Paid and Loving Eyes

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

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Needle Park, as they call it, is as unappetizing as, well, the same in any big city these days. The local gesture at liberalism, of a sort. Gobbie dropped me off. I’d told him I’d be an hour or so.

A few of the huddles looked derelicts, but some were astonishingly affluent. Several decent overcoats, a trilby or two, and one bird smartly dressed in a skirt suit of classic career-woman line. It makes you wonder. One group was actually auctioning drugs, the business ethic at play. I finally found Guy and Veronique round a sort of big candle among so-o-o-o happy friends. Guy shouted, some joke. Everybody laughed at me. If it centred on my stupidity, he’d be right.

“Evening, Guy.”

“Kiye!” several chorused my pronunciation. One added in a shrill roar, “Khow kquaint!”

The laughter died. Somebody coughed, racked and shivering. One drank, offered me a sip. I declined, thanks.

“Chance of a word, please?” I asked. Guy, rolling his eyes, came, Veronique too. She looked in slightly the better shape. I turned after a pace or two and sized them up.

Here stood my two guardians, relaxed, cool. The same custodians, note, who had crumbled in near-terror when I’d gone missing for a few hours among the antique shops of Paris. A decided change, now I’d done my bit. Or now that I was expendable?

“You’re not keeping track of me, Veronique.” I hoped for a reasonable reply. Guy seemed beyond it. “Instead you’re shooting the toot, or whatever you people say.”

She swayed, staring through me. Distant traffic stuttered sedately, the Swiss still methodically switching their engines off at a hint of a red. I wondered, is it to save petrol for the fatherland?

“Time off, Lovejoy.”

“Look. I’ve a problem.” I hesitated, hoping my bad acting wasn’t over the top. “I’ve the chance”, I admitted nobly, “of, er, seeing a girl. But I’ve some money coming in from East Anglia. To the hotel, next couple of hours, I think. I need it signed for.”

“Money?” Guy was on Planet Earth after all.

“As a draft. In my name.” I smiled apologetically at Veronique, who’d also momentarily tethered her mind to reality at the mention of gelt. “I can’t be in two places at once.”

“What girl?” Veronique asked.

“Nobody important, love,” I said. “Not anyone you need worry about. But I can see you’re busy…” That partly mollified her.

“I know!” cried Guy, almost leaping as the notion struck him. “We’ll accept the money for you, Lovejoy!” I thought the penny’d never drop. “Sign an authorization with the concierge, and we’ll do it!”

“Thanks, pals.” I waved farewell. “Oh, one thing. How long can I be away? Only, Colonel Marimee said I’d be needed.”

“You should be able to get in enough pokes before tomorrow night, Lovejoy.” Guy leered, fell over. Veronique started to haul him upright. Somebody nearby relieved himself into a small bush. Another vomited. God. Ecstasy, at these prices?

“See you back at the hotel, troops. Sevenish do?”

They called seven’d be ample. So the Repository would be a midnight job. I had twenty-four hours. They could buy a hundred comas with my money, as long as I was free of them for a bit. As it was, I got free of them for much, much longer.

Gobbie drove us out of Zurich. I tried telling him the way we’d come, me and my golden pair. I vaguely remember road numbers, but things never look the same returning. The old Italian proverb came dimly from some old Western film, look behind, not before. Fine time to remember good advice when it’s pointless. He told me to stop telling him the way. Okay, so he knew the Continent and I didn’t. No need to get irascible.

Lysette was along. Never known such a quiet lass. She only spoke at the first Strasbourg sign. I’d dozed off.

“Why is that money necessary, Lovejoy? I have credit cards.”

She smelled nice. She’d been there when I’d phoned the upright, honest Dicko Chave. He’d promised to wire me a load of zlotniks against some antiques I’d found. That story wouldn’t have been enough to make him trust me. I’d had to invent a lovely unmarried lass I’d also discovered, as his new possible partner. He’d urged me to propose on his behalf. Poor old Dicko.

“The one commodity my addict custodians need is money. The scent of it winkled the time of the robbery from them.”

“They’ll steal it, Lovejoy,” from old Gobbie at the wheel, his face lit by the road lights. “You should have only pretended there was money coming.”

“No. They’d have guessed, then I’d have been in the soup.” I’d not said how much, but to addicts all money promises bliss.

We drove on. I’d not said anything to Lysette about the terrible truth that Gobbie’d made me face. I couldn’t. But I suspected she’d known the true story long since. As I had. And maybe poor Baff Bavington had. And poor Leon, the French divvy. And Jan Fotheringay her brother. Jesus, but I’m thick. That’s half my trouble. I’ll work something out, then ignore the obvious if it’s too horrible to contemplate. Birds are always picking at me for never facing up. Hateful, that they might be right. It’s as if I know the words, the tune, but don’t understand the song.

“Where did they go, love? Your three vans.”

“Lausanne.”

“Lausanne? Is that still in Switzerl -?”

“I’ve made a map with detailed directions, Lovejoy.” She spoke curtly. She meant I wasn’t worth talking to. Next breath she told me why. “I believe you already know the address.”

I hate it. A bloke ought to be allowed one or two tricks, even though they’re transparent. I mean, we’re not allowed to say when a woman’s deceit is obvious, are we? But they can say whatever they like. It galls me. Women have too many blinking privileges for my liking. “Did other vans turn up?”

“I counted eighteen, in Lausanne.”

So they probably all went there, By one route or another. I’d think of a cutting rejoinder to Lysette any second.

“Lovejoy?” Gobbie said gruffly. “We’re here. Paris. Where was it?”

The nausea rose within me. I’d been sick at my non-thought thoughts for a fortnight, longer even. Now I was back.

“Look,” I tried, surly. “We’ll stop for coffee. It’s almost ten o’clock. We’ve not stopped or anything—”

“Lovejoy,” from Lysette. Gobbie said nothing, waited while traffic honked and motorists yelled imprecations.

“Right, Gobbie.” Where had we driven, that night in Dreyfus’s trundlesome motor? Seine, Arc de Triomphe, Sacré Coeur, then doubled back to that sordid Paris-shouldn’t-have-such-districts near the sound of trains. I managed to direct us through the knitted thoroughfares. We parked, by a fluke, and walked.

Lysette walked with her arm through Gobbie’s, I noticed, narked. Gobbie occasionally made as if to glance at me, then avoided my eyes. It took us nearly an hour. We’d actually passed the doorway before I recognized the church-hall-type entrance down a few steps, cardboarded windows opposite, the same smell of cooking. It was wise to walk on by, in case one of those immobile beefy blokes had been left on watch.

“It’s here, Gobbie. That’s the way in.” Children were playing nearby, calling in foreign dialects. I didn’t look at them. It was dark, the street lighting furtive. “What now?”

“You two off out of it, Lovejoy. I’ll look round the district. Be at the corner in an hour, eh?”

Gobbie shuffled away on his quest. Lysette came with me, to a small caff near the Deux Magots. When she did speak it was so unexpected I almost spilled my coffee.

“I should have taken you to the Procope, Rue de l”Ancienne Comédie,” she said quietly. We were at a pavement table. “Benjamin Franklin went there. But your favourite would have been Voltaire. He also. And Napoleon.”

I would have liked Voltaire? How did she know? I knew I’d look him up sooner or later, be no wiser.

“There are whole books written on Parisian cafes, Lovejoy.” I quite liked my name, first time I could remember since Monique said it. “Hemingway objected when the proprietors of the Closerie des Lilas—from its lilacs, you know?—made their waiters lose their moustaches. No longer chic, you see?”

“Oh, right.” There isn’t a lot you can say to this quiet reflective stuff, especially from a bird like Lysette. You never know whether it’s leading up.

“The Coupole has been supplanted by a monstrosity. Beckett, Henry Miller…”

My attention wandered. Nobody I recognized around the small square. Students burst into laughter at a nearby table. Two nurses slumped tiredly on window chairs, smoking. Nurses made me remember that gross but fantastically exuberant Katta. Wouldn’t have minded her giving me something she gave Paulie. Isn’t it odd how—

“Eh?” An important question had come up.

“… kill you, Lovejoy.” Her last words.

“Who?” People looked across with sudden interest. I must have yelped. I quickly smiled for the sake of appearances. I don’t know what it looked like, but it felt pretty ghastly from within.

“The syndicate.”

Sweat beaded my forehead, started to trickle down my back. Jodie Danglass was their helper. Surely she wouldn’t be party to anything so…? And Paulie? Or his slavish fatty Katta? The suave Troude? The chilling Monique Delebarre might, any day of the week. Guy and Veronique would slay their grannies for a bob, par for their mainline course. Colonel Marimee was deranged; I couldn’t count him among the faint-hearts, and who knew how many goons he had to pull the rip? But Sandy, for God’s sake? No wonder Mel had cut and run. Had Mel known how terrible the scam was? Worse, did Sandy?

“Why’d you visit Jan, Lovejoy?” Still flat of voice. “I recognize you from the hospital, coming out of the lift.”

“Dunno. Worried about me getting drawn into something I didn’t understand, I suppose.”

“Jan and Sandy have been… friends for months.” She shrugged. “It’s difficult. To be sister to a brother with…”

“Must be.” Jan and Sandy now? So Mel had good personal reason to scarper, not just money.

“You could leave, Lovejoy.” I wished she’d not fiddle with her spoon. I sometimes wonder if women nark me deliberately.

“Leave?” I said blankly. “Leave? As in…?”

“Leave. With me. Now, when Gobbie comes, simply drive home.”

That quiet voice, her luscious hair, casual manner, the serene intensity of her Pre-Raphaelite features. All the time cerebrating away like a think-tank.

“With you?” She’d made me gape.

“Gobbie will make his own way. He knows the routes.” She raised her eyes to mine. I’d never seen such deep eyes, though they were at the front, if you follow. Not sunken, I mean. “You must ask yourself why stay, Lovejoy.”

I really hate that. Asking me why’s my business, not hers. “Why?” I asked her.

“You must learn your own reasons, if you haven’t already discovered them for yourself.”

“Look, love,” I said, peeved, frightened. “This whole thing’s made me spew up, drift around foreign lands with—”

“You’re ignorant, Lovejoy,” she said softly. “Ignorance of the simple kind, not malice. But it draws you out of your depth.” She coloured slightly. “I would care for you, you see.”

Care for how? I nearly said, like you did your brother Jan? Mercifully, Gobbie wheezed into a chair, his eyes rheumy.

“Found one of their factories, Lovejoy. Within a stone’s throw of the depot. Next street but three.” He cleared his gruff old throttle. “I could tell you about it. Save you seeing?”

Lam out? That’s what Lysette wanted me to do. “No, Gobbie. I’ll see.” It was me’d been sickened, suffered by avoiding the truth. This served me right. “Stay here, Lysette.” I rose. She came anyway. I sighed. One word from me, birds do whatever they want. It’s their version of loyal co-operation.

Distances in Paris never seem very far, not like London where sequential postal numbers signify districts miles apart. Paris is yards rather than furlongs. We were there in a trice, Gobbie flagging somewhat as we made the last street. I must have been hurrying. Lysette told me to take my time, that Gobbie had already done too much. She didn’t mention her prodigious driving, staying on the ball, Lausanne and back, Zurich to Paris. And making mad proposals to a nerk like me.

“See that covered way, son?” There was a kind of projection from a long wall. It resembled one of those ironwork half-cloisters you get over the side entrances of London theatres, for early-evening queues that no longer come.

“Aye?” Several stacked street barrows. Steps, a few sacking-covered windows, some lantern lights, one or two bare bulbs. Rubbish littered the pavements. That scented cooking, metal clanking somewhere, a few shouts in non-French, a background hum. “Is there a way in?”

“The steps go up, but have ones leading to the cellars beside.”

“So I go down?” Nobody along these pavements, not at this hour. I felt my nape prickle.

“No, son. You go up.” With resigned patience, “Then you can look down into the cellar area, see?”

Now he was deliberately narking me. “How the hell did I know they’d made it all into one?”

“Cos it’s a workshop.” He was disgusted by my slowness. Lysette said nothing.

“Wait here.” I left them, eeled down the narrow street. The hum and clanking grew louder. Something thudded, shouts rose, then settled down to a hum. I went softly, looked back. Gobbie and Lysette had vanished. The air felt smoky. The light was only clear at the top of the street now. Here was gloom, foreboding, trouble. I almost started to whistle, like walking past the churchyard coming back from the White Hart.

Some sort of torch would have done me, but I’d not the sense. How had Gobbie managed it? Go up, he’s said, then you can look down. The steps were of the old-fashioned sort you see in North London, iron railings both sides. Some gone, jagged pegs waiting to stab you as you fell.

The door was blowing faintly, sacking, outwards. No lights except some feeble glow—oil lantern?—from within. I shoved. To my surprise it scraped ajar. I stepped in. Somebody calling, others yelling, childish voices answering. A bloke threatening.

Glass, pieces of broken glass, on bare linoleum. Flaking everything, by the light of the oil lamp hung beside the stairs. Oil lamps meant no traceable electricity bill. Up or down? I went where the light glowed most, which was directly ahead beside the staircase. The place stank.

One unbelievable creaking woodwork step down, then a sheen from below. Round a corner, me shuffling inchwise and the hum growing and the shouts louder. If only I could have understood what they were saying. Lots of little voices, the gruff deeper voice yelling abuse. Near silence, then the hum resuming.

And I saw them, suddenly there, children down in the cellars. The floor of what had been the living room had been knocked out, almost ripped, the floorboards scagged at their insertions into the walls near my feet. They had been unceremoniously hacked away. I was near the margin. Another foot or two, I’d have tumbled over and been down among them.

Them? Three or four dozen children, bare-arse naked, working on furniture, planed mahogany, even some walnut. Lovely aroma of fresh heartwood. But it was looking down into hell. Straight out of the seventeenth century, the children were smoothing with their hands, feet. Some were standing on the wooden surfaces, holding on to rods stretched from cellar wall to cellar wall. Oil lanterns shone light.

The children’s bodies glistened with sweat. Their hands bled. One little mite was weeping, trying to lick his palms. Another had actually fallen asleep. Even as I looked he got whipped awake with a riding crop.

They were polishing. One boy nudged his pal, keep going, keep going. Some chanted, working in time. One tiny mite went along the rows, casting up handfuls of dust on the worked surfaces.

The man walking down the aisles of furniture—five rows, three or four pieces a row—switched the air. I swear that he lashed a little lass from sheer habit. A couple of men were seated at a deal table beneath two lamps across from where I stood looking down, playing cards. Playing cards. Smoking cigarettes. The whipmaster looked at his watch, was downcast at the time and lashed here and there in annoyance.

Two smaller children burst in from the rear cellar door, trying to haul a plastic bowl. I recognized the technique. Brick-dust, doubtless.

The average age? It looked about six, at a guess. The oldest child was about nine, the youngest threeish. They were bloodied, blistered, hands and soles dropping sweat and blister water. They were all scarred, too experienced in life to be scared very much. One’s shoulder was a carbuncled, pus-pouring red mass. It took me a while to move away.

Odd, but I walked from there without a single creak of the floorboards. I swear I glided. Odd because when you’re desperately trying to avoid making a noise, everything you touch peals like thunder. When you don’t give a damn, you don’t make a sound. I actually wanted that whip-toting flogger to catch me. I’d have… I’d have run like a gazelle. I know I would.

“Gobbie?” I called at the corner. “Where the hell?”

They were watching me come. Lysette said nothing. Gobbie said, “Awright, son?”

“Stop asking that, stupid old bugger.”

Twice they had to call to me, correct my direction when I’d marched ahead, as if I knew the way and they didn’t instead of the other way round. The motor’d had nothing thieved.

“I expected no wheels,” I joked. “This sort of district.”

“Don’t, Lovejoy,” from Lysette as we boarded.

I swung round in the seat, finger raised. “Not another word from you, love,” I said. My voice was a hoarse whisper, astonishing, because I’d said nowt much. “Not one.”

“It’s not your fault, Lovejoy,” she was saying, when I lashed my hand across her face and she fell back with a cry.

“Now then, son,” Gobbie gave me.

“You too,” that funny whisper said. “Get us to Zurich.”

“Via where?” Gobbie asked. “Lausanne—”

I looked at him. It was enough. He fired the engine, and we flew from Paris like angels.