Pel And The Paris Mob

by Mark Hebden

  ‘And what was in that false bottom?’

  She lay back on the pillows and, putting her feet on the bed, suddenly in control of the situation, she looked up at Misset under her lashes, so that he had to breathe deeply. ‘Serafino’s money,’ she said.

  ‘From Poland?’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know the regulations that exist at the other side of the Iron Curtain? Western businessmen who make money there have to spend it there. Actors who act there have to draw their salaries there and spend them before they leave. Authors whose books draw royalties there have to take a holiday there to spend them, otherwise they lose them. And, since most people can’t manage to spend all they earn in the short time they stay, the system benefits a great deal. I decided that the money Serafino had earned was coming home. I need money. I am a type who can’t do without it.’

  This was something Misset could understand. He was, too. He put his feet up on the bed and leaned back on the pillows alongside her, Misset again – Napoleon Misset, Alexander the Great Misset, Louis XIV Misset, Charles de Gaulle Misset – he stared down at her in admiration, making the most of the view down the top of her dress.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What else?’

  ‘I was there before he died,’ she said. ‘And when he did, for a long time I managed to conceal the fact that he’d gone. I had the body cremated but I didn’t mention it to the authorities. I managed to go on drawing cheques on his bank as though they were going into his business there. The banks paid and gradually I accumulated most of what he owned. When I had it all I set about forming a plan to get it home. I used Serafino. It wasn’t difficult. Through my friend at the American Embassy I managed to get it all changed into dollars so that it would be easier to get rid of on this side. I wanted dollars; the Americans wanted zlotys. For their CIA to use, I suppose. She jumped off the bed and, crossing to the wardrobe, dragged out one of the white suitcases. Taking a key from her handbag she unlocked it and threw the lid back. It contained dollar bills. Misset shot upright on the bed, his eyes bulging behind his glasses.

  ‘Holy Mother of God!’ he said. ‘Are they real?’

  ‘Of course they are? Do you want to check them?’

  ‘Why dollars?’

  ‘Best currency in the world. I transferred them from the box.’

  ‘Is that what’s in the other suitcase, too?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s empty. I’ve been changing them into francs and putting them into a Swiss account. Now are you satisfied?’ She relocked the case and returned to where Misset was still sitting on the bed. Pushing him back on to the pillows, she took her place alongside him, leaning on his chest. The softness of her bosom made his heart pump abruptly and his hands were suddenly moist. Her face was close to his and he suddenly noticed how blurred his glasses had become.

  ‘And the friend?’ he asked thickly. ‘The friend who helped you?’

  She sighed. ‘Poor Dexter. They found out. The CIA informed on him. He got sent home.’

  Misset promptly saw Dexter tramping round Times Square in New York without a job and in danger of being arraigned on a charge of high treason.

  ‘He was transferred,’ she explained. ‘I shall send him a nice present.’

  She lay back on the pillows and Misset leaned on one elbow to look at her. Her story had carried conviction but he still had his doubts.

  ‘As a matter of interest,’ he asked, ‘just how much did you get out?’

  She beamed up at him. ‘Four hundred thousand dollars,’ she said. ‘I’ve already changed half of it.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘You’ve been looking at it. I am making little trips about the country and changing it in small sums. I’m going off again tomorrow. When it’s all gone, I shall go, too, and spend it.’

  He looked startled and she lifted her arms and pulled him down to her.

  ‘I am going to spend and spend,’ she said gaily. ‘I shall never go back to Milan. Why should I? Why should I worry about Serafino’s family. They never liked me anyway.’

  ‘And what about Serafino? Shall you always cart him about with you?’

  She shook her head. ‘When I have finished with him I shall throw him in the lake at Zurich.’

  Misset was shocked. ‘Poor con,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She kissed him cheerfully. ‘Poor con. Now are you satisfied I’m not a spy?’

  Misset nodded. He noticed it was growing warm and his glasses had steamed up once more. Chaput had got it wrong again.

  ‘Let’s have a drink on it,’ he said.

  She shook her head.

  He felt his arteries swell. He was a man of powerful enthusiasm but, faced with a moral problem of this kind, the feeling of guilt put him off a little.

  ‘Aren’t you thirsty?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly.

  The heat seemed to be growing intense. Without taking her eyes off him, she kicked off her shoes and bounced gaily on the bed. ‘It’s too warm for clothes,’ she said, unzipping the bronze dress.

  Misset fought with himself a little longer, watching with the fascinated stare of a rabbit ambushed by a snake. ‘Yes,’ he agreed as she tossed the dress on to a chair. ‘It is.’

  He took off his glasses and placed them down carefully.

  ‘The door is locked,’ she pointed out.

  ‘There’s just one thing.’

  She looked up.

  ‘Serafino.’

  She smiled and pushed the urn under the bed. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘He makes you think you are being watched.’

  It was late when Misset left the Hôtel Centrale and the streets were empty. He knew he ought to be hanged, drawn and quartered, probably even canned and sold as dogmeat in the supermarket at Talant. But he was feeling on top of the world, despite the fact that he knew that Ada had played on his urges like a gypsy minstrel on a violin. He felt almost willing to do some work. The next day, Ada had said, she had to go to Zurich again on business in connection with the late lamented Serafino’s estate, but that she’d be back by evening.

  ‘Tally ho,’ he murmured. ‘La dolce vita. La grandissima fornicazione. Josephe Misset, what a thorough-going, dyed-in-the-wool, copper-bottomed bastard you are!’

  It was about then that he remembered Briand and the fact that, in addition to working for Chaput on the security of the French Republic, he was also supposed to be working with Counterfeit Currency. In his eagerness to find Chaput’s defecting Russian and his delight in Ada Vocci, he had allowed to slip his mind entirely the fact that he was also supposed to be on the look-out for counterfeit dollars.

  Fifteen

  Misset frowned. He’d been frowning a lot in the last forty-eight hours as the memory of the box in Ada Vocci’s room came back to him. He accepted now that the rosy glow he’d felt in the session that had followed its examination had helped to obscure certain important facts of which he ought to have made a note. In the cold light of day he wasn’t satisfied.

  Misset frowned as the thought set a whole train of ideas in motion. If Ada wasn’t all she seemed to be, he realised uneasily, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suppose that Chaput might be right. He had certainly known plenty about her. And Briand? Was he right? One of them must be. Perhaps both. Ada Vocci was a remarkably resourceful young woman.

  Misset’s expression changed again and this time it was closely bordering on alarm. A whole string of events he hadn’t even thought of before began to come back to him. Something, he decided, was rotten in the state of Denmark, as that English chap he’d read at school had said. There were a great many questions that still required answering. Too many inexplicable things seemed to be happening at once. Aware of a prickling down his spine, he decided he wasn’t really cut out for the sort of work Chaput was doing.

  The city, teeming with people, wore a smug look of normality. But there were all sorts of currents of suspicion and violence under the surface that only he knew about. At that moment even the doorways seemed
to hide assassins.

  He located Chaput at the bar near the Porte Guillaume. He was sitting at his usual place, studying a small notebook which he hurriedly put away as he saw Misset. His face seemed harder than Misset remembered and there was an icy look about his small eyes.

  ‘Ah, Misset,’ he said. ‘Thought you’d turn up eventually.’

  Misset offered him a cigarette. ‘I think we need to talk,’ he said.

  Chaput ordered drinks. It was hot in the sunshine and there were damp marks under Misset’s armpits. Suddenly Chaput looked seedy and unreliable and his eyes were as hard and unblinking as a barracuda’s. Not by any means did he look like a man who would do any dirty work when there was someone else to do it for him.

  ‘Look,’ Misset said, ‘some funny things have been happening lately.’

  ‘Better tell me, mon vieux.’

  ‘Well, first there was this type in the suit with gold thread in it at the station. He came out looking as if he’d lost a fortune.’

  ‘Perhaps he had. Got any names? Any descriptions?’

  ‘I think someone tried to kidnap us the other night when I met you. Me and Ada Vocci. You know – the girl who–’

  ‘I know who Ada Vocci is,’ Chaput said sharply.

  ‘They had a taxi laid on. It was stolen. There was this other type, too. Tall chap. Good-looking. Asking for her at the hotel.’

  Chaput shuffled to a more comfortable position. ‘Perhaps the other side’s arrived.’

  ‘What other side?’

  ‘There’s always more than one, mon vieux. They’ll go to any length.’

  ‘Who will?’

  ‘The Russians.’

  ‘Will they be here?’

  ‘I expect so. Americans, too. Perhaps even the West Germans and the British. Be careful. They’re not against making a concrete pudding of a man and dropping him in the sea at Le Havre to make a new breakwater. I could get you a gun if you wanted one.’

  ‘I’ve got a gun. All cops have guns. Why is this Gold-thread type interested in me?’

  ‘I told you. The file.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to do with the file.’

  ‘You have now. The girl. That’s why they’re following you. You’re the man in the middle.’

  ‘Ada’s no agent,’ Misset said. ‘All she’s after is security.’

  Chaput was unimpressed. ‘Security’s a habit,’ he said coldly. ‘Like insecurity. People’ll do any kind of dirt for security. Kill. Thieve. Even pinch plans. Why do you think she’s not in it?’

  ‘I looked at the box. It had a false bottom.’

  ‘It did?’

  ‘But not for what you thought. She explained.’

  ‘They all do. Even when you find their pockets stuffed with hidden microphones.’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard more than one version of her story and none of them seems to indicate she’s a spy. She’s just bringing out the ashes of her husband.’ Misset paused. ‘I think,’ he added.

  ‘And in the false bottom of the wooden box?’

  ‘Money. That’s all.’

  ‘Money. Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘What sort of money?’

  ‘Four hundred thousand francs in dollars sort of money.’

  Chaput looked interested. ‘That’s a lot of money,’ he said.

  ‘Is it illegal to bring that much in?’

  Chaput smiled. ‘It is, to take it out, but I can’t imagine any government objecting to nearly half a million dollars being pushed into the economy.’

  Misset didn’t mention that Ada had been busy as hell taking it right out again and stuffing it into a numbered Swiss account.

  ‘I’ll have to enquire,’ Chaput went on. ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘Poland. It was her husband’s. They wouldn’t let her bring it out so she got the idea of smuggling it out with his ashes.’ Misset went into detail, his words tumbling over themselves.

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘In a bank. What’s left’s in the suitcase. Locked. In her wardrobe. Those suitcases had me baffled for a bit.’

  ‘You and I, mon vieux,’ Chaput said soberly, ‘are in the wrong job. You actually saw this money?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘And you’re sure there’s no file?’

  ‘Yes. Call your dogs off. Call everybody’s dogs off.’

  Chaput sat back, his fingers together like a steeple. ‘They’d never believe it,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Same reason I don’t. There’s no Serafino Vocci. There never was.’

  Misset’s jaw dropped and Chaput smiled.

  ‘I made a few enquiries, you see,’ he said. ‘There never was a type called Serafino Vocci who carried on business behind the Iron Curtain.’

  Misset stared at him for a second then he swallowed what was left of his drink. ‘You sure? You couldn’t be wrong?’

  Chaput gestured. ‘I’ve told you. The route: Poland and East Germany to France. Lüneburg; Enschede in Holland; Maastricht in Belgium; Luxembourg; into France at Dude-lange; then Metz; and finally here. She was followed all the way after crossing over in Berlin. If I say there’s no Serafino Vocci, there’s no Serafino Vocci. Everybody else thinks the same, or they wouldn’t be here, would they?’

  ‘I think,’ Misset said slowly, ‘that this thing is getting dangerous.’

  ‘Always was a bit,’ Chaput admitted. ‘What we want to do is get the woman and the file away from here – fast. Paris. Or New York. It doesn’t matter. Anywhere in the West. The Americans would help. They’d foot the bill even. What are you going to do about it? You’ve got to pee or get off the pot.’

  For a long time, Misset sat still, then he put down his empty glass and rose.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To see Ada Vocci. Name of God, I’ll get the truth out of her this time or die in the attempt. Are you coming?’

  ‘No. You get her out of the hotel. I’ll be waiting.’

  Misset went up the steps of the Hôtel Centrale two at a time. The affair seemed to be reaching some sort of climax and he felt a vague sense of relief that it would soon be over. Underneath his determination, too, there was a vague uneasy feeling about the money he’d seen. Was Ada Vocci passing counterfeit money as well as smuggling files? And if she was, where had it come from? For a moment – a very brief moment – Misset was thinking like a cop.

  As before, he didn’t ask permission and he didn’t use the lift but headed straight for the stairs. No one stopped him. Ada’s door was unlocked and Ada was sitting up in bed drinking champagne and eating a sandwich, her face still flushed from sleep. Her clothes were on the floor with her nightdress and the sight of her made Misset take off his glasses and polish them abruptly. For a moment she stared at him, startled, then she relaxed.

  ‘I just got back from Basle,’ she said. ‘I hired a car and stayed there the night. I was hot and tired and I thought I’d rest. For a moment I thought you were the burglar come back.’

  Misset gaped at her. ‘What burglar?’

  ‘Somebody had been here when I got back. He’d been through the drawers.’

  ‘And the suitcase?’

  She smiled. ‘After I found you making investigations, I had it locked away. It goes to the basement when I’m away. I pick it up when I return. It’s in the wardrobe now.’

  For a moment Misset wondered if Chaput had decided to opt out of the secret service and go in for crime. Then he remembered the man in the gold-thread suit. ‘Anybody see him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you report it?’

  ‘Of course not. They’d have asked questions. Besides–’ she smiled ‘–I have my own private policeman. You, Josephe.’ She made herself more comfortable in the bed. ‘I didn’t expect you until this evening.’

  He eyed the champagne. ‘I suppose you couldn’t spare a glass of that?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. Have you locked the do
or?’

  He was on the point of saying: No, and I don’t intend to, but the amount of naked flesh made him decide that it would be as well, just in case. Misset was a weak vessel. Without a word, he turned round and slipped the bolt.

  She handed him a glass. ‘I’m hardly awake yet,’ she said.

  He swallowed the champagne at a gulp then, putting the glass down, he stood at the end of the bed and leaned over her, angry.

  ‘Just as well you’re hardly awake,’ he said sharply, though when he looked at her he found his resolution melting with every word. The sight of her there on the pillow with her long cool throat and the deep cleft between her breasts and her eyes still drowsy, was enough to melt the marrow of a murderer. Misset thought of his wife. He’d once looked at her, too, like that.

  He continued more slowly, his anger draining away rapidly. He was a policeman. He needed to know because he was on duty – always. On the other hand, he felt, there was no immediate hurry.

  ‘Perhaps if you’re not quite compos mentis,’ he said, ‘I might get the truth out of you.’

  She reached quickly for what looked like a strip of chiffon and slipped her arm into it. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There never was a damned Serafino Vocci,’ Misset said heavily. ‘Never. You’ve been stringing me along all the time with a whole parcel of lies. This time I want to know.’

  Her mouth tightened.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘Chap I know. Enquired in Milan.’

  ‘You didn’t trust me.’

  Misset put on his tough cop face. ‘I’m a policeman.’

  She slipped from the bed and moved to the window. ‘Who is this man?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Another cop,’ Misset said. ‘He looked it up for me.’

  There was a long silence then she looked round at him. ‘And now you are angry with me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Misset felt large and hot and clumsy as she stared coldly at him. ‘You made me look a fool.’

  Her eyes rested on him for a long time, then she refilled the glass and passed it to him. He swallowed it quickly.