“He is blunt. Your life or Marie’s.” Duff couldn’t conceal the hate in her voice.
“As if that’s really a choice,” I said. “Only question I have is if he’s truly that obsessive, or just that delusional.”
Duff arched an eyebrow. “What? Deluded enough to think that you’d actually disclose Marie’s location so he won’t kill you?”
“Nah. That he’s so delusional as to still be chasing this child to save face when he has so many other things of moment on his plate.”
I drained my drink and poured another. I said, “Hitler’s all but through, yet Höttl seems to think he still needs to cover up his fathering a Jewish child. Hell, Höttl should be worried about his forthcoming trial for war crimes, yet he’s acting like he still needs to maintain appearances with goddamn Hitler. Where’s the logic in any of that?”
“I don’t know.” Duff put the letter back on the mantle. She sounded soul sick. “If you do kill Höttl, it could really cost you, Hector. You’d be directly disobeying orders.”
“I know.”
“Do you know where to find Werner Höttl, Hector?”
“Not yet, but I’ve got my people working on it. For sons of bitches like Höttl, Paris is shrinking by the hour. He can’t stay hidden much longer.”
“Your people.” Duff poured herself a whisky. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t just hear you confess you are running your own crew here. I’m going to do that just in case I’m hauled into your eventual hearing.”
I stood up and stretched. “They can’t make spouses testify against one another, Duff.”
“Not back home in a proper court of law, sure,” she said. “But consider where we are. And it’s going to be a military procedure. I have this terrible suspicion they can do anything they decide they want to do once they’ve got you in that room and in that chair.”
She handed me her shot glass. “You finish it off. I thought I’d cultivated a taste for single malt back there fleeing Lyon. Seems if I did, I’ve lost it again.”
I drained her glass and placed it on the mantle. “You simply have to stay practiced.”
She said, “This dinner you’re preparing? It can keep for a bit?”
“Sure. Why?”
“It’s been a very long time, Hec. Much too long. I need you.”
We kissed. I said, “Likewise. Let’s go upstairs.”
Duff wrinkled her nose. “In Gertrude Stein’s bed? Really?”
“No worries,” I said. “I bought new sheets.”
22
Duff stretched and sat up. I ran my fingers down her bare back and squeezed her hip. She slipped on a silky and slinky diaphanous gown that left nothing to the imagination.
She ran her fingers through her tangled hair and said, “You’re sure your little psychopath isn’t coming back?”
“Like I said, I’ve given him tonight and tomorrow off. He was getting stir crazy.”
“That twerp had no distance to travel to crazy, Hector.”
“Well, he was itchy to get out of here.”
“Yes, to draw blood, no doubt.” Duff raked her fingers through my chest hair. “I’ve thought hard about this,” she said. “I’m now making it my mission to keep you in this apartment, in this bed if necessary, until Paris is liberated. I’m going to keep you out of harm’s way, and well away from other kinds of mischief, until this stuff with the brass blows over or goes away. I’m gonna keep you here ’til Miss Stein sets us out.”
I took her hand and kissed its back. “With you as company, the other stuff I can probably sit out or safely watch from a window. But if I get a line on Höttl, I’m striking.”
“His death cannot be traced to you, Hector.” She pressed her hand to her belly and her stomach growled. “I can’t argue effectively on an empty stomach.”
I scooped up my pants and shirt. “Then we must eat.”
***
I freshened our wine. Duff said, “It’s been two very long years. Any word from Jimmy about how Marie is doing?”
“No.” I jammed the cork back in the bottle. “Jimmy and I agreed upon last parting that until this war is over and Höttl’s dead or on the final run in some backwater this side of the ocean, we’d not contact one another. Neither of us wanted to risk even a tenuous link that might somehow lead Höttl to Jimmy and then to Marie. When I get back to the States, I’ll beeline to Cleveland. But always checking my trail along the way.”
She smiled. “We will beeline to Cleveland, you mean. I miss them both, terribly.”
“That’s what I meant of course,” I said. “We will make that trip together.”
“I’m serious about keeping you here these next days, Hector. I’ll do it at gunpoint, if necessary. Handcuff you to a stout pipe, if I have to.”
“I know you mean it, and I’ll try to obey,” I said. “You have properly spooked me with this court martial stuff. Hell, someone else mentioned to me ahead of you I might be in trouble on that front. If that much chatter is in the air, figure I better help myself by staying within those damned correspondents’ lines going forward.”
I sipped some wine and bit my lip. “But I can’t lose any shot I might get at Höttl. If he shows himself, I’m going to strike at him, one way or another.”
Duff shook her head. “This so-called crew of yours, Robert for instance, let them do it. You don’t have to personally deliver the coup de grace, do you?”
“One of mine doing the deed works plenty fine for me, too,” I said. “Hell, if I thought I could pay some of Höttl’s own flunkies to turn on him, I’d happily pay real money for it to end that way, too.”
“I feel better for you saying it,” Duff said. “And I think I even believe you.” She raised her glass and looked out the window. “You know, I don’t really know this city that well. Many other cities in France I feel fairly at home in, but this one I’ve never gotten to explore. Soon as we can travel the streets safely, you must show me your Paris.”
“We’ll do it,” I said. “Provided the goddamn Nazis don’t blow it up first.”
Duff gestured at Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein. “Picasso, where’s he as all this bloody madness rolls along? Did he retreat back to Spain?”
I smiled. “Picasso just visits our world from time to time, I think. The city’s fall, the occupation and the pending liberation? It’s immaterial to him. By all accounts, Pablo just keeps his head down and continues to work in his studio, painting, sculpting… Eating and drinking and making love to his wives and models. History is just another thing that happens around Picasso. Hell, the very business of living is the same way for Pablo, I think—a distraction between masterpieces. He’s an artist in the purest, most terrible sense.”
“As opposed to novelists who write books between revolutions, wars and chasing killer surrealists?” Duff smiled over the rim of her glass. “You know, men who blur the lines between their blood-and-thunder lives and literary productions?”
Not subtle. I said, “Picasso has to fill a single canvas at a time, and I’ve watched the son of a bitch do it in twenty, thirty-minutes and then sell each of the things for as much as I might net for an advance against a novel. But that novel? I’ve got three-hundred, maybe four-hundred pages of blank paper to fill. To do that, I have to feed the muse.”
“Ah-hah.”
“You sound less than convinced, Duff.”
“I’m still trying to get a handle on you in some ways, Hector. Even if we have been married for a couple of years, because of this damned war we haven’t spent that much time together.” She smoothed the tablecloth with her hand. “I’m trying to decide how to put this.”
I reached over and shook her foot under the table. “Just say it, Duff, that’d be best. I’m durable. I love you and can take it.”
“Okay. The man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives. That’s what they call you. Which half of that is true?”
“Right.” I tried to shrug it off. “I have to choose?”
&
nbsp; Duff was solemn. “Someday, I’m afraid you might have to do just that.”
There was machine gun fire nearby; the sound of an explosion and screaming.
“Keep your butt in that chair,” Duff said. “That’s someone else’s worry now.” She looked around. “Stein have a phonograph or a radio? I’ll find us some music and turn it up extra loud. Let’s try really hard to forget we’re in a goddamn warzone.”
23
I gave Robert a longer leash, let him have five days away from Gertrude’s salon. At the end of that time, he seemed less edgy, but it hadn’t helped his hygiene a lick.
Me? After five days cooped up, even five deliciously carnal days with Duff, it was harder and harder to keep from venturing out.
Sunday, the twentieth of August: the fight to liberate Paris was truly underway.
I sat out Saturday, but by Sunday afternoon, I was crawling walls to see the Germans lose the city. Hell, to pitch in toward that end.
Duff cursed and said I was making her edgy with my “goddamn infernal pacing.” She said, “If you go out there, even for an hour, I know you won’t go out as a correspondent. You’ll pull your irregulars together and go after Nazis. I know it. You’ll just dig your hole deeper with SHAEF.”
“In this mayhem? Not bloody likely. This might be the one time in this war when I can truly act with impunity.”
Duff looked at me, clearly exasperated. “If you go out there, you have to come back here for dinner and sleep here every night. And you have to bathe before bed. And that psycho, Robert—he’s professional?”
“Surprisingly, one of the best.”
“Then get him back here to protect me. Him and two more just as good. And you be circumspect. You must be very extra careful.”
“I can do all that. I will do all that. Anything else?”
“Find a way to do it without leaving anything that can be traced back to you, but kill Werner Höttl. For Marie and Jimmy’s sake, I’ve also decided I want that man dead.”
***
In the courtyard of Gertrude Stein’s building, Charles Delattre said, “Bernard is very busy now. As to Robert, I couldn’t get him to bathe. But in deterrence to your lady friend, I liberated a bottle of the Prince Machiavelli cologne.”
I offered him a cigarette and fired him up with my Zippo. I said, “Charles, you can speak French with me, and you can speak it with Duff, particularly as your English is still a little, let’s call it faltering.”
He looked genuinely hurt. “Where did I—your word—falter?”
“Deference, not deterrence. But you could also have said, ‘Out of respect to your lady friend.’”
He nodded, glum. “Any other?”
“Prince Matchabelli cologne, not Machiavelli.” Although I could imagine colorful ad campaign for the latter scent: “Dominate your woman!”
Charles stared at his feet. “I can only masterise the language by speaking it.”
“Master the language,” I said. “Mastery is indeed the goal. Stick with it, old pal. Just let Duff know, up front, if you want her to correct you if you step wrong again. Hell, she may even be able to coach you a bit.”
“I appreciate… that, Mr. Lassiter.”
“Right.” I slapped his arm. “Just keep my lady safe, and we’re even. And don’t let Robert scare her, oui?”
He winked. “No fears. I will retain him.”
“Restrain him. Great. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
***
Bernard said, “You’ve been sorely missed. We’re in a different game, now. I’ll confess, I feel out of my depth. Fighting in the streets like this? My God.”
“We’re all out of our depth, now,” I said. “There’s never been a time like this one.” I read his expression, added, “I know, I know. Every generation thinks they’re the first to discover the world, but this is far from my first war and I’m here to say, it’s a très different beast.”
“It is a different kind of enemy,” he said. “Evil personified.”
“On that note, do you have any word on Höttl?”
“It’s very confused, Hector. Chaotic.”
“They call it the fog of war for a reason, Bernard. Just please stay at it. Höttl is a must for me.”
Bernard squeezed my shoulder. “For me as well. Consider what this man is trying to do to my city. He means to plunder and then to decimate it. And to film all that as it happens. It’s vile and insane.”
“Your men know to look for cameras?”
“They do, but with so many real journalists polluting the town, it’s vexing.”
Real journalists: that dug at me in an irksome way.
I followed Bernard up several flights of stairs and onto the roof of a building overlooking Rue de Regard. I accepted the binoculars from Bernard. He’d done some work on them himself, touching up what he could with flat-black paint to reduce surfaces that might catch light and so draw fire.
After a blurry look through the binoculars, I adjusted the focus pin on the field glasses. “How hard are the Germans fighting?”
Bernard struck a match; I smelled cigarette smoke. “It varies, wildly,” he said. “There are a few die-hards, as one would expect. But the others? We have some who can’t surrender fast enough. Some others are fighting just enough to be protected if the battle should by some miracle go the Germans’ way. But it’s token resistance.”
I didn’t want to appear weak or too worried, but I said, “I’ve heard from some others a bit of the same you warned me about, the brass snooping around after me.”
Bernard exhaled and said, “Yes, I’ve heard some more since we last talked. It’s a serious thing, I think.”
“The prisoners, how are they being held? Where?”
“Hector, we have no facilities for prisoners. I know you cannot be tied to any of this, now, my brother. From this point forward, I think you know me as a guerilla leader who gives you leads for your dispatches. I think these men are all my men, operating under my sole orders. And so the prisoners they take and what happens to those prisoners are my responsibility. Do you agree with all this?”
I thought about all of it. After a time, I said, “Yes, that’s how it is. Thank you, Bernard.”
He nodded. “I will of course alert you to any new developments regarding Höttl.”
“Again, I thank you.”
Bernard took back the binoculars. “It is less than a nothing. Forget it now and play—no, be the good reporter. We can handle this ourselves, Hector. It’s nearly over, whether the Germans think so or not.”
I pointed down at the street, “That man there, the German at the back of the crowd of six. Is that a movie camera he’s holding?”
Swiveling, Bernard adjusted the focus pin on the field glasses. “Yes, that is a camera. Looks rather elaborate to me. I mean, not just some German with a personal camera making little movies for the folks back home. It looks a professional piece of film equipment to me.”
He picked up his radio and rattled off some instructions in French and in English. To me Bernard said, “It may be some time, but we will try and take that one prisoner, Hector. We’ll see if we can draw more from him in the event he is tied to Höttl’s film project here in the city.”
“I would very much like to be present for that talk,” I said. “Somewhere private, if you can arrange it.”
Bernard chuckled. “Hector, for these kinds of talks, we always seek private places. Soundproof, too, if at all possible.” He went back to watching the man with the camera. He said, “Pitched floors and a center drain are also a boon for such,” he smiled meanly and said, “…discussions.”
24
It took every bit of forty-five minutes to make what should have been a ten-minute walk back to Gertrude’s salon. There were sandbag barricades to leap, checkpoints to pass through after flashing my correspondent’s ID, street skirmishes to skirt. And there were other war correspondents to try and placate or to dodge.
Some stray machine gun
fire took out the window of a grocery behind me. A young woman was exiting the store. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to the ground, rolling half-atop her as the machine gun fire strafed overhead, peppering us with more glass and woodchips.
Someone from a floor above us returned fire on the German machine gunner. Screams followed and then the shooting stopped. Someone yelled in French, “All clear! The goddamn Bosch is dead!”
People began rising from the pavement. A few cheered. I hauled myself up and offered a hand to the girl, pulling her to her feet. I scooped up her grocery bag and handed it back to her. “Where are you headed, darlin’?”
Straightening her clothes, in a state of mild shock, the girl muttered an address. “You’re on my way,” I said. “I’ll see you safely there.”
She eyed my correspondent’s insignia. “You’re a reporter; you’re not even armed. I don’t think you can be much protection. But thank you for saving me from the gunfire.”
I took her arm. “I am a reporter, but under these conditions, I’ve decided to bend the rules, just a bit. I do carry a gun. Now let’s get you home. I hope you have enough in that bag to last you a few days. It may be another week before it’s safe to venture out for such shopping trips.”
***
Two blocks away from the scene of the machine-gunning, it was a much different story. I’d reached a neighborhood taken and held by resistance fighters. There was much drinking, partying… even a couple fornicating on a balcony in full view to drunken cheers.
Some of the Parisian collaborators had been dragged out into the street. The men were being beaten; one got himself shot.
The female collaborators were roundly spit upon, then their heads shaved.
Three men had a man in a German uniform on the ground. They were kicking and beating on him. I got a look at the bloodied man’s face and was startled to recognize him. It was Frederick Schmidt, the German who had saved me and Marie when we were caught outside that church two years before—the one who had slit his fellow soldier’s throat to give Marie and I a chance for escape. His was a face burned into my brain.
Roll the Credits: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 15