The Devil’s Daughter, page 15
“I liked Hubert,” I say to V because I did and because V expects me to say something different. “Also, he’s probably the best-dressed guy I’ve ever met in my life, but that pretty much comes with the territory, doesn’t it?”
“He thought you were very handsome,” V tells me, and I know what that grin on her face means.
“You afraid I’m gonna run off with him or something?”
“Jack Coffey in bed with a man. I’d pay to see that.”
“Yeah? What makes you think I haven’t been?” I haven’t, but the momentary flicker of doubt that plays across V’s face while she wonders whether I have is fun to watch.
A couple of weeks later, Dovima sends word that she and the Chevalier have decided to call it quits and she needs her place back, so V and I rent an apartment in the eleventh near the Place de la Bastille. It’s a tiny month-to-month deal, but it suits us just fine, and after a few weeks we settle into a routine. In the morning I buy the International Herald Tribune at a kiosk on the Avenue Parmentier and grab breakfast at a little café nearby. In the afternoon I go for a run around the Tuileries or break a sweat in the gym Georges Carpentier owns, while V works a shoot for French Vogue or indulges in a long lunch with her model friends. She stops off at Les Halles or at one of the markets on the Rue de Buci on her way home to pick up something for dinner. It’s usually something vaguely exotic, tripe or calf brains—the less I know about this, the better—but whatever V cooks up is always tasty. At night we listen to records on an old RCA Victrola I found in a secondhand shop, and after a shot of absinthe, we climb into bed and make love. We’ve been making love a lot since pitching our tent in Paris. Not that we didn’t back in New York, but Paris turns out to be as romantic as everyone says it is, and we can’t seem to get enough of each other. And at least a couple of times each week we go out to the clubs.
The first time we walk into the Tabou, Dizzy and his combo are on the bandstand, and I feel like I’m home. He does a comical double take when he spots me, then has a word in the manager’s ear, and before we know it, V and I drinking for free. We stop in again the next night and the night after that, and pretty soon we’re regulars. The Tabou’s manager is named Boris, and he makes sure there’s always a table reserved for us and our drinks are waiting before we sit down.
When Dizzy’s two-week gig is up and he leaves town, Bud Powell takes his place, and after him, Sidney Bechet. I’m beginning to feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.
In New York, if you walk into a jazz club with Victoria Hemming on your arm, it turns most everybody’s head. The same holds true in the Tabou, especially among the artsy crowd and the crew of existentialists who happen to live in the neighborhood. Of course, I have no idea what an existentialist is or who they are, so when Boris, who doubles as a poet, ushers a hard-looking guy with a Gitane dangling from his lips over to our table and introduces him as Albert, I’m clueless.
But V isn’t. She can’t invite the guy to sit down fast enough, and the two start gabbing in French like they’ve known each other for years. By now, I’ve picked up a word or two and get that Albert is a writer and a famous one at that. Still, I’m beginning to feel like a third wheel, when he suddenly turns to me and asks in perfect English if this is my first time in Paris. I try to hide my surprise and tell him it isn’t, but that the last time I was here, it was with the Eightieth Infantry on the day after liberation, and the perpetual French scowl on Albert’s face disappears.
He was in the Resistance, he says, editing Combat, a Resistance newspaper. I’ve got to hand it to the guy. He was taking his life in his hands with no other way to fight back than with his pen. The Gestapo would have had him shot if they found him, and that’s after torturing him in some dank basement for a few days.
Albert and I weren’t more than fifty feet apart taking sniper fire on that August day in ’44. It makes for a pretty amazing coincidence, and it isn’t long before V feels like the third wheel while he and I get stinking drunk.
Naturally I’m curious about the guy, so the next day I wander over to Shakespeare and Company to pick up one of his books. The American college kid behind the counter finds a translation, and I take it home.
To say that The Stranger is dense is to give Albert too little credit, and I don’t really understand the quote on the flyleaf. “In our society,” it says, “any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.” I’ve been thinking about what that means for days now, and to tell you the truth, I still don’t get it.
CHAPTER 29
Muffy Palmer is dead. The poor kid got caught up in something even I don’t really understand and paid for it with her life. I know this because Janie Cantwell sent me a telegram, care of American Express in Paris, adding, “Call me as soon as you can.”
I give my office number to the girl with the pixie cut behind the desk in the American Express office in the Place de l’Opéra and cool my heels in an airless phone kiosk for a good hour, waiting for her to connect my call. When she finally does and Janie comes on the line, it sounds like she’s underwater.
“When did it happen?” I ask her, and she says that Muffy’s body was discovered a couple of days ago.
“Where did they find her?”
“In an alley behind the Dalton School.”
“Shot in the head?”
“How did you know that?”
“Who told you about it?”
“Bernie Rothstein came by the office looking for you.”
Janie is smart enough not to let Bernie know where I am, but even at four thousand miles away, I can tell from the sound of her voice that she’s rattled.
“And Jack, somebody broke into the office yesterday,” she tells me, and my throat goes dry. I’m picturing Janie scared out of her wits hiding under her desk while some murderous thug ransacks my office looking for God-knows-what. “Lucky for me there was a white sale at Alexanders,” she says. “I needed new sheets and pillowcases, so I wasn’t here when it happened. But Nat was.”
“Jesus, Janie. Is he all right?” If whoever that bastard is clipped Nat Bernstein, I’m on the next flight from Orly.
“Yeah, he’s okay. You know how Nat’s colitis has him running to the bathroom every five minutes. Whoever broke in spotted him zipping up his fly when he came out of the john and took a shot at him. I got back right after it happened and it looked bad, you know, lots of blood, and Nat was as pale as a ghost, but it didn’t turn out to be very much. A bullet took a chunk out of his ear though, so I ran him over to St. Vincent’s to get him patched up. The poor guy was scared half to death, but other than that, he’s fine.”
I tell Janie to lock up the office, go home, and not come in again until I let her know that it’s safe. I’ve been gone for a few months now but kept paying her to look after things while I’m away. Nat must be laid up after his ordeal, so I wire Bernice and tell her to make sure that he stays home too. I feel bad about the whole business, bad and guilty like it’s all my fault. Nat’s an accountant for Christ’s sake, not somebody you take a potshot at, not in his line of work. Janie signed on to take care of my filing and answer my phone. Risking her life while doing it wasn’t part of the job description. I feel responsible for them both. He’s a solid citizen and she’s a great girl. I don’t want to lose Janie, but I’m thinking it might be best if she looks for another job. Before I can tell her that, she wants to know when I’m coming back.
“Soon,” I say. “Just stay home until I do. I’ll have Nat send your check to your apartment.”
“Forget it, Jack. You don’t pay me to sit on my behind watching soaps all day long. You shouldn’t anyway. And I’m not going to let some guy scare me off either. Look, I know you. I know you’re worried about me and you’re probably going to tell me to find another job, but I’m not doing it. Believe it or not, I like working for you. Okay, yesterday was a little more exciting than usual, but it’s not like it’s going to happen again. At least, I don’t think it is. Anyway, how are you going to survive without me? Face it, Jack. You need me.”
She’s right. Janie runs the parts of my life that I’m either too inept or too bored to deal with myself.
“I’ll have the locks changed and put the place back together, but you ought to stay in Paris for the time being—you know, so somebody doesn’t blow a hole in your head too.”
This is sound advice, and I love Janie for being brave and looking out for me, but I can’t just hole up in Paris with V and swan around like some expat swell.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,” I tell her, “but the one thing I do know is that the guy who broke into the office is a killer and I want you out of his line of fire. I don’t care if the place looks like a bomb went off in it, just get out of there and stay out until I come back. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Master.”
“And tell Nat to send his medical bills to me.”
“Okay, but just out of curiosity, how are you going to pay them?”
“Nobody likes a wiseass, Janie.”
“That’s not true, Jack. You do.”
I don’t know how much of this I’m going to tell V. We’re probably the happiest we’ve ever been here in Paris. She doesn’t want to go home now, and she may not want to, ever. When we talked about it, V said that because she works everywhere, she can live anywhere. When I asked what I’m supposed to do to earn my keep while she’s busy being beautiful, V tells me about a friend she has at the Herald Trib. She says that being a private detective, I have a good nose for secrets and scandal, and that as soon as I’m proficient enough in the language, her friend will take me on.
I have to admit that the idea of becoming a cub reporter appeals to me in a Ben Hecht/Charles McArthur sort of way, but my good nose for secrets and scandal also tells me that this offer isn’t really on the up-and-up. Given who V is and what she looks like—and considering that her “friend” doesn’t know me from Adam—I’m thinking that he might just have an ulterior motive.
I don’t say this to V. Instead, I rub my chin like I’m intrigued. But even if the guy from the Trib is on the level, I’m not going to take the job. The business I left back in New York is not only unfinished, it’s festering, and I have to do something to cauterize the wound.
But for the moment, I take Janie’s advice and sit tight. Anyway, Monk is in town. I spot an item in La Monde saying he and his combo are playing two nights at Le Caveau in the Latin Quarter. Monk and Sidney Bechet are close, and I figure he’s probably staying with Sidney in his flat in Montmartre.
I get hold of the number, call over there, and Monk seems tickled to hear from me. He’s laughing when he comes on the line anyway and wants to know what a Hell’s Kitchen semi-Jewboy like me is doing in the City of Lights. I promise to tell him over dinner, and V makes a reservation for the three of us at the Brassiere Lipp in Saint-Germaine.
Monk is holding court with a few of the locals by the time we get there. When he walks the streets of New York, nobody recognizes him. In Paris, Monk is a celebrity. It’s not just that his embroidered skullcap and goatee are distinctive. Jazz is something of a secular religion over here, and Monk ranks as at least a cardinal, if not a candidate for pope in that hierarchy. He spots us when we walk in the door and waves us over to his table. He signs a few final autographs for his acolytes before gently shooing them away, and we sit down.
“As breathtaking as always, Victoria,” he says to V, “but you look like the dog’s dinner, boyo.” I take the dig in the good-natured way that it’s given, then kiss Monk on both of his cheeks because we’re in France and because I know it’s going to annoy him.
A couple of hours later, after we’ve stuffed ourselves, Monk tells me that before he left the city, he saw Louis Garrett with a covey of very young girls. He brought them into Minton’s late one night, Monk says, and they were impossible to ignore.
This surprises me and not because Garrett is above parading jailbait around in public. I’m surprised because Teddy Hill, Minton’s owner, is liable to lose his cabaret license if the liquor authority finds out that he’s serving underage girls. I say this to Monk.
He shakes his head at me. “It probably costs Garrett a pretty penny, Jack, but even our friend Teddy can be bought.” This is disappointing. I like to think of Teddy Hill as incorruptible in a pig-headed sort of way, but I suppose everybody really does have their price. More to the point, it means Bernie Rothstein hasn’t been able to tag Garrett for abuse, or rape, or murder. Going out on the town with his schoolgirl harem is either an act of mindless bravado or evidence that Garrett isn’t remotely worried about being pinched. I’d lay odds that it’s the latter. It also means that whoever iced the Dugans and Muffy Palmer has gotten away with it—at least for now. This not only offends my sense of decency, but it means he’s still out there looking for me, which gives me a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. And on top of all that, I still don’t know what happened to Lucy Garrett.
“I do,” Monk says, nipping the end off a Cohiba before dipping it into a snifter of cognac and striking a match. “I saw her.”
“You saw her where?”
“At Minton’s. Not the night her old man came in. A different night.”
“Was she alone?”
“Alone? She don’t get into the clubs alone. The girl was with a white cat, an older guy. And another thing. She has one in the oven. Looked like she was six or seven months gone.”
Lucy’s mother said that she was pregnant, but the woman isn’t playing with a full deck so I wasn’t sure whether to believe her. In fact, none of this is tracking for me. The last time I saw Lucy, she was passed out on V’s bed on Beekman Place in a heroin-induced stupor. If she was expecting then, it didn’t show, and now she’s strutting around town big as life and pregnant without caring who knows it? She’s on somebody’s arm too. It’s hard to know who that is, but seeing as Lucy seems able to twist men around her little finger, it could be almost anybody.
And I had thought that the Dugan brothers were killed because they got in the way when Lucy was snatched, but now I think maybe Lucy knew the shooter and was in cahoots with him. But what got Muffy Palmer killed? She must have known something that she shouldn’t have, but what?
“So, when are we going home?” V and I are crossing the Pont Alexandre after our dinner with Monk, and she’s reading my mind.
“I don’t want you coming with me, V. The guy after me could take a crack at you too. I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I have to wrap this thing up one way or another, and I’ll rest a lot easier knowing you’re safe over here.”
“You still don’t get it, do you, Jack?”
“Don’t get what?”
V slips her arm through mine, smiles, and says, “I’ll book us a flight in the morning.”
CHAPTER 30
Flying is old hat to V, but I hate it. Pan Am started flying jets across the Atlantic a few months ago, meaning that you can have lunch in Paris and dinner in New York, so everybody is anxious to give it a try.
The plane is packed, but we’re in first class. V insists it’s the only way to travel, and after taking a Miltown, she slips on an eye mask and dozes off. I, on the other hand, am as nervous as a cat. Every time the plane shudders or we hit an air pocket, my sphincter tightens. I order a drink from a passing stewardess, then another, throwing back a couple of those tiny bottles of scotch hoping they’ll calm my nerves. They don’t.
Six hours later, I let out a yelp when the pilot lowers the landing gear as we approach New York, which is about the time V wakes up from her nap, looking refreshed and fabulous. She smiles at me, asks if I enjoyed the flight, and doesn’t seem to notice that I look like I’ve been on a weeklong bender.
We collect our luggage, grab a cab outside the Pan Am terminal at Idlewild, and take it into Manhattan. I don’t want to risk going to my apartment on Perry Street or V’s on Beekman Place. The shooter must know about them both and could be waiting at either one, so I have the cabbie drop us off at the Plaza, where we’ve booked a room.
It’s a necessary precaution, but lying low with Victoria Hemming is a dicey affair. That face of hers couldn’t be more recognizable, and if she hits any of her usual haunts or has lunch in someplace public, word is bound to get out that she’s back in town. My problem is that V is pretty devil-may-care about the whole thing, and despite me telling her to be discreet, she isn’t going to sit in a hotel room twiddling her thumbs while I try to put the Garrett case to bed.
Once we settle in at the Plaza, I walk over to Fifty-Eighth Street and call Bernie Rothstein from a pay phone. I don’t want Jimmy Mullen overhearing us, so when Bernie comes on the line, I ask him if he’s alone.
“Yeah, I’m alone. Where the hell have you been?”
“Meet me by the carousel in the park in an hour and don’t tell Mullen where you’re going.”
“Okay, but why the cloak-and-dagger?”
“I’ll tell you when you get there,” I say and hang up.
Spring in Central Park is something to behold, particularly if you’re a city kid like me. When I was in school, I’d cut class sometimes just to lie out in the Sheep Meadow and soak up the sun. I’ve got some time to kill before meeting Bernie, so I wander over to the zoo to check out the seals and Bobby the polar bear, whose once snow-white fur is now tinged a sort of nicotine brown from the soot of the city. I buy a hot dog smothered in mustard and sauerkraut from a street vendor, then amble over to the carousel, take a seat on a park bench, and wait for Rothstein to show. It isn’t long before he does.
“Want a bite?” I ask, offering him my dog.
“Kraut gives me gas,” he says. “Now, what am I doing here?”
“Do you have a line on who took out Muffy Palmer?”
“We’ve got our eyes on a couple of mooks, but I don’t think either one of them is the guy.”
