Rage in Paris Read online

  “You know why. You white, that’s why. ”

  “I’m not going to scream for help, you know. ”

  A horn sounds on a riverboat, and jazz blasts from it. I start laughing. “Hear that clarinet? Fool think he be Stanley Bontemps.”

  “But he be nowhere near as good as ole Stanley. Nooo . . . ma’ammm!” Hannah says, mimicking me.

  I’m surprised at how good a mimic she is. We laugh.

  “I’m going to New York, too,” she says quietly.

  “You done told your folks?”

  “They can’t stop me. I’m going there to study the violin,” she says, defiantly. Then, “Why don’t we meet up in New York? My father asked me to give you his cousin Jack Firestone’s address. He’s a musician’s agent working in Tin Pan Alley.”

  She hands me a piece of paper with a note from her father and her uncle’s address.

  “You going to look him up?” she asks.

  “Yeah, thank your daddy for me. Thank him for everything. He been good to me.”

  “You didn’t answer my other question,” she says. “Are we going to meet up in New York? Ever see each other again? Or is this as far as we go?”

  A lot of different ideas running through my brain, I shake my head no and stand up to go. Hannah pulls me down on the grass, rolls on top of me, and kisses me hard. I look around, frightened.

  “Swear you’ll never call me ma’am again, or I’ll scream,” she says.

  I kiss her back, jump up, and bolt to St. Vincent s.

  Later, I riff on Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer, ” playing the clarinet that Hannah’s father, Abe, had given me as an eighteenth birthday present the day before. My friend Louis “Strawberry ” Armstrong, who is six years younger than me, blows his cornet, also a birthday present from Abe. The other boys gather up their things and file out of the dormitory door. Most are dressed in the rough clothes that they will wear back to the Battlefield in the Back o’ Town neighborhood.

  Strawberry and I wrap our horns up in newspaper and gather our belongings.

  “You sure you want to head to Chicago first?” I ask him.

  “Yeah. Got to see some folks there, then I be headin’ on to New York for us to duet up again.” He was a month shy of twelve, but looked, and acted, years older. He was already a genius on the cornet.

  “Don’t waste no time gettin’ there, Strawberry, ’cause my next stop’s Paris, France.”

  “Say what?” Strawberry says, amazed.

  “Father G told me yesterday some white Frenchman name of Brown fathered me be livin’ there. My mama was a quadroon whore done suicide herself on his account.”

  “That’s some bad stuff, man.”

  “I’m gonna rake me up some money in New York and then track Brown down.”

  We leave the dormitory room and immediately see smoke billowing through the corridor. Flames lick around the door to Father Gohegan’s office. We run toward it. Through the burning door I see Father Gohegan on his knees, head bent forward, hands clasped in prayer, holding a silver handbell. He turns to look at me as I start breaking flaming shards from the door frame, trying to get to him. With his last strength Father Gohegan throws the handbell through the door and screams, “Urby, your father gave the handbell to your mother! Go find him, in France!” Then Father Gohegan is engulfed in flames. Clutching the handbell, I feel Strawberry’s hands on my back, pushing me out the front door of the building as it collapses in a gush of flames. We lie on the ground, struggling for breath. I see the plainclothes policeman and Pierre. Pierre is holding a can of kerosene, his eyes searching the crowd of colored waifs who watch the blaze impassively.

  I pull Strawberry down out of their sight. “I seen them two before, Straw, ” I say.

  “They been watchin’ the home for days. That sharp dude done set the fire, I reckon.”

  I suddenly realized why the men were there. “They be lookin’ for me, Strawberry. They seen me with Hannah.”

  “You best git, Urby. Stay away from them main roads much as you can. See you in New York, man.” Strawberry strolls toward the fire to join the other waifs watching their home burn down.

  I slip away into the night, moving away from the fire. I carry the silver handbell in a burlap sack along with my clarinet and my few possessions. I look back one more time. Firemen and policemen, joined by men in Klan robes, stand watching the blaze. They smoke cigarettes and cigars, drink from pint bottles, and laugh uproariously, enjoying the spectacle.

  Pierre stands beside the plainclothes policeman, who now has the kerosene can in his hand. They run over to the line of Waifs’ Home boys retreating fearfully from them. I see Buster Thigpen, now a big-time drummer in Harlem nightclubs, who had returned to New Orleans and St. Vincent’s to show off his flashy clothes and car to the colored waifs.

  I yell out a warning just as a policeman wrestles Buster to the ground and forces his hand around the handle of the kerosene can. They throw Buster into a police van, which howls away, groups of cars with flashing headlights following it.

  CHAPTER 7

  Paris, Friday, February 9, 1934

  With a name like The Beautiful Princess, you would expect Hambone Gaylord’s nightclub just off Place Pigalle to be as elegant as Maxim’s and as big as La Coupole, the enormous restaurant-brasserie that had opened with great fanfare in Montparnasse a few years ago. But La Belle was no bigger than four VIP booths in Johnny Sutton’s Blue Heaven Club in Harlem.

  There was a bar where seven or eight skinny people could drink together if they didn’t wave their arms around too much. A dozen or so tables were crammed together near a small stage, and the place always looked like three o’clock in the morning in a murky bar in Harlem.

  But some of the best jazz in the world and Hambone’s charm had brought celebrities there from all over the globe. First time I went there about seven years ago, Redtop was doing the hostessing. It was before she got her own place. Redtop brought so many famous people into La Belle Princesse that crowds would form outside the club, waiting to catch a glimpse of Charlie Chaplin or Picasso or the Prince of Wales or Mistinguett or Josephine Baker.

  I turned up at La Belle at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, as arranged with Stanley, Redtop, Hambone, and his nephew, Baby Langston. Buster was due to arrive in an hour, and he had phoned Stanley at the club a few minutes before to let him know he would be on time and to ask him if, as a favor, he could bring his girlfriend to the rehearsal. Stanley hemmed and hawed, winking at us. Finally, he consented, and the trap was set to close on Buster Thigpen and Daphne.

  Stanley’s plan was simple: to snatch them and then hide them in a disused stable block that he owned in a remote thicket in the Bois de Boulogne. Meanwhile, he would present a list of demands to Robinson III, mainly that he pay me my fee in straight money with a generous bonus for the “dangerosity” of the job. That was the way we had arranged things between us because none of us wanted to have problems with the French police.

  Stanley used his stable block to store, or stash, some of the many items that he dealt in to supplement his considerable income as a musician. No one knew its exact location, except Redtop and me.

  Buster and Daphne would be abducted from La Belle Princesse by two of Hambone’s associates, whom he called “the Corsican Twins.” I would deliver her to Robinson a few hours or, at most, a day later after freeing her from the stables when Robinson III coughed up my fees and bonus as arranged by Stanley. I would pretend that I had tracked her down and saved her from kidnappers, and I would have damage on my face to back up my story. I’d also let Robinson III know that the kidnappers were wise to unpleasant stuff that wouldn’t look too good if it got into the newspapers. The unpleasantness I had in mind was the stories that Jean Fletcher had told me about the family Robinson in the Hôtel Lutetia bar after we fled from the rioting last Tuesday night. If Robinson swallowed the bait, he’d fork out the dough gratefully for our returning Daphne safe and sound. If things turned sour, Buster was there to take the
fall.

  Putting Robinson III and Daphne to one side, Buster Thigpen was still a big problem. He was washed up as a drummer stateside due to his bad reputation as a drug addict and a violent womanizer with a quick temper and a fast blade. Paris was the only place where he had any kind of backing, thanks to the Count. Buster’s only hope of avoiding ending up with a bullet in his brain was to stick as tight to the Count as white on rice. If things went well for Buster’s Fascist and monarchist buddies, and if they succeeded in bringing the government down on their next try, old Buster would be sitting pretty.

  That was where the Corsican Twins came in. Once I turned Daphne over to Robinson, I was thinking of going back to the stables, fetching Buster, and turning him over to the Corsican Twins, unless Stanley had a better plan for dealing with Buster.

  I reckoned that the Corsicans could make it clear to him that he had better keep his trap shut about the snatch, stay away from Daphne, and get out of France as soon as possible. I figured that, although the Count might have two hundred uniformed storm troopers to do his bidding, the Corsican Twins could muster even more men from their clan at a moment’s notice. I doubted that the Count had enough foot soldiers to face down the cream of the French underworld.

  I was taking no chances with the rehearsal. I had brought along my clarinet and its case, but if things went to plan, I wouldn’t even play one note. Still, in case I had to defend myself, I had a hidden compartment in the case concealing my Colt M1911 with two spare clips, each carrying seven rounds of .45 caliber bullets and a silencer.

  It was already getting dark when I arrived at La Belle Princesse. I went past Baby Langston who was polishing the zinc bar. He nodded toward Hambone Gaylord’s office and said, “Everybody’s waiting for you.”

  I knocked on the door, and the burly, black-skinned Hambone and I shook hands. The walls of his tiny office were covered with photographs of celebrity patrons of the club, which they had signed with fond messages. There was a battered table, even smaller than my office desk, next to which Stanley was rocking in a mahogany rocking chair, wearing powder-blue threads from head to toe. Next to him sat the Corsican Twins, two tough-looking youngsters wearing dark pinstriped suits, black Fedora hats, and spats. They looked around calmly as if they could handle any situation without mussing up their duds. Their well-tailored suits had thin bulges in a few places, inside which were thin guns and razor-sharp stilettos. Their swarthy faces were expressionless, and they looked at Hambone Gaylord as if he was their clan leader. Redtop was watching the Corsicans with a worried look. I had never seen her so nervous before.

  “Soon’s Buster and his goldilocks come in, the Corsican boys gone to come running in the front door all tough, waving they pieces,” Stanley said. “They gone attack Baby Langston at the cash registry and grab all the takings. Then these here Alfieris gone sap Baby on his head, and they do the same to you, Urby. They gone menace me with they pieces and tie gunny sacks over Buster and Daphne. A getaway car be waitin’ for them in the back alley.” Stanley was getting more excited by the plan, his voice rising as he warmed to it. “The driver, a Corsican like these here boys, gone take Daphne and Buster to the meetin’ place and then hand them over to friends of ours who gone take them to the hidin’ place.”

  Stanley’s eyes twinkled. I realized that he wasn’t giving Hambone and the Corsicans very many details.

  “Then we start playin’ the game with this Robinson man of yours,” Stanley continued, looking at me, “and you best believe he gone keep the police out of it, ’specially with all the stuff Urby has on him.” Stanley did not let on to Hambone or the Corsicans what I had on Robinson III. If they knew too much, they might pull off a real kidnapping and hold the girl to ransom themselves.

  I liked the plan, but I had learned in the war that even the best plans had a way of going haywire in the heat of battle. But I felt pretty confident that with the Colt in my clarinet case and the Corsican Twins in on the action, I stood a pretty good chance of getting myself, and Daphne, out of this mess in one piece. One thing intrigued me, though: Robinson III had told me that when she had sent him an SOS asking him to help her escape from Buster, he had told her that he was engaging me to track them down. I wondered if she would remember my name and realize that Buster was being set up so that I could rescue her.

  Redtop said her good-byes all around. She was probably heading back to Chez Red Tops for her Hispano-Suiza. She would come back for Baby Langston after the snatch, drive to a place where they would rendezvous with the Corsican Twins and their driver, and then ferry Daphne, Buster, and a blindfolded Baby to the hideaway.

  A few minutes after Redtop left, Baby Langston gave a warning whistle that meant that Buster and Daphne were entering La Belle Princesse. Stanley leapt to his feet, fast as a cat, grabbed his powder-blue Borsalino and his soprano saxophone and, together with Hambone and me, went forth to meet them. The Corsican Twins took their cue to slip out the back door and prepare for the snatch.

  When Buster and Daphne saw the welcoming committee, Buster started grinning from ear to ear and sashaying around, showing off to his girlfriend.

  Buster Thigpen had not changed much over the years. He was still a fine-looking man, but the drugs and booze had turned out the lights in his yellow-green eyes. Still, he moved warily and menacingly, like a big cat in the jungle, and his eyes never stopped tracking. He looked like a hard man to take by surprise.

  He and Stanley flung their arms around each other.

  “Mr. Bontemps, I be honored that you wants Buster on the drums for this here charity concert tomorrow night. It gone to be like the good times in Harlem. Remember that golden gig we played with the Duke on piano, Bubber Miley on the trumpet, and Charlie Dixon on the banjo at Johnny Sutton’s Blue Heaven Club?”

  Buster was really laying it on thick for Daphne, but she was studying Stanley’s face, and she wasn’t buying any of Buster’s jive. It didn’t help that Stanley’s eye tic flared up while Buster kept recalling “the golden gig” back in Harlem.

  According to Stanley, Buster was so drugged up that he couldn’t find the drumhead with his sticks. This happened in front of a packed house at the Blue Heaven Club with Louis Armstrong, Eubie Blake, and Noble Sissle in the audience. Johnny Sutton got so angry that he stopped the quintet in the middle of Blake and Sissle’s “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” hauled Buster off the bandstand, dragged him across the floor amid tables of cheering patrons, and tossed him outside into a December snowstorm.

  Daphne watched everything with the same intensity as her father (or brother?) Barnet Robinson III. Up close, she was breathtakingly beautiful with white-blonde hair that fell to the small of her back. The wave of hair covering her right eye only made her violet-blue left eye look more startling. She wore a long, white silk dress cinched at the waist by a blue leather belt that set off her curves real nicely. Daphne was so beautiful that I tried not to look at her. Each time I did, something fluttered in my chest, and I lost my concentration on what was going to happen in a few minutes. Suddenly, I wanted to protect this woman with every fiber in my being. I wanted to be alone with her somewhere with warm sand, palm trees and an azure blue-violet sky, the color of her eye, reflected in the sea.

  Daphne turned to me and locked her gaze into mine as if she could read my mind and liked what she saw there, too. There was a faint hint of surprise in her expression. When she finally spoke, her voice was low and husky, a voice more knowing than I expected from a twenty-year-old coed who came from a rich, upper-class background and was the daughter of Kaiser Bill to boot, if Jean’s “sources” were right.

  “This be Hambone Gaylord, and this man be his nephew, Baby Langston,” Buster said, introducing Daphne all around.

  Of course, he saved me for last. “This be Urby Brown,” Buster said, yanking a thumb at me by way of introduction.

  She flashed her beautiful smile at me, but if my name meant anything special to her as Robinson III’s bloodhound, she was not giving anything
away.

  “Urby Brown. I like your first name. It’s unusual,” she purred.

  I liked it only when she said it.

  “Buster told me that you met as schoolboys in New Orleans,” she went on.

  “Yes,” I answered, going along with Buster’s lie about us meeting as “schoolboys.” I felt heat on my neck just looking at her. “Buster and I go a long ways back. So does Stanley. But the main thing is we’re still musicianers,” I concluded, lamely.

  Daphne laughed and clapped her hands in delight.

  “‘Musicianers.’ That’s such a quaint word, when Buster’s old friends from New Orleans use it. It sounds nicer than ‘musicians.’ It conjures up high priests of jazz with a language and ritual all your own. As if you hold secrets of the temple that only the initiated may know. Like Wagner.”

  I was enjoying listening to Daphne almost as much as looking at her, except for her comparing our music to Wagner’s. Some high-falutin French music critic said something similar at Chez Red Tops a few years ago, and Ernest Hemingway socked him in the jaw so hard that the man had to be taken to the Hôtel Dieu hospital to be revived.

  Daphne kept her eye locked on mine. I wished I could see her other eye peeking under the wavy white-blonde hair, so that I could know what she was thinking. I looked at the poet, Baby Langston, standing behind the bar. His eyes were glued onto Daphne, and he was taking in her every word. I was sure that Baby was already working out a poem that would transform Daphne into a goddess out of Greek mythology.

  I was beginning to get cold feet about Stanley’s plan because I didn’t want to see the Corsican Twins throw a sack over Daphne’s beautiful face and body, and I didn’t like the thought of her fear while Stanley kept her and Buster in hiding until he negotiated terms for my fees and “lagniappe” with Robinson III. Daphne must have sensed that something was wrong, and she put her velvet-gloved hand on my sleeve.