“YOU’VE BEEN IN TOUCH with Derek all along, haven’t you?” I tried not to make it sound like an accusation.
She smiled slightly and sipped her beer. “This is a favorite place of mine. Wait’ll you taste the choucroute.”
We were at Brasserie Lipp, in St. Germain des Prés, for lunch, at a prime table. A chauffeured Citroen waited for us at the curb. Paris with Jane was interesting. “Well, we did get the money on time; thanks for that. I just hope he doesn’t scare the pants off us again next time.”
“Derek is very reliable. He didn’t need reminding by me.”
“Is that his place upstairs?”
“It’s Nicky’s.”
“It just looked like Derek, somehow.”
“They have similar tastes; they’ve known each other since they were seven. They were at Eton together.”
The choucroute arrived. I wouldn’t have ordered it if I had known it was going to be sauerkraut, but she was right; it was delicious, as were the sausages and ham piled on top. “That’s where Nicky got the accent, then. Was he born in England?”
She shook her head, swinging a dangling bit of kraut across her chin. “Nicky was born in a tent in the desert. It was a very nice tent, mind you. Nicky is an actual prince of his country.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. His grandfather ruled mostly over camels and goats until the oil changed things in the late thirties.”
“Is Nicky going to be king some day?”
She shook her head again. “He has thirty-odd brothers. No chance. But he’s probably the most important of them, because of his business skills.”
“He and Derek do a lot of business together, do they?”
“If it weren’t for Nicky, Derek would probably be a successful stockbroker, nothing more. Nicky … ” She paused and put down her fork. “Almost no one knows this, Will.”
I nodded. “Okay, sealed lips.” I couldn’t wait to pass this on to Mark and Annie, and to my parents.
“Derek’s family were well-placed enough to send him to Eton; he went to Oxford on a scholarship. He had no money. His future in business would have been to work for somebody else. But Nicky—once his family understood how bright he was—had access to virtually unlimited capital. Derek was even brighter, and with Nicky behind him, there was no stopping him. Just out of Oxford they invested about fifty thousand pounds in some houses in Islington and Camden Town—just workmen’s houses, really. They fixed them up and resold them at a handsome profit, then repeated the process, reinvesting their profits in still more property.”
“I’d heard something about winkling old ladies out of their homes.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way; they were paid good prices at a time when there was no market. Derek found cheap flats for them and they were resettled with a nice little nest egg. It was a good arrangement for everybody.”
I wondered.
“When Nicky’s family saw how astonishingly well they were doing, they made much larger amounts of capital available, and everybody was happy. Derek grew very wealthy very quickly, in a lot of different sorts of ventures, and Nicky was able to stay out of the limelight. That’s important to him. Few people are aware that he is the financial brain in his family. He lives the part of the playboy in Europe—and enjoys it immensely, by the way—and the family’s fortune grows. People think of him as nothing more than Derek’s sidekick, like those characters in your American westerns.”
“So Nicky is Walter Brennan to Derek’s John Wayne.”
“For purposes of appearances, yes. But each of them shields the other in important ways. Derek’s reputation preserves Nicky’s anonymity as a financier, and Nicky can protect Derek by acting for him, seeming to be only a flunky, when Derek is anxious to preserve his privacy.
“Which is the dominant of the two?”
“Neither. Oh, Derek often seems to be in charge, because that suits them both, but they are, in fact, the most perfectly equal partners I have ever known.” There was admiration, even sensuality in the way she said that.
I regretted my next question almost before I asked it; it began as a joke, but before it was out of my mouth it was serious. “And which one of them do you fuck?” I asked, stuffing my last bite of choucroute into my mouth.
She never missed a beat. “Both,” she said evenly, gazing calmly across the table at me. “Sometimes together.”
The sauerkraut turned dry in my mouth. I chewed it valiantly, to keep from having to speak.
“I particularly enjoy them together,” she said, motioning to a waiter for the bill.
I swallowed hard, chasing the food with some beer. I was shocked to the bone.
“Are you shocked?” she asked.
“Certainly not,” I replied.
I felt her hand on my thigh under the table. “Are you excited?”
“Yes,” I replied, and I was astonished that it was the truth.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, signing the check and pushing the table away. I followed her out of the restaurant and to the car, where the chauffeur was waiting, braced, with the door opened. He handed her a fresh Paris Herald Tribune. In the car she handed me the newspaper, then turned, reached down and unzipped my fly. “Le Louvre, “ she said to the chauffeur.
“Oui, Ma’amselle,” he replied, starting the engine.
As her head came down to my lap, I flung up the newspaper to shield us from the chauffeur’s eyes in the rearview mirror. A headline at the bottom of the front page said, “INEPT BUT LUCKY GUNMEN ROB CORK BANK AND ARMORED CAR,” but my vision blurred before I could read the story.