Rage in Paris

by Kirby Williams

  “Done, Mr. Brown.”

  CHAPTER 15

  The Oriflamme trooper at the door of the Count’s headquarters greeted me warmly this time, like a comrade-in-arms. He ushered me into the Count’s antechamber, bowing and scraping before me as if I were some foreign potentate. Even Pierre was attempting a smile, though his twitching right hand belied what he really wanted to do, which was to shoot me.

  He was about to knock on the Count’s door when the man himself opened it, hugged me, and kissed me on the cheeks four times, twice on each. In France, you did four with close family or old friends. Judas kisses, I thought to myself.

  The photographs on his desk had been pushed closer to my chair than before. The Count placed a photograph of Daphne in front of me, together with a copy of the ransom note from Buster that Robinson had already shown me and what looked like a summary of the ransom arrangements, typed out neatly. The ransom was to be left in a locker at the Gare du Nord. Beside my chair was a plain brown leather satchel. I picked it up; it weighed a ton.

  “Miss Robinson’s ransom in banknotes and gold bullion?”

  “Yes,” he replied. Pierre went to the rosewood bar, filled two snifters with Domfront calvados, and placed them before the Count and me. Pierre stood at attention, staring at a point a few feet above my head.

  “Pierre will track Bartholomew down, aided by some of my crack troops.” He rang the handbell twice, and Pierre cut a smart about-face and marched out of the office. After the door clicked shut, the Count continued, “Pursuant to Bartholomew’s instructions”—he pointed to Buster’s scrawlings—“I should like you to deposit the bag in a locker in the central locker service at the Gare du Nord, and bring me its key.” He sipped at the calvados and said, “I can divulge to you that, at twelve thirty tomorrow afternoon, Miss Robinson will be sitting at a table in a private room in the La Pérouse Restaurant, awaiting you for lunch. I have paid in advance for the two of you to celebrate with champagne and caviar before you return her to her father.”

  “How will Buster . . . Bartholomew collect the ransom?”

  The Count sipped his calvados and then bore his hard blue eye into mine. “All is arranged.” The Count’s face reddened in anger.

  “So, this has all been Bartholomew’s doing?” I asked in a cynical tone. “Mr. Count, I’ve known your protégé for a long time and, excuse me for saying it, but he doesn’t have the brains to write a ransom note or to ‘arrange’ anything.” I picked up Buster’s nearly illegible ransom note and continued, “I worked my backside off teaching him to write, and this is probably the best penmanship job he’s ever done. Somebody else must have come up with those ‘arrangements’ of his.”

  “He’s more thanjust a protégé to me,” the Count shouted. “And he is not as stupid as you think! He has distinguished himself in my employ.”

  The violence of the Count’s reaction made me suspect that he had manipulated Buster into fronting the ransom scheme from the outset. Now he was using me as a ransom delivery boy for some murky purpose. I wondered again if the ransom would end up in the Oriflamme coffers.

  I didn’t really care anymore about who was behind the kidnapping or who ended up with the ransom, so long as I could bring Daphne back alive and unharmed. I would have fulfilled my contract with Robinson III and paid Tex O’Toole back for his friendship and for helping me out so much during and after the war. I stood up, looked the Count squarely in his eye, and said, “Can you guarantee that if I put the money in the locker and bring back the key, the girl will be at La Pérouse tomorrow? That I can take her to her father afterward? I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll do what you ask if you swear . . . ”

  He drilled his eye into my face as if boring into my soul.

  “I did not believe all of those letters from the New Orleans priest”—he pretended to search for the name—“Father Gohegan, yes?” I nodded. “Until you came to my office last Wednesday and I saw you face to face.”

  That enraged me, and I yelled, “You’re lying! Your man, Pierre, burned down the Waifs’ Home. You ordered him to kill Father Gohegan. Why?”

  “You will come to understand in due course,” he said.

  “Why?” I repeated, screaming at him again. His cold blue eye rested on me, then looked beyond me, as if at the distant past.

  “The priest knew too much of our history. Yours and mine.”

  I was the boy at the Waifs’ Home again, with Louis “Strawberry” Armstrong beside me, watching Father Gohegan burn to death after throwing me the handbell with the Count’s crest on it and begging me, with his last breath, to find the monster before me.

  “That’s no reason to burn a man to death! To drive us out of the only home we’d ever known,” I screamed.

  “But yes! Our history is ours to write. Because we are the d’Uribé-Lebrun. You know, when you were born, we were masters of the richest sugar plantations in Louisiana.”

  I was horrified that he had said “we,” and my face showed it.

  He laughed. “Yes, my dear Brown, ‘we.’ You are my son. The last of my d’Uribé-Lebrun lineage.”

  “You used my mother like a whore, a slave.”

  The Count held up his hands, trying to calm me down. “She was in no way a slave, I can assure you. On the contrary. I helped her in many ways, even after her death.”

  I lunged for him then, and he coolly whipped out a gold-colored pistol and motioned for me to sit down, which I did. He placed the gun in front of him, as if daring me to go for it.

  “I left New Orleans because I discovered that I loved France more than I could love any person. Your mother is the only woman I have ever loved with all of my heart.”

  “Don’t talk that nonsense to me. You ran back to France because my mother wasn’t white enough for you. Look. I’ll do what you want if you promise that the girl will be at La Pérouse tomorrow. Then it’s over. I don’t want you or your men to come anywhere near me again. ’Cause if you or they do, you’re going to get hurt, real bad.” I took out my Colt and put it on the table in front of me. “You want war, you’ll get it. I’ve got a lot of friends that would love to take you and your Nazis on. Just one question, though, what are you after? You want to be a new Napoleon? Dictator of France? King, Emperor? What do you want, man?”

  The Count picked up his pistol, stood up, and walked past the gallery of ancestors peering down from the walls. He twirled around and said, solemnly, “I want to recognize you. With your real name, which is Charles-Emmanuel d’Uribé-Lebrun. I want that, nothing more.”

  I holstered my gun, put my Homburg back on, and hefted the brown leather satchel, so that I could swing it over my shoulder.

  “Father Gohegan named me Urby Brown, and that’s final.”

  “Urby Brown,” he said, disdainfully. “That’s not your real name, nor is America your real country.” He glared at me, snarling and defiant. “We are the last of the d’Uribé-Lebrun. Only you will live on after me to carry us forward.”

  “Forward?” I asked, pointing at the portraits on the walls and then picking up the gold-framed photograph of the Count and Adolf Hitler. “Forward to them, to him?”

  “When Maréchal Pétain takes power, he will restore our family, and France, to their rightful place. He will grant you French nationality immediately. Hitler is only one stepping stone to our future.”

  I made my way toward the door. “Mister, I’m stepping out of that future right now.”

  “You have no choice. It’s a matter of blood.”

  “You want my ‘tainted’ blood in your future?”

  “Those who know that have been or will be liquidated.”

  “Pierre knows, my friends know. You gonna rub them all out?”

  “Naturally,” the Count replied, indifferently.

  The man was a dangerous lunatic. I had to leave now or do him serious harm.

  “I’ll get the locker key back to you in an hour. I won’t be bringing it back, though. I hope never to set foot here aga
in. The man with the key will be a big fellow named Jones. Think of him as an hors-d’oeuvre to a feast of pain for you if Daphne isn’t at La Pérouse restaurant tomorrow at twelve thirty in the afternoon sharp.”

  Lonny Jones delivered the locker key to the Count two hours later, he told me. Five of the biggest Oriflamme men escorted him to the Count’s office as Lonny chewed away at his toothpick, eyeballing them one by one. When the office door cracked opened, Lonny said he just threw the key inside, spun on his heels, and sashayed along the hallway, hawking loudly and spitting on the fine Persian carpet on his way out the front door. Lonny said, “Don’t worry none, brother Urby. Them snail-chompers wants trouble, my ‘peoples’ slice them up like bacon.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Paris, Monday, February 12, 1934

  The La Pérouse restaurant was in a townhouse on the Left Bank of the Seine, bordering the river on the Quai des Grands Augustins.

  La Pérouse was known as a place for trysts. If you had a private room for two, with a dining table and a large couch in it, you could order the champagne for you and your belle from the waiter, and he would come to take your next order only if you summoned him by pressing a bell inside the door.

  So you were left alone to enjoy what the French have enjoyed as long as they have been French: food and sex, probably in that order. There were hidden staircases in La Pérouse that let you exit without being seen. Those who wished to be seen could use the main staircase and strut in, or out, through the front door.

  I arrived at La Pérouse at twenty minutes past twelve, having walked there. The General Strike was effective so far, and the post, telephone, and telegraph services were down, and public transportation was unreliable. The Paris taxi drivers were still holding out and heading toward the second week of their strike.

  Through the windows of the La Pérouse bar, I could see lunchtime crowds walking by on the sidewalks, sheltering from the cold rain under umbrellas. An occasional horse-drawn vehicule would pass in the road, which gave rise to outraged honking by drivers speeding around it in their Citroën and Panhard automobiles. Striking workers, with banners protesting the government’s violent crackdown on them after the riots of February 6, marched along the Quai des Grands Augustins in groups, ready to brawl with any right-wing agents provocateurs or vituperative small business owners critical of the union-led General Strike.

  I decided not to check my Homburg, my umbrella, and my Harris tweed overcoat. It was better to hold onto my things if I had to make a hasty getaway with Daphne down a hidden staircase.

  I gave the name Urby Brown for the reservation, as the Count had instructed me to. I was escorted to one of the private dining rooms for two on the second floor, passing dark brown leather-covered walls with photographs and paintings of past celebrity patrons. The waiter opened the door and seated me on a Récamier couch, covered in dark red velvet. A bottle of champagne awaited us next to a mound of caviar chilling in a crystal caviar server with crushed ice underneath it. The table was set simply, with small caviar plates, dark red damask napkins, and ivory caviar spoons on a matching red tablecloth.

  The waiter poured out two champagne glasses of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Brut and turned on the Victrola next to the couch. I recognized the music as being from a Wagner opera, which only raised my sense of anticipation to near breaking point. I figured that Daphne must be on her way or had arrived.

  I could smell a teasing scent of perfume in the room, like a whisper. I went to look out the window onto the rue des Grands Augustins. At that moment, the heavy, dark red velvet curtain opened, and Daphne stood before me naked, her long white-blonde hair flowing over her breasts and down to her waist. I saw both of her eyes for the first time; they were violet-blue.

  Without saying a word, Daphne undressed me, all the while covering my body with her hair as if to protect my modesty. The strains of Wagner rose in a crescendo, and then, to my surprise, Daphne pushed me down onto the couch, mounted me, and started swaying and moving to the rapid rhythms of the Wagner music, spurring me on with her sharp ankles.

  “Wait for me, Urby!” she cried out in her breathy voice.

  We lay in each other’s arms afterward, toasting ourselves with the champagne. Looking at her beautiful body next to mine, feeling the warmth from her soft skin with its faint blonde down, I felt the need rising again.

  We made love again in a silence broken only by cries of pleasure.

  “Amazing,” she said. “Has it ever been as good for you?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “Promise me that you’ll stay with me. Always.”

  She stood up slowly and walked to the table with our glasses of champagne, her back to me. She was perfection in every part of her body. She poured out more champagne as I watched her back and buttocks, entranced. She brought the glasses back, her face still glowing from our lovemaking. We toasted each other again, looking deep into each other’s eyes.

  “I’m glad that you’re back safe,” I said. “I’d have moved heaven and earth to find you.” Then I grew sad, remembering that I had to turn her over to Robinson III in an hour or so. She had read my thoughts.

  “I know that I have to go back to my father and then back to America. Will you come with me?”

  “I wish I could, Daphne, but I don’t plan to go back to America again. I couldn’t live there like a free man.”

  “We can do anything together, Urby. I have money. You don’t have to live out your life as a . . . ” I knew what she was going to say and stopped her.

  “I am who I am. I’ve already tried being what I’m not, and it doesn’t work. I’m a lot older than you, too, Daphne. Eighteen years is a lot. It might not seem important to you now, but in a few years, I won’t be able to keep up with you.” Tears started streaming down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with the backs of her hands.

  “Let’s finish our champagne and have some caviar. Then I’ll get dressed and we’ll go. You’re right. But it’s lovely being with you. I’ll never forget you.”

  “I know you’ve gone through a lot. But could you tell me exactly what happened when the burglars took you and Buster from La Belle Princesse?” I was trying to find out how much she knew about what had happened to Buster.

  “I’m not sure. Those burglars put a cloth over my face, filled with ether I guess, and the next thing I knew . . . ”

  Her words were beginning to echo in my ears. I said, “Ether?” And my words came out so slurred that I couldn’t understand myself. “Eeetherrr?” I repeated. The room started swaying and then whirling around. I thought I saw a waiter come into the room to remove the champagne and caviar. Daphne seemed to be dressing in slow-motion, buttoning up a dark gray blouse, which she pulled out of a suitcase behind the curtains. Her body was curving in and out like an image in a fun-house mirror. I saw her look toward me as she brushed her hair, quickly, and then she pressed on the button at the door, and the waiter came into the room again.

  Good, I thought. Daphne will go to her father at the Ritz. Then my job will be done. It’ll be over. I tried to stay awake, but the room kept spinning around. I heard approaching footsteps and then some words that I didn’t understand in a language that sounded like German. Then my lights went out.

  A few minutes later, the door to the private room opened. Two Oriflamme troopers led by Pierre dragged the unconscious Urby down a hidden staircase. They bundled him into a red and black Citroën waiting on the rue des Grands Augustins. Pierre took a hypodermic needle out of a leather case and injected pentothal into Urby’s veins to keep him sleeping.

  The Count had ordered Pierre to give Urby an injection every three hours. At three in the morning, he would drive to the Place Vendôme and dump him on the sidewalk outside the Ritz Hotel with a note pinned to Urby’s coat saying that he should be taken to Barnet Robinson’s room immediately.

  PART III

  CHAPTER 17

  Paris, Monday, February 12, 1934

  Ten minutes after Pierre and the Orif
lamme troopers drove off with Urby, the Count met Daphne, as arranged, at the same exit through which Pierre and his men had dragged Urby. The Count was holding open the door of a black Mercedes-Benz Mannheim with diplomatic plates from the German Embassy in France. The car was already loaded with Daphne’s matching Louis Vuitton luggage. Three people were sitting inside the car, two huge German men and a fat middle-aged German woman.

  The Count had arranged with his friend Rudolph Hess that the two Germans, both of whom were working for Hess undercover in the Paris Embassy, would drive Daphne to Berlin in the company of the middle-aged German nurse, Elsa Herbst. Elsa, a spinster, was the head of the household of Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man, Hermann Goering.

  After checking that Daphne was comfortably seated beside Fraülein Herbst in the backseat, the Count bowed over Daphne’s hand, said his good-byes, and then tapped the car’s roof sharply with his cane. The engine roared into life, and the Mercedes joined the flow of traffic on the Quai des Grands Augustins.

  Once they had arrived in Berlin, the German diplomats and Fraülein Herbst were to install Daphne in the most luxurious suite in the Hotel Adlon on Unter den Linden Boulevard. From there, she would send a second note to her father, pretending that her situation was becoming increasingly dire and pleading with him either to accede to Buster’s new demands or to send Mr. Brown to rescue her. The note had already been prepared and would be sent from Berlin by telegraph before Daphne arrived.

  The Count had told Daphne that Rudolph Hess had already arranged for her to join Chancellor Hitler for a gala dinner on Wednesday evening in the Chancellery. The prospect of meeting him again made the long trip to Berlin with the three dour Germans bearable for her. They were strange in the way that they addressed her as “Ihre Hoheit,” or “Your Highness,” a form that the Germans used for addressing sovereigns or royalty.