The Stiff Upper Lip (9 page)

D
ELATOUR
: Until now?

C
AGE
: Until now.

D
ELATOUR
: How long ago was it that this happened?

C
AGE
: Four, five years.

D
ELATOUR
: But they—these people in California—still want him disposed of? After all this time?

C
AGE
: You said it yourself: ‘Revenge lasts a long time.'

This seemingly innocent quotation brought the cigar into motion again. It was Jeannot, the little wimp, who started for me. He was a tireless bastard. I can see him still, the flat head, the quick eyes in a small, impassive face, as he moved in to do what he did best. It freaked me out. I tried to ward him off and at the same time I hollered. And not only hollered but blubbered, stammered, yammered, and all the other things grown men aren't supposed to do in public. And I shouted at Dédé Delatour:

“If you don't believe me, call them! For Christ's sake, call them and ask! All you've got to do is pick up the fucking phone!”

Delatour smiled at me—not the crooked one but the dinner-table special.

He called off the wimp.

“I already have, Monsieur,” he said. “Last night, I didn't want to—one never likes to disturb one's associates with trivial questions—but you obliged me to. With your fairy tales.”

“All right!” I blurted out “And what did they say?”

He shook his head from side to side, then leaned forward and stubbed out his cigar.

“It's all the same to them,” he said, straightening up. “Adlay—or whatever his name is—is old business.” The smile came back, bigger and flashing of teeth. “They don't give a royal fuck what happens to him. As long as it happens in Europe.”

The news hit me like a ton. It was like somebody had just told me: Hey fella, the world's not round, it's a cube and right over here's where you fall off. I'd been flim-flammed all right; and beaten to an omelette for my pains, but right then I couldn't think by whom. Oh sure, by a blonde, but also by a spade called Roscoe, and maybe Odessa too, defunct, and in addition by everybody who came into my head, from the Bobby Goldsteins, father and son, to old Mrs. Hotchkiss in the Third Grade. By everybody and nobody in sum, and they were all there in my head, having a fine old rampage, and I coulnd't put any of it together then, there was too much noise from the party inside.

Dédé Delatour was trying to tell me something. It had to do with his partners in California, Johnny Vee and friends. Something to the effect that I wasn't part of their organization, that they hadn't hired me after all. Oh, but they knew me all right, our paths had crossed before. And Delatour was asking me some question, asked it more than once. But the numbness was leaving my lips now, and they felt big like rubber tires, and somewhere between them and my brain there must have been an accident because the traffic was piled up for miles in both directions.

“I asked them what they wanted me to do with you,” Delatour was saying. His eyebrows were up. It looked like they were held there by sky-hooks. “
Alors …
? Don't you want to know what they said?”

By way of answer, he had his arm out, fist extended. Then he inverted his fist in the classic gesture: thumb down.

Hail Fucking Caesar.

He seemed to find this a real rib-tickler. He threw his head back and roared.

Around in there, somehow or other, the choreography changed. Don't ask me how, but one minute the table was between us and the next it wasn't and we were both on our feet and Dédé Delatour was glad-handing me like we'd just met.

It was crazy, kind of. We were both about the same height, but I had the impression I was standing on my ankles.

“Don't worry about it,
mon vieux
,” he was telling me. “I like you too much for that. I think I'm really starting to like you. Besides, California is … what? Nine hours, ten thousand kilometers away? A long way off. We can take care of our own affairs, can't we. Besides, if they don't want Adlay, I do. Isn't that right? I think I want him more than you do, more even than the police. Isn't that right?”

“That's right,” I said.

It was crazy, like I said.

“
Alors, mon vieux
. We're going to find' him, aren't we? You and I? I'll be looking for him too, of course, but I've the feeling you'll be the one who's going to find him, yes I do. And that you'll bring him to me. Yes?”

He actually put his arm around my shoulder. Then he motioned to the Belmondo, who was holding up the wall next to the door. The Belmondo stuck his cannon inside his belt and stood aside, and Dédé Delatour walked me to the door in his dressing gown, with his arm around my shoulder.

“Then it'll be time for us to have another talk,” he said, patting me. “I'll be looking forward to it,
mon vieux
. About Adlay's future, yes? But about yours too.”

I don't know how I got out of there, less about how I got home. Only that I did.

The desk clerk at the hotel had some messages for me, plus an unpleasant piece of news for which he kept trying to apologize. He also wanted to know if I wanted him to call a doctor.

I told him to forget about the apology. Also about the doctor.

All I wanted to do was go to bed.

This I did.

7

They were there when I woke up. The one called Frèrejean was mucking around at my dresser. The other was just coming out of the bathroom in his shirt sleeves. He had one sleeve rolled up, like he'd been checking the drains. Neither one of them so much as blushed when they saw me looking at them.

I was lying on top of the bed with all my clothes on. I'd been dreaming. It was one of those dreams where you make up a story to make the pain go away, and it does, but then when the story's over, the pain comes back, so you have to make up another story. Only this time Monsieur le Commissaire Frèrejean was standing by my dresser and the plumber was just coming out of the bathroom, and the pain was back and throbbing, and there was no other story.

They were in no rush. The plumber put on his suit jacket and they went into the sitting room and waited while somehow or other I got myself into the bathroom. I surveyed the victim rockily. All in all, you could say that Delatour's muscle had done a pretty professional job. My left eye was mostly closed, and the skin around it had already started to turn blue. Otherwise there wasn't much visible, and when I pried my lips apart, my teeth were standing in ranks, all present and accounted for. No broken bones either, only forget-me-nots of hurt whenever I breathed or swallowed. I took a hot shower, then a cold one, and did what I could to repair the damage. Then I dressed, slowly, and by the time I got out into the sitting room I was feeling some approximation of human.

Also hungry-human.

It was the middle of the afternoon. Mentally I tipped the desk clerk for having held them off that long.

“Is it going to take a while?” I asked them.

That would depend on me.

“Well, long or short, I'm going to eat something. Do you want anything?”

They would accept coffee, yes, but nothing else, thank you. I ordered up coffee for three and sandwiches for one, plus various other things that came into my mind while I pictured the sandwiches. But when the waiter brought it all up, about all I could get past my swollen gullet was the Glenfiddich.

“Well,” I asked them, “did you find anything interesting, looking around? Or were you just browsing?”

“Where is Adlay, Monsieur?” Frèrejean countered blandly. “Where is Valérie Merchadier?”

Them too. It was getting to be a refrain.

“I take it you'd have found them if they were here.”

“That's not what I asked you, Monsieur.”

“I know it's not what you asked me. I also know you gave me twenty-four hours to produce him. Well? I failed.”

“You led us a merry chase, Monsieur,” said Frèrejean imperturbably. “Now it's over. You will please answer my question.”

“I don't know where they are.”

“You did yesterday, didn't you?”

“That's right. Until early afternoon.”

“Where were they?”

I gave him the Neuilly address. Not that it would do him much good now.

He jotted it down in a pocket-sized notebook.

“Then what happened?”

“Then I went off to try to prove Hadley hadn't killed Odessa Grimes. I ran into a little trouble. I'd told them to stay in the apartment. They didn't. I haven't seen them since.”

“You realize, I presume, that at the least you can be charged with obstructing a police investigation?”

This pissed the hell out of me. There I was staring at them out of one eye, and like it would have been clear to anybody but a blind Mongoloid that I hadn't been obstructing anything lately except with my face. But they either couldn't see it or wouldn't

“Go ahead,” I said. “Charge me.”

Up to this point Frèrejean had done the talking, but the next question came from the plumber.

“Did you?” he asked.

“Did I what?”

“Did you prove he didn't kill Odessa Grimes?”

“Yes. At least to my own satisfaction.”

“How?” This from Frèrejean again.

“When Grimes was killed, Hadley was otherwise occupied.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that he was fucking a woman.”

“Valérie Merchadier?”

“No. Her name is Lamentin. She was Grimes' girl friend, at least some of the time. Marie-Josèphe Lamentin. You may have some trouble getting her to admit it. About Hadley, I mean. I did. But, then, your methods are better than mine.”

I spelled the name, started to give the address. But Frèrejean wasn't writing.

“We already talked to her,” he said. “She corroborates what you've said. She's given Adlay his alibi.”

An interesting, if surprising, piece of information. Assuming, as I did, that Dédé Delatour had set Roscoe up, then something had happened in the last twenty-four hours to change his mind.

“When did you talk to her?” I asked.

“That's no concern of yours,” Frèrejean replied. “The question remains: if Adlay can prove his innocence, why has he run away?”

“I don't know. Roscoe's a big boy. Maybe he's afraid you won't give him the chance. He can read the papers too. Or maybe there are other people who want him as much as you do.”

“What people?” asked the plumber.

“What people what?”

“Want Hadley?”

“Dédé Delatour, for instance,” I said, with a casual shrug. If I expected surprise from them, though, I didn't get it Frankly, I didn't expect it On the other hand, they didn't even make a show of asking me who he was.

“You've talked to Delatour?” asked the plumber.

“That's right, can't you tell? Suffice it that it wasn't my idea.”

It was around then that I began to realize the plumber wasn't just a plumber. For one thing, he could get around the H in Hadley without making it seem like he was blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. Then there was a kind of deference between the two of them that suggested equality. I mean, the plumbers in France have strictly walk-on, non-speaking parts, and you'll never find a mere police inspector taking over the conversation when his boss is in the room. Also, when the Police Judiciaire want to talk to you, they like the homier atmosphere of the Quai des Orfèvres, whereas Bobet, as his name turned out to be, was sufficiently at home in my hotel suite. In other words, Bobet wasn't Police Judiciaire, and with his next question I could make a fair guess at placing him.

“What do you know about the drug traffic in France, Monsieur?”

For the record, the official name of his branch goes like this: L'Office Centrale de la Répression du Trafic Illicite de Stupéfiants. Translated literally, that's The Central Office for the Repression of the Illicit Traffic of Stupefiers. To put it in simple English, Bobet was a nark.

“Come on,” I said, grinning lopsidedly at him. “You don't mean to tell me you found some grass in my underpants!”

I guess it wasn't much of a gag. I was the only one grinning, and it hurt me to grin.

The truth was, though, that I didn't know a hell of a lot about the drug traffic in France. From what I'd read and heard, it sounded fairly flourishing, except that latterly the action had begun to play havoc with the balance of payments. By which I mean that if the French narks, with some help from the Americans, had managed to put a lid on the export of the made-in-Marseille varieties, mainly heroin, from an import point of view the joint was as wide open as a slab of Gruyère cheese. And this despite some penalties if you got nailed that made the American statutes look positively permissive.

Bobet largely confirmed this. In fact, to hear him tell it, France was the only country in the world with a dope problem.

“France is a hexagon, Monsieur,” he said. “We have three thousand kilometers of land frontiers with six different countries. Four of them are members of the Common Market, which complicates our task immeasurably. Thirty-seven million foreigners visit France each year. You may enter France by air, sea, train, road, or on foot. We control what we can, when and where we can, but our service is understaffed, and our colleagues in the customs are overworked.”

“Well,” I said, “I'm sorry to hear that, with all the unemployment too. But if you've got it in mind to offer me a job, I'm afraid I have other plans.”

Again, not a smile.

“Under these circumstances,” Bobet went on, “we're not interested in the couriers, the street pushers, the middlemen. We can't afford to be. Cut off a branch and the tree continues to grow. Rather it's those at the top we're after, the organizers, the financiers, the …”

“The big bonnets?” I said. “Isn't that what you call them in French.”