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

shoulders. As he talked he imagined himself somewhere peacefully resting, on a bed perhaps, with no troubles in the world, with nothing to bother him, with only peace and contentment just outside his door. It was a feeling that grew and grew as he talked, and by the time he finished he was smiling and the perspiration had begun to dry on his hands and face. His palms had been so damp they were uncomfortably dry now. He wiped them against his trousers.
    “It is very serious,” he told the commissaire. “You know of this Gorssmann? You know of Cassis?”
    The commissaire nodded. He turned his back on Baron, went around his desk, and sat down in the large, high-backed, leather-upholstered chair. “Yes,” he said. “I know of you, too, monsieur.”
    The commissaire stared at his desk and smoked his cheroot. Baron felt it becoming warm in this room again. His palms began to perspire again and something was starting all over again, down inside him. The moment of respite had been brief.
    The chair creaked as the commissaire leaned back, smoking. He leaned forward, brushed the ash from the cheroot, rested it carefully on the tray, and leaned back again, creaking.
    “Don’t you understand?” Baron said.
    “Let me see your identification.”
    Baron fumbled for his wallet in his jacket pocket, flung it on the desk in front of the commissaire.
    The commissaire picked up a pencil and poked at the wallet. “Just your papers, please.” He poked the wallet across the desk, past the ash tray, beyond the cluttered papers on the desk.
    Baron showed him his papers. The commissaire nodded, handed them back.
    “Who are you?” the commissaire said.
    Baron stared at him.
    “Please,” the commissaire said.
    Baron began to experience the same sensations he’d had when listening to Hugo Gorssmann. It was a feeling of complete enclosure and the sudden outrage down inside him sought for a way out, his mind instinctively feeling there was no way out.
    “Why did you come here?” the commissaire said. “Providing you are Frank Baron, what can you want with us?”
    “Don’t you understand?”
    The commissaire looked at him, rocked slightly in his chair, creaking. He leaned far back in the chair and looked at Baron. “Have you your passport?”
    Baron swallowed whatever he’d planned to say. He found his passport, flipped it across the desk to the commissaire. He watched as the officer glanced quickly through the passport, compared the picture with the man before him, and grunted. “I see,” the commissaire said. He handed the passport back to Baron.
    “Obviously,” Baron said. “You’ve got to do something.”
    “What are you doing in France?”
    “Nothing in particular. Don’t you see? Until now—”
    The commissaire pursed his lips. He rapped his knuckles on the desk and shouted, “Henri!”
    The office door behind Baron opened and the blond agent entered. He closed the door and raised his eyebrows at the commissaire.
    “I warn you,” Baron said, “you’re losing time.”
    The commissaire looked at him and said to the young agent de police, “You will draw your pistol, Henri, and search this man.”
    Baron stood still and waited as Henri searched him and discovered nothing but the roll of franc notes. Henri tossed the franc notes on the desk, trying not to watch them too closely.
    “What are you trying to do?” Baron said.
    “Security measures,” the commissaire told him.
    “You doubt what I say is true?”
    “It may very well be true.”
    “Then for God’s sake, stop acting this way!”
    “Anyway you look at it,” the commissaire said, “it is bad.” He picked up the cheroot, relit it from a greenish brass desk lighter, puffed, laid it in the ash tray, and leaned back in the chair. He scratched the back of his hand, swallowed, pursed his lips. “Your papers are not in order,” he said.
    “You’re joking.”
    “I assure you, monsieur.”
    Baron turned all the way around, performing a kind of