The French Kiss Read online

  The ichthyologist called out from the loggia railing. A pair of voices answered from below, and I heard heavy footsteps on the staircase. Then I was flipped over, the mattress with me, and a minute later I rolled free.

  I got to my knees, tried to stand up and fell on my face. They had to help me down the spiral stairs and hold me over the kitchen sink while I threw up again. Then they emptied me onto a couch and we started playing 20 Questions.

  They were cops all right, but there was something different about the ichthyologist, even though it took me a while to find out what. His name was Ravier and he was a commissaire, but it was pretty clear he didn’t like the sight of blood any more than he liked my story. For that matter, I didn’t much like his either. The Law, it seemed, had gotten an anonymous tip, complete with address. A couple of bloodhounds had been sent over to check it out. They’d found the studio wide open, and me. They’d called for help, and the help had called for help, until it got to Monsieur le Commissaire. Only somewhere on its way up the totem pole, the news had apparently taken a sharp horizontal turn.

  I told Ravier I’d been to a party given by an old friend of mine, a fellow American called Alan Dove. Monsieur Dove dealt in art, I said. I gave his address. There’d been a disturbance at the party, the police had been called. Afterwards I’d come to the studio with a friend of Monsieur Dove’s, whose name was Helen Raven. She’d invited me back for a drink. There’d been two other Americans there, a painter called Rillington and a black man whose name I didn’t know. What was the relationship between these people? They were all friends of Monsieur Dove’s. But beyond that? I didn’t know. Did they live at the studio? I didn’t know that either. And had we been drinking or taking drugs? No, I’d had a glass or two of champagne at the party, that was all. But hadn’t I said the woman had invited me there for a drink? Yes, but we never got that far. Oh? Why was that? Because I got hit over the head first. And who had hit me over the head? The black man. But why would he have done a thing like that? I had no idea, maybe he didn’t like white people. Oh? And what had happened then? I had no idea, between getting hit over the head and waking up was a total blank. Or what had happened to the other people? No, not that either. Then would I take a good look at the studio and see if anything was different or missing?

  One of the bloodhounds had been taking notes in a small crabbed hand. The motion made me sick to my stomach again. I lifted my head. The Rillington was still on the easel, the mess on the work table. The rest of the place had that same unlived-in look. But then, on the other hand …

  I was staring into those huge walk-in cupboards that lined one wall. They were deep all right, with vertical built-in racks, but clean as a whistle except for some sheets of paper on the floor. Again, that unused look. But then it suddenly hit me that I was staring into them, and that the night before the sliding doors had been shut and locked.

  I got up, wobbly. They were deep all right, but the racks were empty. I noticed some kind of thermostatic deal that could have been a temperature control. Could have been used to store paintings, a smart-assed little voice said inside me. Could have been, I answered. (Kingsized paintings. Rillingtons? Blumenstocks?) I heard Ravier asking something behind me, but my stomach was already scrambling, and I felt an upward rush of dizzying heat, and the smart-assed voice opined: Having a little trouble working the pedals, honh, Cagey babe?

  At which the little trouble became a big trouble and down I went again.

  It was getting to be a habit.

  Weak as my story sounded at the studio, it played even less well at the Quai des Orfèvres. It wasn’t my idea to go there. I mean, I’d already seen the gold-spiked gates of Paris justice from the outside, which was close enough for me. Besides, as far as anybody knew, no crime had been committed, had it? Other than the one perpetrated on yours truly? And yours truly was ready to be big about it and forget the charges.

  Then they had to go and switch audiences on me. Monsieur le Commissaire Ravier, it turned out, belonged to something called the Service de la Répression des Fraudes Artistiques, which means the guys who tap you on the shoulder when you start carrying the Mona Lisa out of the Louvre. But the Monsieur le Commissaire who took over at the Quai des Orfèvres was Police Judiciaire, which means plain old garden-variety crime cop. His name was Dedini, and he’d been at it for twenty-eight years. He didn’t seem very proud of it either. He had the belly that went along with the job, and bulldog jowls pinched by his shirt collar, and a pair of rimless specs stuck on a massive head, and a dusty desk squeezed between filing cabinets and metal closets, and every time he said he’d been at it for twenty-eight years, his tone added: I’m up to my ears in it, Monsieur, don’t think you’re any different.

  Dedini didn’t buy my story, not at all. I think it was congenital with him. I gave him a little more than I’d given Ravier. I said I thought I’d been thorred because Al Dove had ordered it. I gave him the phone call too. Al Dove, I said, had been plenty agitated over what had happened to his party, and he’d gotten the idea I’d had something to do with it. In this he was 100 percent wrong, but I was ready to let bygones be bygones.

  Dedini shrugged. He ran his finger around inside his collar, looked at the tip of it, then picked up my passport again in both hands. He riffled the pages, stopped, read, riffled some more. He’d already done this several times. As soon as I’d got there, they’d put in a call to the foreigners’ section at the Prefecture of Police. And had come up empty-handed. This wasn’t surprising—files aren’t normally kept on tourists—but it made Dedini suspicious.

  How long did I say I’d been in Paris? he wanted to know.

  Off and on for some months, I’d already said. I said it again.

  Didn’t I know any foreigner who spent more than three months in France had to register with the Prefecture and apply for a carte de séjour?

  Yes I knew that.

  Well?

  But I hadn’t spent more than three consecutive months in France.

  Where else had I been?

  I’d been to Majorca. I’d also been in Italy.

  Then where were the stamps in my passport?

  The border officials had only looked at my passport. They hadn’t stamped it.

  I hadn’t been conducting any business in Paris, had I?

  No, I hadn’t.

  What precisely was my business?

  Public Relations.

  Where did I practice this Public Relations?

  In Santa Monica, California, U.S.A.

  In California but not in Paris?

  That was correct.

  I knew, didn’t I, that any foreigner who worked or did business in France had to possess a carte de travail?

  Yes, I’d heard something of the sort.

  Monsieur Dove was also from California, hadn’t I said that?

  In fact I didn’t remember saying it, but yes, Monsieur Dove was also from California.

  Monsieur Dove was doing business in Paris, wasn’t he?

  Yes.

  What did I know about Monsieur Dove’s business?

  Very little. He dealt in works of art, apparently successfully. It wasn’t my line.

  Then I didn’t work for Monsieur Dove?

  No.

  Or have any business dealings with him?

  No.

  I knew, didn’t I, that any foreigner living in France who wasn’t regularly employed had to prove an adequate source of income?

  I’d heard something of the sort. I didn’t believe it applied in my case though, because I wasn’t legally living in France.

  What, in any case, was my source of income?

  I was living off my savings.

  My savings?

  Yes, my savings.

  What was the source of these savings?

  That, I said, was my business.

  Were there any persons in Paris who could attest to these statements?

  Well, they could check the hotel I stayed at. The people there could vouch for my c
oming and going, also that I paid my bills.

  Besides the hotel?

  No.

  No? Did I mean to say that I’d been in Paris such a considerable time and knew no one?

  No, of course I knew some people in Paris.

  Well then?

  Well then, I didn’t want them being bothered by the police.

  And so on and so forth, or ainsi de suite as the French would put it. I took it at the time for one part fishing expedition and one part stall, with more than a dash of that sadistic pleasure bureaucratic work brings out in people. But I took it less and less, and when a bloodhound brought in a plate of sandwiches that looked suspiciously like rejects from Air France’s propellor days, I broke out in a sweat again. I had nothing against cooperating with the police, I said, but I’d answered all their questions, more than once. Now I had better things to do. No crime had been committed. If they needed me again, they knew where they could find me. Etc. etc., and I salted and peppered it with lawyers, ambassadors, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

  Dedini dropped my passport on his desk. He ducked his head, scratched his neck, then bit into one of the sandwiches.

  “Sit down, Monsieur,” he said between mouthfuls. “There have been two infractions of the law that we know of.”

  He picked up a newspaper with his free hand, flipped it open, and tossed it across his desk at me. It was the first edition of one of the afternoon papers and Al Dove, I saw, had made the front page.

  “Sit down, Monsieur,” he repeated. “Read it.”

  I sat down.

  Un vernissage pas comme les autres (an opening unlike the others) ran the headline, and under it they’d used two photos. One was of the Blumenstock, the other, fuzzy but recognizable, of the mêlée. The story under the painting referred to an old controversy over the artist’s late work and an American court case famous in art circles. Was the scandal about to revive? the reporter asked. In any case, he concluded, there hadn’t been such a furor in the tired world of Art since the Legros affair, to which this one might bear more than one unsuspected resemblance.

  “Theft,” said Commissaire Dedini, taking another sandwich. “The first infraction is theft.”

  I didn’t get it.

  “The painting is missing,” he said, pointing. “It is presumed stolen.”

  I still didn’t get it. Who would steal a fake? Besides, hadn’t it still been hanging there when the police showed up?

  Dedini’s mouth was full of sandwich, but that didn’t deter him.

  “Read the other one,” he said, gesturing at the newspaper.

  The second story was about the party itself. It described the same ruckus I’d witnessed, but it claimed that the carnage that had taken place before the police arrived was nothing like what had happened after. In the process of their seizing the premises—for what motives nobody knew—innocent people had been roughed up and brutalized. This was just another example, by now familiar to Parisians, of violence compounded by official violence. All too typically the police had no comment, and the citizens of Paris could only ask again: Who did the police think they were protecting, and from whom?

  “The scum,” Dedini said when I’d finished reading. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. “Was that what you saw, Monsieur?”

  “It’s pretty exaggerated,” I said.

  “Did you see any examples of this so-called police violence?” He gestured again at the paper. “Of innocent people being brutalized by the so-called police?”

  “Not really. But …”

  “The scum,” he repeated. This time I assumed he was referring to the press. He took off his glasses, blew on them, then wiped them on the handkerchief. His eyes looked naked and watery without them.

  “But what about the painting?” I said. “I still don’t see …”

  Putting the glasses back on, he leaned back heavily in his chair.

  “Suppose I were to tell you, Monsieur, that there wasn’t a contingent of police within two kilometers of your friend’s party last night?”

  I mulled that one over. The more I mulled it, the less I could suppress a smile. Because if someone had set me up, which was what it was beginning to look like to me, at least I had company.

  Dedini, though, didn’t see the humor in it. His eyes went small behind the specs and his lips tight like a prune.

  “If they weren’t the police,” I said, “then who were they?”

  He didn’t answer, though somehow I got the impression he knew. I thought back to the ones I’d seen. They’d looked enough like Law to me, and they’d been well organized. Maybe too well? In any case, I hadn’t been the only one who’d been fooled. There’d been the tout-Paree, and the press too.

  “We want to talk to your friend Dove,” said Dedini. “Where is he?”

  He stared at me. I stared back.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “You’ve got the same address I do.”

  He ran the fingers of both hands through the gray stubble of his hair. He didn’t say the word this time, but you could see it in the disgusted look on his face. “Scum,” and I guess for Monsieur le Commissaire it meant everybody, present company included.

  Just then we were interrupted. There was a knock, then the door to Dedini’s office opened and a tall, dapperly dressed figure looked in from the corridor. He glanced at me without recognition, then crooked his finger and called to Dedini in a clipped peremptory voice.

  The commissaire’s jaw tightened. He got up and his lumbering body disappeared into the corridor. I could hear several voices arguing at once, but all I heard Dedini say was “Oui, Monsieur” and “Non, Monsieur,” and when he came back he looked like he’d been taken by the collar and shaken inside out.

  Two bloodhounds were with him.

  “Let’s go,” Dedini snapped at me. He stopped only to grab another sandwich off his desk. Chomping at it, he led the way.

  It had started to rain again, that chill spring drizzle, and the sky was going dark ahead of time. I spotted the Giulia parked where I’d left her, but if I’d’ve had a notion, the shift in the odds would have put it from my mind. It had been three to one in Dedini’s car. Now, on the canal bank, it was more like two dozen, give or take a few.

  What was it I said: one part fishing expedition and one part stall? But all the time the stall, if that’s what it was, had been going on at the Quai des Orfèvres, the fish had been lying at the bottom of the Canal St. Martin. The Law claimed they’d gotten another anonymous tip, but I still like to think it was one of those old anglers on the canal banks who’d gotten his first bite of the century out of those polluted waters and knew something had to be wrong.

  By the time we got there that particular lock had been drained to knee depth and the fish hauled onto the dirt bank. They’d covered him with a blanket. Three men in high rubber boots stood guard over him along with Monsieur le Commissaire Ravier, his turtle head scrunched against the elements, while behind them a squadron of uniformed gendarmes kept the curious at bay and the quay traffic circulating around the police vehicles.

  It was a big one too, and as black as Italian coffee. He hadn’t been in the water long enough for the body to have mildewed, but the whole right side of his face had been staved in, starting with the eye. By a club, you’d say, or even an irate mastodon, though as it turned out a single bullet had done the damage, a big and crashing one fired at close range.

  I had no trouble recognizing him. It was Thor all right, the same oversized brother who’d kingkonged me at the party, again at the studio. Sometime after that, while I bad-tripped up on the loggia, somebody had taken him out with a Paris-isn’t-Chicago elephant gun and dumped him conveniently into the canal. He didn’t look like he knew what had hit him either, lying there soggily in the drizzle, and while I shed no tears over him, I felt no particular gratitude toward his murderer.

  “I suppose you never saw him before,” said Dedini.

  “I’ve seen him,” I said. “I don
’t know his name, but he was the one who slugged me last night. Both times.”

  The commissaire was holding the blanket up in one hand. He let it drop.

  “Who killed him, Monsieur?”

  “I have no idea,” I replied.

  Somebody handed him a manila envelope. It contained the so-called last effects of the corpse. He pulled out a passport, examined it, handed it to me. It was a green American Eagle job, and though the ink had run and some of the pages were stuck together, you could still make out: Name: JONNISON DAVIS; Birthdate: August 1, 1947; Birthplace: CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.

  California, U.S.A. I shook my head.

  “It’s a big country back there,” I said, “and California’s the biggest piece of it. No, I never heard of him before.”

  We went back to the Quai des Orfèvres. Monsieur le Commissaire Ravier wanted a crack at me, but homicide wasn’t art fraud. Homicide was strictly Police Judiciaire. That meant that Monsieur le Commissaire Ravier could go fingerpaint. That meant back to the same dusty office with the single grime-streaked window giving onto the courtyard, and murder made Monsieur le Commissaire Dedini happy as the proverbial pig in sunshine, the more so because he had a live body to go with the dead one.

  The French Law, you see, have a nasty little wrinkle going for them. It’s called the garde-à-vue. What it means is that they can hold you for twenty-four hours for no reason at all, and the twenty-four can go to forty-eight in cases involving “national security,” which, the way I understand it, can include stealing a loaf of bread. You get zero phone calls. They don’t have to tell a soul, not even your mother, and if they’ve got to take you before an examining magistrate after the time limit, they can lock you up and throw away the key in the meantime. Furthermore, the examining magistrate doesn’t even have to be convinced you’ve committed a crime. He can order you held as a witness, and if there’s the slightest doubt about your skipping town, not all the legal talent in Paris can get you out. Preventive detention, it’s called, and according to Dedini, examining magistrates were used to cooperating fully with the Police Judiciaire in regard to preventive detention.