77 Rue Paradis by Gil Brewer Read Free Book Online Page B

turned, walking slowly in the other direction, reeling slightly. Her purse, hanging from one hand, scraped the sidewalk as she moved away toward the harbor.
    He went on, reached the Rue Paradis, and turned to the right.
    Gorssmann. Hugo Gorssmann. All in one night. He could not believe it, and thinking of Bette in Gorssmann’s hands made him ill all over again. And Elene, what about Elene? Good Lord, what was he to do?
    He had to go to the police.
    That was a laugh.
    The street was not busy. The city seemed calm. An occasional legionnaire hurried along, apparently sober. They drew hardly enough pay to get drunk. Music slammed from some of the cafés; other cafés were absolutely empty and looked like old-fashioned drugstores back home, with the cold enamel, the zinc bar, and the twisted wire chairs.
    He entered one he knew and ordered cognac.
    The bartender, Pierre, was very thin, gray-faced, with a long lock of hair hanging down the side of his face. He stared at Baron, frowned.
    “You sick?” he said.
    “No. The cognac, Pierre.”
    “Bon.”
    He paid the man, yanked one of the notes from the bundle. It was a five-hundred-franc note. Pierre stared at it, then stared at him.
    “What you owe?”
    “Sure, take it out.”
    Pierre rang it up, gave him back ten francs, and smiled broadly.
    He drank the cognac. It was like water. He looked at the glass.
    “Pierre. Did you see Elene tonight?”
    “Elene? No. She was in early, not late. She came in, bought cigarettes, and went away. That was all.”
    He turned and left. He moved on up the street, walking in a kind of vacuum. He turned in at Number 77, went up the long flight of black stairs lighted only by the dim saffron glow from the downstairs hallway. The stairs creaked. The house smelled of old cognac, old wine, old fish, old bread, old years, and old love.
    His door was open. He had not locked it. He went in, pulled the tasseled cord on the 1927 lamp with the wild angled shade. It glowed once again with that scarlet light. Elene’s idea. “Better for the eyes, chéri,” she had said.
    The bed was unmade. It was sway-backed, a double bed that smelled like an old double bed. He limped across the room and stared at himself in the big, mottled mirror over the dresser. He leaned on the dresser with both hands, looking at himself.
    He was a mess and he certainly did look sick. Joseph had spared his face, though. There were no cuts on his face, only large swellings along either jawline and beside each eye by the temples. It changed his appearance considerably. He looked as though he had his cheeks full of cake. His eyes were muddy and harried.
    He returned to the bed, slumped down on it. He stared at the threadbare, colorless carpet on the floor. The sagging, faded curtains on the window fluttered in a small wind. Somebody out on the street shouted at somebody else and a girl laughed high on the scale, cutting it off sharply.
    He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, at the stretches of peeling paint he and Elene had often counted. Twenty-seven spots, there were. Five spots had appeared since he had lived in the room. You never saw them come; they appeared as if by magic.
    He had to go to the police. He knew this. He knew that no matter how long he remained here on the bed, he would eventually get up and go to the police.
    He began to perspire, just lying there.
    He could not stay on the bed. It had become already a kind of cell, a method of imprisonment, because of his strong sense of being so completely trapped. He was surrounded with a bulwark so strong and so neatly rigged that there was no possibility of a loophole.
    He knew Gorssmann and the rest of his clan would allow no loophole. Since they had spent months arranging things, they certainly had overlooked nothing.
    He came to his feet from the edge of the bed in a rush. He limped to the dresser, fumbled in a cluttered ash tray for a decent-sized cigarette butt, lit it, and began to pace the room. He paced