Alan Furst: Red Gold

Casson tried to stand up, got to his knees but that was the best he could do. He felt hands going through his pockets; Black-Shirt was excited, breathing hard, Casson could smell sweat-something like sweat, but much worse-and hair oil. When the man was done he stood up, then kicked Casson in the ribs. Casson heard himself cry out. He fell forward, tried to roll up to protect himself, saw the two men walking away, back toward place Clichy.

Julie knelt by his side, touched his face, her hand was trembling. She took a tiny handkerchief from her purse and held it against his mouth. There were blood drops on the pavement.

“No police.” He tried to say it but it came out a mumble.

“Your mouth is hurt,” she said.

Somehow he got up. Very shaky, but on his feet. He had to get off the street. She took his arm, helped him walk. In the lobby of the hotel, a night clerk was behind the counter.

“I’m taking him to his room,” Julie said.

The clerk hesitated a moment, then said, “The patronne comes in at eight-just be out before then.”

They started up the stairs. Casson said, “My key.”

“I have it,” she said. “And your papers. They only wanted money.”

He held the little handkerchief against his mouth so he didn’t bleed on his shirt. She took his arm, helped him up each step.

It took a long time to climb to the sixth floor. She got most of his clothes off, he fell onto the bed, faded out. He woke later, she was sitting on the bed in the dark room. He reached out, rested a hand on her knee. “Are you all right?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. But she had been crying.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You couldn’t help it.” She paused a moment. “Somebody like you..”

They were quiet for a time. “They should be shot,” she said.

“You know them?”

“They are always in that place. You see them next week, they’ll smile at you. Up here, nobody goes to the police, that only makes it worse.”

He turned toward her. His side throbbed, his face was numb. She smoothed his hair back. “Go to sleep,” she said. “I’ll be here.”

He didn’t want to sleep but he couldn’t stop it. For a few seconds he came back awake, felt how warm she was, sitting on the bed. Sometimes jagged and plummeting, sometimes about Citrine. Just before making love, when together they took her clothes off. She had once said that when a woman goes with a man, and for the first time he sees her with nothing on, that it is the best at that moment that it will ever be. Later he tried to turn in his sleep and a sharp pain under his arm woke him up. He reached out, felt nothing, opened his eyes. The first gray light of dawn was in the room and the girl was gone.

An hour later, the knock on the door.

“Police, open up.”

My revolver, he thought. Drawing it from beneath his pillow, firing through the door, pounding down the stairs. In the lobby, the patronne, eyes wide with horror. “No! Please! Have mercy!” Shots ring out in the Hotel Victoria.

“I’m coming,” he called out, struggling to stand up. There was no revolver. When he got the door open he saw it was the same flic from the day before. So, he thought, it had been his photograph after all-he had been betrayed. By the patronne? Somebody else? He didn’t know.

“Is your name Marin? Jean Louis?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wanted for questioning.”

Not arrested, not handcuffed. He thought about making a run for it, but he was too banged up-the flic had to wait for him as he worked at getting dressed.

“Let’s go, eh?”

“I’m trying.”

“Have you been fighting, Marin?”

He touched the swollen side of his face and winced. “I was robbed. They beat me up.”

“Report the crime?”

“No.”

Probably that’s a crime too, he thought. He managed to get into his jacket, looked around the room one last time. Not so bad. Now that he’d never see it again he started to like it.

In the lobby, the patronne glanced up from the register she kept on the counter, then looked down, finding an entry, holding her place with a steel finger. “Monsieur l’agent?” she said.

“Yes?”

“Is this one coming back?”

“Couldn’t say.”

The patronne’s finger, stuck on Room 28, began to tap. Her eyes were shining with fury.

Small-a very small victory, he thought. But likely the only one of the day. Outside, a battered Renault police car. A detective sitting in the passenger seat was reading a dossier as Casson got in the back.

“You’re Marin?”

Casson nodded. Closed his eyes for a moment. He was, more than anything, tired, in every way you could be. Tired of his life, of clumsy deception, of the world he had to live in. Shoot me and get it over with.

The old engine whined, turned over, and finally caught, missing and backfiring on the low-grade gasoline the Germans gave the police. The flic said, “To the prefecture?”

The detective turned, rested his arm on the top of the seat, and looked him over. He was an old man, heavy, with a head of thick, white hair and deep lines carved in his face. He had a big nose with a dent near the bridge and very pale blue eyes, wore an ancient black suit beneath his overcoat, a loose wool muffler, and a weather-beaten hat with the brim snapped down in front.

“No. The rue Rondelet.”

Casson looked out the window as the car drove off. In May of 1940, recalled to military service, assigned to a Section Cinematographique, he’d seen the streets of eastern Paris through the windshield of a truck. Different than the back of a taxi, he’d thought then. Now, the same streets, from the window of a police car.

Blood will tell. It was a deep Gallic conviction, especially among women over forty. Casson’s father had been a rogue, and his mother had been employed full-time as the wife of a rogue: long-suffering, humiliated by unpaid butchers, terrified of the phone. But, often enough, his father’s shield. Casson pere had more than once been spared by creditors who could not bear to hurt “his poor wife.” Wealth had always been just around the corner; shares in Venezuelan lead mines, a scheme to import herring from Peru, a powder that kept lettuce from spoiling, tonics, treasure maps, mechanical pens. And, late in life, one honorable and very productive venture-a wool brokerage-which he’d been done out of by men he called “licensed thieves who work in paneled offices.”

The rue Rondelet was a little street in a factory district with a small poste de police. Not the kind of place Parisian detectives usually worked. “Go back to the prefecture,” the detective told his driver. “If anyone asks, tell them I’ll be in later.” The flic touched the visor of his cap with two fingers and drove off. Inside the station, a desk sergeant wearing a knitted green sweater under his uniform jacket greeted the detective like an old friend.

Upstairs, a small office used for interrogation-two chairs, a desk scarred with cigarette burns, tall windows opaque with dirt, a floor of narrow boards. The station backed up to a schoolyard, it was recess, and Casson could hear the kids, playing tag and yelling. The detective leaned on his elbows and read the dossier, now and then shaking his head.

“Casson, Casson,” he said at last, with a sigh in his voice. Casson flinched despite himself. The detective seemed not to notice. He turned the pages slowly, sometimes puzzling over the cramped handwriting. Suddenly he looked up and said, “You’re not going to insist on this Marin business, are you?”

“No.”

“Grace a Dieu-I already fought with my wife this morning.”

“Will you turn me over to the Germans?”

“Worse than that, Casson, worse than that.”

The detective read further. “Here’s your concierge,” he said. “Kindly old Madame Fitou, in 1933. Hmm. Secret doings, something buried in the cellar.”