“He did that?”
“As blood dripped down his chin from his bloody nose onto his shirt,” Mickey said.
“What set you two off?” Matt asked.
“That’s not important. The sonofabitch has never liked me, and vice versa. It just happened.”
“So what’s going to happen?”
“We have entered a thirty-day cooling-off period, during which they hope that I will change my mind about apologizing-they know I won’t-and the Bull hopes Kennedy will make a full and public apology for his reprehensible remarks and behavior to me-which he just might. During this period, I have withdrawn my professional services from the Bulletin. I still get paid, of course.”
“So what can we two rejects of society as we know it do for the next thirty days?” Matt asked.
“That’s what I came to talk to you about,” Mickey said.
“Whiskey and wild, wild women? You want to go to Atlantic City? What about Vegas?”
“Casimir has this nutty idea-has had it for years-that I should write a book.”
“You told me about that, Mick. And I told you it doesn’t sound nutty to me at all.”
“The original idea was a collection of stuff that I’ve done, Matt, and I even started putting stuff together for that.”
“I know.”
“But what Casimir did now was call some publisher and tell him that what they really needed was a book about Fort Festung, and I was just the guy to write it.”
“Why him?”
“Casimir said the Frogs can’t stall much longer-he looked into it, I suppose-and they’re going to extradite the slimy sonofabitch.”
“I agree with the Bull,” Matt said. “If they send Festung back, it’d be national news. That’d sell a lot of books. And you are just the guy to write it.”
“Yeah, well, anyway they threw a lot of money at me- which I don’t have to give back, by the way, even if I don’t write the book, or they don’t like it-and I’m going to France to have a look at him.”
“Hence the worldwide telephone?”
“Yeah. My mother goes bananas in the nursing home unless I call her once a day. I think it’s nine dollars a minute or something when you use it, but what the hell.”
“The more I think about this, it’s a great idea,” Matt said.
“Come with me,” O’Hara said.
“What?”
“Come with me. What else have you got to do?”
“Wow!” Matt said. “That came out of left field.”
“You’ve been there, right? You even speak a little Frog?”
“Very little,” Matt said. “Ouvrez la porte de mon oncle. That means ‘open the door of my uncle,’ if you’re taking notes.”
“That’s more than I speak. Come on, Matt. Everything on me, of course.”
Matt didn’t reply.
“I already know all I have to know about the sonofabitch, so all I have to do is take a quick look at this farmhouse, maybe get a couple of pictures of it, him and his wife, then we can go to Paris, or wherever, drink a lot of wine, and cherchez la femme.”
“Mick, if I didn’t think this was be nice to poor, loony Matt time, I actually think I’d go with you.”
“I want you to go because I don’t want to go by myself, okay?” O’Hara said.
Jesus, he means that. Mr. Front Page himself, the battling brawler of the city room, is afraid to leave Philadelphia by himself.
What the hell, why not? What else have I got to do?
“What the hell, Mick, why not?” Matt said.
Mickey took out the cellular, pushed one button, and then put the instrument to his ear.
“What happened to the Zero Zero One routine?” Matt asked.
“The Bull’s got one of these, too. They store a hundred numbers of other people with one of them,” Mickey explained, then held up his hand to cut Matt off.
“Antoinette, this is Michael. Would it be possible for me to speak with Casimir, please?”
It took several minutes for Mr. Bolinski to get on the line. He explained he was floating around the pool.
“Matt says he’ll go, Casimir,” O’Hara said. “Set it up.”
Bolinski said something Matt couldn’t hear.
“You got a passport? Is tomorrow night too soon for you?” Mickey asked.
“Yes and no,” Matt said.
“That’s fine with Matt, Casimir. Set it up.”
Bolinski said something else Matt couldn’t hear.
“He’s fine. He was exhausted, is all.”
Mickey broke the connection after Bolinski said something else.
“The Bull says he’s glad to hear you’re okay.”
“That’s nice of him.”
Mickey pushed another button on his worldwide telephone and put it to his ear.
“Hi, Mom!” he began. “How you doing?”
He spoke with his mother for five minutes, then handed the cellular to Matt.
“You want to call your mom?”
“Not particularly.”
“She’s your mother, for Christ’s sake. Call her.”
Matt called his mother and told her that he was fine, thank you, and that he was going to Paris tomorrow night with Mickey O’Hara.
When Air France Flight 2110 deposited them at Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris the second morning later, French customs showed great interest in Mr. O’Hara’s brand-new luggage-a last-minute purchase after Matt suggested that if they were going to be gone a couple of weeks Mickey would need more space than his zipper bag with the Philadelphia 76ers logotype would provide-and went through it suspiciously before gesturing they could pass.
Outside Customs, a man in a chauffeur’s cap was waiting for them, holding a sign lettered “M. O’Hara.”
He drove them, in a new Mercedes, to the George V Hotel, where they were installed in a two-bedroom, two-bath, sitting room suite on a corner of the building. From two windows in the sitting room, if they looked carefully, they could see the Champs Elysees, a block away.
They unpacked their luggage and then walked over to the Champs Elysees, took a quick look at the Arc de Triomphe at the other end, and went in search of breakfast.
Then they went to the U.S. Embassy at the foot of the hill, where-after Mickey threatened him with calling Pennsylvania’s junior senator right then and on his worldwide telephone-the press officer somewhat reluctantly promised to be prepared to give him the latest developments vis-a-vis the extradition of Isaac Festung once a day when Mickey called.
As they left the embassy, Matt said they were within walking distance of two famous Paris landmarks, the Louvre Museum and Harry’s New York Bar.
“Let’s take a quick look at the museum,” Mickey said. “Just so we can say we saw it. And then we’ll go to the bar and hoist a few.”
They went into the museum a few minutes before eleven and left a few minutes more than eight hours later, when at closing time three museum guards-immune to Mickey’s argument that he was the press, for Christ’s sake, and entitled to a little consideration-escorted them out.
He immediately announced to Matt that they were going to have to come back tomorrow.
“I could spend all goddamn day in there just looking at Venus de Milo,” Mickey said.
They called their respective maternal parents while sitting at the bar in Harry’s. When Matt told his mother they had spent most of the day in the Louvre, and had only minutes before arrived at Harry’s Bar, she chuckled knowingly.
