The French Kiss

by Peter Israel

  “Oh Cagey, I was so scared.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I could tell that from down the block. I was dying to tell you everything was all right. Only there didn’t seem any way, under the circumstances.”

  “But what was I to do, Cagey? Ever since they got here last night, Johnny and the others. I was so scared. I wanted to warn you, but how could I? They never let me out of their sight.”

  “And yesterday afternoon, before they got here? You were scared then too, weren’t you?”

  “Of course I was. I had no idea who was following us. Then when you went off like that … and he came after me …”

  “And you couldn’t go back to the apartment, could you?” I finished for her. “Obviously. Because that’s where the paintings were. So you took him out to L’Isle-Adam where you knew you could lay a trap on him. Or get help. Right?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Like I say, there’s a form of honesty in silence.

  Then I asked her—just for the record, because God knows it didn’t matter anymore—when she’d gotten to Paris. She didn’t answer that either.

  “But that night after Al’s party?” I said. “In the studio? You were there then, weren’t you, Binty?”

  Her chin dropped, and the wet cheeks.

  “Yes I was, Cagey. I was there.”

  We drove off then. She asked me if I was sure I could drive. I said I’d always wanted to see how the Renault van handled. It did all right too, in a trucky sort of way. But she wasn’t finished talking, not by a long shot. The important thing was: we were free. We were free, weren’t we? Free at last, with all those awful things behind us? She didn’t know how I’d swung it, how I’d convinced them to let us go, and she didn’t care. The important thing was that it was done, behind us, and all we had to do was forget it. And we would forget it, wouldn’t we? Yes we would. She would see to that.

  But of course she cared. Just a little. She’d seen the briefcase too, and she either knew or guessed what was in it.

  “How’d you do it, darling?” she asked. This was on the autoroute. “How’d you talk them into letting us go?”

  “Oh,” I said, “I can be a pretty persuasive fellow when I want to be.”

  “But where are we going? Where are we going now?”

  “Well, first we’ve got some property of yours to collect. Remember?”

  “You mean the painting? My God, can’t we just forget about it? Why don’t we just go around Paris and keep on going? What’s to stop us? They’ll never find us. Eventually they’ll give up trying. We can send them a postcard telling them where it is. That’s all they care about.”

  “What about the Law?”

  “Well what about it? There’s nothing they can prove.”

  Maybe so and maybe not. Though I was inclined to give her the nod.

  “Well where do you want to go, Binty?” I asked. “Somewhere where there are palms and soft breezes?”

  She didn’t get the reference. There was no reason she should.

  “Why not?” she answered. “Why the hell not? Or some place where it’s freezing cold and there’s ice on the pine cones! Hot or cold, what difference does it make? Don’t you understand? All I want to do is be with you, you dummy, don’t you understand that?”

  And I did, in a way. That was the funny part. Back at the Lascaults’ breakfast I’d tried something on for size, about Johnny Vee’s hit list, and the more I thought about it the more obvious it seemed to me. Because once the Blumenstock affair was over, where was the need for the middle man? Or woman? In other words, once Arts Mondiaux had opened direct contact with their suppliers, hadn’t both Doves become expendable? It stood to reason, and whatever Bernard or Johnny Vee had in mind for her, the idea must have occurred to Binty too.

  When I pulled into the service station on the autoroute she all but threw a fit. We didn’t need gas, she said, what was I stopping for? Not for gas, I said. I had to make a phone call. But I wasn’t going to leave her alone in the van, was I? Sure I was, I said, but I’d be in the phone booth right alongside. Still she grabbed my hand when I started to get out, grabbed it hard, and while I was calling and she could easily have jumped into the driver’s seat … no, she just sat there, frozen, her small face staring out at me through the passenger’s window.

  Of course it didn’t help that I took the keys and the briefcase into the booth with me.

  Maybe by then she’d spotted our company too. Parked back on the Chantilly byroad, I’d been a little surprised by the traffic, even for a pretty Sunday, but I’d been as willing as not to chalk it up to chance and paranoia. But there was no mistaking them in the service area. They came in a black unmarked Renault 16, but with an antenna big enough to receive Gibraltar. They drove through between the gas pumps without stopping and parked far down, near the access road, and waited while I told Dedini about them.

  The rich, it seemed, keep their word just like the rest of us.

  I told Dedini I was ready to deliver three of the people he wanted, but that it had to be done my way, and that I needed his help. I explained what I had in mind. It took some time. At first he didn’t like it at all. Then he gave me some static because of the logistics involved, followed by a long pause while he put it together from his end. I told him where I was, and he estimated how long he’d need and when I should leave the service station, and all the while Binty Dove stared out through the two windows that separated us, with the shades up in her hair.

  “Who was that you were talking to?” she wanted to know when I came out. “Was it Al?”

  “No, it wasn’t Al.”

  “But you’re going to kill me, aren’t you, Cagey? The two of you?”

  She had killing on the brain all right. I guess after a while it gets to be pretty commonplace.

  “No,” I said, opening the door on her side. “At least not right now. Right now I’m going to buy you a cup of coffee.”

  We went inside into the restaurant section. It was one of those typical autoroute joints, indistinguishable from one country to the next except that the ones in France are more expensive and the food worse. I had a cheese omelette to go with the coffee, but Binty seemed to have lost her appetite. The thing was, she said, she was so exhausted, done in, she didn’t care what happened to her so long as I stayed with her. She felt like it had been years since she’d had a real night’s sleep. She felt like a long time back somebody had put her on a treadmill, like a laboratory mouse, and she’d been running ever since, around and around and around, chasing her tail without ever catching it.

  I paid the check and we went back to the Renault van. I put her in the passenger’s seat and closed the door, then walked around to my side and got in. The grass was an unnatural green under the sun, and not a blade was stirring.

  “Wait a minute, Cagey,” she said, putting her hand on mine as I turned the key in the slot. Her eyes were big with message. “Just think a minute before we go. Make sure you know what you want.”

  She gripped my hand for emphasis.

  I thought about it a minute. I’m sorry, baby, I thought, but you’ve fed me to the wolves once too often. Then I turned the key again, and threw the van into reverse, and then into first.

  They’d set up the first roadblock just where the autoroute ended, at the Porte de la Chapelle. It was a hell of a place to do it, and on a Sunday in addition, and if it had been a couple of hours later, they’d have created a jam all the way back to the Belgian border. As it was, and even though they didn’t have to check every car, the lines were already half a kilometer long by the time we got there. I’d been trying to spot our company, without luck. The Renault 16 had stayed in the service area, but I was pretty sure somebody else would have taken over, ahead of us or behind.

  I’d given Dedini a description of the van. When we got to the head of our file, the gendarme in charge waved us through without a second glance. Then we were into Paris, and I zigged and zagged the van through some side streets before coming o
ut around Stalingrad and the top of the Canal St. Martin.

  But at least one car had been ahead of us, waiting. It was another Renault 16, and I didn’t pick him up till we were part way down the canal. When I stopped suddenly for a red light, though, he had no choice but to snuggle up behind me, and I could clearly see the turtle’s head trying to hide in the passenger’s seat. It belonged to none other than my old friend, Commissaire Ravier.

  I couldn’t have run them if I’d wanted to, not in that van. As it was, I didn’t want to. But it was a good thing I’d taken out some insurance of my own.

  The second roadblock was already in place on the east side of the canal. The Law, Dedini’s Law, had cordoned off an area several blocks deep, starting in from the quays, and they were there in force, in plainclothes and uniform, and the only other people in sight were some fishermen sunning themselves on the canal bank.

  There was a checkpoint on the far end of the bridge, another on the Quai de Jemmapes itself. We passed both without a challenge, but the Renault 16 got stopped behind us. I saw Ravier get out, gesticulating like a proper Frenchman. But another proper Frenchman was there to match him, a big and gray-jawed one, and it’s a shame I can’t quote you their conversation.

  We turned onto the side street. Like Dedini had promised, there wasn’t a cop in sight, just the low-scarred façades of the warehouses. I parked and got out, Lascault’s briefcase in hand. Binty got out on the other side.

  The skylight glinted brightly in the sun.

  “You mean it’s been there all this time?” Binty said, gazing up at the building.

  “No, not all this time.”

  “Jesus.”

  “They ran out of places to hide. It’s too bad you didn’t think of it.”

  “Who’s up there now. Is Al up there?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Or the police?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll see.”

  This seemed to reassure her momentarily. But halfway up the dim stairs, with the garbage smell full in our nostrils, she pulled hard on my hand again. I thought it was to steady herself. Maybe it was. But then the plea came, hoarsely this time even though she was talking in a whisper:

  “God, Cagey, please get me out of this.”

  I knocked on the door at the top landing.

  “Come in,” Helen Raven called from inside. “The door is open.”

  We went in. She was alone, staring down into the street from the skylight. Al Dove had said something about needing an army, but the door was open and all Helen Raven had for her defense was a gun. It looked like the same one she’d carried the night before. It hung listlessly in her hand, as though she’d forgotten it was there.

  The studio had undergone an extraordinary transformation. A week or so before, it had struck me as unlived in. Now it reminded me of one of those hermit’s apartments you read about from time to time, when the neighbors complain of the smell and the police break in to find the bodies molding and the old newspapers stacked to the ceilings. Not that there was so much stuff, but you got the feeling every dish in the place had been used more than once, with no washing in between, and the smell was stale and heavy with turpentine. The floor was awash in papers, oily rags, clothes, cigarette butts, with the biggest piles around the easels, and though the sun was streaming in through the skylight, the spots shone down on the portrait of John Blumenstock and his wife.

  “Find a seat,” said Helen Raven, scarcely looking at us. “She hasn’t come yet.”

  “Who are you waiting for, Professor?” I asked her.

  “Who am I waiting for,” she repeated in a monotone. “I’m waiting for Judith.”

  “Judith?” I said. But she didn’t seem to hear, and then it struck me who Judith was, though probably nobody had called her that since her nanny.

  I put the briefcase down. I asked her where Rillington was. She didn’t seem to know, or care particularly. She said he’d gone out a while ago, but in a way that suggested it might have been a quarter of an hour or a week, or anything in between. As it happened, it was closer to a quarter of an hour, and the Law, not taking any chances, had picked him up. But that had been out of her line of vision, in more ways than one. All that she saw, all that she was capable of seeing, was the street immediately below and, I suppose, the limousine that was supposed to pull up there any minute.

  “She’s not coming, Helen,” I said finally. “Cookie’s not coming. Judith. She’s sent us instead.”

  The message didn’t seem to register.

  “But she’s buying the painting,” I added. “I’ve brought as much cash as she had. There’s a little over 160,000 francs in the bag here, with more to come on delivery.”

  Again no response. But a moment later she turned from the skylight and came toward us. I felt Binty stiffen beside me. I did too, though less from the gun than from the expression on her face. Or rather: the lack of expression. The mouth was slack, the skin pocked and dotted with bumps, the eyes small and bored and unseeing. It was the moon woman in short, the walking zombie, and you’d never in a million years have guessed the violence seething below the crust.

  As it was, she dropped the gun on the work table near the easels. She rummaged in the mess for a cigarette, found a pack but it was empty, crumpled it, tossed it on the floor. Then she found another, turned and asked us for a light. I produced a box of matches. She took them from me and lit up with a steady hand, contributing Gauloise smoke to the general turpentine stink, and stood next to us, her arms now folded across her chest, studying the painting.

  “It’s a great one,” she said finally, in that same toneless voice. “The best he ever did.”

  She went on talking then. About the painting, about him, about them. Them was John Blumenstock and his wife. In its way, Helen Raven’s version of Cookie was one of the most violent diatribes I’d ever heard, but the horror of it came less from the words than the tone, and not from the female hysterics you’d expect but from the utter absence of same. It was a little short on coherence, but the gist was clear enough: simply that the artist she, Helen Raven, had taken over from the woman on the canvas was already a human ruin, a wreck, a shambles at thirty-four. And this thanks to the woman on the canvas. Having seen the original in action, I’d have to add that the Professor’s portrait came closer to reality than the painter’s, but it came out flat and colorless, and with all the awful finality of an obituary.

  Maybe it takes one woman to do real justice to another.

  The briefcase with the money was almost directly under her feet. She bent down, opened it, rummaged idly inside. She stood back up, clutching a random fistful of bills. The suggestion of a smile tightened her lips.

  “I told you,” she said, staring at the portrait. “Won’t anybody believe me? It’s not for sale. It’s simply not for sale.”

  “I can see your point of view, Helen,” I answered, “but a lot of people have gone to a lot of trouble over this painting. The money’s not all for you either. Half of it’s Al’s.”

  “Al’s?” she asked distantly.

  She started to laugh, a far-off sound that seemed to come from somewhere outside her.

  “But Al’s dead,” she said. “I killed him.”

  She gazed around vaguely, as if remembering the murder weapon, then swiveled sharply. Too sharply almost. She caught herself, then focused on Binty.

  “But you’re his wife, aren’t you? Isn’t that you? Oh, I see. You’ve come for his share, is that it? That’s what you want? His share?”

  Binty started to answer, but I interrupted her.

  “You didn’t kill him, Helen. He’s not dead.”

  She turned to me. Her eyes, I noticed, were a split-second slower than her head. The mouth opened, the laughter came again, but her face stayed an immobile mask.

  “You didn’t kill him,” I repeated. “Maybe you scared him half to death, but you only winged him. Half of that money’s his as I understand it, and if you agree, I’ll see to it that he gets
it.”

  She didn’t answer. Her mouth was still open, but no sound came out of it. She stared at me dully, uncomprehendingly.

  “It’s all over, Helen,” I said as gently as I could. “Cookie’s not coming. Judith. Judith’s not coming. She sent us instead. She gave us the money for you. The money in exchange for the painting. We’re going to take the painting now. I think it’s the best deal you’re going to get.”

  How dumb these words were you’ll see in a minute. It was dumb to try to talk to someone who only heard a sentence in a paragraph, dumb to try to speak reason with someone who probably left her full sanity behind when the car she was riding in drove off a New England bridge. The least I could have done was cut out the part about Cookie not coming. Hell, the least I could have done was grab the cannon the minute she let go of it.

  Binty came to before I did. She screamed something at me. But as for me, it was like I was hypnotized by that open mouth and the fact that no sound was coming out of it, hypnotized by the reek of turpentine into some deep waking dream where it made perfect sense that things should be happening in slow motion, perfect sense that people should be lighting franc notes with my matches and holding them upside down while they burned into a torch, perfect sense that the whole world should be going up in slow and violent flames. And you could say, if you wanted to, that I’d foreseen what was going to happen and I didn’t stop it because somewhere deep down inside I didn’t want to. Like in the balls of my feet.

  But I’d be the last to be able to tell you you were wrong.

  I saw the Professor set fire to the fistful of money. I heard Binty scream. I saw smoke at the base of the easels where the pile of litter and rags was heaviest, purposefully so, and I saw the pile catch in a flaring ring of innocent flames. But there was a gap of time—as short as a split second, as long as your life—when I did nothing. Then the roar went off, inside me as well as outside, a hellish stinking burst of sound, and the adrenalin spurted through my pores, and I lunged out of pure reflex for what was most precious to me.