where a G.I. with limited means could nurse a single drink throughout the night and take in some of the hottest jazz east of New York. Warm memories stood aside for cold reality, however, as Bolan surveyed the now dismal scene. The fog had captured the odor of decay and too many centuries of living on the same spot-perhaps even too much dying... and what, he wondered, was really the difference? All of living was a slow dyingness, a gradual rundown of the clock of life, a decay-rate from the moment of conception. Violence, Bolan had long ago decided, was but a form of protest against that inexorable decay. Where the smell of decay was strong, violence somehow seemed a natural constituent also.
A chill shivered him and sent him on along the quiet street. At this hour of the morning, he knew the signs to search for, knew the telltale evidences of the form of activity he sought. The .32 came into his hand, the small weapon lengthened somewhat now by the silencer, and he walked quietly with the mists, themselves a dampener and softener and silencer of human activity.
A door opened somewhere up ahead and a woman's amused giggle entered the fog. Bolan crossed the street and moved on toward the sound of footsteps going away from him. A faint glow ahead halted him, and he heard the woman again, calling softly into the gloom a gay farewell.
He lit a cigarette and waited. Several minutes later, a repetition — the light giggle, a quiet male voice saying something in hushed French, footsteps on the walk, a feminine farewell floating out to send them on their way.
Bolan had scored. The signs were unmistakable. The house of joie was disgorging its overnight clients. This time the footsteps approached Bolan. He cupped his cigarette to shield the glow in his hands and pushed back against the front of a shop. A bulk moved past him and on along the sidewalk, the man moving hesitantly and feeling his way along the curbing. Yeah, he had scored. A few years back, the maisons de joie had been a natural and accepted legality in this ancient city of charm, and there would have been no standing room within them for a free ride by the Mafia, no opening whatever for the writhing tentacles of organized crime. Now joie was banned in Paris, the city of joie, and indeed the Mafia would find a fertility in that ban.
Bolan moved in closer and the next time the door opened he had a rather good view of the couple who stood briefly in the halo of light. The woman was tall and rather well put together. Black hair was cut short and curled loosely about the ears, a shimmering wrap of some sort belted at the waist, a nylon-clad leg projecting into the early morning cold. The man was middle-aged, well dressed, a soldier of the night. He murmured, 'Au revoir, Celeste. La soiree, c'etait for-midable!'
The woman's response must have been a prescription giggle, Bolan was thinking. It came the same as twice before, accompanied by, 'Au revoir, Paul. A plus tard, eh?'
'Oui, certainement.'
The man was on the sidewalk and moving away from Bolan. He awaited the final prescription after-call of farewell from the steps, then a swift movement placed him beside the woman. She stood there in a silently shocked reaction to Bolan's sudden presence, one hand on the door the other clutching her silk-covered tummy.
'Bonjour, Celeste,' Bolan amiably greeted her. 'Comment ca va?'
Judging from the expression of dismay on her face, 'it' was obviously not 'going' too well at the moment. She shrank into the doorway, trying to put the door between Bolan and herself. He defeated the maneuver and moved inside with her. In the better light, Celeste looked better in the fog. Too much eye makeup and an overabundance of scarlet lipstick emphasized rather than softened the image of dissolution and too many years of horizontal trade. The body was still exciting enough, however; Bolan allowed that a darkened room would work about the same brand of magic as the fog.
They were in a tiny room which obviously had once served as the lobby of a small hotel. Two couches and several plain chairs overfilled the place. Bolan recognized the set. A stairway at the rear would lift to a larger, more sumptuous reception room which would, during the height of business hours, serve as a gay showplace and selection chamber for the wares of the house, and as a frolic center for refreshments and naughty conversation and perhaps a bit of dancing between acts. Le chambre de soiree.
At this time of morning, that upstairs chamber would be deserted and dismal, reeking of a mixture of alcoholic fumes and cheap perfume and perhaps even of expended passions. Passing through it on his way out, a guy would wonder what he had found so exhilarating about it a few short hours earlier.
Behind the lobby where they now stood would be the living quarters of the madame and maybe one or two of her pet pimps. It would smell like boiling vegetables and more cheap perfume, stale tobacco smoke, and dry rot.
Madame Celeste's eyes were flattened with fear as she contemplated the gun in Bolan's hand, particular interest going to the silencer. 'Chic alors! C'est sinister!'
Bolan said quietly, 'I want Marcel.'
'Non! Americaine?' She raised her voice to call out, 'Marcel! C'est l' Americaine!'
Immediately the door at the rear of the lobby opened and a man of about 25 entered, a short but powerful looking Frenchman with a wide grin of welcome. The grin faded into uncertainty as he stared at Bolan, then another man pushed in behind him.
The second man got a good look at the visitor, yelped something in excited French, and whipped a pistol from the waistband of his trousers. Bolan's .32 phutted dully and blood geysered from between the man's eyes. He hit the floor dead, his pistol clattering across the floor and sliding to a rest almost at Bolan's feet. The first man was diving back toward the door. Bolan's second round helped him get there, the slug plowing into the back of the skull and dropping him in the doorway.
The woman called Celeste was staring unbelievingly into the scene, mouth open and moving but no sounds issuing. Bolan clamped a hand onto her shoulder and shook her. 'Speak English,' he commanded. 'Who were they expecting?'
Sound came on her second try, rasping through a parched throat and a paralyzed tongue. 'Non, non,' she choked.
Bolan let her go and she crumpled to her knees. A sound out he stairway whirled him about as a blonde girl of about twenty descended quickly into view, then halted halfway down in sudden confusion as the scene presented itself to her. She wore absolutely nothing but a narrow garter belt and thigh-length hose of black mesh. She cried, 'My God! I thought I heard...'
Bolan growled, 'Get on down here!'
She came down hesitantly, a voluptuous vision of pink skin and well-piled flesh, eyeing Bolan as though he were a cobra about to strike, then she scuttled quickly across to be near Celeste. She asked Bolan, 'Wh-what is this? What are you doing?'
Her speech was that of a refined Englishwoman. Bolan wondered what the hell she was doing in this lousy drop. He told her, 'I'm not up on the language. Tell Celeste she has one chance to live. I want information and damn quick. Are they bringing the American here? How many of them are involved. When are they expected?'
A rapid exchange in French between the two women ensued. Then the blonde girl told Bolan, 'Yes, an American criminal was to be brought here. He was to be kept here until further instructions were received. She does not know how many, she understood it was to be but one. Do you mean — oh yes, I see what you mean.' She turned to the older woman and another discussion, then back to Bolan. 'Seven men went to the airport, in two machines. She feels that they have been delayed by the fog. They should have arrived before now.'
Bolan said, 'Okay, that's what I wanted.' Under other circumstances he would have wanted something quite different from the English beauty, but this was just another of the sacrifices to the lousy war. He told her, 'Get the woman upstairs. Stay there. Don't let anyone else down.'
The girl nodded her head in vigorous assent and pulled Celeste toward the stairs. The French woman was beginning to tremble and weep. Bolan watched them up the stairway, hoping that Celeste had not become overly attached to her dead pimp, and working hard to keep his eyes away from the invigorating display of blonde rump, then he quietly put out the lights, opened the door, and went outside.
The situation out there had not changed. The street was quiet and the fog was showing no signs of dissipating. Bolan took a position several steps uprange from the doorway, secure in the enveloping mists. He noted lights going on upstairs and supposed that the house of joie was coming alive in a premature awakening. He replaced the two expended cartridges in the .32 and settled into the wait, trying to not think of the English girl. Half a cigarette later, the sound of an automobile engine entered his consciousness, followed quickly thereafter by the slow advance of headlamps along the curbing — then another sound and another pair of lights.
