Sandman

by J. Robert Janes

  He wasn’t having any of it. ‘Yes, then. He is henpecked and not just by that wife of his, by his four daughters, two of whom are married. They constantly examine every aspect of his life and criticize him amongst themselves.’ She blew her nose.

  Creases framed the frown she gave. Her lips were parted slightly as if she wondered, still, what he was thinking of her answers. The nose was not big or small but decidedly impish. The thick, auburn hair was a little less than shoulder length, in waves and curls, masses of them, and worn over the brow with only a part in the middle to all but hide her frown and emphasize her eyes.

  ‘Life on the sly with a thirty-two-year-old zoo-keeper and veterinary surgeon must be better,’ he grunted. ‘Should they ever discover the affair, your Monsieur Laviolette will immediately blame his wife and daughters to their faces for having caused him to stray!’

  Taken aback, she said softly, ‘He’s not vindictive. Oh bien sûr, the house, it was an investment and not much – he wouldn’t let me spend a sou fixing it. He always said she would only find out if he did. But …’ She clutched the robe about her throat and tossed her head. ‘But he has made his promises and I believe he’ll keep them.’

  New laundry for the old and she beginning to distance herself from the explosion. ‘You’re far too intelligent to believe it, Madame Lemaire. So when, please, did the two of you first meet?’

  Ah damn him. ‘Last summer. 13 June.’

  ‘And he was feeding oats he had gathered in early summer to the zebras?’

  Merde! how could she have been so stupid? ‘He had purchased a small sack of last year’s harvest from a farmer. I thought …’ She shrugged. ‘Well, that you would understand that’s what I meant.’

  ‘And when, exactly, did the affair begin?’

  Laviolette would be questioned closely, therefore she had best answer as truthfully as possible. ‘The end of June,’ she said. ‘I … I only make 650 a day, Inspector. It’s not so much for a woman who does a man’s job, is it? That’s when we decided on our little arrangement. He wanted someone to live in the house, otherwise the authorities would have taken it over, isn’t that so? It was close to my work. In a few minutes by bicycle, a little longer on foot, I could be there without the expense of the métro or autobus but now … now I don’t know what I’ll do. His wife is bound to find out. The press … Ah nom de Dieu, I had not thought of them.’

  A study in contrasts, the expressions she gave in quick succession changed from firmness of resolve to doubt, hesitation and despair as she realized they had already mentioned the press.

  ‘The bolts on your side door, madame?’ he said.

  ‘Pardon?’ she managed, startled by this new direction.

  ‘Why were they left open? Ah certainement, the Gypsy had the key but there were two other bolts, one at the top, the other at the bottom. The owners of those old houses felt they never could take chances. The cambrioleurs of those days were tougher than they are today.’

  The housebreakers … ‘The bolts stick in winter because the cold freezes the dampness in the wood, so I …’ She shrugged. ‘I left them open, otherwise it would have been a window for me and those are – were, I should say – stuck tightly and shuttered also.’

  She’d try to have an answer for everything. ‘Then only the key was necessary. The Gypsy entered at about 4 or 5 a.m. Did he have two suitcases or a rucksack – what, please?’

  She drew back, and again threw a frantic look towards the street. ‘I … I wouldn’t have known, would I? He wouldn’t have carried all that loot upstairs. He’d have needed his hands, his wits …’ Why was the Sûreté so suspicious of her? Why? she wondered anxiously. ‘I awoke to find a gun pressed under my chin and a hand clamped over my mouth. He was lying on top of me, Inspector. Me! Can you imagine what I thought? Ah! a woman’s worst nightmare. He assured me that wasn’t the case, and since he had the gun, I did not resist.’

  The Inspector fiddled with the pipe he had taken out but had yet to pack with tobacco. He was waiting for her to add to what she’d just said and she knew that if she did, it would not be wise of her, but if she didn’t, he’d believe her evasive. ‘He lit the candle I have beside my bed – or had, I should say. It’s necessary to have such things due to the frequent electricity outages, is it not? He let me see him. He was tall and thin and blond and had the sharpest blue eyes of any man I’ve ever met. Swift, calculating – far ahead of my thoughts or anyone else’s, I must think, and very sure of himself with women – with men, too, I suspect, though I cannot say for certain. The nicest smile, the gentlest hands. Très caressant, you understand, even when tying a vulnerable woman and gagging her.’

  ‘Yet he warned you to lie still.’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘And when we left the house together, madame, you said on the doorstep …’ St-Cyr flipped open his little black notebook. ‘“No one told me this would happen.”’

  ‘I … I didn’t know what I was saying. I was angry. I was scared. I’d been put upon.’

  ‘Who was it that failed to warn you?’

  ‘No one. I’m not lying, Inspector. I’ve no reason to. How could I have?’

  Ashen, she threw another glance at the street. He couldn’t let her go. He had to keep an eye on her and keep her from the Gestapo. ‘And now you have no house or clothing beyond what you wear. Permit me, please, to offer the use of my house until you’re settled once again.’

  ‘Is it that you wish to keep me a prisoner?’

  ‘Ah! of course not. The house is empty. There are two bedrooms and if I am ever there, you may lock your door and leave the key in the lock though, as a detective, I would not advise this elsewhere.’

  ‘Why is that, please?’

  ‘Because as every experienced housebreaker knows, such a key can easily be manipulated.’

  ‘And your partner?’

  ‘Lives with two women and at the moment, has his hands and flat full.’

  ‘And you have no one?’ she asked, fiddling with her robe.

  ‘A chanteuse, but she’s very understanding and works nearly every night. Besides, she has her own place.’

  ‘Then perhaps I could stay with her. Would this be possible?’

  ‘Perhaps, but you will need clothing, and this I have plenty of – my dead wife’s. I … I haven’t had time yet to pack up her things. You’re about her size, I think, though she was a little younger than yourself.’

  ‘Ah!’ she tossed her head in acknowledgement. ‘And how, please, did that one die?’

  There seemed nothing else for him to do but to tell her, and she knew then that he had deliberately manoeuvred her into accepting and that he had not yet wanted to let go of her.

  And his partner? she wondered. Would that one reinforce the Sûreté’s doubts or merely treat them with impatience?

  And why, please, had the Gestapo not come for her, not yet? Were they leaving it to this one and his friend? Was he offering the house to keep them from her?

  ‘All right, I accept. It’s very decent of you but I should warn you I sometimes have to work late and for this, I must stay overnight in my surgery. Just so that you understand and don’t come looking for me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  *

  The look Boemelburg gave would have broken glass. Grabbed by two strong-arm boys while frantically clearing rubble, Kohler had been hustled into a black Renault and hurtled across town at 180 kilometres an hour.

  ‘Four men, Hermann. Dead, do you understand? Two others so injured they will not recover. Did you think von Schaumburg wouldn’t shriek at me to find and arrest those responsible immediately?’

  Old Shatter Hand … Rock of Bronze, the Kommandant von Gross Paris under whose authority the ordering out of the bomb-disposal boys had fallen. An old friend from previous investigations. Well, sort of.

  ‘Sturmbannführer, we didn’t know the Gypsy would be doing a boil-up. He’s moving far too fast even for us. He’s also leaving surprises.’

&nbs
p; ‘And the dynamite?’

  ‘We don’t know how he got it. We’re working on it.’

  ‘You’re “working on it”, Ja, das ist gut, Hermann. You disobey my orders. You lock Herr Max out when it is he who is in charge. Verdammt! could you not have gone up with the mortar dust to save the lives of those men?’

  Furious with him, Boemelburg seized and hurled a Chinese porcelain figurine, a leftover from the days when Louis’s boss had occupied the office.

  10,000 Reichskassenscheine went everywhere and even Pharand down the hall would have heard it and leapt.

  ‘I’m warning you, Kohler. This matter is to be handled delicately. Berlin, you idiot, SONDERBEHANDLUNG, JA?’

  ‘Chief, your heart.’

  ‘Fuck my heart. It’s your balls we have to worry about und your neck. Mine too.’

  ‘We know so little,’ bleated Kohler. ‘We’re not being told everything.’

  ‘Sit. Light up if you wish and wipe the dust and blood from your face and hands. There … over there, idiot. My basin of water and towel.’

  Kohler would see death when he looked in the shaving mirror. He would realize he looked ninety. Damned worried. Too much Messerschmitt benzedrine in his blood and too little sleep. Everyone knew he was popping those pills the fighter pilots took to stay awake and alive.

  ‘Don’t get careless with this, Hermann. We all have to make sacrifices.’

  And wasn’t Louis to be one of those sacrifices – wasn’t that what Rudi Sturmbacher had said? thought Kohler. Had the gossip started here?

  His big hands shook when he lighted a cigarette – the aftershock of the rue Poliveau.

  ‘A brandy, I think, and then some coffee,’ grunted the boss.

  A mouton had let Gestapo-Paris know about the job at the Ritz but had failed to get the timing right or mention Cartier’s or the Gare Saint-Lazare. Kohler fished about in his pockets for the cigarette case only to remember Louis had it. ‘Lucie-Marie Doucette. Tshaya,’ he said, ‘daughter of a horse trader. We’re to find her – is that all Gestapo Paris-Central can give us, Chief?’

  ‘Herr Max can, perhaps, tell you more.’

  ‘Like who’s her conductor? Is it the Spade?’

  The boxer, Henri Doucette. ‘Perhaps. I really wouldn’t know.’

  Kohler sighed inwardly with disbelief and said, ‘Herr Max obtained an agreement from the Gypsy in writing, Srurmbannführer. De Vries was then released from the Mollergaten-19 and taken to Tours so that this Tshaya could make contact with him and let her conductor know what was up.’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Then her conductor was told by Herr Max what to feed her. She must have believed the Gypsy had escaped from prison. She’d have rejoiced in this and would have lied about the timing of the Ritz robbery in order to save him.’

  ‘You’re beginning to understand, Hermann. She’s well known to De Vries. They travelled in the same kumpania during the war years and every summer for years afterwards. She’s the daughter of the family that, on seeing how well the boy had come to learn their ways and language and to respect them, took him in and treated him almost as one of their own, even though he was a Gajo and marhime.’

  And polluted, as were all Gaje. ‘Is she helping him now?’

  ‘This we do not know but suspect.’

  ‘Someone must be.’

  ‘That’s what we want you to find out.’

  ‘And never mind her conductor?’

  ‘You’ll find him too. I’m sure you will.’

  The Club Monseigneur’s neon sign was out because all such things had been forbidden. In the greyness of swirling snow and fast-fading light, the rue d’Amsterdam was busy. There were uniforms everywhere among the pedestrians, Vélo-taxis and gazogène lorries, and one lonely Citroën parked where it ought not to have been.

  The only flic in sight was writing up a traffic ticket for the only car in sight. Enraged, Kohler said loudly, ‘Piss off! Go on, beat it, eh? There may be a bomb under that thing.’

  The Führerlike moustache twitched. ‘A bomb …?’

  ‘That’s what I said. Now don’t try my patience.’

  ‘But … but the car is not where it should be? It was stolen.’

  ‘So you’re writing up a parking ticket?’

  ‘Certainement! The law is very clear in the matter, monsieur.’

  Ah putain de bordel! a stickler. ‘Then write it up but don’t touch the car. Not until I’m done with it.’

  Reluctantly Kohler got down on all fours to peer under the car, only to find it better if flat on his back. He strained to look up into the engine, got his hands all greasy and had to wipe them on his overcoat. Oona would be furious. She was always trying to keep him tidy. Giselle would back up every word, if not in tears over the baby …

  When he lifted the bonnet, he found three sticks of dynamite wrapped with black electrical tape and wired to the ignition. Sickened, he took his time. There was verdigris on the bloody blasting cap. It was too delicate to touch … too delicate …

  The cold weather didn’t help. It made the wires stiff. Carefully he tucked the sticks into his overcoat pockets and then dropped the cap down a sewer only to realize he ought really not to have done this.

  The flic handed him the traffic ticket and Kohler took it without a word, the injustice of it all building silently within him. The bonnet was gently closed. The keys were under the seat just where he had left them.

  He was still counting but there was no nitro lying around loosely in its little bottle, though there had been two of those bottles at least, and the Gypsy had left only one of them on the doorstep of that house in the rue Poliveau.

  The flic glared at him from the pavement and Kohler was tempted to say, Why not get in and give it a try? but it was his responsibility, no one else’s.

  Though he didn’t want to, he got in behind the wheel and when the engine suddenly came to life, he let it run for a moment while the tears trickled freely down his ragged cheeks.

  Switching the ignition off, he locked all four doors and put the keys in a trouser pocket. Then he looked uncertainly up to the Louis XIV wrought-iron balusters of the narrow balconies above the club. He tried to pick out Nana Thélème’s flat.

  ‘Aren’t you going to move the car?’

  The Paris flics could be almost as obnoxious as the waiters.

  When Louis found him, Kohler said, ‘Is that bastard up there with her or long gone?’

  Hermann was a wreck. ‘He wouldn’t have hung around. He would have known this was one of the first places we would look but if we ask any of the locals, none of them will have seen a thing.’

  ‘Merde! I’ve got to pee. Hang on. It can’t wait.’

  Electrified by his refusal to move the car, the flic yanked out his truncheon and started for them only to ignore the ice.

  Louis helped him up and brushed him off. ‘Forget about all this talk of arrest, eh? That one is Gestapo and dangerous.’

  ‘Asshole, I don’t give a damn if you both are dangerous!’

  The left knee bent a little as Louis feinted that way but then the right fist came up and hard. There was a crack.

  Unconscious, the flic was put in the back seat and handcuffed.

  ‘He won’t freeze, will he?’ asked Kohler.

  ‘Not with the farts he’s been letting off.’

  ‘Make sure he can breathe. We don’t want him puking all over the place.’

  ‘Shall I awaken him?’

  ‘He’ll only start shrieking again.’

  They took the lift. Hermann seemed too tired to care. He didn’t even wince when they had to stop at the third floor. But on the fourth, he did look back in surprise as the gate was closed and only then realized he’d been in the lift.

  ‘I’m still shaking, Louis. That bastard is out to get us. Three boulder-breakers and so nicely wired, I couldn’t have done it better myself, but he’s like a hop-head. That blasting cap he used was so corroded it could have blown his fingers
off.’

  The sticks of dynamite were old and at their ends, an oily, pale yellowish fluid had formed little beads that were sticky. Lint from Herr Kohler’s overcoat pockets clung to them as the sticks lay on the end table beneath the foyer’s mirror.

  Terrified by what he was now seeing, Herr Kohler seemed unable to say anything.

  Nana Thélème threw her eyes up to questioningly look at him in the mirror as he stared down at those things. ‘Louis …’ he finally said.

  ‘Ah nom du ciel, idiot! What have you done?’

  ‘Carried them. Thought nothing of it. That blasting cap … I guess I was concentrating too hard on freeing it and didn’t really notice.’

  St-Cyr was swift. ‘Is there a telephone, mademoiselle?’

  She found her voice. ‘Downstairs. On the concierge’s floor, near her loge or in the club, by the bar.’

  ‘Stay here, Hermann. Don’t let her touch them. Don’t drop anything.’

  ‘Just call the bomb boys and have them bring one of their little boxes, Louis. Tell them this one’s for real too.’

  Still they stood before the mirror, and still Herr Kohler stared at those things.

  ‘Taken from the magazine of an abandoned quarry,’ he said at last and the emptiness of his voice matched that of the faded blue eyes. ‘The French … the Resistance, eh? How could the silly sons of bitches have carried it at all without killing themselves? Nitroglycerine with sawdust or gelatine as the filler. That’s all dynamite is. Fifty per cent strength – you can just make out the number on the side. Velocity better than 5300 metres a second. Sends a powerful shock wave which creates a tremendous shattering effect even when unconfined.’

  She waited and he tonelessly continued. ‘Extremely useful for wrecking old machinery or blowing apart the car of unwanted detectives, preferably with them in or near it.’

  She winced. ‘I … I know nothing of this.’

  ‘Nothing? Then why the hell did that bastard park the car directly under your windows?’

  The stench of the nitroglycerine was so powerful, she gagged and turned away only to have him yank her back. ‘Ah no, Mademoiselle Thélème. If I’m to die because of you, I’ll need your company. One good knock, eh? That’s all it needs when the sticks are like that. Shock or friction, and to think I was so lucky down on that street of yours not to have blown myself to kingdom come.’