Дональд Уэстлейк - Castle in the Air

Bruddy held out a five pound note under the policeman’s nose. Andrew watched the play of thought and stratagem and frustration cross the policeman’s reddening face, until finally the man said, “Garrrr!” and snatched the five pound note out of Bruddy’s hand. “I’ll remember your face,” the policeman threatened.

“Gord,” said Bruddy, “I’ll do my best to forget yours.” And he turned away, shooing Andrew ahead of himself to an illegally parked long black Daimler limousine.

After which, it was hardly a surprise at all to Andrew to find Sir Mortimer Maxwell waiting for him in the back seat.

Renee Chateaupierre, the most beautiful cat-burglar in Cannes, with the longest slenderest legs and the blackest sleekest hair and the quickest lightest fingers in her profession, helped herself to all the sparkling jewelry while the movie producer snored atop his snoring starlet. Oddly enough, her snores were deeper in tone than his, but together they made a fairly pleasant harmony. Monotonous, though.

It was also strange but true that his jewelry was more extensive and richer than hers. The starlet had been good for merely a few pairs of earrings, a brooch or two, a necklace, a few other trinkets, but from the movie producer, Renee had accepted rings, a platinum identification bracelet, a golden watch inset with rubies, a golden money clasp in the shape of a dollar sign (plus all the money it clasped), several valuable sets of cuff links and a silver cigarette lighter.

And now she was finished, without ever having made enough noise to disturb the lovers at their snoring. Moving in swift slender silence, Renee crossed the room to the window through which she had entered and smoothly slid across the sill.

The ledge was narrow, but so were Renee’s feet. Ignoring the rather magnificent view of the Mediterranean, Renee glided across the front of the wedding-cake-white hotel, a dark shadow in the pre-dawn empty night, passing dark windows toward the one — leading to an empty room — which had been her route on arrival.

Four windows from that goal there came a sudden change in Renee’s direction. An arm snaked out from the darkness of this open window, wrapped itself around her lithe and slender waist, and yanked her off her ledge, through the opening, and into the darkness.

Renee, naturally, opened her mouth to scream, but before she could do so a hand smelling not unpleasantly of Canoe after-shave firmly pressed itself against the lower half of her face, barring her from making any vocal noise at all.

Or breathing, in fact, since the hand covered her nose as well. And the other arm was still about her waist. Kicking, gasping, writhing, struggling, clawing at the hand against her face, Renee found herself inexorably drawn into the dark room and across it, farther and farther from the safe rectangle of the window, until she was abruptly spun, lifted and flung upon a bed. “Oof!” she said, tried to get her elbows under her so she could rise, and her attacker dropped his entire body on top of her, crushing her onto the mattress. “Oof!” she said once more, then quickly gulped in air and yelled, “Help! Police!”

“Don’t be silly, Renee,” said the calm, seductive, very familiar voice in her ear. “You don’t want the police any more than I do.”

Startled, recognizing the voice but not yet able to unite it with a name or face, Renee stopped yelling and said instead, “What?”

The man lifted part of his weight from her onto his elbows — so at least he was a gentleman. Then he reached out to the bedside lamp and switched it on, and Renee, blinking in the yellow light, saw above her the smiling and well-remembered face of Jean LeFraque. “Hello, my love,” he said.

“Jean!” Forgetting all other distress, Renee said, “What are you doing here ?”

Seductively grinning at her, moving his lower torso just a bit, Jean said, “I have business to discuss with you, my sweet.”

Renee made a head gesture to indicate the bed. “This isn’t my business.”

“Surely,” Jean said, his hip rotation becoming more pronounced, “we can be comfortable while we chat.”

Renee did a thing involving her knee, which Jean didn’t at all like. She could tell he didn’t like it by the way his face became all scrinched up and lost all of its color, and by the way he sagged between his supporting elbows, and also by the way he offered no protest when she rolled him off her onto the other side of the bed, saying, “Let’s be un -comfortable.”

Renee, free at last, got to her feet and smoothed down her black cashmere sweater and narrow black cotton pants. Meantime, Jean remained on the bed, curled like a shrimp.

Renee was standing in front of the mirror, fluffing her hair, when Jean finally uncoiled himself and sat up, moving slowly, like a weary old man. Moving painfully to the edge of the bed, cautiously lowering his legs over the side, he said, “Renee, you never did have any sense of humor.”

Looking at him in the mirror, Renee offered him a mock-sympathetic smile, saying, “Poor sweetheart, did I hurt you?”

“Only temporarily, thank God.”

Renee turned, saying, “I’m glad to hear it. I’m ready to listen now.”

Jean looked at her, and she could see him considering the possibility of prolonging his agony in order to get some sympathy — which might eventually lead to what he’d had in mind in the first place — but then she saw him realize she was the wrong person for such a ploy, and she knew their platonic relationship had been re-established when at last he shrugged and said, “Fine. To business.”

The Bistro Chagrin was crowded tonight, though it was a Thursday. This working-class joint in Montmartre, just off Pigalle, attracted a very tough, very laconic, very fatalistic clientele, who didn’t give a damn if it was Thursday or not. What matters, eh?

Above the droning din of existential conversation drifted the notes of a piano, playing over and over a vaguely slow but syncopated, catchy yet boring, reminiscent yet not quite plagiarized little tune. The piano itself, in a far corner of the long smoky crowded room, was a battered upright, concealing from the general view the man playing it. Charles Moule was his name, he was short and slender but wiry-tough, he was of indeterminate age somewhere shy of forty, and he had a long bony deeply lined face with a smoldering cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and with black eyes that spoke of too much hope blighted in too many bistros on too many Thursday nights. And Tuesdays as well.

The fight broke out shortly after eight. The two men at a table in the middle of the room suddenly lunged at one another, swinging haymakers. The two women at the same table leaped to their feet, dragging daggers from the rolled tops of their stockings and having at one another. One of the men, struck by a flailing fist, staggered backward into another table, knocking a customer’s beer into the customer’s lap, and in no time at all the fight had spread into a general melee. Punches were thrown, and so were glasses, bottles, knives, chairs, tables and the occasional waiter.

And through it all, the piano tinkled. Protected by the wall of the upright piano, lost in his own thoughts Charles Moule played on, oblivious of the screams, the curses, the threats, the moans and groans of the wounded, the crashing of furniture, the smashing of glass and ultimately the EE-OO EE-OO of approaching sirens. The same little tune babbled endlessly on, the same cigarette smoldered in the corner of Charles’ mouth, the same faraway reflection remained in his blank eyes.

Police burst in, swinging their nightsticks. They made order, but they did so by first making even more chaos — the old omelet-egg idea. But it didn’t take them long to dampen the enthusiasm of the combatants, and then to start moving the ambulatory outside to paddy wagons. Ambulances arrived to deal with the non-ambulatory, and very soon the Bistro Chagrin was quiet again, except for that infernal tune. Waiters crept out from the safety of the kitchen to right the tables and chairs, sweep up the debris, restore order. The bistro settled into a kind of exhausted empty pensiveness, and Charles played on.