyes. “I talked a great deal last night, didn’t I? I told you something, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. Forget it. It was nothing. What I mean, you have a wonderful thing in this breather, Paul. It’s an amazingly wonderful discovery. I can see why all the secrecy now, and I admire you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m going on home,” Baron said. He felt the papers in his shirt and he distinctly heard them crackle. He watched Chevard’s face closely. “Why don’t you ride out to the parking area with me? You could bring this jeep back.”

  Chevard glanced over at his office, then back at Baron.

  “Come on,” Baron said. There was anxiousness in the tone of his voice, he tried to make his voice light. “We can talk. You can spare the time.”

  “All right,” Chevard said.

  They went on outside and climbed into the jeep and Baron hardly talked at all. He had difficulty in keeping his foot easy on the accelerator.

  “You seem troubled,” Chevard said. “I thought we were going to talk, Frank.”

  “I’m sicker than I thought.”

  “You get on home, then. Listen, why don’t you go to my place? Jeanne will fix you up.”

  Oh, good great God, Baron thought. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, the poor fellow.

  “I’ll see,” Baron told him. They came into the parking lot and he drove the jeep over to where the Fiat stood. He climbed out immediately, and the papers crackled. He wondered if they would be worth a damn by now. They would be sweat-soaked, but the envelope would protect them.

  “Listen, Frank,” Chevard said. “For God’s sake, please never say a word about what I told you last night.”

  “You don’t have to ask me that.”

  “I know, but I am asking you. One slip and all is lost. And that’s not being dramatic.” His face looked intensely worried.

  “Just don’t bother yourself about it,” Baron said. “I’ll see you later. Maybe tonight?”

  Chevard nodded quickly. “Yes. Come to the house.”

  Baron was already in the Fiat. Chevard kept looking at him, wanting to say it again and again, that he should not say anything about the breather, the story he had told him last night. Baron could read the fear in Chevard’s eyes.

  “Tonight,” Baron said. He started the Fiat, drove swiftly out of the parking area. Once outside, he stomped on the accelerator, careened down the curved road toward the gate. In his mind’s eye he saw Chevard climb into the jeep and start back for the office. He slowed the Fiat on the last curve and rolled slowly to the gate.

  Already, he knew, the phone might have rung in the gatehouse. The guards might be waiting.

  They weren’t. They came out and one of them took his identification card, then handed it back, and the gate opened. He drove through with the card still in his hand. As soon as he was out of sight, he turned the Fiat loose. He saw the card in his hand blow abruptly out the window, and made a wild grab for it. He was already doing eighty-five miles an hour and the car swerved on the road and he straightened it out, perspiring, his hands wet on the steering wheel.

  He hit the main road, finally, and opened the car up all the way. The Fiat roared and became a light, foolish, wild thing in his hands, but it stuck to the road. He saw by the speedometer that he was doing 168 kilometers, and went through the familiar mental steps to transla
te the kilometers into miles: 105. This speed on those particular roads was out of the question. There were no guardrails and the road began to peel down now, around the mountainside. He came off the macadam onto a stretch of gravel where they were doing repair work, and the car hit it lightly, cuttingly.

  He began to let up then, going down, and as he approached the first really wild curve on a cliffside, he looked straight out there and saw the sea and Marseilles bright and shining in the morning light. If he held the wheel perfectly straight, it seemed that he could ride right on down there, coast to the Cannebière.

  He wanted to take those papers out of his shirt.

  He made the curve and it was close. For one long horrible moment he could see from the corner of his eye out the car window straight down and down and down to treetops and the bare side of the mountain with the road curling and a vineyard.

  He took it a little more easily then. But not much.

  There was nobody in the Café Demoiselle except the woman with the red wig and the horribly interesting background.

  She looked at him and shook her head.

  “I do not know if I can do this thing, monsieur.”

  “That’s not the question,” Baron said. He was very nervous. He knew every minute counted, that Gorssmann was very smart, and that he might have had him followed. If so, he had managed to elude the shadow. He had driven up and down several alleys and had seen no one. He knew, however, that he had to reach Gorssmann’s place, and fast. Bette was in the back of his mind, like a poised dagger, and Lili was there with her, and he was going through hell and now this woman had to act this way. “You’ve got to get word to Follet, see? Tell him to come here and wait here until he hears from me, until I get here, something! Understand? There’s not a single moment to lose, madame.”

  “I should not divulge this, perhaps, but this I know: Louis Follet will no longer help you, monsieur.”