by Irwin Shaw
“Thanks.”
“Pour rien, as the French say.” She threw away her cigarette and came over to the bed and bent and kissed his cock, briefly. “Good night, laddy,” she said, “I have to go now.”
As the door closed behind her Billy lay back against the pillows, staring up at the dark ceiling. Another problem. He had to decide whether or not to tell Rudolph that Wesley had been seen coming out of a hotel in Cannes that day, but that he didn’t know the name of the hotel, although he might find out tomorrow. But then he’d have to explain how he had heard it and why he had to wait for tomorrow. And he couldn’t explain anything, without at least mentioning Monika. And then he’d have to explain something, at least, about Monika. He shook his head irritably against the pillow. Rudolph had enough on his mind without having to worry about Monika.
The phone rang. It was Rudolph to tell him that they would all meet at the bar downstairs in a half hour before going to dinner. After he hung up, Billy went in and took another shower. He didn’t want to go to dinner smelling as though he had been in an orgy. He wondered if his mother was upstairs now also taking a shower.
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CHAPTER 11
“No,” Gretchen was saying, “I don’t want any party after the showing. I’m exhausted and all I want to do is fall into bed and sleep for forty-eight hours.” She was in the salon of her small suite with Donnelly and Rudolph. It had been Rudolph’s suggestion that after the evening performance of Restoration Comedy they should celebrate by having a gala supper, inviting the festival judges and some of the representatives of the major distribution companies as well as several of the newspapermen with whom Gretchen and Rudolph had become more or less intimate in the last few days. Gretchen was showing increasing signs of tension as the date approached. A party might help her unwind.
“If there was anyone else but us three here,” Gretchen said, “maybe a party would be called for. But I don’t want to be the only one to accept the kudos, if there are going to be any kudos to accept, or the only one to see the long faces of all those people if the picture flops. If Frances Miller and Wesley were here, I’d say yes, but that little bitch couldn’t take the trouble to come and you can’t find Wesley for me and I’m too old for parties anyway.…”
“Okay,” Rudolph said. “No party. We’ll have a nice little foursome for supper—us three and Billy—and congratulate each other.” He looked at his watch. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I suggest you go to bed and try to get some sleep.” He kissed Gretchen good night and started toward the door.
“I’ll go along with you,” Donnelly said, “I need some sleep, too. Unless you want me to stay, Gretchen …?”
“No, thanks,” Gretchen said. “See you in the morning.”
In the corridor, on the way to the elevator, Donnelly said, “I have to talk to you about her, Rudy. I’m worried. She’s taking it too hard. She can’t sleep and she’s dosing herself with pills and she has crazy crying fits when she’s alone with me and I don’t know how to stop her.”
“I wish I were a woman,” Rudolph said. “I’d like to break down and cry myself.”
“I thought you felt fine about the picture.” Donnelly sounded surprised.
“I do,” Rudolph said. “It’s not that. It has nothing to do with the picture.”
“What then?”
“Some other time,” Rudolph said.
“Can I help?”
“Yes,” said Rudolph. “Take care of Gretchen.”
“Maybe,” Donnelly said, “it would be a good idea, after the showing, if I got into a car with her and took her on a little sight-seeing trip—get out of this madhouse for a couple of days.”
“I’d be for that,” Rudolph said, “if you could convince her.”
“I’ll try in the morning.”
“Good man,” Rudolph said, as the elevator door opened. “Good night, David. Sleep well.” Donnelly walked back along the corridor and stopped in front of the door to Gretchen’s salon. There was no sound from the room. Donnelly put out his hand to rap on the door, then stopped himself. Tonight, he thought, it’s probably better if she sleeps alone. He went back toward the elevator and took it down to the ground floor where he strode into the bar. He hesitated when the bartender asked him what he wanted. He ordered a whiskey and soda. The wine route could wait for another time.
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The phone was ringing when Rudolph unlocked the door to his room. He hurried over to the phone and picked it up to say hello. “Monsieur Jordache …?” It was a man’s voice.
“Yes.”
“L’avocat d’Antibes,” the man said, “m’a dit que vous voulez me parler …”
“Do you speak English?” Rudolph said. If it was the man he thought it was he had to understand every word he said. He might just barely be able to arrange a murder in English, but never in high-school French.
“A leetle,” the man said. He had a hoarse, low voice. “The lawyer of Antibes, he say per’aps we do a leetle business together …”
“When can we meet?”
“Now,” the man said.
“Where?”
“A la gare. Z’ station. I stand by z’ bar in z’ buffet.”
“Ten minutes,” Rudolph said. “How will I recognize you?”
“I am dressed z’ following,” the man said. “Blue pantalons, jacket brown, I am small man, w’z grand belly.”
“Good,” Rudolph said. “Ten minutes.” He hung up. Blue pants, brown jacket, big belly. Well, he wasn’t picking the man for his beauty or his taste in clothing. He unlocked his bag, peered in. The automatic was still there. He closed the bag, locked it and went out.
Downstairs, he went into the cashier’s room behind the desk and had his safety-deposit box opened. He had had ten thousand dollars sent over from his bank in New York and had converted them into francs. Whatever was going to happen, good or bad, he knew would cost money. He looked down at the neat bundles of bills, considered for a moment, then took out five thousand francs. He put the remaining bundles back in the box and locked it. Then he went out of the hotel and got into a taxi. “La gare,” he said. He tried to think of nothing on the short trip to the station. He fumbled as he pulled some ten-franc notes out of his pocket and his hand was shaking as he took the change and tipped the driver.
He saw the fat little dark man in the blue pants and brown jacket standing at the bar, a glass of pastis in front of him. “Good evening, monsieur,” he said as he went up to the man.
The man turned and looked soberly at him. He was dark, with a fat face and small, deep-set black eyes. His lips were thick and wet. An incongruous baby-blue cotton golf hat that was too small for him sat back from his domed and wrinkled forehead. It was not a prepossessing face or one that in other circumstances Rudolph would have been inclined to trust. “Per’aps we go for walk,” the man said. He had a strong Provençal accent. “Z’ light here bad for z’ eyes.”
They went out together and walked away from the station and along a narrow, dark, deserted street. It could have been a thousand miles away from the bright, crowded bustle of the festival.
“I listen proposal,” the man said.
“Do you know a man called Danovic?” Rudolph asked. “Yugoslav. Small-time hoodlum.”
“’oodlum?” the man said. “What z’ ’oodlum?”
“Voyou,” Rudolph said.
“Ah.”
“Do you know him?”
The man walked ten paces in silence. Then he shook his head. “Per’aps under different name. Where you t’ink ’e z’?”
“Cannes, most likely,” Rudolph said. “Last time he was seen it was in a nightclub here—La Porte Rose.”
The man nodded. “Bad place,” he said. “Varry bad.”
“Yes.”
“If I find him, what ‘appens?”
“You will get a certain number of francs if you dispose of him.”
“Dispose?” the man said.
“Kill.” Good God, Ru
dolph thought, is it me who is saying this?
“Compris,” the man said. “Now we talk money. What you mean certain number of francs?”
“Say—fifty thousand,” Rudolph said. “About ten thousand dollars, if you want it in dollars.”
“’ow much advance? Now? To find z’ man.”
“I have five thousand francs on me,” Rudolph said. “You can have that.”
The man stopped. He put out a pudgy hand. “I take money now.”
Rudolph took out his wallet and slipped out the bills. He watched as the man carefully counted them by the dim light of a streetlamp thirty feet away. I wonder what he would say, Rudolph thought, if I asked him for a receipt. He almost laughed aloud at the thought. He was dealing with a world where the only guarantee was vengeance.
The man stuffed the bills into an inside pocket of his coat. “When I find him,” he said, “’ow much I get?”
“Before or after the … the job?”
“Before.”
“Twenty thousand,” Rudolph said. “That would make half the total.”
“D’accord,” the man said. “And after, how I make sure I am paid?”
“Any way you want.”
The man thought for a moment. “When I say I find him,” he said, “you put twenty-five thousand in hands of lawyer. The lawyer read in Nice-Matin he is … what word you used?”
“Disposed of,” Rudolph said.
“Dispose,” the man said, “and a friend of me go to lawyer office for rest of money. We shake on deal?”
Rudolph had shaken hands on a variety of deals in the past and had celebrated after. There would be no celebration after this handshake.
“Stay near z’ telephone,” the man said and turned and walked quickly back in the direction of the station.
Rudolph took a deep breath and started walking slowly toward the Croisette and his hotel. He thought of the two men who had ambushed him in the hallway of the house in New York and who had been so furious that a man who looked as prosperous as he did had only a few dollars on him to reward them for their trouble. If anybody mugged him tonight on the dark streets of Cannes, they’d probably leave him for dead after they’d searched his pockets. He didn’t have much more than cab fare left.
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Billy was awakened by a knocking on his door. He got sleepily out of bed and barefooted and in pajamas he went over to the door and opened it. Monika was standing there, smoking a cigarette, a raincoat draped over her shoulders like a cape. She came in quickly and he closed the door and switched on a lamp.
“Hello,” Billy said, “I was wondering when you would turn up.” It had been four days since her visit.
“Did you miss me?” She threw off her coat and sat on the rumpled bed, facing him, smiling.
“I’ll tell you later,” Billy said. “What time is it?”
“Twelve-thirty,” Monika said.
“You keep some weird office hours.”
“Better late than never,” she said. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I’ll tell you later about that, too,” he said. “The fact is, I like afternoons better.”
“How European you’ve become.”
“What the hell do you do with your afternoons?”
Monika smiled demurely up at him. “Curiosity killed the cat,” she said.
Billy granted. “I see this is your night for clichés,” he said. “Did you remember the name yet of the hotel where you saw my cousin?”
“I am trying hard,” Monika said. “Sometimes it seems to be almost on the tip of my tongue.”
“Oh, balls,” Billy said.
“What a nice word,” she said. She threw her cigarette to the floor and ground it into the carpet. Billy winced. Her manner of dressing had improved considerably but her housewifely instincts were still at the Brussels level. She stood up and came over to him and put her arms around him and kissed him, her tongue sliding softly inside his mouth. His erection was immediate. He tried to think of other things, whether it was time to have the oil changed in his car, whether he wanted to play tennis the next day or not, if he had to get his dinner jacket pressed for the evening performance of Restoration Comedy two nights from then, but it was no good. “Let’s get to bed,” he muttered.
“I was wondering how long it was going to take you to say that.” She chuckled, sure of the hold she had on him.
An hour later she said, “It’s not too bad at night, either, is it?”
He kissed her throat. She wriggled out of his arms and slid from the bed and stood up. “I have to go now,” she said.
“Why the hell can’t you stay the night?” he said, disappointed. “At least once.”
“Previous engagements.” She began to dress. It didn’t take her long. She put on her panties, girlishly plain and white, over her tan, shapely legs and slipped her dress over her head. He watched her, feeling deprived, as she pulled on her ballet slippers and combed her hair in front of the mirror. “By the way,” she said, “we decided to call in our debts.”
A cold chill went over him and he drew the blankets over him. “What do you mean by that?” he said, trying to keep his voice calm.
“The Paris debt,” she said, still combing her hair. “You remember that, I imagine?”
He said nothing and lay absolutely still.
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” she went on, tugging at her tangled hair with the comb. “Two nights from now, you’re going to go to a bar called the Voile Vert on the rue d’Antibes at six P.M. There will be a man there waiting for you. He will have two magazines with him, L’Express and Le Nouvel Observateur. He will be reading L’Express and the Observateur will be on the table in front of him. You will sit down at the table with him and you will order a glass of wine. He will reach under the table and will pick up a sixteen-millimeter movie camera.”
“Only it won’t be a sixteen-millimeter movie camera,” Billy said bitterly.
“You’re learning,” Monika said.
“Will you for Christ’s sake stop combing your hair?” Billy said.
“You will take the camera and when you go into the Festival Hall that evening you will open it and take out what you find in it and hide it in an inconspicuous place. It will be timed to go off at nine forty-five.” Monika finally put the comb down and pushed at her hair with her hands, twisting her body so that she could look at her reflection from the side.
“You must be out of your mind,” Billy said, still with the blankets pulled up under his chin. “At nine forty-five they’ll be running my mother’s picture.”
“Exactly,” Monika said. “No one will suspect you. There will be dozens of photographers with all sorts of cameras. You can wander all over the building without anyone questioning you. That’s why you were chosen for the job. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to be hurt.”
“You mean it’s going to be a nice, harmless, friendly type of bomb?”
“You should know enough by now not to be sarcastic with me.” Monika turned away from the mirror and faced him. “The police will be called at nine o’clock and told there is a bomb somewhere in the building. They’ll clear the place in five minutes. We’re not out to kill anybody. This time.”
“What are you out to do?” Billy was ashamed of the quaver in his voice.
“A demonstration,” Monika said evenly, “a demonstration which will have the greatest kind of publicity, with newspapermen, television crews all over the place and internationally famous people falling all over themselves to get out of there. If anything represents the rot of the whole system better than this disgusting fat circus, we haven’t heard of it.”
“What if I say no, I won’t do it?”
“You will be dealt with,” Monika said quietly. “When it is done to our satisfaction, I believe I’ll remember what hotel your cousin is at. In the meanwhile I trust you’ll remember—the Voile Vert, the two magazines, six P.M. Good night, laddy.” She picked up her bag, threw her raincoat over her shoulde
rs and went out the door.
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As Billy went up the steps of the Festival Hall for the morning showing of Restoration Comedy with Gretchen and Donnelly and Rudolph, he said, “I think I’d like to sit downstairs in the orchestra with the peasants.” The others had reserved seats in the balcony. He kissed his mother and whispered, “Merde.”
“What’s that?” Gretchen asked, surprised.
“It’s French show-business for good luck,” he said.
Gretchen smiled and gave him another quick kiss. “I hope you like the picture,” she said.
“I hope so, too,” he said gravely. He showed his ticket to the man at the door and went into the auditorium. It was already crowded, although the picture was not scheduled to start for another ten minutes. An inconspicuous place, he thought, an inconspicuous place. Everywhere he looked seemed like a highly conspicuous place to him. He went to the men’s room. At the moment it was empty. There was a trash basket for paper towels. It would be possible, given thirty seconds alone, to open the back of the camera, take out the bomb and hide it. If he could manage thirty seconds alone.
The door to the men’s room opened and a man in a flowered shirt came in and went over to the urinals. Billy ostentatiously washed his hands, pulled out a paper towel and dried them. Then he went out and found a seat near the front of the auditorium, where there were still a few vacant places. In the state he was in he didn’t know whether or not he would be able to sit through the picture, which was another reason for not sitting beside his mother for the showing. But when the picture started he found himself immediately engrossed and even laughed with the rest of the audience at the humorous scenes. And Wesley’s performance astonished him. It was Wesley all right, but a Wesley who had somehow blended someone else’s character with his own, to become a boy hidden and besieged, revealing bits and pieces of himself at rare, emotional moments, by a glance, a movement of his head, a mumbled monosyllable, and through it all looking brutally handsome while suggesting sweetness and vulnerable sensitivity, even when the script demanded violence and cynical behavior from him.