The Quirk (41 page)

He returned to the big room and found Mather sitting at the desk with an American electric percolator at his side. A glass of beer and a cup were opposite him. Rod picked up the glass and drained it in one swallow.

“It’s like that, is it?” Mather said with a brief laugh. “I know the feeling. I’ll get you another.” He poured coffee and rose and glanced at Rod with a little nod. “You look better. You’re a good-looking guy.” He left with the glass.

Rod’s head reeled as the beer hit his stomach. But then everything began to smooth out and flow freely. He would live. He pulled up a chair to the other side of the desk and drank the hot thin coffee. Better by the minute. Mather returned with another glass of beer and sat and began to fill a pipe. He glanced up at Rod.

“Oh, sorry. Cigarette?” He tossed a pack of American cigarettes across the desk. Rod hadn’t smoked for more than a week and took one. Mather lit his pipe and put on his glasses and shuffled through the papers in front of him. “Let’s see. We can start with this. I’ll want you to sign it.”

Rod ran his eyes over the paper that was put before him. It was a statement told in the first person, purportedly by himself. “What’s all this about dope,” he demanded indignantly. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“You’re learning.”

“Yes, but it says here I knew all along.”

“That’s the way it would look in court. It may not come to that. I still don’t know, but we’re not in the clear by a long shot. François may have to take the rap. That means you too. We’d look after you both eventually, but it could be a long unpleasant wait.”

“François?”

“The same.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. Who the hell are you?”

“I don’t show my credentials in this business. Get that straight. You’re here. That must mean I have some pull.”

“They were ready to let me go until you got into it. I suppose it was you.”

“By tomorrow you’d be back there in a cell. Don’t kid yourself about that. You’ve heard of the CIA? It covers a multitude of sins, but that’s close enough for our purposes.”

“I’m going to go to the American Embassy about this.”

“Go ahead, but it won’t get you anywhere. They’ll tell you all about me. I’m in business here.” Mather reached into a drawer and dropped a crumpled wad of bills onto the desk. Rod stiffened and his scalp prickled as he recognized the money François had given him. “It looks as if Jack Harkins at the bank might be in for a little trouble too. Recognize it? Every one of those has been straightened out and photographed and rolled together again just the way you left them. We’re careful. Go ahead. Take it. It’s yours. Whatever you do with it, it’ll be traced to you. This drug thing is just a cover for something much bigger–I guess you’ve begun to figure that out for yourself–but we’ve got to play it straight or the whole operation will come apart at the seams. As far as everybody is concerned, except me, François is just a cheap punk and you are too.”

Rod’s thoughts were chaotic. Was he being told that he was going to have to think of François as one of the good guys? A hero? “I don’t understand how I got into this. Why did I get picked up last night?”

“You were more or less leading a demonstration for Algerian independence. I don’t know what possessed you to go into that rigmarole about Marseille. Still, I can’t blame you. You didn’t know what you’d gotten into. François shouldn’t have taken you with him even though he was, in a sense, following instructions. We’re interested in recruiting good men. He’s had his eye on you. He’s impressed by you. He doesn’t think your homosexuality is any more of a problem than his is.”

“My homosexuality?” It was the last straw. He was a crook and a queer. He felt like overturning the desk on this quiet, keen-voiced tormentor. He stared at him with outrage.

“Oh? Did he get that wrong?” Mather asked.

“He sure as hell did.”

“I hope you’re telling the truth. I didn’t think you looked the type, if there is such a thing. It doesn’t matter, but it would make my job a little easier.” He leaned forward over the papers for a moment and sucked on his pipe. “You moved back into the Hotel Alabama yesterday.”

“Yes. I don’t remember why.”

“Autosuggestion induced by François, I think. Probably a good idea. We had a man around there in case you turned up. He was supposed to keep an eye on you. He didn’t do a very good job.” Mather sat back and looked at him. “We can use you. We damn well
have
to use you. I don’t know if you’re patriotic, but your country needs you, as the saying goes.”

“I’m not interested.” Ever since he could remember, his father carried on about his responsibilities to his country, which usually turned out to be responsibilities to the family’s interests. He was out of all that.

Mather pointed with his pipe stem at the paper facing Rod. “I could nail you with that right now if I wanted to. That is, the French could. You’re in our pocket.”

“I haven’t signed it.”

“You will.”

Rod’s throat felt congested with the shout of protest that had been lodged there since he had woken up this morning. He took a long swallow of beer to clear it. He wasn’t going to get dragged into a situation where spies would be watching him, where his telephone, if he had one, or even his mail might be tampered with. There was plenty wrong with the States, but there were certain things you knew couldn’t happen there. There weren’t many orphans either. Life retained some sort of orderly continuity and progression, developing normally instead of bursting out in strange outcroppings of the unknown and untried. “I’m not sure I’m going to be here much longer,” he said.

“You mean Paris? It doesn’t matter where you are. We’ll find you if we need you. Right now you’re signed on for the duration. You have no choice until I’ve sorted this out. Somebody’s playing dirty. We haven’t put it all together yet, but it’s not funny. We’ve already got a victim on our hands. Your friend–” he leaned over his papers again. “Patrice Valmer. Correct? He got caught in the cross fire. His body was found yesterday. Shot.”

Rod’s mind was a blank. It suddenly became a roaring tunnel through which he was hurtling. A massive slippage occurred in him, a great ripping and tearing of everything in him, similar to something he remembered happening before, but so violent that it almost knocked him out of his chair. His breath stopped. When he could breathe again, he felt strangely altered, light-headed, detached. He wasn’t sure whether he was entering a dream or if everything that had happened until this moment had been a dream. He leaped up and seized something from the desk and hurled it against the wall. There was a crash and a thud. The material world around him was real. He resumed his seat and rubbed his forehead with his fingers.

“Are you all right?” Mather asked.

“All right?” The man’s voice had sounded far away. Rod looked up and spoke impatiently. “Of course I’m all right. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“No reason. That just happened to be a very expensive camera.”

“Oh? Sorry.”

“Think nothing of it.”

“You got a pen?”

“Sure.” Mather handed him one.

Rod signed the paper in front of him and handed it back. Apparently his having to stay here had something to do with that. “I want to go.”

“OK. We can take care of the rest of it later. You must be tired. I’d take it easy on the booze for the next couple of days if I were you. You may be in danger.” Mather rose and picked up the phone from the desk and put it front of Rod. “Memorize that number. You can call me Cotton to make sure you’re talking to the right guy. I want you to keep in touch. I’ll have you covered as best I can. Got it now?”

Rod hadn’t even seen it yet. He was staring at a celluloid disc with marks on it. “Right,” he said. He rose and gathered up his coat and headed for the door. Mather followed him.

“Get some rest. And just remember, I’m trying to get you out of this. Everything you do to cooperate will be in your own interest.” He stopped with his hand on the knob of the front door. “You’ve forgotten your money.” He handed it to Rod who stuffed it into his coat pocket. Mather opened the door. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Rod turned abruptly and hurried for the stairs. He ran down them and was out on the quai. He paid no attention to the weather but knew it wasn’t raining. He walked rapidly. He felt as if there were a wild beast caged in him somewhere and knew that he must do nothing that might free it. He had to call Nicole to tell her he was back but that he mustn’t see her. He’d tell her he was sick. She would want to come to him, but he’d think of something to forestall her. He reached the bridge and turned onto it. He caught a glimpse of a beret on a dark head bobbing among the pedestrians ahead of him. The pattern of hurrying figures shifted, and he caught the swing of a cape. He sped up and weaved his way through the oncoming crowd. When he came abreast of what he could see now was a very young boy, he was beaming.

“I knew you were all right,” he exclaimed. “Where’ve you–” He saw a city dweller’s hostile suspicion of strangers come up into the boy’s face.

“We don’t know each other,” he protested in English.

“No. Of course not. I’m sorry. I thought you were–”

It
was
Patrice, of course, and yet somehow it wasn’t. Nothing ever quite matched in dreams. Any idiot could see that he was taller and heavier and younger than Patrice, but there was no disguising the eager cheerful sweetness that was beginning to replace hostility as the boy looked him over. His cape was a regular schoolboy’s cape. His dark hair was curly.

“Well, I guess we do know each other now,” the boy said with a welcoming young grin. “Hello. I’m Georges.”

“I’m Henry,” Rod said, laughing. He remembered that the address on Gérard’s card was on the Ile-St-Louis. “What are you doing over here? Have you been to see Gérard again?”

“Gérard? You know Gérard? How amazing. I’ve just come from there. That’s where I live.”

“You’ve gone back to him?” He was prepared for everything to have changed. The wrenching alteration that had taken place in him made it difficult for his to grasp what was happening around him although his head felt quite clear. The boy’s voice seemed to reach him from a distance. Dreamlike.

“I don’t understand,” the boy said. “Have we met before? I don’t see how I could forget you.”

It was one of Patrice’s games, testing him. “Not in this world,” he said, playing along with it. “I was just going to have a beer. Do you want to have something with me?”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. There must be a bar along over there somewhere.”

“Oh.” The boy’s grin became cheerfully suggestive. “I hoped you might be going to ask me home with you.”

“Why would I do that?” Rod said, trying to make his smile enigmatic.

“I can think of reasons, can’t you?”

Something was wrong with time. That explained the differences that puzzled him. Everything would fall into place if he didn’t try too hard to make it all fit. “Aren’t you awfully young to go home with strange men?”

“I’m almost 17. I’m a man where it matters.”

“What makes you think I’m interested?”

“If you weren’t, you’d have insulted me by now and left me.”

“I wouldn’t insult a boy just because he makes a pass at me. You know that.”

“Maybe I do. You’re sort of peculiar, Henry, but you’re awfully handsome. I like you a lot.”

“My real name’s Rod. My earthling name.” He chuckled. “What are you doing today? You aren’t working?”

“No. I have to meet my mother later. I have time now.”

“Your grandmother. She’s coming up from the country to see you?”

“Yes. I’m having lunch with her. That’s why I’m not at school right now.”

“Your English is excellent. You’ve got hardly any accent at all.”

“I’m supposed to go to the States next year. I’ve been working on it. I need an American friend to practice with. If you know Gérard, why don’t you ever come to see us?”

“Oh, well. You know. It doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“I’ll tell you a secret.” The boy moved closer so that they brushed against each other as they walked. “I come out on my own whenever I can, hoping for something like this to happen. Christian is always having strangers speak to him, but it’s never happened to me before. I’ve always wanted somebody all to myself, somebody I’ve picked out for myself. You’re going to take me home with you, aren’t you?”

“Sure. I’ve been lonely without you. I want to tell you about last night.” He decided not to mention Marseille unless the boy did. It didn’t seem to fit this particular time sequence.

“I can’t wait. Is it far?” He seemed to wriggle with excitement like a puppy.

Rod laughed. “Just off the rue du Bac. We can get a bus along here.” They turned off the bridge and headed for a bus stop.

“I have a pretty big you-know and a nice behind. I do everything. You can–is it very bad to say fuck?–you can fuck me if you want.”

“That’s the way things generally turn out.”

“I’ll bet you’ve got a big one.”

“It hasn’t changed.”

“The way you say it, it must be enormous. How exciting. Christian’s is the biggest I’ve ever seen.”