The French Kiss

by Peter Israel

  But of course they had help. It had to have been. Maybe one man with lungs enough could have pulled it off, like a single spark combusting a forest fire, but chances were he had a half-dozen or more accomplices scattered in key places, with goblets in their hands and flagons in easy reach and no particular compunction about who they slugged or what with. Half a dozen maybe, and then, with the crush and the semidarkness, the tout-Paree did the rest. Undoubtedly they thought it was a gag at first, an Al Dove happening, something they could put down in their novels and memoirs, but once the blood started to flow the joke stuck in their throats and screams came out instead. People ran, scattered, converged, fled. People had their clothes ripped off. People fell and got stomped on. In a matter of minutes it was a brawler’s paradise, every man for himself, women and children last, and it didn’t simmer down till the whistles started to blow.

  As it happened, I was one of the first to go. A sudden surge of bodies hit me from behind and the velvet ropes tackled me neatly around the ankles. I went down like a red-dogged quarterback and got up in a tangle, my hands trying to blot out the spotlights, in time to see a massive black fist thundering out of the ceiling like the hammer of Thor. Surprise, surprise, it was headed my way, but by the time I registered this unusual fact, all I could do was jerk my head back and take it on the shoulder. The jolt sent a shock of pain clear through to my big toes, and down I went again. This time I crawled around for a while on my hands and knees, cursing the referee, to surface in a gaggle of squawling pansies who were holding their nuts against all comers. A pair of arms was trying to grab me from behind. I ducked and pivoted and came up with my forearms extended, just like they teach you in Karate 3B, only to find myself wrestling with … my host.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Al Dove yelled at me.

  He was quite a sight. Blood leaked from a corner of his mouth, and one sleeve of the silk jacket had been yanked half out of its socket. He was panting and heaving, and he had the desperate expression I’d seen before, of a high roller who won’t admit the dice have gone cold.

  “It’s quite a shindig Al,” I must have said, or some such.

  “The bastards,” he gasped at me. “I’ll get them for this if it’s the last thing I do!”

  “Who’s them?” I shouted.

  “Listen Cagey!” A finger jabbed wildly at me. “It’s gonna cost them triple now! You tell them that for me! Triple!”

  “Who’s them?” I shouted again, but there was no hearing his answer, if he had one. A new tide of bodies swept into us and crashed us apart. Somewhere in there the whistles started blowing and the lights went on again, but I wouldn’t be too sure of the order of anything, only that when I glimpsed the courtier en tableaux again he was a salon away and heading out to sea. By this time I myself had been jammed backwards into one of the buffet tables. There was nowhere to go but up, so I watched the rest of the carnage, short-lived as it was, with one foot in a platter of sandwiches and the other in the caviar.

  Short-lived, I should add, because of the arrival of the Law. I’ll leave that part for you to put together. I mean, you’ve got a populace that on the one hand hires a police force big enough to colonize Mars and on the other shouts “Fascist pig!” every time they see a cop. I guess each of us has a little guilt tucked away in his soul, next to the stolen goods, but to see the tout-Paree cut and run that night when the Law showed up, you’d have thought the half of them had paintings stuck under their coats and the other half dope sewed in their linings. Well, but they don’t do these things by halves in France. There must have been a couple of regiments of them, all in plainclothes and raincoats, including the ones who lined the staircase to make sure nobody ducked into the head. They didn’t stop for any of the niceties either, like the customary identity checks. It was a case of “Allez!” and “Dehors!”, indiscriminately, which means vamoose, beat it, and as quickly as it had flared up, as quickly the party was over. Except for the stretcher cases.

  Of these last there were relatively few—not so surprising at that in a country where hostilities are mostly of the keep-me-away-from-him-I’ll-kill-him variety. The joint was a shambles, but the Art itself looked largely unscathed. My client was long gone. So, it appeared, were Al Dove and the Susan Smiths. In fact the only familiar body I spotted was crouched in front of the Blumenstock, her fangs bared and her claws flying.

  A gendarme below me said: “Allez!”

  “Dehors!” said another to my right, and a third threw in a “C’est fini!” for good measure.

  Apparently they were talking to me. I’ve never been particularly partial to the breed, but the odds for argument were all wrong, and if I needed any further persuasion, it was the unceremonious image of Professor Helen Raven being separated from the Blumenstock across the way. At that I like to think the dame on the purple couch snuck a peek just that once—it would have pleased her no end—but as it was she continued to stare out, haughty and stiff-necked under the turban. Straight out in fact at me. So I jumped down.

  TWO

  I caught up with her under the porte-cochère. The rain had settled into one of those steady silent mists that haloes the lights and soaks the pavement, and she was rubbernecking the street from the shelter of the arch, like Prince Charming was late with the chariot.

  “Well, Professor,” I said, coming up behind her, “you came a long way for a party, a shame it had to end so soon. But the night’s young and Paris is all ours. And my humble droshky’s right up the street.”

  I even gave her the bow that went with it.

  Startled, she jerked her head at me. But then she registered who I was, and the anxious glance gave way to the same sullen expression I’d seen before. Without a word, she turned and headed up the sidewalk in the rain.

  I kept pace with her. When we came level with the Giulia I stopped her.

  “Here she is, Professor, four wheels and a motor.” Then, taking her by the arm: “Look, there’s no point your getting soaked on a night like this. I’ll drop you wherever you’re going.”

  But some people are touchy, you could say. She whirled like I was a purse snatcher, and flailed, and slashed my arm away. Her eyes went big and nasty and froglike, and she brandished her fist in case I tried again.

  “I don’t know who you are or what your business is,” she snapped at me. “But whatever it is, it’s not mine. And I don’t need your help, no thank you.”

  With that she pivoted and continued up the sidewalk. I watched her go in the dim light, nervous determined steps in an over-long skirt, but before she reached the corner I had the Giulia eased out of her slot by the curb. The street emptied out like the spoke of a wheel into one of those broad, cobbled Paris circles. The circle was deserted except for a couple of cabs waiting in a taxi rank on one of the far spokes. I saw Helen Raven run out into the slanting mist, waving her arm as she crossed, and by the time the cab made its U-turn to head down toward the Seine, the Giulia and I were right behind.

  It was dumb enough in hindsight. The snooping expedition I’d been hired for, with Al Dove as primary target and Professor Helen Raven as a parenthesis, had obviously been derailed by the events of the party. Somebody had had a better idea of how to deal with my “ole buddy,” and for the moment the most logical thing to do would have been to go home, nurse my aching shoulder over a bottle of Glenfiddich, and check in with my client in the morning. In addition, I was rusty as hell—enough, for instance, not to have noticed the absence of those unmarked blue buses they use to tote the Paris Law around in (by rights a dozen of them ought to have been parked in the circle), and the time had long since passed when I got my rocks off playing follow-that-car.

  Maybe the rust had something to do with it at that, that itch you get from twiddling your thumbs too long while you’re sitting on your hands and the Al Doves of your past are rolling high and rolling low. Also the memory of …

  Well, but don’t worry, it’s all going to come out sooner or later. Chalk it up for the minute to my gene
ral conscientiousness, plus the fact that I never did take kindly to being rejected, not even by professors with scars on their cheeks and a pretty distinct aversion to the stronger sex in general.

  We drove down the Right-Bank quays along the Seine, staying some two or three cars back in the flow. I expected the cab to peel off around the Concorde, where most of the posh hotels are, but instead he continued on into the tunnel, and out past the Louvre and the Cité, with Notre Dame looming up out of the mists, to veer off around the Hôtel de Ville. He went into the Marais, the old jewish quarter which has lately been rediscovered by the well-heeled ecumenical chic, but he wasn’t stopping there either. He came out of it instead, through a maze of ancient streets, somewhere around the République. A couple of blocks later he trundled onto a short, arched bridge barely wide enough for a goat cart. It gave the distinct impression of crossing you into Transylvania. Down below was canal water, part of the old Paris locks system still in use, but which has to predate the wheel.

  It made no sense, nor did the dingy street the taxi stopped in not far from the canal. The low façades had that warehouse look, but warehouses whose windows had been bashed in and whose brick walls were pasted over with tattered posters promoting French Algeria. One or two of the buildings were taller and might have qualified for residential, but they’d have been tenements in any other language, and all I could think of was that Al Dove sure didn’t keep his guests in the style to which he was accustomed. Though in this, it turned out, I was wrong too.

  I watched from the shadows while Helen Raven paid the taxi. She got out and fumbled in her purse in the doorway of one of the taller buildings. It was dark all the way up except, by sharp contrast, for light spilling out into the mist from a rooftop skylight. Maybe the Quasimodos lived there, I thought, and the bells would start ringing when I tried to follow Esmerelda through the door, but there were no bells when I crossed over behind her, and no buzzer either, none at least that you could operate without a key. I’d never seen the system before, but apparently it’s used in over-the-hill neighborhoods no self-respecting concierge will live in. The front door’s left open by day, but at night you need a key to trigger the buzzer, to get out as well as in, and if you’ve lost it, well, I guess they figure you can always make a rope ladder out of your sheets.

  I stood there in the rain, contemplating the problem. Suffice it to say that I didn’t hear him coming. All I can tell you is that one minute my Adam’s apple was standing tall and that the next it was crushed into my trachea by a forearm of steel. Then I was flung forward and crashed into the door.

  The door hurt. So did my throat.

  When I turned around, I saw the bulge in his raincoat pocket. He was black and big, bigger than big, and if he wasn’t the one who’d thorred me at the party, then Thor had a twin spade brother.

  “You’re out of your mind!” I protested, once I’d found my voice. “The Professor asked me over for a nightcap, I was just trying to figure out how to get in the damn door!”

  This stopped him momentarily. He puzzled it over. I tried it on him in French and was just about to switch into Senegalese when he said:

  “O.K., Mister Man, let’s you ’n me go find out.”

  The accent, to my surprise, was pure Watts.

  He had a key of his own. The buzzer buzzed and he pushed me inside, into a dim and foul-smelling hall. He shook me down. Then we went up a tunnel of narrow wooden stairs where your head bumped the light bulbs on the turns. The steps were scooped out from use and slats were missing entirely in places, but he didn’t fall through. Nor did anyone come out on the landings to see who was doing all the clumping.

  The top landing had only one door. He knocked, and almost immediately Helen Raven opened it. When she saw me, she stopped whatever she’d started to say and her expression went from surprise to anger. Then a shove from behind propelled me past her and smack into the middle of an artist’s studio, one that looked like it had been transplanted, paintbrush by paintbrush, out of the pages of Vogue.

  It went up over two stories to an enormous slanting skylight. The front part was brilliantly lit, while softer lighting cast a glow over the living area, a double-decker affair in the rear topped off by a sleeping loggia. Above the loggia, from the peak of the slant, an elaborate system of spots shone down on a pair of tall wood easels, framed in the light like on the stage of a theater. It was Vogue all right, right in the middle of the Paris slums, and so was the vertical painter who stared at me from the easels, as un-Quasimodo as they come, a tall and spindly blond geek in a jeans outfit, with pale eyes, a high narrow forehead and wielding what looked more like a meat cleaver than a paintbrush.

  “Evening,” I said to him, holding out my hand. “My name’s Cage.”

  “William Rillington,” he answered, putting down the cleaver and wiping his long hands on a rag. But that was as far as it went, and virtually the last substantive thing he got to say.

  “Shut up!” commanded Helen Raven behind me. The painter blinked rapidly at her. Then, to the spade: “Who told you to bring him here?”

  “Who tole me?” he said. “Who tole me?” His voice went up in pitch. “Nobody tole me! I found the cat downstairs, Miz Raven.”

  “How’d he get there?”

  “Looks like he followed you. He …”

  “And so you had to bring him up?”

  “He said you ast him over. That’s what the cat said.”

  “And you believed him, didn’t you?”

  “I …”

  But then he shut up too, and the rims of his eyes went sad and red like a spaniel’s.

  “You damn fool,” she hissed at him. Then she turned to me.

  “It’s not his fault, Professor,” I told her. “I just wanted to make sure you got home all right.” I grinned at her, but it didn’t make any dent in her expression. “Look, seriously, I’m sorry I barged in on you. Like your strongboy here says, it wasn’t my idea, but nobody likes to stick around when he’s not wanted. Obviously you’ve got better things to do. And so, I just remembered, do I. So why don’t we call it a night?”

  It sounded reasonable enough to me. With a wave, I nodded to them and made for the door, which was hidden somewhere behind the spade’s bulk. He didn’t budge though, except to bring the cannon out of his raincoat pocket. I couldn’t see what he needed it for. It lay in his paw like a water pistol, with the squirt end pointed my way.

  “Sit down,” said Helen Raven.

  “Lissen Miz Raven,” interrupted the spade. “I can take care of the cat. Lemme take care of him for you. Lemme take him outside.”

  “Sit down, Mister Cage,” she repeated.

  Well, at least she remembered my name.

  I sat. William Rillington sat. The spade sat, holding his cannon. And Helen Raven sat, but not for very long. She got up again, paced, sat down again. Then up again for variety, and so on. In between she chewed at her nails and stared at the telephone. But the telephone didn’t ring, and nobody knocked, and every attempt I made at small talk came out mostly with me listening to my own voice.

  I tried explaining it to the painter. It was all a mistake, I said. I was an old friend of Al Dove’s. I’d gone to his party, there’d been a ruckus, everything had ended upside down. But I didn’t know a Blumenstock from a …

  “Where’s Al?” Rillington wanted to know.

  “Never mind,” snapped Helen Raven.

  “But he’s coming over, isn’t he?” the painter went on. “Or wouldn’t he call?”

  Silence.

  “Maybe the police would know,” I suggested.

  “The pol …”

  “Never mind!” Helen Raven shouted at him, on her feet. “He’ll get here when he gets here!”

  His reaction to this was to blink like a semaphore and shrivel in on himself, like his body was going to turn into a pipe cleaner. But seeing him, Helen Raven relented curiously. She murmured something I couldn’t hear, the menace gone from her voice. Then Rillington unraveled,
and she sat down again, and we listened to the rain against the skylight, which made no noise.

  It was passing weird. The work-in-progress on one of the easels was Rillington’s, I gathered. The other easel was bare. At least I took it for work-in-progress: with that kind of work I don’t know how you tell when it’s done. I think it’s called “action painting,” meaning, the way I understand it, that the painter hits the canvas with everything handy, including the contents of the garbage pail, and whatever sticks on, from noodles to gravy, is Art. It looked like a one-way grudge fight to me, and to judge by what I could see on his work table, Rillington had been using knives, hammers and broken bottles on the enemy. As to the result? Well, there’d been several such hanging at Al Dove’s which Susan Smith had oohed and aahed over and they’d seemed no better or worse. Except that they’d been hanging at Al Dove’s while Rillington’s was still bleeding on the easel.

  But for the area immediately around the easels, the place hardly seemed lived in. There was a complete kitchen unit under the loggia that looked right out of a box, and so did the furniture. Elsewhere, as far as I could see, the studio was bone bare. A series of walk-in cupboards ran all across one long wall. They looked far too big for clothes. The sliding doors were shut, there were locks on them, and I’d a hunch the Professor wore the keys chained to her navel.

  Passing weird. A man called Bernard Lascault had hired me to do a little exploratory work on Al Dove, with a parenthesis on Helen Raven. He was a very persuasive character, Bernard Lascault; so was his checkbook. I’d gone to the party in order to establish contact, somebody had hollered “Fake!” and that had been the signal for the fastest scramble Paris had seen since they let loose a carton of mice at Pompidou’s funeral. Then I’d ended up in a studio fit for Rembrandt, where I obviously wasn’t supposed to be, in a neighborhood long since ready for the wrecker’s ball, with a scarecrow of a painter, a bodyguard straight out of King Kong, and a professor who’d clearly spent too much time away from the classroom. Passing …