The Stiff Upper Lip

by Peter Israel

  “You’re lying, Roscoe,” she said flatly. The way she said it, you knew she wasn’t talking about hotdogs either.

  The thing was, I knew how I knew; but I didn’t know how she did.

  Roscoe glanced up at her, then away.

  “Look, honey,” he said, “why don’ you go out awhile, take in a little air, buy us some food? Now we started talk-in’ about it, my stomach’s rumblin’. I bet Cage here too, he could use …”

  For once, though, his voice trailed off. It must have been her expression. Her lips were tight, her eyes narrow. Roscoe stood partway up. His king-sized palms were spread in some kind of beseeching gesture.

  “Look, honey, there’s something I want to talk to Cage here about. Personal-like, you know what I means?”

  I began to have an idea why.

  “Roscoe,” I said, “there wasn’t any traffic jam yesterday up on St. Michel, and no crowd of people.”

  “Shit, man, maybe I was wrong about the time.” He stood up the rest of the way. “Maybe it wasn’t half pas’ one. I tole …”

  “At no time, Roscoe. Not a half past one or any time. They had the ambulance on the back street. They took his body out that way. There was only one cop car you could recognize, the rest were unmarked. You …”

  “What are you calling me?” he said, nostrils flaring. “A liah?”

  “I don’t think you were anywhere near the Puke yesterday. And like you said: a good thing too.”

  “Yeah? What makes you so sure about that?”

  “Because I was there myself.”

  Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: I didn’t kill Odessa Grimes, I only found him.

  I’d gone up to the P.U.C. gym myself, late that morning, looking for him and Roscoe. My California sources of information weren’t what they’d once been, but I had a notion I wanted to try on them. Both together. I was late getting there, though, thanks to a transatlantic conversation, largely one-way, with one Robert Richard Goldstein, and by the time I arrived the action was fast and frantic. It was strictly playground style: no whistles, no refs, no fouls, no time-outs. And no Roscoe either. And no Odessa Grimes.

  I asked around if anybody had seen them. Nobody had. I watched the action for a while. Then I decided to take a look for myself.

  I found him lying between a bench and the locker-room wall, in a swamp of his own blood, with his street clothes on. A big and ugly giant, and recently dead. Very recently. Judging from the smears on the floor, he’d crawled the last part. He hadn’t been going anywhere, though; it was more like an animal looking for a hole to die in.

  The way it looked to me, whoever had done it had clubbed him on the head first, with a blunt object about the size of the Eiffel Tower, and then had cut his throat for good measure. Somebody’s idea of spade work, maybe. Later on, the medical expert said the skull injury could have been caused in a fall, and maybe so, but it was hard to imagine anybody taking on Odessa Grimes with something as flimsy as a Gillette, and there was no sign of a struggle.

  Other than the corpse’s with himself.

  I bent over him. His jaws hung open at the hinges, but for a weird second I’d have sworn he was trying to whisper something. Jesus, maybe. Sweet Jesus. But it wasn’t Odessa Grimes who was calling on the Good Lord, it was me, and I didn’t have to feel his pulse to tell he’d gone up for his last rebound.

  Then my mind started stripping gears in a hurry.

  My first thought was to get the hell out of there. But it was already too late for that. There was the matter of witnesses, for one: I’d been seen in the gym. Then too, the Law had a shortcut for connecting me with Odessa Grimes. Then, in no particular order, I thought of Roscoe, of Valérie, of a telephone. Somewhere I found a telephone. I tried calling Roscoe: no answer. I tried Valérie: ditto. I got through to my hotel and left a message for her. Then I called the Law. But I was still talking to them when one of their minions, in plain clothes, took the receiver out of my hand and finished the conversation for me.

  I mean, the Paris constabulary has been known to move fast on occasion. But not that fast.

  Unless, that is, they’ve been tipped off.

  Whoever had gotten Odessa, it turned out, had given them Roscoe. And failing to find Roscoe, they took me.

  I spent the rest of that day trying to convince them, first, that they’d made a mistake, and, second, to give me a chance to prove it. They convinced hard, and looking at it from their point of view, you couldn’t blame them. The pressures on the Law are pretty much the same in France as elsewhere, and in the early stages of a case, when the cameras are popping and the bigwigs demanding results, simple arithmetic holds sway. Meaning that in the eyes of tehe Police Judiciaire for every, dead body there has to be a live one. Furthermore, I was the only live one they had who wasn’t wearing sneakers, and the only one, white or black, who didn’t answer them in nigger talk. The basketball players in the P.U.C. gym, it seemed, had gone deaf, dumb, and blind to a man. They’d seen nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing, and they were their own mutual alibi. I was the odd man, and when, in mid-afternoon, they found out that a day or two before I’d been poking around the foreigners’ section at the Préfecture, had even “talked” my way into a look at the dossiers on Grimes, Odessa and Hadley, Roscoe, all my hopes of passing myself off as an innocent bystander went up in Gauloise smoke.

  By this time we’d moved from the Boulevard St. Michel down to the Quai des Orfèvres. That’s a pretty historic corner of Paris—the sightseeing boats go right under your feet and Notre Dame’s just a couple of blocks away—but once inside, it’s like you never left home. The smell does it mostly, I guess, compounded of dust and nicotine, ink and bad breath, but of fear also and suspicion. A sweaty, metallic smell, inhuman even though it’s man-made. The lair of the Law, in sum, and you don’t have to have been farther than your friendly L.A.P.D. to know what it’s like.

  I gave them what I had.

  They weren’t much impressed with it.

  Neither was I. The fact was: I didn’t know why Odessa had been killed, unless it was a case of mistaken identity. Nor did I know who had killed him. Nor why, if he was innocent, somebody would have fingered Roscoe Hadley. Nor where Roscoe Hadley was.

  And around and around we went. Until I asked to see Dedini.

  Dedini wasn’t my favorite cop, and no, I probably wouldn’t have bought a used car from him. He’d long since risen as far as he was going to in the Police Judiciaire, and he knew it and was bitter about it, and he took out his bitterness on whoever came to hand, including his fellow gendarmes. But he had a kind of brutal realism, born of contempt and experience—some three decades’ worth—and I thought I could deal with him.

  I had before.

  But Odessa Grimes wasn’t Dedini’s case. Furthermore, Dedini was out on sick leave. Furthermore, it wasn’t up to me to decide who I would and wouldn’t talk to. Furthermore, if I didn’t tell them where they could find Roscoe Hadley, they were going to have me charged me with obstructing a police investigation. Etc. Etc. Until, a while later, Monsieur le Commissaire Dedini, Jean-Pierre, stood in the doorway of the office where I’d been being furthermored.

  He was a big, ugly man with a square, bulldog head and a pair of rimless glasses that got lost in his jowled face. Despite the mild weather, he wore a sweater under his suit jacket and a raincoat over the lot. You could see why he was on sick leave. He was doing battle with the Paris grippe, but the only weapon he had at hand was a wadded handkerchief, with which he mopped at his forehead and his nose. The handkerchief was visibly getting the worst of it.

  “Hello, Monsieur le Commissaire,” I said. “I was sorry to hear you were sick. But aren’t you rushing the season a little?”

  He gazed around the office, at his colleagues, at me. His expression was what I’d once called his scum look. It was habitual, and it took in the whole world.

  “What’s this shit that you want to talk to me, Monsieur?” he said hoarsely, following the wo
rds with a thick cough.

  “Alone, Monsieur le Commissaire,” I said. “I want to talk to you alone.”

  I saw the eyebrows go up around the room.

  “This isn’t my affair,” Dedini said with a shrug. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say it now.”

  “All right,” I said, shrugging back at him. “I don’t know how much you’ve been briefed on what’s happened. A man called Odessa Grimes has been murdered, a professional basketball player, American, black. I found him. Shortly before I found him, an anonymous caller told the police about it and accused one Roscoe Hadley of having done it. I don’t think that’s likely. Roscoe Hadley and Odessa Grimes were friends and teammates. These gentlemen here seem to think I know where Hadley can be found. I don’t, other than his address, which I’ve given them. Hadley has troubles of his own, serious ones. It’s more likely that the people who murdered Grimes were really after him. He may already be dead. If he isn’t, the longer you hold me here, the worse our chances of finding him alive.”

  While I was talking, one of the inspectors who’d been questioning me handed Dedini a sheaf of papers. Among them were the notes he’d been taking. Dedini read through them. He didn’t seem to be listening to me. When he’d finished, he looked at me, rheumy-eyed, over the rims of his glasses.

  “What do …?” he began. “What do you …?”

  But the cough got the better of him. He took out the handkerchief, unwadded it, spat weakly into it, then wadded it back and wiped at his forehead.

  “What do you want of me, Monsieur?” he said.

  “I want you to tell these gentlemen to let me go. I’m not doing you any good here. I just might be able to on the outside.”

  I’ve referred before to a deal I once made with the French Law. Somewhere in the archives of the Police Judiciaire was a copy of the deposition I’d signed. Dedini knew about it. In fact, I’d used his pen. The deposition was a lie which at the time had served the interests of certain people with influence in high places, but it gave me a certain small leverage over the Law. Dedini sighed and sneezed and lumbered out of the office with the Monsieur le Commissaire in charge of the case, Frèrejean by name. I didn’t see him again, but when Frèrejean came back some time later, the message he had for me was pure Dedini.

  “We’ll give you twenty-four hours, Monsieur,” he said.

  Somehow I doubted it would be enough. On the other hand, when you’re dealing with the Law, you learn to take what you can get.

  Another thing you learn: you’re going to come away feeling dirty. I mean physically, collar-sticking dirty. When I came out on the Quai des Orfèvres, night had already fallen, bringing a damp and germ-laden chill off the Seine, and about all I could think of was a hot bath and a flagon of Glenfiddich, preferably at the same time.

  I could have walked to my hotel, but the Giulia was parked out by the curb, between two no-parking signs. It was the first dumb thing she’d done.

  I walked around to the driver’s side.

  “Move over,” I said. She did, and I got in. She flung her arms around me and kissed me. I didn’t kiss her back.

  “Are you all right, Cage?”

  “No, I’m not. We’d better find Roscoe. In a hurry.”

  “I already found him. He’s safe, in Neuilly. Just drive, Fll tell you where to go.”

  I glanced at the rearview as I pulled away from the curb. I stopped for a red light, still on the Ile de la Cité, and glanced again.

  “Give me the address,” I said, when the light switched to green and I turned on to the Boulevard du Palais.

  “Why do …?”

  “Just do like I say,” I said sharply. “Give me the address.”

  She did.

  “Is there a phone?”

  There was. She gave me the number.

  I headed slowly across the Ile de la Cité toward the Right Bank.

  “Now listen carefully. When I get to the Châtelet, I’m going to stop at a newspaper stand. I want you to get out, leaving the door open, then duck around the stand and down into the Métro.”

  “But I …”

  “Don’t argue. Just do what I tell you.”

  “I’m sorry, Cage, I didn’t …”

  “Don’t look around either. Go down into the Métro. You ought to have enough of a head start. Ride out to Neuilly, but, just in case, don’t take the direct line. When you get there, stay there. Keep him there. Above all, don’t try to call me. I’ll come when I can, but probably not before tomorrow.”

  The Châtelet Métro station is one of the biggest in Paris. Three lines go through it, meaning they’d have a one-in-six chance of ending up on the same platform she was on if I could reduce them to guessing. “They” was an unmarket Peugeot 304 I’d seen pulling out of a slot behind us on the Quai des Orfèvres. They’d followed us across the Ile de la Cité and the Pont au Change, and when I stopped at the Châtelet kiosk, sure enough they tucked in behind me. I left the motor running when she got out, and it took them a good couple of minutes after she disappeared to realize she wasn’t coming back. Then one of them got out to check. I reached across, closed her door, and drove off, followed abruptly by the 304. The last I saw of the one who’d gotten out, he was waving his arms and shouting something after us from the sidewalk, and probably I was too busy congratulating myself to notice that they weren’t the only company we had.

  I gave the Giulia some exercise just for the hell of it, then drove back to my bathtub. The tail in the 304 was good enough to discourage any ideas I might have had about trying to lose him on the way to Neuilly that same night. In the morning he, or a replacement, was still sitting in the 304 outside the hotel, complete with partner, so I took the Métro myself, losing the partner in a little wrinkle I’d worked out for just such emergencies in the Montparnasse-Bienvenüe station. Then I was in that posh apartment in Neuilly, with Valérie looking out the window again and Roscoe Hadley making a half-assed job at trying to hide the fact that, around the time Odessa Grimes got his throat slit, he, Roscoe, was shacked up in bed with Odessa Grimes’ sweetie pie.

  4

  The 14th Arrondissement of Paris is a mixed bag of a neighborhood that starts at one twentieth-century monument, the Tour Montparnasse, and ends at another, the circular urban autoroute known as the Périphérique. Parts of it are still chic, but behind the Sheraton Hotel extends a so-called “popular” quarter of dingy streets bordered by condemned buildings, boarded-up shop fronts, and narrow, littered sidewalks. Such businesses as survive there are of the low-overhead variety: cheap bars and restaurants, small groceries, dry cleaners, headshops, fly-by-night galleries, and they cater to a populace the only common denominator of which is its lack of political clout, meaning Ayrab, Portuguese, Slav, black, and also the young and transient, and also the old and immobilized.

  Marie-Josèphe Lamentin lived in a cul-de-sac off the rue de l’Ouest, a narrow, cobbled alley where you could touch the doors on either side and the rooftops tilted forward, shutting out the sky overhead. The number I wanted could only be reached by walking through another building, then a courtyard where a gang of neighborhood cats was standing guard over some garbage cans. Somebody somewhere was cooking fish. I went up the dark stairs, ducking my head. Marie-Josèphe Lamentin lived on the third floor left, but her doorbell gave off no sound and there was no answer to my knock. I tried the third floor right. I had the impression someone was in, but if so, they didn’t want visitors. I retreated then to the ground floor, the courtyard, looked for a concierge, found none, then to the alley, and finally, through a curtain of colored plastic strips, to a storefront bar at the corner.

  A group of gents from the wrong side of the Mediterranean were playing cards noisily at a formica-topped table near the front window. The tables behind them were empty except for two of their compatriots who were drinking tea out of glasses in the back and talking to someone, presumably the cook, who stood in a rear doorway. The lighting was harsh, fluorescent, there was the sweaty reek o
f couscous, and to top off the atmosphere, a jukebox was playing “Heartbreak Hotel,” Bedouin version.

  The food may have been great, but the service wasn’t. I waited at the bar while the card players finished their hand. Then one of them gathered the loose cards and proceeded to shuffle while another, fat and beslippered, with a mustache to compensate for his balding skull, scraped back his chair with a sigh and shambled over to the other side of the counter.

  “I’m looking for Mlle. Lamentin,” I said to him. “Marie-Josèphe Lamentin. She lives in the passage, number eleven bis, third floor left. She’s not there now. Do you know where I can find her?”

  I had no reason to assume that he should know her. Only he did. Not that he said so, or that there was any change in his bland expression, but when I mentioned her name there was a momentary break in the sound behind me. Even the jukebox seemed to stutter.

  “Marie-Josèphe,” I repeated. “Do you know her?”

  Ayrabs, in my limited experience, are a suspicious race, but if you’re not careful, they’ll be telling you their life story five minutes after they’ve met you. All it takes is a little encouragement.

  I decided to encourage him.

  I ordered a glass of Mescara, that lethal red wine they squeeze in Algeria. I took a hundred-franc note from my wallet and put it on the bar top, making sure he saw there was more where it came from. He wiped his fingers deliberately on his shirt front, then produced a juice glass and a bottle from under the counter. The bottle was about three quarters full and had no label. He filled the glass, put the bottle away, wiped his fingers again. Then he took the hundred-franc note, looked it it, turned it over on the other side, looked at it, and, presumably satisfied, made change.

  I left the change where it was.

  “Marie-Josèphe Lamentin. She has, or had, a boy friend called Grimes. Odessa Grimes. A black American. The black man who’s been murdered.”

  The barman shrugged.

  “Do you know her?” I said.