Rage in Paris Read online

  “Is something wrong, Mr. Brown? You’ve gone red in the face like you have a fever.” She actually took her right glove off and put her soft hand on my forehead. So soft and perfumed was her hand that I had to restrain myself from kissing it then and there. Buster took it all in with an ugly sneer twisting his face before he said, “Don’t you worry none about Urby, baby. He be tough as they come, almost as tough as me. Ain’t that right, Urby, my man?”

  He was really skating on thin ice now because the last time we fought at St. Vincent’s, I beat him up so badly that he had to limp into Father Gohegan’s office to find sanctuary.

  “I think Mr. Brown has a fever, Buster. Maybe he should be in bed under warm blankets with pots of tea and lemon and dry toast in easy reach. I could take him to my—”

  Just at that moment, there was a commotion at the door, and we all looked at each other. Only Buster seemed truly surprised. Daphne was not fazed at all; she looked amused by the goings-on.

  An instant later, pandemonium reigned in La Belle Princesse. One of the two masked men had slugged Baby Langston and was rifling through the cash register, while the other pointed a sawed-off shotgun at us.

  “Que personne ne bouge!” he shouted.

  “Les mains en l’air!” We all raised our hands. Buster was wide-eyed with terror, but Daphne was as cool as if armed robberies were a matter of routine. Playing the role assigned to me, I leapt at the gunman, and he brought his sap down on my head so hard that I slumped to the floor and saw a lot of my blood on my hand when I removed it from my temple. Soon I was only semiconscious, but then I felt Daphne’s hand on my cheek, and her honeysuckle scent filled my nose.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she hissed at the Corsican. “He was only trying to protect me . . . like a gentleman.”

  “Shut yo’ mouth, woman,” Buster quailed. “Elsewise they turn on you. These here men just wants to take the money in that cash registry and be gone like a cool breeze.”

  The first Corsican had filled a bag with all the money in the cash register, and then he turned to Buster and Daphne. “Vous parlez trop,” he said to them. The second Corsican tied their hands behind their backs so tightly that Buster let out a yelp. Daphne went a little red in the face. The Corsicans threw big burlap sacks over Daphne and Buster that almost fell to her ankles.

  “Avancez,” a twin barked out as they pushed them toward the alley door with the barrels of their shotguns aimed at their backs. Buster was shaking and moaning like a man going off to the guillotine, but Daphne didn’t make a sound.

  The four of them slipped out the back door. We heard the distinctive roar of a Citroën “traction avant” revving up and then the squeal of tires as the Corsicans raced off with Buster and Daphne to rendezvous with Redtop and Baby Langston.

  The moment the car roared off, Stanley slapped palms with Hambone Gaylord, and they both made that cricket laugh in their throats. Baby Langston was wiping at the scratch on his forehead with a handkerchief, but when he saw the cut on my temple he poured gin over it and swabbed the blood away.

  “Those boys sure play rough,” Baby Langston said in his soft voice. “I sure wouldn’t want to be around when they do it for real.”

  My head was throbbing. I was wondering why the Corsican had sapped me so hard. But, mainly, I was worried about Daphne. She seemed cool enough, but I didn’t want to think of what the twins might do to her if they got hot eyeing her on the way to the rendezvous with Redtop and Baby Langston. They probably wouldn’t be able to master their urges for too long.

  “Are your Corsicans on the level, Hambone?” I asked.

  “They my men,” he replied coldly. “I done dragged they Daddy off the barbed wire at Verdun. The whole Alfieri clan at my beck and call.”

  Stanley gave me a big wink and wagged a finger at me. “You sho’ taken to that Daphne and she to you, mon petit. Ooooeeee, I can still feel the heat. Don’t worry, your doll gone be free in twenty-four hour, Mr. Robinson play ball.”

  “What about Buster?” I asked.

  “Well, you told me he was tight with the Count. Let’s see that little Hitler sweat when he try to get that no-count Buster back from them Corsicans. But you let me handle it. We gots to be careful that it don’t bite back on us. I gone phone the police right now ’bout the robbery and snatchin’ of goldilocks and Buster. You keep a rabbin’ on that cut so’s the blood keep gushin’ outta it.”

  My blood, I thought bitterly. I hadn’t lost a drop of it during four years in the Great War, and now I was bleeding in a faked abduction over a question of money.

  “The mo’ blood and bruises them Frenchy po-lice sees, the mo’ they likely swallow our story,” Stanley said. “We got to rough Baby up some more in case they come back to question y’all again about the robbery and the snatch.”

  Stanley looked like those photos of King Vidor directing Hallelujah!. He sat Baby Langston down at one of the tables and slapped him across the face until Baby was sobbing in pain with tears flooding his cheeks. I could see that Hambone was straining to keep from jumping Stanley. Then Stanley threw me to the floor so that my back was angled against the bar, and he rubbed one of the white cloth napkins across the cut on my forehead so hard that it soaked up the bleeding instead of making it worse. When I dabbed at the cut with my handkerchief, it had already dried up.

  Stanley flung a few more chairs and tables around and threw bottles of wine at the bar toward both sides of the cash register. Shards of glass ricocheted around La Belle Princesse, and Hambone was looking seriously irritated. Stanley smiled at him slyly and said, “Hey, Bone. Gots to make it real nasty in here so them police don’t look around too much. They don’t like to get real down and nasty and mess up they pretty uniforms and shoes like the cops back home.”

  Hambone scowled even more as he took in the mess, and he looked frightened when he saw the state of his nephew Baby Langston. Stanley threw more fat on the fire.

  “Hambone, mon grand, when the police arrives you gots to be lookin’ mo’ upset about losin’ all that money and havin’ yo’ club all trashed up. But don’t worry. The girl’s father goin’ to pay Urby some big money to get his daughter back, and you goin’ to get a nice slice of it, pay for some new furniture for yo’ club. Sho’ needs it.”

  That really did it. Hambone raised himself to his full six feet three inches and shook his ham-like fists at the slight Stanley.

  “You wants me to look mo’ upset?” Hambone said. “Mo’ upset! Sheeeitt, Stanley, I be mo’ upset, you be missin’ half yo’ mouf. This caper best be worth my while.”

  Stanley sweetened Hambone up by forking over a large wad of franc notes as an “advance” on the proceeds. After eyeing the wad and making fast mental calculations, Hambone suddenly became so enthusiastic about playing the role of a robbery victim that Stanley had to keep him from busting up all of his own chairs.

  I heard the roaring of a car engine, and then Redtop burst into the room. She checked out the devastated nightclub and shook her head nervously.

  “The firestorm’s about to blaze,” she said. She crossed herself and looked as if she were about to cry. I was surprised because Redtop was one tough woman. She went over to the miserable Baby Langston and yanked him to his feet. “Let’s git, Baby. We got to meet up with them Corsican boys and fetch Beauty and the Beast off to Stanley’s hideaway.”

  The chief inspector of police apologized to Hambone for the “inconvenience” that the robbery had caused. Hambone declined his offer of help to tidy up La Belle Princesse for tomorrow night’s charity concert. Hambone didn’t want policemen lingering around the premises because he probably felt that they might uncover something that could get him deported.

  The police examined my wounds, careful not to get blood on themselves. When the chief inspector learned that, like himself, I had known the carnage of the Battle of the Somme, he carried my clarinet case out to his car and drove me to the Hôtel Dieu hospital himself, the siren wailing at full blast.

/>   Fortunately, he didn’t open the clarinet case and find the weaponry in its hidden compartment. That would have got me kicked out of France quicker than you can say Jack Robinson, war hero or not.

  I was released from Hôtel Dieu six hours later, at just past one thirty in the morning. A team of doctors had spent most of that time debating whether I needed stitches on my temple and, at long last, concluded that I didn’t. Finally, I asked them to put liquid court plaster on the cut. Then I combed my hair over it, said my good-byes, and headed for Chez Red Tops. I was anxious to find out how Daphne was doing.

  CHAPTER 8

  Paris, Early Saturday morning, February 10, 1934

  Chez Red Tops was unusually empty for two o’clock on a Saturday morning. The Paris taxi drivers were nine days into their strike, and it was getting hard to move around in the city, day or night. People were still lying low after the riots, avoiding the Fascist gangs licking their wounds in bars and restaurants on the Right Bank and assaulting anybody who looked foreign or like a workingman. They were limbering up for another attack on the National Assembly if the order came down.

  The colored American owners of businesses in Harlem-in- Montmartre were ready for them, guns and knives and baseball bats on hand, in case the Fascists aped their Klan brothers in the South by attacking their businesses.

  Redtop was all alone, standing behind the bar looking blue and down. I had never seen Chez Red Tops so empty, and I had never seen her so low. She sipped at the straight gin in her glass, smoking a gold-filtered Russian cigarette with a trembling hand.

  When I asked her about the “hostages,” she said, “Buster’s ice queen be really somethin’. Don’t nothin’ faze her. Them Corsicans say the girl be quiet as a morgue, but Buster be whinin’ like a baby so much they etherize him and ice queen a little bit before turnin’ them over to me and Baby Langston to take to Stanley’s hideout. Urby, you ought to have seen them when we opened their sacks to check them out. Buster be out cold and lookin’ scared to death, and the ice queen be like Sleepin’ Beauty with no fear in her. Me and Baby ain’t said a word the whole time, so there ain’t no way Buster or the ice queen can tell who we is. I left Baby with them to hold the fort when they wake up until Stanley make his move.”

  “How come Buster’s acting like that? He’s all front, but I’ve never seen him act so cowardly.”

  Redtop’s gold tooth shone. “I think he scared to death that Daphne Daddy goin’ to cut a deal for her and leave him to them Corsicans, and he know what they capable of doin’. Between you, me, and the lamppost, Buster ain’t worth flea farts and ain’t worth savin’.”

  I had discovered a frightened Redtop at La Belle Princesse earlier, but I saw a panicked one now. She pulled at her curly red hair, bit at her claw-like, lavender-painted fingernails.

  “This deal gettin’ too big, Urby,” she went on. “Smells to me like cops and politickers and other big white fish goin’ to get swimmin’ around in this thing. That got to be a worry for my bidness and our folk here in Montmartre.” She paused and squeezed my arm, the first time that she had ever touched me.

  “Urby, they throw me out of France, and I ain’t got no place to go. There ain’t no way I’m goin’ back to America and all of that Jim Crow lynchin’ and everybody black and white be hatin’ on me ’cause I makes love to women instead of men. No way I’m goin’ back.” Redtop reached under the bar and held up a sawed-off shotgun. “I’m goin’ to swallow this baby’s barrel and pull the trigger if the Frenchies deports me.”

  “What you got there?” I asked Redtop, stroking her shotgun. I was trying to get the old smile back on her face and to cover up my shock at what she had said about suiciding herself. “Looks like when your baby grows up, she’s going to be a Browning A-5.”

  “Sure is,” she said, smiling. “And I knows how to use her. Them French Nazis better not try to bust in here. You packin’?”

  I reached inside my overcoat and made a fast draw from the custom-made speed holster strapped to my chest. Then I twirled the Colt around, doing Tom Mix gun tricks. Redtop whistled and then tapped me hard on my Homburg helmet for good luck, a little too hard judging from her pained look as she sucked at her knuckles. I screwed the silencer onto the Colt and put it back into the holster.

  “You sure is ready, Urby,” she commented, admiringly. “When Baby Langston phone me just ’fore you come in, everything be copacetic, ’cept Buster awake now and he lettin’ rip. He shoutin’ about tellin’ the Count them Corsicans stuck up Hambone’s place and snatch up him and ice queen, unless somebody cut him loose from his gunny sack. The girl ain’t open her pretty little mouth one time.”

  “You tell Stanley about the way Buster’s acting?” I asked.

  “Stanley says he got a plan for Buster. Meantime, Baby Langston keepin’ a close eye on them through a spy hole in the stable wall. Baby finally had to hogtie Buster. Man goin’ to end up scarin’ hisself to death. Thank the good Lord, he don’t know me and Baby in on it. He think it be the Corsicans.”

  “Can I look at them through that spy hole?” I asked.

  Redtop gave me a knowing grin and said, “Sure, you can take a peek at her. I got itchy feet too, Urby. I’ll drive you there myself.”

  “Has Stanley talked money to Barnet Robinson yet?” I asked. “Stanley told me he decided to get a white friend of his to phone him at the Ritz where he be stayin’. Around lunch time. The friend goin’ to lay it all out to Robinson so that he pay what he owe you big time when you brings the girl in.”

  “What’s Stanley’s plan for Buster?” I asked.

  “He goin’ to ax Baby to put on one of them French accents he can do and warn Buster that the Corsicans gone cut him into little pieces and feed him to the sharks, he open his mouth about the snatch. Also, he gone promise Buster if he hush up his mouth, he be back to his Count in no time flat.”

  Stanley’s plan sounded good to me, but I knew we couldn’t trust Buster to go along with it quietly. He was bound to do something crazy.

  “You think the girl will talk?”

  “Naw. You goin’ to bust into them stables and save her soon as Stanley white friend settle your bidness with her daddy. You be her hero then. I think she like you, too.”

  Redtop closed her empty nightclub, leaving the Senegalese bouncer to stand guard. She seemed to have calmed down and was acting like her old self: tough as nails and warm as the sun.

  We hopped into Redtop’s Hispano-Suiza. She had slung her baby shotgun out of sight under her coat. She revved up the engine, and we sped off to Stanley’s Bois de Boulogne hideout using back alleys and side streets. I peered behind us. It didn’t look like we were being followed. But I had an uneasy feeling that something was out there. Redtop knew Paris as well as any taxi driver, and we hurtled along so fast that anybody tailing us would have to show his hand.

  I saw a glint of light on a car well behind us. “Redtop, I think somebody’s tailing us.” Just then, it turned down a side street and disappeared.

  “Call me jumpy,” Redtop said, “but we best slip around another way, so ain’t nobody follow us without us knowin’ it.”

  She stopped the Hispano, turned off the engine and the lights, and we waited for five minutes to see if the other car reappeared. While we were waiting, Redtop opened her coat, unslung her shotgun, and put it in my lap. No car appeared, so Redtop started up the engine, and we moved along a road in the Bois de Boulogne with the lights off.

  Suddenly, Redtop veered off the road and we skidded across the grass, the frost crunching under the tires. We stepped out of the car and looked around. Even with our coats on, it was chilly, and the bare, rimy tree branches looked sinister swaying in the wind in the dim moonlight. We struggled through a mass of tangled bushes that tore at our clothes. Redtop led the way, swinging her mini-Browning like a scythe. By reflex action, I unlocked the safety on my Colt.

  We could make out the outlines of the stables when they were about ten yards away. The sounds from Paris
were faint, and the woods were silent. Suddenly, I heard a cry like a hoot owl, right in front of me. I heard Redtop chuckling. She had made the hoot owl sound and thrown her voice. She put her finger to her lips and we waited. We heard a hoot owl replying.

  “That be Baby Langston,” she said. “Let’s go.” Redtop slung her shotgun, but I kept my Colt’s safety off. She hooted more loudly as we reached the stables and then she walked inside and I headed toward the spy hole.

  Something hard hammered against my metal Homburg. As I fell, I drew my Colt, ready to hit the ground shooting. I must have blacked out for an instant. When I came to, I heard Redtop cursing and screaming inside the stable, and I peered through the hole in its wall. In the light from a kerosene lamp, I saw that Buster had broken loose, and Baby Langston lay unconscious on the ground next to the tire iron that must have bounced off my Homburg. Buster was holding Redtop’s Browning to her head. Luckily, he didn’t know that I was conscious.

  Buster looked like he needed some drugs real fast. Killing me, Baby Langston, and Redtop must have seemed to him to be the fastest ticket to drug heaven now that he held the upper hand. When Buster cocked the shotgun, ready to blow off Redtop’s head, images of him from the time that I first saw him at St. Vincent’s flashed through my mind. I wished there was a way to stop him from shooting Redtop without killing him, but I drew a bead on Buster’s ear hole through the opening in the wall and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet made a phttttt sound passing through the silencer and then punched its way through Buster’s ear. The force of it made his head jerk sideways, and blood spattered from the wound as Buster toppled over, dead before he hit the ground. I heard Daphne cry out, but by the time I had charged into the stable, she must have fainted and now lay immobile in the burlap sack.

  “Thanks, Urby,” Redtop whispered. “I ain’t about to forget you done save my life.” Baby Langston moaned and started rubbing his head vigorously where Buster had slugged him.