CHAPTER 7

Paris, Friday, February 9, 1934

With a name like The Beautiful Princess, you would expect Hambone Gaylord’s nightclub just off Place Pigalle to be as elegant as Maxim’s and as big as La Coupole, the enormous restaurant-brasserie that had opened with great fanfare in Montparnasse a few years ago. But La Belle was no bigger than four VIP booths in Johnny Sutton’s Blue Heaven Club in Harlem.

There was a bar where seven or eight skinny people could drink together if they didn’t wave their arms around too much. A dozen or so tables were crammed together near a small stage, and the place always looked like three o’clock in the morning in a murky bar in Harlem.

But some of the best jazz in the world and Hambone’s charm had brought celebrities there from all over the globe. First time I went there about seven years ago, Redtop was doing the hostessing. It was before she got her own place. Redtop brought so many famous people into La Belle Princesse that crowds would form outside the club, waiting to catch a glimpse of Charlie Chaplin or Picasso or the Prince of Wales or Mistinguett or Josephine Baker.

I turned up at La Belle at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, as arranged with Stanley, Redtop, Hambone, and his nephew, Baby Langston. Buster was due to arrive in an hour, and he had phoned Stanley at the club a few minutes before to let him know he would be on time and to ask him if, as a favor, he could bring his girlfriend to the rehearsal. Stanley hemmed and hawed, winking at us. Finally, he consented, and the trap was set to close on Buster Thigpen and Daphne.

Stanley’s plan was simple: to snatch them and then hide them in a disused stable block that he owned in a remote thicket in the Bois de Boulogne. Meanwhile, he would present a list of demands to Robinson III, mainly that he pay me my fee in straight money with a generous bonus for the “dangerosity” of the job. That was the way we had arranged things between us because none of us wanted to have problems with the French police.

Stanley used his stable block to store, or stash, some of the many items that he dealt in to supplement his considerable income as a musician. No one knew its exact location, except Redtop and me.

Buster and Daphne would be abducted from La Belle Princesse by two of Hambone’s associates, whom he called “the Corsican Twins.” I would deliver her to Robinson a few hours or, at most, a day later after freeing her from the stables when Robinson III coughed up my fees and bonus as arranged by Stanley. I would pretend that I had tracked her down and saved her from kidnappers, and I would have damage on my face to back up my story. I’d also let Robinson III know that the kidnappers were wise to unpleasant stuff that wouldn’t look too good if it got into the newspapers. The unpleasantness I had in mind was the stories that Jean Fletcher had told me about the family Robinson in the Hôtel Lutetia bar after we fled from the rioting last Tuesday night. If Robinson swallowed the bait, he’d fork out the dough gratefully for our returning Daphne safe and sound. If things turned sour, Buster was there to take the fall.

Putting Robinson III and Daphne to one side, Buster Thigpen was still a big problem. He was washed up as a drummer stateside due to his bad reputation as a drug addict and a violent womanizer with a quick temper and a fast blade. Paris was the only place where he had any kind of backing, thanks to the Count. Buster’s only hope of avoiding ending up with a bullet in his brain was to stick as tight to the Count as white on rice. If things went well for Buster’s Fascist and monarchist buddies, and if they succeeded in bringing the government down on their next try, old Buster would be sitting pretty.

That was where the Corsican Twins came in. Once I turned Daphne over to Robinson, I was thinking of going back to the stables, fetching Buster, and turning him over to the Corsican Twins, unless Stanley had a better plan for dealing with Buster.

I reckoned that the Corsicans could make it clear to him that he had better keep his trap shut about the snatch, stay away from Daphne, and get out of France as soon as possible. I figured that, although the Count might have two hundred uniformed storm troopers to do his bidding, the Corsican Twins could muster even more men from their clan at a moment’s notice. I doubted that the Count had enough foot soldiers to face down the cream of the French underworld.

I was taking no chances with the rehearsal. I had brought along my clarinet and its case, but if things went to plan, I wouldn’t even play one note. Still, in case I had to defend myself, I had a hidden compartment in the case concealing my Colt M1911 with two spare clips, each carrying seven rounds of .45 caliber bullets and a silencer.

It was already getting dark when I arrived at La Belle Princesse. I went past Baby Langston who was polishing the zinc bar. He nodded toward Hambone Gaylord’s office and said, “Everybody’s waiting for you.”

I knocked on the door, and the burly, black-skinned Hambone and I shook hands. The walls of his tiny office were covered with photographs of celebrity patrons of the club, which they had signed with fond messages. There was a battered table, even smaller than my office desk, next to which Stanley was rocking in a mahogany rocking chair, wearing powder-blue threads from head to toe. Next to him sat the Corsican Twins, two tough-looking youngsters wearing dark pinstriped suits, black Fedora hats, and spats. They looked around calmly as if they could handle any situation without mussing up their duds. Their well-tailored suits had thin bulges in a few places, inside which were thin guns and razor-sharp stilettos. Their swarthy faces were expressionless, and they looked at Hambone Gaylord as if he was their clan leader. Redtop was watching the Corsicans with a worried look. I had never seen her so nervous before.

“Soon’s Buster and his goldilocks come in, the Corsican boys gone to come running in the front door all tough, waving they pieces,” Stanley said. “They gone attack Baby Langston at the cash registry and grab all the takings. Then these here Alfieris gone sap Baby on his head, and they do the same to you, Urby. They gone menace me with they pieces and tie gunny sacks over Buster and Daphne. A getaway car be waitin’ for them in the back alley.” Stanley was getting more excited by the plan, his voice rising as he warmed to it. “The driver, a Corsican like these here boys, gone take Daphne and Buster to the meetin’ place and then hand them over to friends of ours who gone take them to the hidin’ place.”

Stanley’s eyes twinkled. I realized that he wasn’t giving Hambone and the Corsicans very many details.

“Then we start playin’ the game with this Robinson man of yours,” Stanley continued, looking at me, “and you best believe he gone keep the police out of it, ’specially with all the stuff Urby has on him.” Stanley did not let on to Hambone or the Corsicans what I had on Robinson III. If they knew too much, they might pull off a real kidnapping and hold the girl to ransom themselves.

I liked the plan, but I had learned in the war that even the best plans had a way of going haywire in the heat of battle. But I felt pretty confident that with the Colt in my clarinet case and the Corsican Twins in on the action, I stood a pretty good chance of getting myself, and Daphne, out of this mess in one piece. One thing intrigued me, though: Robinson III had told me that when she had sent him an SOS asking him to help her escape from Buster, he had told her that he was engaging me to track them down. I wondered if she would remember my name and realize that Buster was being set up so that I could rescue her.

Redtop said her good-byes all around. She was probably heading back to Chez Red Tops for her Hispano-Suiza. She would come back for Baby Langston after the snatch, drive to a place where they would rendezvous with the Corsican Twins and their driver, and then ferry Daphne, Buster, and a blindfolded Baby to the hideaway.

A few minutes after Redtop left, Baby Langston gave a warning whistle that meant that Buster and Daphne were entering La Belle Princesse. Stanley leapt to his feet, fast as a cat, grabbed his powder-blue Borsalino and his soprano saxophone and, together with Hambone and me, went forth to meet them. The Corsican Twins took their cue to slip out the back door and prepare for the snatch.

When Buster and Daphne saw the welcoming committee, Buster started grinning from ear to ear and sashaying around, showing off to his girlfriend.

Buster Thigpen had not changed much over the years. He was still a fine-looking man, but the drugs and booze had turned out the lights in his yellow-green eyes. Still, he moved warily and menacingly, like a big cat in the jungle, and his eyes never stopped tracking. He looked like a hard man to take by surprise.

He and Stanley flung their arms around each other.

“Mr. Bontemps, I be honored that you wants Buster on the drums for this here charity concert tomorrow night. It gone to be like the good times in Harlem. Remember that golden gig we played with the Duke on piano, Bubber Miley on the trumpet, and Charlie Dixon on the banjo at Johnny Sutton’s Blue Heaven Club?”

Buster was really laying it on thick for Daphne, but she was studying Stanley’s face, and she wasn’t buying any of Buster’s jive. It didn’t help that Stanley’s eye tic flared up while Buster kept recalling “the golden gig” back in Harlem.

According to Stanley, Buster was so drugged up that he couldn’t find the drumhead with his sticks. This happened in front of a packed house at the Blue Heaven Club with Louis Armstrong, Eubie Blake, and Noble Sissle in the audience. Johnny Sutton got so angry that he stopped the quintet in the middle of Blake and Sissle’s “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” hauled Buster off the bandstand, dragged him across the floor amid tables of cheering patrons, and tossed him outside into a December snowstorm.

Daphne watched everything with the same intensity as her father (or brother?) Barnet Robinson III. Up close, she was breathtakingly beautiful with white-blonde hair that fell to the small of her back. The wave of hair covering her right eye only made her violet-blue left eye look more startling. She wore a long, white silk dress cinched at the waist by a blue leather belt that set off her curves real nicely. Daphne was so beautiful that I tried not to look at her. Each time I did, something fluttered in my chest, and I lost my concentration on what was going to happen in a few minutes. Suddenly, I wanted to protect this woman with every fiber in my being. I wanted to be alone with her somewhere with warm sand, palm trees and an azure blue-violet sky, the color of her eye, reflected in the sea.

Daphne turned to me and locked her gaze into mine as if she could read my mind and liked what she saw there, too. There was a faint hint of surprise in her expression. When she finally spoke, her voice was low and husky, a voice more knowing than I expected from a twenty-year-old coed who came from a rich, upper-class background and was the daughter of Kaiser Bill to boot, if Jean’s “sources” were right.

“This be Hambone Gaylord, and this man be his nephew, Baby Langston,” Buster said, introducing Daphne all around.

Of course, he saved me for last. “This be Urby Brown,” Buster said, yanking a thumb at me by way of introduction.

She flashed her beautiful smile at me, but if my name meant anything special to her as Robinson III’s bloodhound, she was not giving anything away.

“Urby Brown. I like your first name. It’s unusual,” she purred.

I liked it only when she said it.

“Buster told me that you met as schoolboys in New Orleans,” she went on.

“Yes,” I answered, going along with Buster’s lie about us meeting as “schoolboys.” I felt heat on my neck just looking at her. “Buster and I go a long ways back. So does Stanley. But the main thing is we’re still musicianers,” I concluded, lamely.

Daphne laughed and clapped her hands in delight.

“‘Musicianers.’ That’s such a quaint word, when Buster’s old friends from New Orleans use it. It sounds nicer than ‘musicians.’ It conjures up high priests of jazz with a language and ritual all your own. As if you hold secrets of the temple that only the initiated may know. Like Wagner.”

I was enjoying listening to Daphne almost as much as looking at her, except for her comparing our music to Wagner’s. Some high-falutin French music critic said something similar at Chez Red Tops a few years ago, and Ernest Hemingway socked him in the jaw so hard that the man had to be taken to the Hôtel Dieu hospital to be revived.

Daphne kept her eye locked on mine. I wished I could see her other eye peeking under the wavy white-blonde hair, so that I could know what she was thinking. I looked at the poet, Baby Langston, standing behind the bar. His eyes were glued onto Daphne, and he was taking in her every word. I was sure that Baby was already working out a poem that would transform Daphne into a goddess out of Greek mythology.

I was beginning to get cold feet about Stanley’s plan because I didn’t want to see the Corsican Twins throw a sack over Daphne’s beautiful face and body, and I didn’t like the thought of her fear while Stanley kept her and Buster in hiding until he negotiated terms for my fees and “lagniappe” with Robinson III. Daphne must have sensed that something was wrong, and she put her velvet-gloved hand on my sleeve.

“Is something wrong, Mr. Brown? You’ve gone red in the face like you have a fever.” She actually took her right glove off and put her soft hand on my forehead. So soft and perfumed was her hand that I had to restrain myself from kissing it then and there. Buster took it all in with an ugly sneer twisting his face before he said, “Don’t you worry none about Urby, baby. He be tough as they come, almost as tough as me. Ain’t that right, Urby, my man?”

He was really skating on thin ice now because the last time we fought at St. Vincent’s, I beat him up so badly that he had to limp into Father Gohegan’s office to find sanctuary.

“I think Mr. Brown has a fever, Buster. Maybe he should be in bed under warm blankets with pots of tea and lemon and dry toast in easy reach. I could take him to my—”

Just at that moment, there was a commotion at the door, and we all looked at each other. Only Buster seemed truly surprised. Daphne was not fazed at all; she looked amused by the goings-on.

An instant later, pandemonium reigned in La Belle Princesse. One of the two masked men had slugged Baby Langston and was rifling through the cash register, while the other pointed a sawed-off shotgun at us.

“Que personne ne bouge!” he shouted.

“Les mains en l’air!” We all raised our hands. Buster was wide-eyed with terror, but Daphne was as cool as if armed robberies were a matter of routine. Playing the role assigned to me, I leapt at the gunman, and he brought his sap down on my head so hard that I slumped to the floor and saw a lot of my blood on my hand when I removed it from my temple. Soon I was only semiconscious, but then I felt Daphne’s hand on my cheek, and her honeysuckle scent filled my nose.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she hissed at the Corsican. “He was only trying to protect me . . . like a gentleman.”

“Shut yo’ mouth, woman,” Buster quailed. “Elsewise they turn on you. These here men just wants to take the money in that cash registry and be gone like a cool breeze.”

The first Corsican had filled a bag with all the money in the cash register, and then he turned to Buster and Daphne. “Vous parlez trop,” he said to them. The second Corsican tied their hands behind their backs so tightly that Buster let out a yelp. Daphne went a little red in the face. The Corsicans threw big burlap sacks over Daphne and Buster that almost fell to her ankles.

“Avancez,” a twin barked out as they pushed them toward the alley door with the barrels of their shotguns aimed at their backs. Buster was shaking and moaning like a man going off to the guillotine, but Daphne didn’t make a sound.

The four of them slipped out the back door. We heard the distinctive roar of a Citroën “traction avant” revving up and then the squeal of tires as the Corsicans raced off with Buster and Daphne to rendezvous with Redtop and Baby Langston.

The moment the car roared off, Stanley slapped palms with Hambone Gaylord, and they both made that cricket laugh in their throats. Baby Langston was wiping at the scratch on his forehead with a handkerchief, but when he saw the cut on my temple he poured gin over it and swabbed the blood away.

“Those boys sure play rough,” Baby Langston said in his soft voice. “I sure wouldn’t want to be around when they do it for real.”

My head was throbbing. I was wondering why the Corsican had sapped me so hard. But, mainly, I was worried about Daphne. She seemed cool enough, but I didn’t want to think of what the twins might do to her if they got hot eyeing her on the way to the rendezvous with Redtop and Baby Langston. They probably wouldn’t be able to master their urges for too long.

“Are your Corsicans on the level, Hambone?” I asked.

“They my men,” he replied coldly. “I done dragged they Daddy off the barbed wire at Verdun. The whole Alfieri clan at my beck and call.”

Stanley gave me a big wink and wagged a finger at me. “You sho’ taken to that Daphne and she to you, mon petit. Ooooeeee, I can still feel the heat. Don’t worry, your doll gone be free in twenty-four hour, Mr. Robinson play ball.”

“What about Buster?” I asked.

“Well, you told me he was tight with the Count. Let’s see that little Hitler sweat when he try to get that no-count Buster back from them Corsicans. But you let me handle it. We gots to be careful that it don’t bite back on us. I gone phone the police right now ’bout the robbery and snatchin’ of goldilocks and Buster. You keep a rabbin’ on that cut so’s the blood keep gushin’ outta it.”

My blood, I thought bitterly. I hadn’t lost a drop of it during four years in the Great War, and now I was bleeding in a faked abduction over a question of money.

“The mo’ blood and bruises them Frenchy po-lice sees, the mo’ they likely swallow our story,” Stanley said. “We got to rough Baby up some more in case they come back to question y’all again about the robbery and the snatch.”

Stanley looked like those photos of King Vidor directing Hallelujah!. He sat Baby Langston down at one of the tables and slapped him across the face until Baby was sobbing in pain with tears flooding his cheeks. I could see that Hambone was straining to keep from jumping Stanley. Then Stanley threw me to the floor so that my back was angled against the bar, and he rubbed one of the white cloth napkins across the cut on my forehead so hard that it soaked up the bleeding instead of making it worse. When I dabbed at the cut with my handkerchief, it had already dried up.

Stanley flung a few more chairs and tables around and threw bottles of wine at the bar toward both sides of the cash register. Shards of glass ricocheted around La Belle Princesse, and Hambone was looking seriously irritated. Stanley smiled at him slyly and said, “Hey, Bone. Gots to make it real nasty in here so them police don’t look around too much. They don’t like to get real down and nasty and mess up they pretty uniforms and shoes like the cops back home.”

Hambone scowled even more as he took in the mess, and he looked frightened when he saw the state of his nephew Baby Langston. Stanley threw more fat on the fire.

“Hambone, mon grand, when the police arrives you gots to be lookin’ mo’ upset about losin’ all that money and havin’ yo’ club all trashed up. But don’t worry. The girl’s father goin’ to pay Urby some big money to get his daughter back, and you goin’ to get a nice slice of it, pay for some new furniture for yo’ club. Sho’ needs it.”

That really did it. Hambone raised himself to his full six feet three inches and shook his ham-like fists at the slight Stanley.

“You wants me to look mo’ upset?” Hambone said. “Mo’ upset! Sheeeitt, Stanley, I be mo’ upset, you be missin’ half yo’ mouf. This caper best be worth my while.”

Stanley sweetened Hambone up by forking over a large wad of franc notes as an “advance” on the proceeds. After eyeing the wad and making fast mental calculations, Hambone suddenly became so enthusiastic about playing the role of a robbery victim that Stanley had to keep him from busting up all of his own chairs.

I heard the roaring of a car engine, and then Redtop burst into the room. She checked out the devastated nightclub and shook her head nervously.

“The firestorm’s about to blaze,” she said. She crossed herself and looked as if she were about to cry. I was surprised because Redtop was one tough woman. She went over to the miserable Baby Langston and yanked him to his feet. “Let’s git, Baby. We got to meet up with them Corsican boys and fetch Beauty and the Beast off to Stanley’s hideaway.”

The chief inspector of police apologized to Hambone for the “inconvenience” that the robbery had caused. Hambone declined his offer of help to tidy up La Belle Princesse for tomorrow night’s charity concert. Hambone didn’t want policemen lingering around the premises because he probably felt that they might uncover something that could get him deported.

The police examined my wounds, careful not to get blood on themselves. When the chief inspector learned that, like himself, I had known the carnage of the Battle of the Somme, he carried my clarinet case out to his car and drove me to the Hôtel Dieu hospital himself, the siren wailing at full blast.

Fortunately, he didn’t open the clarinet case and find the weaponry in its hidden compartment. That would have got me kicked out of France quicker than you can say Jack Robinson, war hero or not.

I was released from Hôtel Dieu six hours later, at just past one thirty in the morning. A team of doctors had spent most of that time debating whether I needed stitches on my temple and, at long last, concluded that I didn’t. Finally, I asked them to put liquid court plaster on the cut. Then I combed my hair over it, said my good-byes, and headed for Chez Red Tops. I was anxious to find out how Daphne was doing.