The Cafe Girl Read online

  'Gunther, you owe me several favors...'

  'No!' the German exclaimed. 'There is no way that I am going to request of Best, or of any senior administrator, for that matter, that they release a man who harbored Jews and insulted a senior Gestapo officer.' He glanced nervously around the parking lot. 'Giraud, I'm not sure you quite understand how much anti-Jewish sentiment there is even in the rank-and-file these days. I mean, they were never popular, with their hook noses and their forelocks. I bare them no ill will and even I find myself hating them a little, we are exposed to so much of it. No, this would be beyond foolish, my friend.'

  'I'm not asking you to repatriate Jerusalem, Gunther, just help me out with one Jew,' Giraud said. 'One. And from what I understand, a very wealthy one, with very grateful family members.'

  'My God, man, do you know what you're asking? I would be carved alive and sent to the Russian campaign as meat for the dogs if Best found out.'

  'Inquire, carefully. That's all that I ask for now. Perhaps we can start with his location. Think about it, Gunther: enough money in a bank account that, once Germany has won the war, you can buy a home and settle down.'

  Obst took a hasty puff off the cigarette and exhaled, then another. He'd told Giraud about his childhood, growing up in a cold-water flat with his four brothers, each larger and more menacing than the last. The idea of owning his own home was tempting, and the Frenchman had gone for his sweet spot. He threw the last of the butt down onto the ground and stepped on it. 'Giraud...'

  'Just inquiries. A location first, and then maybe we work on getting him out.'

  Obst took a deep breath. 'I shall do what I can, Giraud. But this seems like an extreme amount of risk on your end for just another score. If it starts to go bad, you know I'll just drop it, don't you?'

  'Believe me, I understand, Gunther: like everything, this is strictly business.'

  21...

  In the early morning hours, Giraud tossed and turned in his bed, his sleep fitful and embattled by dreams of failure and loss. In his tortured slumber, Isabelle fought at the front, led the charge, dressed as a simple waitress. To the men in her imaginary unit, she was La Beaute de la Guerre, carrying a French standard as they ground the Nazis under their boots. But she was in trouble, he knew. One moment he was watching her at the front, and the next he found himself on a dark Paris street, seeing her run across the cobblestones and through the shadows, shades of grey and black interrupted by the stark light of the car's headlights, the gleaming beads of water on its dark paint job, the whiteness of the light upon her skin as she turns to face it, the Wehrmacht soldier leaning from the window, the machine gun's barrel pointed at her, spitting angry fire.

  Giraud awoke with a start; the dream began to fade from memory, until all that was left seconds later was the image of her being gunned down. He tried to clear his breath, to slow his heart rate, and he swung his legs out of bed and over the edge before leaning over to the side table for his cigarettes and lighter. He coughed to clear his lungs, then took out a Gauloises and lit it.

  What had it meant? Was he so infatuated with her that he saw himself as a protector? Then why hadn't he saved her, or even tried to intercede? He'd seen the German car approaching, the girl running. She looked frightened, and even in hindsight he felt the tug to reach out and grab her arm, lead her to safety. But he hadn't; instead, he'd watched while the Nazis riddled her with bullets.

  Perhaps it was fair warning, he told himself. Perhaps his subconscious knew the trouble that could face her if she became involved in his world. Had he asked anyone who knew him, Giraud might have found that he was, once again, giving himself far too much credit. But he felt indebted to her through some semblance of loyalty if nothing else, for enchanting him so consistently.

  He took a drag from his smoke and exhaled, then looked at the clock. It was nine in the morning; he'd had just five hours sleep, but knew instinctively that he did not want to go back to bed. To do so was to invite that scene to return, that image of her dying. And he had no such intention.

  He wondered what Isabelle was doing; probably sleeping; if anyone was willing to defy the curfew and pretend the gay Paris of old still existed, it was the Bohemian subculture, the students and artists. Giraud had never been a superstitious man -- his stoic pragmatism practically disallowed it -- but he could not help but feel the dream required respect. He could not help but feel that, but for his intervention at some as-yet undetermined point, Isabelle faced real peril.

  And perhaps it was an omen intended for him, also: a suggestion that those with interests of the heart are best far away from Europe. He knew that, between his savings, pilfering from the Germans, the cigarettes, the pearls and the flawless diamond ring, he would have more than enough to get himself out, and Isabelle, and perhaps even Pascal as well, if he wished. But that meant finding Bernard Distin, and freeing him; it was a most unlikely prospect.

  For the first time since the beginning of the war, Giraud felt the same pervasive hopelessness as so many unprivileged Parisians. It was an unpleasant sensation, and he quickly resolved to rid himself of it.

  22...

  Pascal looked unhappy, and Giraud wondered if it was jealousy. He had been following the policeman around for a month, first at the old cafe and now at the park, and it occurred to Giraud that the boy had a case of hero worship. As such, he was bound to take unkindly to the notion of a woman in his life.

  'So where did she go?' he asked.

  'She... Monsieur, why is this important? She is just a waitress, unworthy of...'

  'Pascal...'

  The boy sighed, sounding resigned to secondary status. 'She went up the hill to the bus stop by Rue des Poissonniers. Then she got on the bus heading east, towards the tenth. '

  'Do you recall which number?'

  'The number two, monsieur. I asked a man at the stop where it was going, but he ignored me.'

  'It's good, it's good, don't worry,' he told the boy. 'I already know where it goes.'

  Indeed, the number two route was part of the 'Carrot Express', a quick trip out of the city; when combined with a transfer to the number eleven route at Belleville, it would carry passengers into an area of agricultural land past the commune of Les Lilas, where an enterprising Parisian could still barter for staples, particularly carrots and eggs. The rations distributed by the government were so small and insubstantial that people looked for proper nutrition wherever it could be found. That had led to a string of trains and buses out of town being renamed in honor of one staple or another.

  'You did fine work, Pascal. Perhaps you shall be a policeman one day. Now, I need you to do one more thing for me,' Giraud requested. 'I would like you to follow her tonight when she leaves work and find out where she lives.'

  'Monsieur...'

  'My reasons are purely professional,' he said, knowing it wasn't true. 'Her boyfriend or male friend or what have you, he is a communist. We are expected to know their whereabouts, particularly now.'

  'My uncle says communists should be rounded up and shot,' the boy said. 'I don't know why he hates them so much, but I must assume he is correct. I don't think I've ever met one, except perhaps those lay-about boys at our old cafe.'

  'Your uncle is perhaps being harsh,' Giraud said. 'But they are dangerous, of that there is no doubt. Do you know the difference between a communist and a socialist, Pascal?'

  The boy nodded. 'A socialist wants state control by the ballot, the communist wants it by the bullet.'

  'Exactly. In both case, the state control will far overreach its controlling, stabilizing value. And in the case of her friend Jean-Max and his Bolshevik beliefs, it will lead to tyranny, oppression.'

  'You mean more than the Germans?' the boy asked.

  'Quite probably, yes,' Giraud said. 'The Germans will starve us out and work us to death if they win this war. But the communists would just line us up and shoot us.'

  'So...'

  'So we try to find them before the opportunity presents i
tself. And that is why I need you to follow her tonight. If her boyfriend is a communist and she is a socialist, there is a good chance that they meet with other political radicals.'

  The young boy nodded again. Then he took on a worried look. 'But won't that ruin your chances of a romance with her?'

  'That may well be the case,' Giraud said.

  He knew it wasn't true. None of it was. He wanted to know where she lived because he had a fantastic and absurd image in his head, a notion that he might spirit her away from whatever ramshackle flop they made home and take her to a better life, perhaps with a gesture as simple as showing up at her door with flowers.

  He knew it was fantastic and absurd, but nevertheless, there it was. And his heart told him to act upon it. The real likelihood was that he would stand outside the house and try to catch a glimpse of her coming or going, and probably never speak with her. But he was determined to at least try.

  'Okay, monsieur,' Pascal said. 'I will find out where she goes. Are you going to offer me a similar reward to last time?'

  'This time, fifty francs,' Giraud said. 'But you mustn't say where you got it from, okay?'

  'I shall save it for my uniform.'

  'Uniform?'

  'For the new Youth Popular Front, which I will join next month when it begins.'

  A voice came from the other direction. 'Are you corrupting our youth, Giraud? Sending him for some bootleg hooch or what have you?' It was the banker, Hubert Rousseau.

  'Just an errand,' Giraud explained. 'And what are you up to on this fine Fall afternoon?'

  'Just a break for lunch,' Rousseau said, taking a seat beside the younger man, the bench seat bowing slightly under the larger man's weight. He reached into his coat pocket and took out a wrapped sandwich.'

  Giraud peeked at it as Rousseau took the first bite. 'Egg and lettuce for a mere lunch? You don't seem to be doing too badly.'

  Rousseau shrugged. 'As I think I said when we first met, things are still very busy at the bank. For all of the Germans' economic problems, they seem to move an awful lot of foreign currency and control a lot of accounts -- as you are well aware, Giraud. But there is no doubt the executives feel a collective guilt over it all.'

  'Really? I thought most of them were pure wool capitalists, accustomed to seizing an advantage when it presents itself.'

  'True, but not at the expense of France's identity,' Rousseau said. 'I sometimes wonder whether the expensive suits that I wear to work have blood on them, not visible at first glance, but worn deep, into the fibers. The Nazis are not going to get better, you know. More and more, they send our fellow countrymen to work camps, camps in Germany. Soon, I suspect there will be official policy involved. I have a cousin who works on the trains and sees them being shipped out in box cars. Apparently, the weaker ones are being shipped out of the country to reeducation camps, which perhaps makes them the lucky ones. My father... he was a practical man, and he was not fond of Jews, or intellectuals, or Freemasons. But, as I say... he was a practical man. He would have found little purpose in terrorizing others.'

  The banker finished the sandwich and rolled its paper wrapper into a ball. He shoved it into his pocket. 'Do you feel guilt over your good fortune, Giraud?'

  He did, sometimes. But Giraud had become practiced at ignoring negative emotion, unproductive wallowing. No one had ever felt a whit of guilt about his lot in life. 'I try not to think about it at all, Hubert,' he said. 'I have responsibilities, a need to survive and thrive like anybody. And whether people find it scornful that I work for the Germans or not, I know one thing that is absolutely certain, no matter your opinion of our visitors: their boss isn't taking my calls. Der Fuhrer isn't listening to the likes of me. So nothing that I do will change how they act. None of it. So... no, I do not feel guilty for decisions forced upon all of us by war. But I wish the goddamned thing would end.'

  Mostly, Giraud thought, he would like the city to be peaceful again. He would like to sit in front of his wide-open apartment window at night and look out to see the city lit bright, the tower free of Nazi flags, and he would listen to Trenet and Chevalier, and watch the city regain its poise and grace.

  'But what about the funds, all of the money the Nazis entrust upon you?'

  'You mean that we collect for them... but, yes, I understand your point. It is tempting, no doubt. But I have a duty...'

  'I admire your resolve,' Rousseau said. 'I'd have been in there the moment they turned around.'

  Giraud nodded politely and filed the information away for potential future use. Rousseau was impetuous, and any pilfering from the Nazis was to be done with grace and elan, unnoticeable save for a pen stroke here, a wave and tip of the hat there.

  But it was nice to know that, should the opportunity dictate, the banker would have loose morals.

  23...

  That evening, the familiar knock of the ever-eager Const. Mombourquette rapped upon Giraud's office door.

  'Come in,' Giraud said, probably sounding more tired than he really was. Mombourquette's enthusiasm was so energetic that at times it could be positively draining.

  Mombourquette, who stood perhaps five feet five inches tall in his shiny black boots, strode in imperiously, clicked his heels together like an army recruit and saluted. 'Sir!'

  'Yes, Claude, what is it?' Giraud no longer tried to hide his fatigue at the constable's presence. It did not seem to matter, as Mombourquette never seemed to notice.

  'Sir! You asked to be kept up to date on anything new on the communist cell.'

  'And?'

  'There is nothing new to report, sir. However, we have put together a surveillance network including myself, Const. Joubert, Const. Miquelon and Const. Plouffe. We have a series of Bohemian hang-outs targeted, and shall be using them as starting points to try and establish where they reside and meet.'

  Thrilling. Good lord, how could a grown man be so excited by such tasks? 'Very good, Mombourquette,' he said. 'Run along now and get on with it.'

  'Sir!' Mombourquette bellowed, making Giraud jump in his seat even as the diminutive subordinate snapped to attention, pivoted on his heels and strode out of the room, turning to quietly and precisely close the door behind him.

  Mon Dieu, thought Giraud. If I'd tossed a bone out of the window, I believe he'd have followed it, even from the second story.

  There was another knock, this one quick, its perpetrator not waiting for an answer. Chief Constable Herveaux strode in, leaving the door ajar. 'Ah, Giraud. I saw young Mombourquette leave. Top man, eh? I only wish we all had his extraordinary gumption. He tells me he has quite the operation planned to identify that cell.'

  Herveaux was ruthless, and connected, and experienced. He was also quite possibly an idiot. There were at least fifteen communist cells in Paris that Giraud knew of, and he was well aware that his contacts in that area were not strong. That meant there were many, many more. Already, they had taken to randomly sniping at the Germans, and had killed several officers. The last retribution had been three Parisians taken to the hangman's noose; it would only get worse from there, they knew, and yet the communists did not seem to care. The act of defiance seemed more important to them than the lives of their countrymen.

  Part of the problem was that there were too many groups claiming the moral high ground on the left; the remnants of the old Popular Front -- the coalition of socialist and communists that had briefly held government -- was still represented in its many forms: the Human Rights League, the Committee of Antifascist Intellectual Watchdogs, the Union of Socialist Republicans, The Proletarian Unity Party, the Movement Against War and Fascism, The Young Republic. And each had its own ideas about how the great workers' struggle should proceed.

  But none of that would interest his boss, Giraud realized. 'He seems to have it firmly in hand sir,' he proposed.

  'Good, good. It seems there are still some among the High Command who believe Laszlo Fontaine remains in Paris with his family. It seems odd that he would take such a chance.'<
br />
  'I would not be so certain that they are wrong, sir,' Giraud said. 'The Germans have checkpoints on every road out of the city, soldiers checking every bus, every train. Flights out are prohibitively expensive and require letters of transit. It is possible they are being hidden by the young communists. We shall see. If that is in fact the case, I suspect young Mombourquette or one of his men will spot them before they can escape.'

  'I certainly hope you are right, Giraud. We'll have those work camps full of dissident scum in no time, eh? Get back to how things used to be.'

  Even though he was not a remotely violent man, Giraud felt the urge to draw his service weapon and shoot the decrepit old sponge. He had always considered himself a supporter of French traditions and social mores, and believed that but for a few twists of fate, he might have been born to an old, wealthy family himself and lived in one of those grand houses he'd seen as a child. Of one thing Giraud was certain: he would not have wasted the opportunity, like Herveaux.

  Instead, he just smiled, meekly. 'Perceptive as ever sir,' he replied.

  24...

  The following morning was a Friday, and Giraud's day off. He found himself up at nine, even though he'd arrived home just after four in the morning; he would have preferred to sleep in, but business was business.

  He started his day at the CNEP, politely waiting in line with the dozens of other customers until he could make his way to the wicket and withdraw some funds. The Germans had a huge month of seizures and would not notice a few francs unaccounted for in the official records.

  The young lady at the teller window looked at the withdrawal slip with trepidation; Giraud wondered what she was thinking. She must have recognized the account number from the series exclusive to the Nazis, he decided.

  Sure enough, she smiled politely then said, 'I'll just be one moment, if you please...' She took the withdrawal slip to a supervisor who was sitting a few feet behind the tellers, near the vault door. The supervisor listened to the woman, then got up, walked along the wall to a box of filing drawers, where she pulled out a file index card and looked up the account number, then compared Giraud's signature to that required for access.