going to Red Bank. A cab from Red Bank he said would only be a few bucks. I phoned the train station and found I had ninety minutes before the next train to Newark, and after that, they seemed to run every half- hour.
I sat in the booth and smoked. I had enough money, it would be safer for Colette and myself if I didn't return. She was making this food, and Lord knows what she expected me to tell her about Hal. I didn't want to be a crude jerk but this wasn't the time for playing at manners. But I did have time and hanging out at her place was better for me than the streets.
I thought about buying her kids a box of candy: that might be like a guy borrowing money to bet against you in a crap game. I walked toward her house slowly, looking up and down the street to see if I was being followed, and feeling like a guy who hasn't the smallest idea of what he's doing.
She had some long-haired junk on a record player and said the food would be ready in a moment. I studied the chair she was fixing, and wondered why you never heard of women carpenters. She called me into a kitchen full of a hundred gadgets and I sat down to a plain cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee. She had also packed some food in a bag for me to take, which was fine—it would make me look a working stiff on his way to the night shift. When I finished the sandwich she insisted I have another cup of Java but I said I had to go.
“Your call. Everything is all right?”
“Sure. Listen, I'll send you the money.”
“Mickey, you can't leave! A few more minutes, please.”
“Colette, I'm a lousy gossip. I don't know what you think I can dish out about Hal, but I don't know a thing that...”
“That was a lie to make certain you returned. Mickey, you must stay a few more minutes. It's very important! Somebody wants to talk to you. He's on his way here.”
“Somebody is coming? How did...?”
“I phoned Jacques. You must talk to him about Melouza. You can trust him.”
“Aren't you the real live doll!” I said, trying to keep my voice down, remembering the cop downstairs who owned the house. “I don't trust anybody! In the last dozen hours I've been shot at, slugged, and pushed around. From now on my sole hobby in life is keeping my nose clean! Did you tell him my name?”
“I think I said Mickey. You can trust him, trust me. You must!”
I could see the red line of danger streaking toward us; once they knew my name and the boat, we were finished! I started for the living room. Colette flung herself on my shirt. She said fiercely, “I trusted you! When you came here I didn't ask if the police were after you, or if you were bringing danger to me and my children! You are Hal's best friend, why should I harm you?”
I stared down at her for a moment without talking. I mumbled, “You don't understand, I can best help you and your kids by taking off—now.”
“Mickey, you are the one who lacks understanding. I don't know if you are only pretending or you really don't know what this is all about. Jacques is a good man, very smart, a member of one of the French diplomatic staffs. He will know what to do.”
“Do about what? Colette, if you have any sense, let well enough alone.”
“No, no, you see I know a little—about Willy Sowor, and more about Melouza. Mickey, you may have something very big for us.”
“Who's 'us?'”
“The decent people of the world. The true story of Melouza is so important!”
“Important? I don't get your message—what are you trying to sell me?”
“To wait for Jacques, he can tell you much more than I know. Mickey, you have nothing to fear from either Jacques, or myself. Believe that!”
“Damn it, how do you know what I have to fear?” I asked, pushing her away, wondering if Hal had mentioned what I'd told him in Haiti about Rose. Two other ideas were rattling around in my sore head. I had wanted to see Sowor to find out what Rose was in. Strange as it seemed—and nothing about this set-up could actually surprise me any more. Colette and this Jock could give me the info. The other idea, the bigger one, was that if I ran now, Colette might give this Jock my real name. And then he would trace me to the boat, the island. Ruin our last hiding place.
Colette was standing with her back to me, blocking the door neatly. I said, “Sure I trust you, I have to. But one thing I insist upon: under no circumstances are you to tell this Jock, or anybody connected with him, my full name or anything about me. I have my reasons. A deal?”
“Deal? Of course, anything you wish. Mickey, I would no more hurt you than I would expect you to harm me or my children. I...”
“But you can be hurting the hell out of me without knowing it! Like now, asking this Jock in without first even asking me.”
She looked away for a moment. “I simply refuse to believe you are on the other side.”
“The other side of what?”
“Of humanity and everything that makes life worth living.”
I never was good at riddles. “I don't know about sides, but let's settle two things: no mention of my real name, and I'll wait ten minutes for this...”
There was a knock on the downstairs door. Colette actually raced down the stairs and returned with a compactly built guy dressed like a conservative fashion- plate. His face was vaguely familiar as he took off his homburg and black overcoat with the velvet collar. He stared at me, blowing on his finger tips, as Colette talked to him in runaway French. His hair was completely white and the tired eyes had tiny wrinkles around them, yet I had an idea he wasn't much older than me, maybe younger. He nodded as Colette talked, now rubbing his thin hands together slowly. I once knew a knife thrower who had hands like that; sort of delicate but strong, like thin steel wire. Sitting on the couch, he pointed toward a chair and said, with a kind of clipped, and perhaps phony, British accent, “Now let us talk, Monsieur Mickey.”
As I put it down, the accent reminded me of the old man in the turtleneck. This Jock was staring at me and I looked him smack back in his eyes. And knew where I'd seen the face before: he was one of the Maquis in the snap on the bedroom wall, although his hair hadn't been white then. And from the way he'd been standing in the picture, he'd been their officer. I said, “Okay. You do the talking.”
He gave me a weary smile. “As you wish, Monsieur Mickey...?”
“Mouse,” I added, brightly.
“Ah, yes, Monsieur Mouse,” he said without a smile. “Very good. He is a jovial chap who tries to make the world laugh. But enough of small talk. It will save us both time, and I understand you are in a hurry, if you will kindly tell me why you were trying to contact the late Monsieur Sowor?”
“Nothing to it: I was looking for a gal I once knew. She'd mentioned Sowor. As I told Colette, it was an easy name to remember, being she said the guy was a German... Sauerkraut. Of course I thought it was spelt s-o-u-r, but took a chance this Willy Sowor might be the same guy, might know where this gal is now. Or where Me-Lucy-ah is and she might know. I thought she was an Oriental gal. Colette says she's—it's—a town. Very confusing.”
“Indeed. It is hard to believe anybody could be that naive in these times. But the woman you look for, why do you want to see her?”
“Talking about being naive—what does a fellow generally want to see a babe for? We spent a hot week together in Canada last year. I'm all for an encore, if I can find her.”
“Is her name Rose and was her husband Josef Fedor?”
“Her name is Mary and we didn't talk about a husband.”
He waved his manicured hands as if clearing the air, and I thought I saw the outline of a shoulder holster. “Was she a tall, statuesque woman? Beautiful? An actress?”
“She was a big blonde and very pretty. Come to the point. What's this all about?”
“Basically it is about good and evil, right and wrong, Monsieur Mouse. In the early summer of 1957 while civil war was being waged in Algeria between the French army, the
“Sure,” I said, wondering how this could possibly have any tie-up with Rose. She was neither French nor Arab. If she'd ever been in Africa, even with a USO show, she would have told me.
“The FLN charged Melouza was a village of no known political sympathy or importance. They claim French soldiers in the uniform of the FLN were the mass killers, that it was done to terrorize other Algerian villages from aiding the FLN. They said that in a raid on an Oran cattle fair the year before, French soldiers were alleged to have been captured disguised as FLN guerrillas. These are all mere charges. To this day the truth is unknown.”
“But what's all this to do with me, or the gal I knew?”
Jock held up a thin finger. “Monsieur, let me first fill you in on the European scene before 1957. There were many stateless men roaming about. Ex-Nazi soldiers and the victims of the Nazis still snarled in the red tape of rehabilitation camps. There were exiles from various countries. There were many decent men, along with out-and-out adventurers, and scum. All had one thing in common: they were desperate and hungry. Many such men enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and fought in Indochina, in Algiers, wherever they were sent. Being desperate they fought bravely, ruthlessly, and many of them died. Now it is known that a unit
