Pel And The Paris Mob

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Very well,’ she said in a manner that was suddenly brisk. ‘So you found me out.’

  ‘You’d better get dressed.’

  ‘You’re going to arrest me?’

  Misset didn’t want to. Up to now he’d always managed to avoid arresting attractive women. She eyed him with an amused smile.

  ‘Your friend is right, of course,’ she said calmly. ‘There is no Serafino Vocci in Milan.’

  ‘Then who–?’ Misset indicated the urn alongside the bed.

  ‘Serafino Vocci,’ she said. ‘But he wasn’t a Milan businessman. Nor was he a Neapolitan businessman. Nor a Roman. Nor a Florentine. So you can tell your clever policeman friend he needn’t look him up again. He was a Pole.’

  ‘A what?’ Misset stepped back from the urn as if it might bite.

  ‘A Pole. He was my father.’

  ‘Holy Mother of God!’ Misset sat on the bed, his head whirling. She sat alongside him and, filling his glass again, put her arm round his shoulders and ran her fingers lightly through his hair.

  ‘Poor Josephe,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s have it,’ he said wearily.

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘It was last time.’

  She kissed his ear. His inclination was to push her away but he could feel her warm flesh and smell the perfume on her skin, and the inclination gave way to another feeling which never failed to be strong in Misset. He let her stay.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he begged. ‘Tell the truth this time!’

  ‘I’ll tell the truth,’ she said. ‘But first take off your coat. It’s become very hot suddenly.’

  He allowed her to remove his jacket. ‘Come on now, the truth,’ he insisted.

  Disconcertingly she pulled the scrap of chiffon round her and sat on the bed alongside him, her legs tucked underneath her.

  ‘Put your arms round me,’ she commanded.

  Misset didn’t argue. There was plenty of time to arrest her later, he decided.

  ‘I am a Pole, too,’ she said. ‘But not entirely. My mother was French–’

  ‘Which is why you speak such good French?’

  ‘Of course.’ She moved closer to him and put her hand inside his shirt.

  ‘It’s no good doing that,’ he said. ‘I want to hear the story.’

  ‘Very well,’ she agreed, but she didn’t remove her hand. ‘My father escaped to France in 1940. He married my mother in Paris. I was born there after the war. They went back to Poland during the amnesty the Communists allowed and I went with them.’

  She leaned over him and he had to fight hard to keep his hands off her.

  ‘The story,’ he repeated.

  ‘My father went back because he was a Pole. He had won many medals with the French army and was a hero, and he was a master-printer and hoped to do well. He worked for the Polish government. He printed their bank notes. My mother died. Then he was taken ill too.’

  Misset’s head was whirling and he wasn’t sure he was following the story properly.

  ‘Before he died, he let me into a secret.’

  ‘He’d robbed the till?’

  She looked puzzled, and he waved her on.

  ‘He had managed to overprint many of the issues and had put the notes aside. He had two suitcases full of them.’

  ‘And that’s what you brought out? Not Serafino’s money.’

  ‘It was Serafino’s money. He was my father. Except that his name wasn’t Serafino. I decided to come here. France is always hospitable and sympathetic to political refugees.’ She giggled and kissed him. ‘They also have good banks,’ she added. ‘And they don’t ask questions. And it is handy for the Gnomes of Zurich. I wanted to escape. You have never lived in Poland, so you could never understand why. I got the money into Austria and put it into an account with the Creditanstaltbank then I used the savings book and code word system to draw it out again. In dollars.’

  Misset hadn’t the foggiest idea what she was talking about but Ada obviously did.

  ‘All you do,’ she explained, ‘is offer your savings book and write the code word on a piece of paper and you’ve got your money – fast. I was away before they’d noticed I’d arrived.’

  Misset had long since given up trying to concentrate. There was too much of Ada Vocci in close proximity and not enough of it was covered.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this the first time?’ he managed.

  ‘Because it was dishonest.’

  ‘Well, the second time then.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to think badly of me.’

  ‘I might have, mightn’t I?’

  She shrugged and settled herself inside the curve of his arm. ‘If you look at it in some ways,’ she agreed. ‘If you look at it in other ways, you might not. My father had his own business before the war, but it was destroyed and they wouldn’t let him build it up again. The Communists said he had fought for the Fascist-capitalist nations. They said he had no status because he’d fled when the Germans came, instead of staying behind to defend his country.’

  ‘Why don’t you apply for political asylum?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could tell you how to go about it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want to!’

  ‘But–’

  ‘I tell you, no! I’m doing exactly as my father wished.’

  ‘Surely he wouldn’t object.’

  ‘No!’

  Misset was feeling a little drunk now and was stroking her shoulder, trying desperately to keep a grip on events which still seemed in danger of whirling away out of control.

  ‘He was determined I should get what he was entitled to,’ she went on. ‘He told me on his deathbed what I must do. He was to be cremated–’

  ‘And put in an urn?’

  ‘And the urn had to be in a funeral casket.’

  ‘With the money in the false bottom.’

  She smiled, and nodded as he finished her story with a rush. ‘And you were to say you were taking him home to your native land because officially you were born in France and had the passport to prove it?’

  Misset sat up but she pulled him down again so that his glasses were knocked askew. ‘My God,’ he said, coming up for air once more, ‘what an idea!’

  She reached purposefully for him. The contact made him giddy. Misset was a man without many scruples and, always short of funds, he was even beginning to think of ways of getting his hands on some of the money. At that moment he wasn’t even bothered if it was Briand’s counterfeit stock, so long as he could share it.

  ‘You don’t think too badly of me?’

  The soft voice in his ear brought him back to life. ‘I think you’ve been damned clever,’ he said in a thick voice that didn’t sound like his own.

  ‘And what are you going to do with me?’

  Misset stared at her. His head was full of ideas and they all seemed to crystallise into the same thing.

  ‘Do you want to go now?’ she asked.

  Misset’s head seemed to shake of its own accord. ‘I’m in no hurry. Plenty of time.’

  She smiled and patted the bed alongside her. ‘Then let us stay here for a while. As if we were an old married couple–’ She paused. ‘Well,’ she ended, ‘not too old.’

  She stretched luxuriously and Misset took off his glasses and laid them on the tray on the table beside the bed. Then his eyes fell on the urn.

  ‘What about Papa?’

  She smiled. ‘He always liked to see me enjoying myself.’

  Sixteen

  It’s no good, Misset thought weakly as he lay in bed alongside his wife. Once a rat, always a rat. You couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

  It was the drink, he told himself. He’d had too much. It had melted his resolve. It always had done. By his usual devious process of reasoning, he was trying hard to convince himself that he couldn’t be blamed for what had happened.

  But what a girl! What a
story! He was swept by admiration. Then abruptly, as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown over him, he remembered it was the third story he’d heard. And they’d all been equally clever.

  His mind was clearing rapidly. According to Chaput, half the secret agents in Europe were at that moment pouring into the city by every train and bus and plane. The place was becoming jammed with them, and the sort of-in-between-the-sheets behaviour he’d indulged in was hardly the pastime for a man in imminent danger of being dropped in the sea inside a block of concrete.

  He sat up in bed, staring in front of him, his mind sharpening rapidly as he fought off the effects of the drink. ‘Ada,’ he croaked. ‘For God’s sake!’

  There was a heave in the bed alongside him and his wife sat bolt upright alongside him.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  He came to his senses abruptly and passed a hand across his face. Whatever the truth of Ada’s story – any of her stories! – things would be unpleasant for her if she were dragged back behind the Iron Curtain.

  ‘Who’s Ada?’ Madame Misset demanded.

  Misset came down to earth. He stared at his wife. She looked blurred so he scooped up his glasses from the bedside table and slammed them on his nose.

  ‘Ada?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘Ada. Who is she?’

  He struggled to get his mind working. ‘A woman I’ve been following,’ he said. ‘At the Hôtel Centrale.’

  ‘That’ll be why your clothes smell of perfume, I suppose.’

  ‘I don’t smell of perfume.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You’ve been smelling like a brothel.’ Madame Misset snorted. ‘She must be a cheap type to use such stuff.’

  Misset struggled to sort out his thoughts. Ada Vocci, he felt, could give half the length of the track to his wife and still beat her by the other half.

  ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on her,’ he said. ‘Hôtel Centrale. I told you.’

  ‘Does keeping an eye on her mean clutching her tightly enough for her perfume to be all over your clothes and for you to leap up in bed yelling, “Ada, for God’s sake!”? For God’s sake, what? What did she do?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. I was dreaming.’

  ‘I’ll bet you were. And not about me either. Who is this Ada woman?’

  Misset answered without thinking. Normally he answered warily and tried to give his wife the impression that any woman he was connected with during his work had a face like the back end of a bus. He just wasn’t alert.

  ‘Looks like Sophia Loren,’ he said. ‘You’d never believe–’

  Madame Misset yanked the pillow from behind her and swung it with all her force. It hit Misset in the face and slammed him back against the bedhead with a jolt that cracked his head and made him see stars.

  Stunned, he lay there for a moment then he scrambled from the bed. The carafe of water that always stood by his wife’s side of the bed smashed against the wall. The glass followed. Then a hairbrush and the Bible his wife liked to read from time to time. He decided it was time he disappeared.

  As he snatched up his clothes he was under a hail of everything Madame Misset could lay her hands on, and as he slammed the door behind him it shuddered under the impact of the glass tray she kept on the dressing table for her lipstick, face powder and curlers. He bolted, hopping down the stairs on one leg as he tried to put his shoes on as he went.

  Outside, finally dressed, Misset lit a cigarette and took a deep drag at it. He was scared. The time had come to stop. It was the point of no return. Much more of this, he thought, and he’d never be able to back off. He’d lose his job and his wife – though that didn’t worry him too much – and he’d be finished. It was all right daydreaming about a golden future and a world of beautiful women, but it seemed a damned sight wiser to turn his back on them and go in for a dull grey present. Come home. All is forgiven. That was what he wanted to hear. The safest thing, he decided, would probably be to be a hermit but, name of God, that would be a damned spartan existence! Safer to plump for a bit of for-richer-for-poorer.

  He crushed out the cigarette half-smoked, suddenly stone-cold sober. He looked at his watch. It was late but he’d got to talk to Ada. He’d got to clear the thing up. He’d got to arrest her or back off. As Chaput had said, he’d either got to pee or get off the pot.

  In the cold clear light of day, it was obvious what Ada Vocci had been up to, even if she wasn’t the agent with the file everybody was looking for. She was handling counterfeit dollars. She had to be.

  He’d let it slide, he realised, because every time he got around to discussing it she got him on the bed with all the wicks turned up to boiling point. He should be sold into slavery for the things he’d done. On the other hand, he couldn’t hand over someone who looked like Ada to Number 72, Rue d’Auxonne, which was the name by which the local clink went. She’d die in a place like that. He’d got to get her away. Get her to demand political asylum. And then get her out of France. To America for instance. There was only one thing to do. March round to the Hôtel Centrale and grab her straight away.

  Despite the hour, there were signs of agitation at the Hôtel Centrale when he arrived and the receptionist gave him a glare. None of them trusted him, the way he was always hanging around.

  He became aware that people were moving about in surprisingly large numbers considering the hour, and that a policeman from Inspector Nadauld’s Uniformed Branch was standing by the desk.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

  ‘God only knows,’ the cop said. ‘Somebody dashed out and fetched me off the street. I think it’s all cleared up now. Some fight between a man and a dame.’

  ‘Which dame?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her. Some Italian, I gather.’

  Misset pushed him aside and dived for the desk. ‘Mademoiselle Vocci?’ he demanded.

  The clerk gave him a pained look. ‘Not another one?’ he said.

  ‘Listen.’ Misset was quick to fall back on his proper rôle. ‘I’m a cop. I’ve been keeping an eye on her for some time.

  ‘We wondered why you were always hanging around.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Some type came asking for her.’

  ‘Which one? That one who was here the other day? Tall chap. Good-looking. Bit film-star-ish.’

  ‘No. Not him. A little man.’

  ‘Did he give a name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Cheap and nasty. Brown suit with shiny bits running through it.’

  Misset fished out his identity card with its tricolour strip. ‘I’m going up to her room,’ he said.

  The clerk shrugged. ‘Well, everybody else’s been up,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t.’

  Misset turned and tapped the uniformed man on the shoulder. ‘You,’ he said in his most magisterial voice. ‘Come with me.’

  Ada Vocci’s room was a shambles. Drawers hung open and clothes were draped untidily from them. The bedclothes, the pillows, even the mattress, were on the floor. The box containing the chippings was open, the chippings scattered, and a white suitcase had been flung in one corner. It was open and was full of dirty clothes. The hotel’s housekeeper was staring at it, bewildered.

  ‘Who’re you?’ she snapped.

  ‘Police.’ Misset fished out his identity card again and flashed it. ‘What happened?’

  ‘God knows?’ The housekeeper looked bewildered. ‘I heard all this din and when I appeared they were throwing things.’

  ‘Who were?’

  ‘The woman. And a man in a brown suit. She ran off. He went after her, but then he came back and grabbed one of her suitcases. Who was he? Her husband?’

  ‘I don’t know who the hell he was,’ Misset admitted.

  He stared around. The urn containing Serafino was still by the bed, undamaged. He gestured at the cop.

  ‘Money,’ he said. ‘Look for money.’

  ‘Money
?’

  ‘Counterfeit money! The damn woman was carrying a fortune in counterfeit notes.’ By this time Misset was certain.

  It didn’t take long to get the thing sorted out. It seemed that Gold-thread, whoever he was, had turned up with a gun and, at the sight of it, Ada Vocci had vanished at full speed, pausing only to snatch her handbag. There had been a brief wrestling match then she’d bolted down the corridor wearing only one shoe, and snatched a taxi which had happened to stop outside the main entrance with a couple of late-night revellers. Gold-thread had torn the bedroom apart while the horrified upstairs staff had been telephoning to the management downstairs who, in their turn, had telephoned the police. By the time Nadauld’s men had arrived, Gold-thread had also disappeared and so had one of the white suitcases. Misset knew which one, too. The one with the money in it.

  At the Hôtel de Police, Misset placed the urn containing Serafino, now clearly marked with a sticky label, ‘Serafino Vocci. Ashes of’, on his desk and sat down to the laborious task of writing out the report.

  Briand turned up as soon as he could be contacted and was quickly on the telephone to the frontier police demanding the arrest of a man in a gold-threaded suit who was expected to try to cross. Then Chaput turned up, all his bounce gone, wanting to know what had gone wrong.

  Misset sighed. All that remained of a beautiful friendship was the urn containing Serafino, now locked in Pel’s safe until somebody claimed him.

  Misset’s report was written with care and the Chief had him in and praised him for his skill in halting the issue of counterfeit money. Pel was disgusted. Misset, of all people! The man who was never known to do anything extra – not even the normal amount if he could help it.

  But the counterfeiters had fled. Nobody could deny that. But Ada Vocci had been clever enough to change half her notes into French francs and had disappeared with them safely locked in a numbered Swiss account. And the other half of the money was swanning about somewhere to the south as US dollars in the possession of what must be a very frightened little man in a gold-threaded suit.

  ‘Name of Horstmann,’ Pel said after a talk to Paris. ‘Heinz Horstmann. German crook. Demi-sel. Small-time. He was her henchman. The trouble was she’d outwitted him and was in danger of getting away with the loot. He objected. Naturally.’