The Cafe Girl Read online

  'It's nothing, of course,' Rousseau said. 'I am almost always away at meetings or hidden away in my office. But Levesque mentioned that this park was nearby and it seemed absolutely ideal for a lunch break.'

  'Please, sit,' Levesque said motioning to the spot between them.

  The bench was large, Giraud thought, and he did not begrudge the man a lunch perch. He might even prove interesting to talk to, the policeman considered.

  Rousseau sat down, then reached into the side pocket of his coat and withdrew a sandwich wrapped in paper. He opened it, withdrew half and began to eat it. He swallowed and said, 'So, what was it exactly that had Monsieur Giraud's attention?'

  'A girl,' Levesque answered, before Giraud could. 'A very pretty girl, at that.'

  'Hmmph,' Rousseau ventured, while knocking down his second bite. He smacked his lips slightly as the morsel disappeared, then said, 'I think perhaps that marrying a pretty girl for her looks is like running a bank; most of the time, your dreams lie just beyond your fingertips, they are never truly yours, and you can trust no one. Still, if you're fool enough to try, I am fool enough to wish you good luck.'

  'Thank you,' Giraud said. 'I think.'

  Levesque chuckled. 'Do not mind Hubert, young man, he is just cynical because his dark heart spends day in and out dealing with the Nazis in servitude to the greed of capitalism... despite the Nazis purporting to hate capitalism.'

  'Only for as long as others stay out of the war and they think we are needed,' Rousseau said. 'It is a puppet freedom, anyhow, a laissez-faire socialism that will be full-bodied by the time this fight is over. They will maintain gentility with us for as long as they require a go-between with neutral Swiss interests. Once Switzerland is eventually overrun by Hitler's forces, we will cease to have purpose.'

  Giraud was less cynical. 'It would make no sense for them to simply rid themselves of decades of experienced employees...'

  'Unless they believed we were eminently replaceable with Germans,' he said. 'Still, we shall see. Perhaps things shall progress smoothly, as you say, but I shall continue to make contingency plans for otherwise.'

  'Probably wise,' Giraud said. 'I forget how fortunate I am.'

  Levesque leaned forward slightly to look past his large friend at the policeman. 'Giraud is a right-winger, you see, an old school type.'

  Giraud sloughed that off. 'He intends to get under my skin, Hubert, but he does not realize that he is incalculably wrong. In fact, my sole ideology is pragmatism. My belief system is survival.'

  'And yet,' Levesque sighed, 'he does not believe that he is on the right.'

  'I am a conservative, Anton; on 'the right', as you would suggest,' the banker said. 'I do not believe solely in pragmatism. So how are Giraud and I identical?

  'There!' Giraud remarked. 'Hubert understands my position. Do that which is smart, I say, and stick out your neck for no one.'

  'Especially Jews and homosexuals,' Rousseau added.

  Giraud ignored the comment. 'It seems much less likely that way to have your head lopped off at the first opportunity, something we have some history with in this city,' he instead suggested.

  'Bah!' Levesque motioned his irritation with a flick of his wrist. 'Sometimes standing up...'

  'It is a pragmatic reality of life in occupied Paris,' Rousseau interrupted. 'I said I do not believe solely in pragmatism, but at the barrel of a gun? I would like to think that, should the correct circumstances present themselves, I could be brave; but I am not stupid.'

  Levesque huffed at that. 'A banker agreeing with a policeman! I suppose that should not surprise me in the very least.'

  Rousseau commiserated with him, clapping him on the back. 'What a shame! I think we have offended our friend's socialist sensibilities, Giraud.' He paused for a moment then considered the uneaten half of a sandwich lying in paper on his lap. He offered it to his friend with a shrug.

  'Very funny,' Levesque said. 'But you shall both see: long after 'Der Fuehrer's' vision of society has faded, the struggle for true equality under Communism will continue. Do you know why?'

  'I'm sure you shall tell us,' Giraud said.

  'Because the men who fight for equality have all experienced true loss; it was loss, and the desire to avoid it, that alerted them to the broader functions of community, the real values. They merely reached the conclusion that we are better as a species when we work together, with more fulfilled lives...'

  'Workers of the world, unite! That sort of thing?' Rousseau mused.

  Giraud was less amused. Naive views about the role of equality in driving progress led to the suppression of business, the rise of state control. 'And what has the great Anton Levesque known of 'true loss'? You own a popular newspaper, you live in a fine townhome, you have mentioned that you have a wife...'

  Levesque nodded. 'I had a son, also. He had no love for communism, at least not Marxism. But he did love the notion of equality and communal life.'

  'He passed?' Rousseau asked. 'I'm sorry.'

  Levesque waved it off. 'It's been several years now, and he was a young man, not a child. Still... it is never easy.'

  Rousseau filled the silence. 'May I ask...?'

  'As much as he embraced equality, he hated fascism. So, he went to Spain, to fight with the Republicans against Franco.'

  He turned to see what Giraud thought of that, but his attention was lost again, looking back to the spot where the woman had met her friend, just minutes earlier. 'For a policeman,' Levesque said, 'your lack of intuition is alarming. Why not go talk to the piano player, see if he knows her name? She's obviously friends with Martine, the waitress...'

  He had a point, Giraud thought. He rose and crossed the street, giving them a quick look back to see how amusing they were finding the entire situation then leaned over the wrought-iron rail of the patio fence. 'Excuse me, Luc?'

  The piano player stopped his relaxed playing entirely for a moment. 'Yes?'

  'I am Deputy Divisional Superintendent Giraud. We talked before.'

  'The jazz fan, yes, I remember. We see you sitting over there most days.'

  'I do not come over and patronize because it is uncomfortable for people to have a policeman within earshot all the time, you understand?'

  'That is ... very considerate of you, sir.'

  'Anyway...' Giraud realized he hadn't formulated his thoughts before crossing the street and wasn't sure how to word it without sounding awkward or forward. 'Look... There's this girl...'

  'Martine?' the player said. 'She is very nice, but a bit wild for a policeman, monsieur. She herself would admit she spends her nights in the Eighteenth with the Bohemian kids.'

  'No,' Giraud said, 'No, not Martine. There was another girl here, earlier today, a girl in a brown dress...'

  'Isabelle?' he said. 'Isabelle Gaspard?'

  'Perhaps,' Giraud said, a bit baffled by so little information. 'She is smaller, with short brown hair?'

  'Ah yes, that sounds like her,' Luc said. 'She is Martine's replacement for the next few months while she visits her uncle in Perpignan. She is not returning until the new year,' I believe.

  So! Giraud felt his breath shorten and his pulse quicken. She would be there for months. It was the best news in weeks.

  12...

  He had returned to work in a jovial mood. It was not to last. The knock on his office door was different from that of Mombourquette, authoritative and direct. Familiar, too.

  'Come in,' Giraud said, moving his papers in their entirety to one side, behind his correspondence tray. As the door swung open he was moving his daily newspaper from one side of his desk to the other, using it to cover the pile so that he looked untasked.

  The chief superintendent would want his full attention, after all, and he wanted to look on top of everything. Some people insisted on cluttering their desks, in vain attempts to look overtasked, or even just busy enough. But men like Marc Etienne Herveaux did not care a whit for anything save results, or whatever could be plausibly passed off as
such. He was a politician, which made him the ideal kind of boss for a man like Giraud, who was accustomed to sleight of hand.

  Herveaux was tall, with a ramrod-straight backbone, even when leaning forward. He had steel-grey hair over lifeless, dark eyes, and spittle would sometimes gather in a sticky white blob in the corner of his lips. He was a product of the national military and proudly French in an oddly fluid manner, in which he managed to offend almost no one. It was quite the feat, and Giraud was never entirely sure whether it was a rare sort of guile, a social fluidity beyond that of most men, or whether Herveaux was simply not very bright. He quoted Cicero and he said things that seemed vaguely wise yet totally abstract. And yet he was easily manipulated and often drifted around the precinct as if in a fog.

  'Ah, Giraud! Good to see you, nose to the grindstone as ever, I see!'

  'Of course, Chief Superintendent. And what may I do for you on this dreary afternoon?'

  Herveaux sat on the edge of Giraud's desk, as if it were his own kitchen table. Giraud tried to stifle a stiff grimace. 'We've been getting some pressure from the Germans to shake up our routines a little,' he said.

  'Our routines?' Giraud didn't like the sound of that.

  'Yes... it seems their people have been talking to our internal security people, and they've got it it in their heads that someone in one of the northern suburbs is coordinating a black market ring. They're hoping that by making everyone -- including this alleged scoundrel -- change their schedules, the person will slip up and expose themselves. Now, I know it's an absurd contention in the first place, but we do want to get along with headquarters, now don't we?'

  Giraud knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to put the idea far from Herveaux's mind. He wanted to say, 'Chief, there are probably dozens of such rings. Without them, many Parisians would not be able to obtain even the most basic necessities. Are they suggesting that by moving some work shifts around, that necessity will disappear?' But he was shrewd enough to know that, when push came to shove, Herveaux would defer to the will of German security, regardless of whether it was the right thing to do.

  And so instead, he nodded studiously. 'So, move the shifts ahead six hours each and let the night shift supervisors know to expect it?'

  But Herveaux frowned at that. 'No, they are quite insistent that everyone's schedule be uprooted, including supervisory staff. That means you and me, as well, Giraud.'

  It was worrying news. Giraud's deliveries were all slated to arrive during the day. Meeting times were in narrow windows, designed to minimize risk. Everything would have to be rescheduled, planned over, exactly as the Nazis foresaw. At night, there was no free movement, unencumbered by inspection, even for a policeman.

  Still, he was too accustomed to playing it carefully to be shaken. Instead, he smiled at his boss. 'Well we shall just have to make a go of it then, chief!' he said enthusiastically. 'It shall be like we're both young recruits again, patrolling the streets on the overnight shift.'

  Herveaux stood up, satisfied. 'There's a good man! See if you can't transfer some of that enthusiasm to the boys, eh?'

  'Of course, chief, of course! They never disappoint.' This, too, was wholly untrue. But it would keep the chief from paying much attention once the shift change took place. 'When is this expected to be in place?'

  'The start of next week,' Herveaux said as he walked to the door. 'Quite sure it's a sword in the water, this latest German request, and nothing will come of it. But we'll put our best foot forward, eh Giraud?'

  'Absolutely, chief,' Giraud said. 'We always do.'

  13....

  It had taken considerable persuasion to sign out Internal Security's Citroen for surveillance duty. Vaillancourt's reward had been four hours sitting behind the driver's wheel, parked on the road at the end of a long driveway, waiting for the American to make a move.

  The car manager lived north of Saint Denis in an old chateau, which meant he had money and connections with the Germans. The Americans were staying out of the war, and the Germans didn't want diplomatic incidents that might incite them, which meant arresting John Granger immediately was out of the question. Indeed, cigarettes alone would probably not be enough. If he was bringing in drugs or prostitutes? Maybe. Assuming they weren't for members of the High Command.

  The double gates to his property whirred open and Granger's Lincoln limousine pulled slowly out onto the road. The man's reputation in Saint Denis was weak, at best. His employees did not like working for someone who hardly spoke French, and he underpaid them, thanks to the Nazis allowing it in exchange for a steady flow of usable machinery. The Lincoln pulled past his own vehicle and Vaillancourt got a glimpse of Granger sitting in the back seat. He looked bull-necked, with a shock of ginger hair.

  Vaillancourt pulled his car onto the road and followed the Lincoln on the twenty-minute drive to the car factory. When they arrived, it pulled up to the main doors to let the executive out. Vaillancourt looked at the position of the Sun and tried to guess which corner office the man would take. Then he pulled the compact Citroen into the factory's parking lot and took aim at the appropriate window.

  Sure enough, within five minutes, Granger could be seen entering the room, then crossing to his desk and sitting down. Vaillancourt pulled out his small pair of binoculars and sighted through them. He could see a little of the ground floor office; leather chairs, a bookshelf along a side wall. He supposed there was probably a bar with a crystal decanter at one end, as well.

  He seemed like a typical stereotype of an American businessman. Valliancourt supposed Granger worked on a mantra of greed being positive; but then the policeman castigated himself. He didn't know the man; perhaps he wasn't a crook. Perhaps the fact that Giraud had visited him on at least a half-dozen occasions in the prior month was coincidence. The constable had been helpful and couldn't think of any cases related to the factory, which meant it was probably something off the books.

  And that made Granger the prime suspect to be Giraud's cigarette supplier.

  Vaillancourt felt an inward measure of satisfaction. His gambit of following the kiosk owner to the source had turned up Saint Denis, and Saint Denis had turned up Granger, who was already connected to Giraud who, in turn, was well known to the Internal Security officer.

  Perhaps it was time to set up a bigger buy.

  Starting work at eight o'clock at night was proving a challenge to business interests, but Giraud had to concede it made it easier to get out and about. In the few days since the shift change, he'd managed to attend his favorite spot in the tiny park three times, and Isabelle had been working on two such occasions.

  On a cool Monday, with empty, grey skies and a dampness that threatened rain at any moment, Giraud watched as she served the one couple who, for whatever reason, chose to ignore the temperature and sit outside under the purple sun umbrellas. She stood with her hands in front of her patiently while they picked sandwiches, and she answered questions politely before taking their menus. When she moved towards the cafe proper, there was no hint of annoyance at the inconvenience, just the brisk pace of someone confident in her work.

  On the first day, the Saturday prior, she had been busier than her predecessor Martine ever seemed, and had even helped the piano player eject a drunk -- but not before slapping him hard enough to leave a mark after he pinched her bottom. Giraud had appreciated that show of strength.

  When he'd first arrived that day, she'd been busy with a tray of soiled dishes, and instead of going directly over to the park bench, he'd secreted himself on the bench by the cafe fence, at the bottom of the hill. The wind made it difficult to hear her as she spoke with the old man and his wife. But he could hear them laughing, her tone musical and happy. It was banal stuff; the weather, the state of the war. It didn't matter. He would have stayed and listened all day, if the piano player hadn't returned to his stool and noticed the policeman. Instead, wary of being seen as obsessive, he'd returned to his familiar spot across the road.

  Giraud had ye
t to introduce himself, and with good reason: his nerves ran amuck every time he saw her. The editor, Levesque, had described her as 'pretty'; but to Giraud, Isabelle was radiant, with an inner glow that suppressed the surrounding gloom. She moved so smoothly she seemed to float from the table to the doors, pirouetting with ballerina grace to pick up a plate and cup along the way from an adjacent table, her turn, dip and turn as smooth as a ballroom waltz. She was never too busy; the cafe never seemed to have more than three or four patrons at a time. But it was obvious she belonged -- if not in that place, then at the very least with those people.

  He wondered if she knew how to dance formally; in his mind's eye, he could picture a grand hall full of tuxedoed gentlemen and ladies of high society, all gathered under thirty-foot high ceilings, domed arches and towering chandeliers. The gathered portraits of generations would look on as the male and female guests lined up facing one another, as they took one another's hands, assumed the position for a waltz, then glided across the broad expanse of marble floor together, semi-circles of exuberance pirouetting around one another.

  The bus pulled up to the stop by the bench, pulling Giraud from his daydream. Converted to run off manure, the bus's exhaust pipes belched black smoke, stinging the policeman's nostrils as it drifted past.

  The door opened and Levesque carefully climbed down the two steps to the sidewalk.

  Giraud saw him immediately and nodded his way.

  'Giraud,' Levesque acknowledged. 'You're here early today.'

  'I've been switched to the night shift,' he explained. 'It's actually been a few days already, and I'm getting accustomed.'

  'Ah. And it wouldn't have anything to do with whether a certain waitress is working today?' The bus pulled away as Levesque made his way unsteadily over, leaning on his cane throughout. He sat down at the end of the bench.