by Alan Furst
Albers had always suspected that the mistress went home to some grim husband, who looked up sharply from his newspaper when she came through the door. “Well, what’s for dinner?”
Casson got up every day and looked for a job. He read the petits annonces and underlined the best possibilities, then set off for the morning search. But he immediately ran into problems. For one, Casson might have found a job, but Marin couldn’t, because Marin didn’t have a past. “And where have you worked, monsieur?” He tried various answers-his own business, a job abroad, but the eyebrows went up and Casson looked for the door.
Once or twice he came close. He applied to be a salesman in the toy department of the Bazaar de l’Hotel de Ville, the BHV. The manager was sympathetic. When Casson started to tell stories, he held up a hand. “Please,” he said, “I understand.” Just what he understood Casson could only imagine, but when he returned to the store that afternoon, the manager told him his candidacy had been vetoed at a higher level.
To save money, he stopped taking the Metro. The weather turned furious in the last days of February, broken clouds rolling like smoke above the rooftops, the western sky black and violet at sunset. Casson walked head down into the wind, one hand clamped to his hat.
He tried hard for a week, then went back to see Charne. Charne had a scarf wound tight around his throat, his eyes were red and watery. “I’m sick as a dog,” he said. Casson sympathized, then said he needed to find work.
“What I used to do, if I needed money between pictures, was go to a cafe near Luna Park. The ride operators had a wall where they pinned up notes, help wanted, whatever they needed. In fact”-he smiled at the memory-“just before we made The Devil’s Bridge I was running a Ferris wheel out there.”
Casson tried it the next day. He found the cafe, read the notes on the wall, and went to see a man called Lamy. “I own the Dodge-em cars,” Lamy said. “I need a bookkeeper, maybe two mornings a week. Can you do it?”
Casson said he could. A strange little man. Lamy sat behind his desk in a soiled homburg and an overcoat with a velvet collar and told Casson stories. Born in Paris but traveled the world. He’d made and lost fortunes, served in the Rumanian navy-by accident, he swore it! Sold wind-up toys on the streets of Shanghai. “Come in tomorrow morning,” he said. “We’ll see how it goes.”
Casson showed up at eight and went to work. The money wasn’t much, but he figured he might just be able to squeak through on it if other opportunities came his way. He decided to leave the Benoit and move into a cheaper hotel, a Gothic old horror out by the Saint-Ouen flea market.
He made contact with Sylvie, the FTP liaison girl, and let her know his new address and the number of the pay phone by the downstairs desk. Then he packed his belongings: an old shirt, a razor, toothbrush, underwear, pencils, a tattered copy of Braudel, the Walther.
He worked in Lamy’s office, writing long neat columns of figures, using an adding machine for the totals. Just outside the window was the Dodge-em ride. As the drivers-mostly German soldiers-stomped on their accelerators, showers of blue sparks rained down from where the cars’ rods made contact with the copper ceiling. The cars bounced and shivered as they hit, the drivers spun their steering wheels like the great Nuvolari, their girlfriends screamed and hung on tight.
That evening, Casson returned to the office to finish up his work. At nine, a flight of British bombers passed over the city. The air-raid sirens wailed and, as usual, the power was cut off. The rides went dark and the cars coasted to a stop. Casson stared out the window-something so strange about the scene he couldn’t look away. The German soldiers sat patiently in the dead bumper cars, one or two of them lit cigarettes, while airplane engines droned overhead.
Fifteen minutes later, the all-clear sounded, the little orange lights strung around the Dodge-em ride went back on, and the cars clattered around the floor.
The first day of March. Payday. Thank God, Casson thought, he was down to his last fifty francs. He went out to the park and looked for Lamy. “Come back this afternoon,” Lamy said. “I’ll have it for you then.”
That left him with several hours to kill. He took the Metro over to the Benoit, and asked at the desk if he’d received a postcard. No, nothing had come, but he could leave a forwarding address. He said he was still looking for a permanent place to stay, and left the hotel. Where was Helene? By now she should be in Algiers. Could he go see de la Barre, ask for news? Maybe once, he thought. It wasn’t time for that yet. Inter-zonal postcards were slow, he had to wait.
He walked across the city, headed for Saint-Ouen. It took him an hour and a half-the streets glazed with ice-and he was tired by the time he got there. He trudged up the stairs and saw that the door to his room was padlocked. For a time, he stood and stared at it. Then he went back down to the desk.
“I’m in Room 65,” he said. “It’s locked.”
The clerk looked up from his newspaper. “Rent due by noon on the first day of the month.”
“It’s two-thirty.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I get paid this afternoon,” Casson said.
The clerk nodded. Everybody in the world had money coming. Mostly, in his experience, it didn’t come.
“Isn’t there some way?”
Apparently not. “We must all pay to live, monsieur.”
Over at Luna Park, Lamy was in his office. Casson told him he’d been locked out of his room. “Once they get to know you,” Lamy said, “they ease up a little.” He took a metal cash box from the bottom drawer, wet his index finger, counted the notes, and fanned them out on the desk. Then he put the coins on top. “Everything cash at Luna Park,” he said with a smile.
It wasn’t enough.
Casson could pay two weeks’ rent and eat for a week, but he’d run out before he got paid again.
“We’ll see you Thursday morning,” Lamy said.
Casson thanked him and put the money in his pocket. “Is there something else I can do?” he said. “I could use the money.”
Lamy thought it over. “There might be, remind me next week.”
Casson returned to the hotel and paid the clerk, who climbed the stairs and took the padlock off the door. Casson sat on the sagging bed. This can’t go on. Maybe it was time to see his old friends. Would they help? He wasn’t sure. If they were living as they always had, it was costing them a fortune. The coal and food and clothing they were used to was available on the marche noir, but getting more expensive every day. Parisians lived on nine hundred francs a month-if they did without. Lately, it cost nine hundred francs for two kilos of butter. No, he thought, leave the friends alone. Think of something else.
He reached under the mattress and pulled out the Walther. Its presence had worried him since his return to Paris. Under Occupation law, the ownership of weapons was a serious crime-somebody might find it and turn him in. What could he get? A thousand? A few hundred? At least he’d be rid of the thing, and whatever he made would help.
He put the Walther in his belt and left the hotel.
He walked north, through Clignancourt, most of it boarded up in the late afternoon. Saturdays, before the war, he used to come here. He never bought anything but he liked the feel of the place, dusty drapes and crackled varnish, postcards of Lille in 1904.
Out past the antiquaires’ stalls of Serpette and Biron there was a different market, this one jammed with people. The streets were lined with pushcarts and rickety tables piled with old clothes, rusty pots and pans, shoes and dishes and sheets. The narrow aisles were packed; the crowds shifting and pushing, somebody stopped to bargain, somebody going against traffic. A vendor called out to Casson, “You could use a new tie, monsieur.” He stood by a cart full of spotted horrors, some with painted scenes. “Take a look, anyhow,” he said. He had a beret pulled down over his ears and stamped his feet to keep warm.
“I need to sell something,” Casson said. “Quietly.”
The man blew on his hands. “Quietly,” he sa
id. “Papers? Ration coupons?”
“No. A gun.”
The man looked him over. “Keep going,” he said. “To the end of the row, then right. You’ll see the people you need to talk to.”
He turned right at the end of the aisle and found another market. Hard to see at first, the same carts and tables, the same crowd, poking at clocks and lamps. But, in among them, a different group-hands in pockets, restless eyes.
By a table stacked with army blankets he saw a young man in a leather coat, belt pulled tight. Casson caught his eye and walked toward him. Then somebody-Casson never saw who it was-hurried past and whispered “Rafle.” Roundup. It happened so fast Casson wasn’t sure he’d heard it.
The man in the leather coat had vanished. Somewhere ahead, a sudden commotion-shouts, a dog barking. Then, police. They swarmed through the crowd, shoving people aside with batons, grabbing others and demanding papers.
The gun. He backed up, working his way around the table, took the Walther from his belt and slid it into the pile of blankets. Then squeezed between carts into the next aisle, jammed up against two women with shopping baskets who were blocked by the crowd. He stood still and watched, a bystander. The police were everywhere, thirty or forty of them. He saw a couple-foreign-looking, the man bearded, the woman in a head scarf-questioned, then led away. A kid, maybe fifteen, tried to run for it. The flics chased him down, he broke free and crawled under a table. Casson heard the batons as they landed.
He felt a hand close on his elbow. When he turned, the flic said, “Get your papers out.” As Casson reached under his coat, the man glanced at somebody behind his back, a question in his eyes — is it him? He got his answer, took Casson’s identity card without bothering to read it, and slid it in his pocket. “This one,” he called out. Casson was surrounded. One of them jerked his elbows together, another snapped handcuffs on his wrists.
They were taken to the far end of the market, Casson and ten others, shackled to a chain and led off to the Saint-Ouen police station. The men were separated from the women and pushed into a holding cell-yellowed tile, the ammoniac reek of Javelle water, a bucket in the corner. The bearded man he’d seen arrested paced around the cell for a few minutes, then squeezed in next to him, sitting with his back against the wall.
He was balding, heavy in the shoulders, and smelled of woodsmoke and clothing worn too long. “Listen, my friend,” he said. He had a thick accent, Polish or Russian, stared straight ahead and barely moved his lips when he spoke. A prison voice, Casson thought. “We can’t stay here.”
Casson made a half-gesture-nothing to be done.
“This is a little police station, not a prison. One door and you’re out. We can take the guard when he comes in-I’ll do it. You grab his keys and open the cells. Let everybody go, will give us a better chance to get away.”
“They’ll shoot us,” Casson said.
“Maybe not.”
“It won’t work.”
“Listen to me.” The man leaned hard against Casson, his shoulder was like a rock. “We started running in Lithuania in ’40-we didn’t come this far to die here.” He paused. “You know what happens next?”
Casson didn’t answer.
“Do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I know. We saw it done.”
Casson heard footsteps, the man beside him tensed. A flic stood at the barred door of the cell, a key in his hand.
“Jean Marin?”
“Yes?”
From the man beside him, a fierce whisper. “Don’t be a fool!”
“Come to the door,” the flic said.
Casson stood up. So did the bearded man.
“Not you,” the flic said. “You sit down.”
The flic turned the key in the lock. As Casson walked to the door, he looked over his shoulder. The bearded man saw he wasn’t going to try it, sat down, let his head fall back against the wall.
Casson stepped into the corridor, heard the door slam shut behind him.
“Straight ahead,” the flic said. He took the shoulder of Casson’s coat and shoved him forward. To the desk, and beyond. Down a long hallway to the end, then a second hallway to a heavy door in an alcove. The flic let him go, and faced him. “Back in the market, somebody got rid of a pistol in a pile of blankets. That was you.”
Casson was silent.
The flic leaned close to him. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me, what would this Monsieur Marin, the insurance adjuster, be doing with a Walther pistol?”
No answer.
“You better tell me something,” the flic said, his voice low. “There are forty agents in this station-some of them would be calling the Gestapo right now.”
But you aren’t one of them. “You know what I am,” Casson said.
The flic watched his eyes. Truth or lie? He handed Casson his identity papers, went to the door, ran the bolt back, and pushed it open. It was dark outside, Casson could see a long alley that ran to the street. The flic looked at his watch. “End of shift,” he said. “Things to be done.” He turned abruptly and walked down the hall.
Corbeil-Essonnes. 1 March.
At 11:30 A.M., Brasova, Weiss, and Juron met in the FTP safe house. They worked their way through several points on the agenda, then Brasova said, “The Center’s transmission of 27 February transfers the case of Alexander Kovar to the French section of the Foreign Directorate.” That meant Juron.
Weiss had seen the message. He didn’t like it. He met Brasova’s eyes-any chance? They’d known each other for a long time, since Weiss’s service in the Comintern in the 1930s. “Can we be absolutely sure we won’t need him again?” he said.
“It’s up to the Center,” Juron said. “Their decision is final.”
“I have to agree,” Brasova said. “Of course,” she said to Weiss, “Casson will remain your responsibility.” She meant, you got half of what you wanted, don’t be greedy.
Weiss turned to Juron. “What do you plan to do?”
“He’s become a liability,” Juron said.
To Weiss, Brasova said, “It’s my understanding that the last time we met on this subject, you promised Colonel Antipin your cooperation.”
“I did,” Weiss said.
“Do you know Kovar’s whereabouts?” Brasova asked.
Weiss started to say that the investigation was ongoing.
“We know,” Juron said impatiently. “Casson was followed to an office on the rue Petrelle. Kovar goes there at night.”
Weiss gave up. “Is there anything else you need?”
“Tell your people I have a job for them.”
Later, after Juron left, Weiss said to Brasova, “It’s wrong to do this, Lila. He acted against the Germans, nothing more.”
“I know it’s wrong,” Brasova said. “I’d guess that Antipin did the best he could. He horse-traded-saved Casson, gave up Kovar. So that’s the way it has to be.”
Weiss drummed his fingers on the table.
Brasova’s voice softened. “Let it go,” she said.
HOTEL DU COMMERCE
Marie-Claire was waiting for him, a little way down the street from the doorway on the rue de l’Assomption. She’d thrown a fur coat over a pair of pajamas. “Mon Dieu,” she said, when she got a look at him.
She took his arm and led him around to the side of the building, using the service entry meant for deliveries and adultery, avoiding the eagle-eyed concierge in her loge in the front hall. They took the stairs up instead of the elevator. Not the first time Casson had come this way. But then, not the first time for Marie-Claire, either.
She opened the door, Casson stepped inside. His old apartment-producer’s fees from Paramount for Night Run, development money from Pathe for The Man from Cairo, which was never made. That, and some very dire months when the bills sat in a desk drawer and steamed. But, back then, a love nest, so it didn’t matter. The dinner parties came later. And all the rest of it.
Casson took off his coat. Marie-Claire neve
r faltered, hung the awful thing in the hall closet. “What about Bruno?” he said.
“In Rome. He’s getting the dealership for the Alfa Romeo. The 2500, I think. Is there an SS model?”
“Yes.”
“So there he is, wining and dining Mussolini’s nephew-somebody like that-to get an export permit. Anyhow, he’s not here.”
She shrugged off her coat, revealing cherry-red lounging pajamas, stepped out of her shoes, and put on matching slippers. “Jean-Claude,” she said, shaking her head in mock exasperation. “What time is it?”
“A little after six.”
She fell back on the sofa, covered her eyes with her hands. She was the same, he thought. Maybe a little blonder than usual, but the same. Not beautiful. Narrow eyes, thin lips-spite and meanness promised, though not all that often delivered. Then what, he’d always wondered, made her so deeply appetizing? She lived in clouds of perfume, sat close to you, touched you. But that was simply parisienne. There was more to her, and here he didn’t have the word. Indomitable? Strong, anyhow. And driven by grandes ardeurs-if she wanted something, she was on fire to have it.
“A shower?” he said. “Any warm water?”
“All you want. We have to pay the black-market prices, but Monsieur Krajec-you remember, the coalman-has been a magician.”
“I would like a shower,” he said.
“I’ll tell you what, just leave everything in the bathroom, and when Rosine comes in, we’ll try to do something with it. Jean-Claude?”
“Yes?”
“Why do you wear that little mustache? I had to look twice to make sure it was you.”
“It’s me.”
“It’s horrible.”
“I know.” He went into the bathroom and undressed. There was a full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door. He shuddered at the sight of himself, thinner than he realized.