“You owe me. Four grand.”
“Wait a minute,” he said.
“Don’t fuck around about it,” I said. “We had a bet.”
“Tony … ”
“I gotta catch a plane. I’ll be back in a couple o’ three days. See you then. Cash, check, or money order.”
“I can’t give you that much … ” he started to say, but then he saw the look on my face. “All in one chunk, I mean. I mean, first I gotta check this out. … ”
“Go ahead.”
“Then you gotta, I mean, give me some time on it.”
“No sweat.” I grinned and dashed back for my cab.
The flight was full, the seats were narrow. I fell asleep breathing the breath of the bodies on either side of me, dreaming dreams of clients who would fly me on the Concorde. I woke up to a seat belt announcement and turbulence forty-five minutes out of Charles de Gaulle. Sunlight was coming through the windows.
Then we were on the ground. The signs for the bus that went to the train to Paris said “Le Train.” I could follow that. In the station there was a combined train and metro map, just like the subway maps at home. Unfortunately, as with the subway map, without a knowledge of the city to mentally transpose over it, it was nothing but a random assemblage of unpronounceable names.
The seating was two across, facing each other, with lots of standing room. The middle-aged couple across from me were chattering away in Parisian, but I asked them anyway if they spoke English.
“Mais non,” the man said. Contempt twitched his mustache.
I asked the people back to back with me.
“Sprechen Sie deutsch?” they replied.
“English?” I said to the people across the aisle. “Parlez anglais?” They shrugged and looked so blank that I figured I didn’t even say that right. A woman, a girl, standing beside her suitcase, looked down at me. She wore an oversize sweater, blue and yellow, a belt at the waist giving it some shape, patched blue jeans, bright green sneakers. She was built for comfort, and looked like she’d look as right with the morning as cream does with coffee. Her black hair was in an uncombed tangle, chic au natural, tied with a scarf folded into a band. Her eyes were dark, eyebrows thick; her nose was strong, her generous lips were a breath away from laughing. A Gallic face, a Mediterranean face. I could see the human animal living in her eyes. She was welcome to laugh at me.
“You speak English,” I said. She had to.
“A little bit,” she said.
“It had to be that way,” I said.
“What?”
“I said,” I said very slowly, “that I am very glad that you do.”
“OK.” What a lovely accent.
I asked how I should get to my hotel. She didn’t understand the name of the street as pronounced by Cassella, so I showed it to her and she repronounced it, correctly.
“How do I get there?”
“Do you have a map? Of Paris? Of the metro?” she asked.
I shook my head. She sighed with exasperation and smiled at the same time. (Translation from the French: You are a foolish boy, but what can one expect from a boy. Even so, I still like boys. Who teaches them to talk like that?)
“You are American? English?” she asked.
“I’m from New York,” I said.
“Oh, la la. You are American.”
“No. New York is not America. My name is Tony.”
“Is short for Antony? Yes?”
“Yes.”
“I want to go to New York. You think I will like?”
“Hey, you’ll love New York. When are you coming?”
“En été. End of the summer. Uh … August, yes?”
“Yes. August. When you get there, you call me, I’ll show you around. It can be difficult for a stranger.”
She suddenly looked very shy. A good girl would not do that.
“Here,” I said. I reached into my wallet and gave her my card. “You call me when you are coming.”
“Maybe,” she said, sounding very much like maybe, and took the card. “I will show you where to go. To get to your hotel. It is in the arrondissement twelve. You know arrondissement? It means district, yes? An area.”
“OK. Thank you. Thank you. What’s your name?”
“It is Marie-Laure.”
I caught the Marie, but the second part was a sound that can’t be formed with a New York tongue.
The train slid into Paris, and at the Gare du Nord we got off and changed to the metro, buying small yellow cardboard tickets with a magnetic stripe down the back. These went into the turnstile and came back out. “You must keep this,” Marie said, “to do the exit.”
“Right. To do the exit.”
“If I do not say it right, it is better if you correct my English.”
“OK. ‘To get out.’ ”
When we got out of the metro, she took me to a magazine shop and picked out Les Rues de Paris for me, an encyclopedic directory, maps in the book, plus two foldout maps, one for the rues, one for the metro, cross-referenced to each other and to the book.
“Now we go this way,” she said.
I offered her my arm. She didn’t take it. “Thank you for this,” I said. “I would like to take you to lunch.”
“It is nothing; it’s OK.”
“Yeah. What about lunch?”
Again she looked shy, but a look so full of flirtatious charm … (I’d seen that look before. Nineteen forty-four. Dropped behind enemy lines. The countryside. Moonlight. Wounded. The SS on my trail. A farm. A barn. A place to hide. Troops outside. Someone entering the barn. … It is her. The farmer’s daughter. I know at a glance she will save me. And oh, la la.) I asked if she would join me for dinner.
“Maybe in New York,” she said. “The hotel is on the street. There.”
“A coffee. Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
“Thank you,” she said, smiling, a dance around her eyes. She looked at her watch. “But it is the hour that I must go.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” She made it sound like she meant it. Every woman who turns me down should do it with a French accent. “Ciao.”
“I’ll see you in New York,” I said.
She spoke to me with her eyes. I understood every word she didn’t say. Then she was walking away. In a few steps, she disappeared into the purposeful bustle of the Parisian street.
After I checked in and showered, I found Avenue Jean Moulin on the map. It was to the south, only a few blocks long, coming out of Avenue du Général Leclerc. With or without the map, I wasn’t up to finding it on my own. I hailed a cab and told the driver the address. He said what I understood to be “Huh?” I repeated it. He said, “Huh?” I wrote it down. “Ah, oui!” and we took off with enthusiasm. It was an interesting drive, and I saw many things. New York cab drivers are equally courteous to foreign visitors, always picking the most scenic routes.
When we arrived, the meter showed forty francs. But there were additional charges. Because it was a Tuesday. Because it was l’heure de déjeuner. Because we had to cross the Seine. Seine-crossing alone is an extra twenty francs. Ah, Paris, city of lights, you are what I had always dreamed you would be.
No. 42 was, like the buildings around it, a six-story apartment building. I rang the bell beside the door. The lock released. I pushed my way into the foyer. There was a double door in front of me, a smaller door and a directory to my left. While I was reading the directory, the concierge appeared from the small door. She was exactly as she should have been, gray-haired but vigorous, short, stout, with the territorial instincts of a terrier, guardian of her domain. Entry to America is controlled by the immigration department. Residence in Paris is dictated by a casting director. She spoke to me in French.
“Mr. Bergman,” I said. “Oo ay Mr. Bergman. Samuel Bergman.”
“Que?”
“Par-lay English?” I asked.
“Non,” she said, and then something else, which contained a lot of syllables attached
rapidly to each other.
I wrote down the name and showed it to her. She was even more emphatic. “Pas ici, pas ici,” ushering me toward the door as if she had a broom and I were litter in her lobby.
What do you do in Paris when what you’re there for isn’t there et vous ne parlez pas français and you can’t figure out what to do next? I decided to see the Eiffel Tower. I had my Les Rues de Paris in my pocket and I thought I could walk across the city. To anyone raised with the utter simplicity of Manhattan’s grid street plan, Paris is a nightmare. No street is complete, no street is through, no angle is right. Soon I was in a cimetière. The du Sud, if it matters. Which meant I was going in the right direction. For the tower, not for a Bergman. A zig, a zag, I left the dead, and I was on Boulevard Raspail. Which went to Boulevard Montparnasse, a name I had heard somewhere, probably in a movie. But I was turned around and found myself at an intersection of a whole lot of streets. About six of them. All with different names.
There was a café. Est bien. Seats outside, umbrellas over the tables, a waiter in a soiled white jacket and a mouth that made moues. I ordered a croissant and un café con leche. Service was leisurely. Except for presentation of the bill. That was instantaneous. Written with an insouciant flair and placed before me: 8.4 francs. I handed him a fifty.
“Vous n’avez pas dix francs?” he said. I think.
“What?” I said.
“Dix, dix francs,” he said, holding up ten fingers. “Vous avex dix francs?”
“No. Sorry,” I said.
He took the fifty with great weariness. Or perhaps, since he was Parisian, it was ennui.
Once again the open door had led to nothing. I had the feeling that if I failed, Wirtman was the kind of guy I would have to sue to get my money, a landlord.
The waiter placed my change before me. I looked up, said thank you, then looked out at the street. There she was. My pretty woman. Roy Orbison burst into song in my head.
“Marie,” I yelled.
Fourteen out of twenty women, and two men, turned around when I called. Half the population of France is named Marie-quelque chose; the rest are named Jean-Paul, Jean-Claude, and Jean-Louis. My Marie smiled when I jumped up from my seat. She laughed when I hopped over the railing that surrounded the café.
“I need your help,” I told her.
“Oh, yes?”
“Yes. Definitely. Come. I will buy you un café and I will explain,” I said, taking her arm and turning back to the café. The sonofabitch moue-mouth waiter was not only collecting my unfinished coffee and my half-eaten croissant; he was gathering forty-plus francs as a tip. “Hey, leave that,” I yelled.
The waiter calmly dropped the forty francs in his pocket. Probably slightly deaf in his left ear. I dragged Marie after me into the café. The waiter was hiding behind the bar.
“Give me my money back. And where’s my coffee and croissant?”
“Pardon?” he said, a double moue on each vowel.
“Come on, Jacques. Gimme,” I said, with my hand out.
The waiter turned to the bartender, and in rapid French, they discussed their incomprehension of what I’d said. I explained to Marie what was going on. Marie put on a new face and voice, inherited from Maman, a devastating set of expressions handed down through generation upon generation of the housewives of France to deal with thumb-on-the-scale, sou-stealing shopkeepers.
It brought my waiter up short, like a French poodle caught on a choke collar. “Pardon, pardon. Excusez-moi,” he mouthed, handing back my forty-one francs. Marie watched the money, then turned those eyes upon him. He coughed up an additional six centimes.
Only then did she look back at me. Maman had disappeared. The shy girl with flirtatious eyes was back. I was the man and in charge. It was up to me to show her to the table. Which I did.
“Tell me something, Marie: You got a housing shortage in Paris?”
She said, “What?” and I repeated it slowly and carefully.
“Oh, yes. It is very difficult to find the apartment. Very, very expensive.” Her franglais description of the problem was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter. I ordered two café con leches and two croissants. Marie was kind enough to wait until the waiter left to let me know that it was café au lait.
“The reason I’m here,” I said to Marie, “is to find this guy named Samuel Bergman, who’s wanted for multiple rent-control fraud back in the States.”
Rarely have I seen someone look blank so attractively. Intelligently. Bergman’s crimes and the labyrinth of real estate regulations from which they arose were not really worth explaining. So I told her, simply, that I had an address for a man. When I went to the address, the concierge had shooed me away.
The waiter returned with our order and l’addition. I reached to pay the 16.8 francs. Marie took the money from my palm, extracted a ten-franc piece, gave that to the waiter and the rest back to me. He moued. She looked at him. His eyes drooped. The world was a very sad and unfair place.
“Will you help me talk to the woman?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Thank you, Listen. I … do not want to be rude.”
“Rude?”
“Not polite.”
“Yes, I understand. You do not want to be not polite.”
“Right. But I can pay you for your help.”
“No,” she said.
I accepted that. She dipped her croissant in the coffee the way Americans dunk doughnuts. Oh, the thrill of seeing another culture.
This time we went directly to the concierge. Marie told her that I had come from America in search of Samuel N. Bergman. That I was certain that Mr. Bergman lived or had lived …
This time the greeting was completely different. “Bien,” the concierge said, and something else, which I think was: “I am pleased you have returned.” She held her door open and ushered us into her apartment.
It was a room filled with overstuffed furniture, paintings on the wall, mementos and do-funnies on every available horizontal surface, doilies on the arms of every chair and on top of the huge old console TV. A man in a blue suit and pale blue tie sat facing us.
The concierge slammed the door shut, blocked it with her body, and cried with malignant triumph, “Il est ici!”
He was a cop. I surrendered my passport. Marie showed her identification. The cop spoke rapidly. Marie translated haltingly. I spoke slowly. The concierge watched us all balefully.
Gradually, sense and order came to the conversation. After I left, Madame DeFarge, the concierge, had called the police. The police now wanted to know who I was and why I was looking for Mr. Bergman. At the name Bergman, Madame DeFarge once again broke into a tirade, a cascade of syllables, a torrent of agitation. Marie scaled that down to a few phrases. “She is upset”—I could see that—“that such a thing has never happened before … or since. This is a good habitation … apartment building.”
“What thing has never happened?” I asked her.
She shrugged, her face neutral but her eyes laughing.
The cop finally barked loudly enough to stop Madame DeFarge. Silenced, she wrapped herself in a cloak of righteousness and sat. She picked up her knitting, jabbing left, left, right, as she listened. Again the cop turned to me. I explained slowly and as simply as I could, Marie translating, why I was looking for Mr. Bergman. I finally had the sense to show him my investigator’s license. He looked at it, raised his eyebrows, and put it in his pocket.
When I finished my story, he sat and looked at me. Finally he spoke.
“You have to go to the police station with him,” Marie told me.
“What’s going on?” I said.
Marie asked. He repeated that I was to go with him.
“Am I under arrest, or something?”
He repeated the same phrase. With less patience. In France they do not say, “You have the right to remain silent … anything you say can and may be used against you … you have the right to an attorney … if you can’t afford an attor
ney the court will provide you with one.” This omission was not due to his inability to speak English. It is because those rights don’t exist in France. The anarchy it would engender is unthinkable.
The three of us exited under the glare of Madame DeFarge. An unmarked Citroën was parked out front. He opened the back door and gestured for me to get in. I held it open for Marie.
“Non. Vous,” the cop barked.
I got in. He slammed it shut. It did not open from the inside. He got in front, then gestured at Marie to go. Rarely have I felt so bereft. She stood looking at me.
“Come to New York,” I called through the window. “Call me.”
The engine started, and we left her behind.
Police stations are more or less universal. So are cops. He sat me down in a dank corner office—a table, a chair, a small, high window—and went away. Five minutes later, the door opened. I was led to a much grander office. Now we were four.
I was introduced to Capitaine Renaud, Officer Zucchero, a translator, and Détective Jean-Claude Solaise, who had brought me in. Jean-Claude took out his notebook and recited a précis of his initial interrogation. Capitaine Renaud took out a Gitane. Officer Zucchero lit it for him.
When Jean-Claude was finished, le capitaine asked Zucchero to ask me how I had obtained that address for Bergman.
“Can I have a lawyer?” I asked.
Zucchero laughed, but he translated. Le capitaine said, “No.”
“Can I call my embassy?”
Zucchero laughed, but he translated. Le capitaine said, “No.”
“Mr. Bergman is supposed to live in an apartment in New York,” I said. “Each month he sends a check with his name on it to the landlord. But the account from which the check is drawn does not belong to him. It belongs to a lawyer, in New York. I went to the office of this lawyer. I looked in his Rolodex. I found the address on Avenue Jean Moulin.”
Le capitaine said something.
“What?” I asked Zucchero.
“He said it is a barbarity the way you said Jean Moulin.”
“Yeah, well, is mispronunciation a punishable offense over here?”
“Yes, monsieur, it is,” Zucchero said.
Le capitaine began to question me, through the translator, about Bergman’s apartment scheme. They sounded very skeptical. We went through it three times.
You Get What You Pay For (The Tony Cassella Mysteries) Page 11