The wrong Venus Page 8

  “It’s just the other side of Rambouillet,” he reminded her. “Not in the Pyrenees.”

  “I thought if we had time we’d have dinner somewhere,” she said, knifing back into line in front of an oncoming truck with inches to spare.

  They stopped at an auberge in Rambouillet. While they were sipping their apéritifs, she asked, “Why bougie?”

  “I don’t get it either. But he was after the money—he must have been.”

  “I suppose.” She frowned. “But—candle—Kendall.”

  “Just a coincidence. You don’t translate names. And how would she know a thug like that?”

  Martine smiled. “I don’t know. But with Flanagan, don’t bet on anything.”

  In one of his pockets Colby had a folded dust jacket from These Tormented by Sabine Manning, and Kendall Flanagan’s passport. He took out the latter and opened it. A knockout, he thought, even in a passport photo. “What kind of girl is she?”

  “Out of a Norse myth, by Rabelais,” Martine said. “A silver blonde, six feet tall and around one hundred and sixty pounds, and as unbuttoned as the second day of a wake.”

  “Six feet?”

  “It’s right there. Look.”

  Colby glanced at the data on the front page. She was right. Height: 6-0. He whistled. Birthplace: Wyoming. Aug. 18, 1937.

  “But it’s all girl,” Martine went on, “and in the right places. She has what novelists used to call an appetite for living. Her theory is we’re all double-parked, and tomorrow may be called off on account of rain. She’s the last person you’d ever expect to be writing that syrupy drivel for TV commercials, but as she says, she discovered she had a knack for it, it pays better than trying to teach English to high-school kids, and she had to give up modeling because bearskin rugs made her break out with hives.

  “Actually, she can imitate any style of writing, and this stuff of Manning’s was a cinch for her. She did a page of it in Faulkner one day, just to bug Merriman, and it was perfect. She could write as fast as Sanborn, too, but she’s just not overwhelmed with the seriousness of it all. The reason he got ahead of her is he slept nights.

  “Sometimes she wouldn’t get home till ten a.m., long after he’d gone to work. For breakfast she’d have a split of champagne, six cups of coffee, and three or four eggs, and then sit down at the typewriter and start banging away. Vitality galore.”

  “I can see how she and Dudley might get on each other’s nerves,” Colby said. “Oh, she never paid any attention to him. She just laughed at him or brushed him off like a gnat—except that morning they had the argument, I mean. She was apparently upset about something, and when he started complaining about her late hours, she blew up and told him off.”

  “And that was the day she was kidnapped.”

  “Yes. Nobody saw her leave, but apparently it was in the evening. They must have picked her up in front of the house.”

  Colby nodded, and turned his attention to the photograph of Sabine Manning on the back of the book jacket. It was the usual gussied-up job of the glamour photographer, softened and diaphanous and full of subtly hinted mystery, but no amount of technique could entirely cover up the spinsterish aspect of its small, prim mouth, the lost and defeated wallflower face, and its drab topping of undistinguished hair that was probably somewhere between brindle and dried-thistle brown.

  “What’s she like?” he asked Martine.

  “It’s not a kind thing to say,” she replied with some reluctance, “but mousy is the word you have to use. She’s just one of those people that nothing ever happens to, that nobody ever sees—”

  “No charisma.”

  “Worse. The girl at the cocktail party hiding in a corner with an empty glass pretending to be interested in book titles on a shelf. I thought when Roberto shook her up she was going to live a little, but maybe it was too late.”

  “She might have found another boyfriend. I mean, if Roberto left her.”

  “It’s possible, I suppose. But she’s so—so ineffectual, the poor dear. Actually, we don’t even know she went away with Roberto in the first place; we just assumed she did. That postcard from Samos sounded so ecstatic . . . I don’t know, it baffles me.”

  * * *

  It was a narrow gravel road running between hedges. "Two kilometers,” Colby said.

  He glanced at his watch in the glow of the instrument panel. Six minutes to nine. Just after making the turn they’d passed a farmhouse showing lights, but he could see no more ahead. It was lonely enough. A rabbit bolted across the road ahead of them. Then he picked up the wooden bridge.

  Three kilometers on the nose,” he said, as they rolled across it and stopped. “This is the place.”

  “I’ll go on and turn left to get back to the highway.” She was silent for a moment and then shivered slightly, and said, “I almost wish we hadn’t got mixed up in this. I’m scared, Colby.”

  “So am I,” he said. He turned. Faint starlight shone in her eyes and he was conscious of the subtle hint of perfume. Then she was in his arms and he was kissing her to the accompaniment of fireworks and violins.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Damn it to hell—”

  “Mmmmmmm—what?”

  “The bucket seat. Nobody but an automobile manufacturer—”

  “Well, the pills can’t do it all.”

  “Have you ever been to Rhodes?”

  “Uuuuummmmmm-uuuuummmmm.”

  “What?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Its wonderful there—”

  “That joke’s older than both of us.”

  “I didn’t mean the joke. Rhodes. Bougainvillea, wine-dark sea, roses, music. Tomorrow we’ll have six thousand dollars—”

  “You do the most exciting audit. Or is it a travelogue?”

  “Will you?”

  “I think I might be persuaded. Let you know tomorrow?”

  “All right.” He broke it up, reluctant to let her go, said “Geronimo,” and stepped out. She blew him a kiss. The taillights of the Jaguar disappeared down the road.

  He lighted a cigarette, waited a minute until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and began walking slowly ahead along the left side of the road, his mind still swamped and overrun with the prospect of this intoxicating girl against the perfect background of Rhodes. It was going to be worth getting involved in Dudley’s madhouse.

  It was a beautiful night, clear, but moonless, and crisp with autumn without being cold. He wore only the tweed suit, having left the topcoat at the house. The shadowy masses of the hedges continued, closing him in on both sides. In less than ten minutes the headlights showed behind him. In spite of himself, he felt his nerves begin to tighten.

  The car came on, slowed, and went past. He recognized the distinctive, carapace silhouette of a Citroën. After it had gone out of sight, he remembered the lipstick, and scrubbed at his lips with a handkerchief. It was supposed to be Dudley who’d dropped him, and the fewer things he had to explain the better. His shoes made a crunching sound on the gravel. Now the car was coming back.

  The headlights were on high beam, blinding him. He felt for the edge of the gravel with his feet to give it room to go past if it were the wrong one. But it was already slowing. It came to a stop less than twenty feet away. He turned his back and put his hands on top of his head.

  Footsteps sounded in the gravel, two sets of them, and came up behind him. He felt the hair lift on his neck. A voice growled, “If the salaud twitches a muscle, shoot him!”

  Naturally theatrical, he wondered, or just trying to impress the gangstair américain? Or maybe they hadn’t bought a word of it; it was possible they didn’t read the Série Noire. Hands patted him under the arms, on the pockets, and ran down his trouser legs.

  “Nothing,” another voice said.

  A dark cloth was placed over his eyes and knotted behind his head. Then there was the tearing sound of tape being unrolled as the man wound it around and around his head, over the blindfold and
into his hair. A hand guided him back to the car. He groped, found the open rear door. He got in.

  “Kneel,” the voice said. He crouched on his knees, his face on his arms atop the seat. He heard the others get in, in front, and the door closed. Something cold and hard nudged the back of his head, and the voice said, “No tricks. Brains are hard to clean off upholstery.”

  He had a fine flair for drama, Colby thought; he was feeling less nervous now. It was impossible to tell which of them he’d talked to—the French telephone is seldom a high-fidelity instrument. The gun muzzle left his head, but he knew it was still pointed at him. The car lunged forward with the sound of scattered gravel. It was a Citroën, all right; he recognized the exaggerated vertical movement of its shock-absorbers.

  The first turn was to the left, which meant they were going away from Maintenon, but after that he paid no attention. It would be elementary, even for a child, to make an unnecessary number of them, going in a twisting, roundabout route, in order to confuse him. He lost track of time. It could have been thirty minutes later, or forty-five, when they made a sharp turn, bounced over a rough road for some hundred meters, made two turns in quick succession, and stopped. Doors opened.

  “Descend,” one of the voices said.

  He climbed out, his knees cramped from kneeling on the floor. He was conscious of the ubiquitous odor of rotting manure of all continental farms, and heard a horse kick his stall. He was in a barnyard.

  A hand took his arm, and he felt the gun in his back. After three or four steps he felt concrete or flagstone under his feet, and then a mat. He wiped his shoes. One of them brushed something that moved with a wooden clatter. Probably a pair of sabots. A door clicked open, and he was pushed into a room with a bare wooden floor. No light at all penetrated the blindfold, but he could feel the warmth of a stove nearby, and smell coffee and the residual odors of cooking.

  8

  The whole ride had been in silence, but this was now swept away with the suddenness of a collapsing dike. "Alors! Another pensionaire! It was a female voice, young, assertive, and charged with accumulated grievance. "Maybe we will get in the Guide Michelin, with a star, and crossed manure forks—”

  “Écoute—!”

  “Another one to cook for and wash dishes for, when I’m not shoveling food down that bottomless pit of a woman, or scrubbing floors, or milking your Uncle Anatole’s excrement of a cow—”

  “Quiet!” one of the men shouted. “This one lays the golden egg.”

  “Hah! Like your Uncle Anatole’s imbecile of a horse lays the golden egg in a basket of laundry—”

  “Tais toi, Gabrielle! One should never put things down near a horse—”

  D’accord! Not near the horse of Uncle Anatole. Or the cow of Uncle Anatole, or the chickens, or the sheep, or anything else in this paradise where constipation was only a rumor. If she ever saw a piece of pavement again. . . .

  Colby stood in silence while language played around his head. Then somebody caught him by the arm and he was pushed into a chair. He could feel a table in front of him. “Listen!” a voice shouted, as a fist banged the table, causing dishes to rattle. This one says she is not Mademoiselle Manning. Let us examine his so-called proof!”

  “In my right-hand coat pocket,” Colby said.

  “Aha! He does not speak with the accent of Cheek-ago!”

  “What do you know of the accent of Cheek-ago? You have heard it in films, with French actors—”

  “Alors! So Oomfrey Bogarr is a French actor—”

  “It is never the voice of Oomfrey Bogarr!”

  “To hell with the accent of this one! Let us see the proof.”

  A hand dug into his pocket and brought out the folded dust jacket and Kendall Flanagan’s passport.

  “Voilà! It is the passport of ours.”

  “And the faces are not the same.”

  “Writers put other names on their books, why not other faces?”

  “Regard! If you had the face of ours, would you put the face of that one on your book?”

  “So! You too!” It was the girl’s voice. “Maybe I should keep the key to her room.”

  “I am only stating what anyone can see—”

  “You are as sickening as Jean-Jacques. You would need the equipment of alpinisme. I see you, roped together, mounting the north wall of this blonde Alp—”

  “Quiet! We must decide.”

  “What is there to decide? Truly, she is not Mademoiselle Manning. We take the money and we go.”

  “But thirty thousand francs—”

  All the voices erupted at once, but it was the girl’s Colby was following. She was full up to here with Uncle Anatole’s farm. This was the Paris she’d been promised? The discothèques, the Moulin Rouge, the Champs Élysées, champagne? For five days she’d been up to her knees in fumier, taking care of an idiot of a cow, and cooking food and opening bottles of wine for the unbelievable appetite of this unbelievable species of woman who was the wrong woman to begin with. And besides, Uncle Anatole might return tomorrow—

  She was immediately pounced upon and silenced, but Colby had caught it. He was going to win; they had to settle tonight. He gave no sign he’d heard, but said curtly, “Nobody gets anything until I’ve talked to Mademoiselle Flanagan.”

  “You shall talk to her.”

  “Good. Give me back the passport. And your letter is in my left-hand pocket.”

  The passport was placed in his hand. He returned it to his pocket. Someone else removed the letter.

  “What a species of imbecility, in your own handwriting,” the girl’s voice said. “It’s a good thing you have an American gangstair to tell you how to conduct an affair of this sort.”

  “Come,” one of the voices said. He stood up, and was turned, marched forward, and turned again. He thought they were going down a hallway. They stopped. He heard a key being inserted in a lock, and had an impression of a door opening.

  “She will tell you she is all right,” the man said. It was the one called Jean-Jacques. Then he warned, “No English.”

  “Mademoiselle Flanagan?” Colby asked, addressing the blackness directly ahead of him.

  “Yes. Who are you?” There was no fear in the voice, which seemed to be coming from the far side of a room. It was pure American French; they weren’t running in a ringer on him.

  “Duke Colby, from Chicago,” he said. “I work for Carl. Trouble-shooter, enforcer—like that.” He wasn’t sure how much of this she could understand, but it was for the others anyway. “I flew in today to see if I could cool this thing before it got loused up with cops or newspapers.”

  “How is Carl?”

  “Chewing nails, you know him. He wanted to move in with a bunch of muscle, but I talked him out of it. Bad for business. You’re okay, then?”

  “No complaints.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know. Dudley’s just waiting for word from me to deliver the payoff. I’ll see you.”

  The key turned in the lock again. “Now, are you satisfied?” Jean-Jacques asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Call the same number. When Monsieur Dudley answers, say only one word. Bingo.”

  “Beengo.”

  “That’s it. He’ll deliver the money as soon as he can get there.”

  “Beengo. Remember it well, Rémy.”

  He was marched back along the hallway a few steps and apparently into another room. His hands were tied behind him, and he was pushed backward onto a bed. “We are being robbed,” Jean-Jacques complained bitterly. “Thirty thousand francs—hah! But what can one do? We will drop you with the Cicero.”

  They went out. He could hear them in the kitchen, still arguing, still addressing each other by name. In a few minutes a door slammed and there was silence except for an occasional banging of pots and pans by Gabrielle. They had gone to phone Dudley. He shook his head. In a deal like this, give him professionals every time; these blousons noirs were careless and reckless enough to freeze his blood except t
hat he’d been lucky enough to sell them the Chicago story.

  In the twenty minutes he’d been here he’d learned enough about them for the police to locate the farm in an hour, with nothing but a copy of the tax rolls and the telephone numbers of the local gendarmeries. It was owned by a man named Anatole, who’d been away somewhere on a trip and who had a nephew named Jean-Jacques. Jean-Jacques had a friend named Rémy, whose girl friend was called Gabrielle. They’d pick them up in an afternoon. Well, it didn’t matter; he’d convinced them nobody was going to the police.

  With his hands bound behind him, there was no way to get comfortable in bed. After awhile he sat up on the side of it, wishing he had a cigarette. The bonds weren’t tight enough to cut off circulation, and he could probably have worked his way out of them if he’d tried, but it would be stupid. He would accomplish nothing except to antagonize them, which was the last thing he wanted now that success was in sight.

  There was nothing to do but wait, as he had a thousand times in the Army. He had no idea how many hours later it was when he heard the kitchen door fly open and then the sound of their voices, all three talking at once. He started to grin, but it faded. Something had changed. He leaned forward, listening intently. He could make out only a word now and then, but there was some quality in the voices that hadn’t been there before. A chill moved slowly up his spine as he began to place it. It was panic.

  What could have gone wrong? They must have the money by now, and certainly there couldn’t have been any police in the area. But several times he heard the word among the shouts and violent recriminations. They were scared to death, and blaming each other. The flap went on for what could have been ten minutes, and then the key turned in his door.