Shape of fear, p.6
Shape of Fear, page 6
“But you didn’t,” Chambrun said matter-of-factly.
“I didn’t, but I wish to God I had. Not because I’m afraid of danger. But because—because I got a taste for something myself that I can’t shake. Something harder to kick than the drug habit.”
“Juliet Valmont?” Chambrun said.
“Yes,” Digger said. He turned his head from side to side. “Yes, yes, yes!”
It began during a big international road race in southern France, Sullivan told us. A driver he knew well—a fellow American from Texas named Al Jenkins—had a bad crackup and was carted off to a French hospital on the critical list. After the race, in which Digger finished second, he went to the hospital to see Jenkins. Before he got to see Jenkins, the doctor on the case told him Jenkins had only a long shot chance of pulling through. He’d been given drugs to ease the pain of severe internal injuries; Digger wasn’t even sure Jenkins recognized him. But that Texas boy was a tough kid. He hung on day after day, and finally the doctors began to believe he might make it. Digger visited him regularly. At the end of a couple of weeks Jenkins was actually sitting up in a wheel chair and the medical report was that he’d won. But there was something wrong with Jenkins. The more hopeful the medical reports, the more disturbed he seemed to be emotionally.
Then one day he broke down and confessed to Digger what the trouble was. He was on H—heroin. As he grew physically better and the doctors took him off morphine, his personal problem was driving him crazy. He begged Digger in a kind of jabbering hysteria to get him a supply of heroin without which he couldn’t live. He’d kill himself if he had to go another twenty-four hours without it.
“You can be awfully pure and moral in a situation like that,” Digger told us. “You can use a lot of silly phrases like ‘grin and bear it.’ Unless you’ve been involved in that kind of torture, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I pacified Al Jenkins as best I could. I let him tell me the name of the man who would supply me with a fix for him. It was something of a shock. The pusher was a fellow named Langlois who was chief mechanic for the racing cars operated by the Bernardel Auto Company. I knew this Langlois well from a dozen races. I told Jenkins I’d do what I could. That, I thought, would keep him alive for another day.
“Then I hunted up the doctor. He knew Al Jenkins was an addict. He frankly sympathized with him, but he couldn’t help him. He couldn’t get drugs for Al without its being called to the attention of his superiors. They wouldn’t approve it. The doctor’s immediate superior was a bug on drug addiction. He seemed to believe the only cure was will power. The doctor told me if I could help Al, he’d turn his back on it. ‘Your Monsieur Jenkins can fight his personal fight some other time,’ he told me, ‘when he has his strength and health back.’ ”
So Digger went to the man named Langlois and after a lot of backing and filling, he got help for Al Jenkins.
“It wasn’t very dangerous,” Digger said. “Drug addiction isn’t a big deal in France. The authorities admit to only about three hundred addicts in the whole country. That’s why France is a great place for those secret laboratories I mentioned. Oh, the police co-operate with Interpol and our Bureau of Narcotics by cracking down on a laboratory maybe once a year. But they aren’t constantly looking for dealers and pushers the way we are. This fellow Langlois, who in his job rubbed elbows with the international sports crowd, was servicing people from abroad who were part of the tourist-sports world. Langlois knew how badly Al needed help because Al was an old customer. He dealt with me without too much hesitation. I got a supply of heroin for Al—and a needle—and went back to the hospital.” Digger’s voice hardened. “Al was dead. Jumped off the solarium roof on the tenth floor of the hospital when a nurse turned her back for a moment.”
Digger twisted in his chair. “I don’t know. Something clicked inside me then. Langlois and a whole line of sons of bitches like him were responsible for what had happened to Al Jenkins. You understand—he hadn’t done Al a favor by supplying me with H. I paid him plenty for it.”
Digger wasn’t a Frenchman or a French citizen. He didn’t want to get involved, but he felt it was his duty to put a stop to Langlois’ business. So he went to Paul Bernardel, Langlois’ boss and an old personal friend. Bernardel was shocked to hear what his chief mechanic was up to. He and Digger drove to the testing grounds where Langlois was working out some of Bernarde’s cars. They were too late. Someone had walked into the testing-ground garage and shot Langlois five times through the head. No one had seen it happen, and the killer was gone, free as air.
“Two men violently dead in the space of a few hours,” Digger said. “Just small fry—both of them. Just a user and a pusher. I don’t know why, but I was boiling. I felt Al had been murdered just as definitely as Langlois.”
In that angry state Digger got his first view of the big picture. “Bernardel knew a lot about it. I learned about the economics—that many of the secret laboratories for processing opium were in France—all the rest of what I’ve already told you. And more. It was suspected that the Secret Army terrorists in Algeria had turned to the drug traffic to raise money for arms and ammunition. Millions of dollars could be pried out of the despairing and the hooked in the United States.” Digger laughed mirthlessly. “It got to be a kind of patriotic cause with me then. Bernardel said if I was interested in knowing more, he could introduce me to a man who really knew the score. He was a Colonel Georges Valmont, a strong de Gaullist, who was trying to smash the drug traffic by the terrorists. He was trying to smash it, not for moral reasons but to keep guns and bullets out of their hands. And so—and so I went to see Colonel Georges Valmont. I was cordially received and I—I was introduced to his daughter, Juliet.”
Juliet Valmont had a great deal more to do with Digger’s immediate actions after that than any “cause.” This girl, so French and yet so American, was a new experience. He had been involved with a lot of women in his time, but the idea of permanence had never been a part of those relationships.
“The first time I laid eyes on Juliet I knew she was going to be a part of my life for the rest of time. I guess I wouldn’t have been so sure of it if something of the same thing hadn’t happened to her. We were in love. We had no questions. We had no doubts. There was only one small hitch—her devotion to her father. She didn’t want to go away and leave him. Not a neurotic fixation, you understand. The old man was living in deadly danger from day to day—the Algerian terrorists were out to get him, and they were allied with a completely ruthless gang, the drug peddlers. I liked Georges Valmont, not just because he’d produced the miracle that was Juliet. If he wanted to fight the terrorists, I was on his side. If he wanted to fight the narcotics boys, I was on his side. At that moment, if he’d wanted to fight Lyndon B. Johnson, I was on his side. That’s how gone I was.”
There was a way in which Digger could be useful to Valmont. Someone would have to take Langlois’ place as a pusher for the international set. Digger, moving in that crowd, might come up with a lead. Identifying the new pusher could lead to the higher-ups Colonel Valmont was so anxious to nail. It was a grimly important job, but Digger enjoyed every moment of it because it meant that he and Juliet went places together, worked together toward the same end, and grew closer and closer. But they didn’t have much luck. They worked at it; Paul Bernardel gave them help; and secret agents of Colonel Valmont’s were at it night and day.
About a month after this adventure began, a serious attempt was made on Colonel Valmont’s life. Valmont in a chauffeur-driven car was cruising along the Champs Elysées when, Chicago fashion, a car edged them off to the side and its passengers opened fire on the colonel with Tommy guns. Whether the chauffeur was a hero or whether it was a freak miracle was an unanswered question. Valmont’s car swerved right, struck a tree, and turned over. The chauffeur was killed, but Valmont, pinned under the car, was shielded by it from the bullets that were meant to kill him.
It was clear then that the terrorists meant to let nothing stand in their way. Monsieur Delacroix, then in the Ministry of Justice, Bernardel, and Charles Girard, chief prosecutor for Delacroix’s office, all urged Valmont to leave France and go into hiding far away from the center of danger. Valmont refused. He felt he was close to identifying the big shots in the drug traffic who were supplying the terrorists with funds. But he did go into hiding in the city. Not even Delacroix and Bernardel and Girard knew where. The location of the little apartment on the Left Bank was a secret shared by only one person—Digger.
“He could have chosen any one of half a dozen trusted agents,” Digger said. “He chose me. Oh, he trusted me, but mainly he knew how much in love Juliet and I were, and he didn’t want to separate us. So I knew where the apartment was and I acted as a courier for him, carrying messages to people on the outside and bringing messages back to him. It was on the wild side. I could never approach the apartment openly. I had to look as little like myself as I could. I dressed like a workman, like a bus conductor; I even wore the uniform of a French soldier. As far as I could tell, I was never tailed except when I was myself, and I never went anywhere near the apartment as Digger Sullivan.
“Valmont had one obsessive fear. It was that someone high up in the government, someone he had every reason to trust, might actually be connected with the terrorists and the drug boys. There was no particular person he suspected, but there had been too many leaks in the past, too many traps set into which no one walked. Someone was always a step ahead. I think the only person to whom he gave a completely clean bill of health was me. I wasn’t interested in French politics; I didn’t need money; and I was in love with Juliet.
“One day—the day—I got a phone call at my hotel. It was Valmont in a highly agitated state. He had, he told me, discovered the identity of this high-up traitor. He wouldn’t tell me who it was on the phone. He was afraid his phone might be tapped. And he was afraid they were ready to move in on him fast. Would I come at once and get Juliet away to some safe place. There was no time for disguise or roundabout approaches. I was to come now—now!
“So I went, openly racing through traffic in my car. I pulled up across the street from the apartment and hurried toward it. It was a walkup—three flights. I’d just reached the first landing when the shooting began.
“I ran up the last two flights and smashed my way into the apartment. The front door was locked but flimsy. I found Valmont on the floor, torn to pieces by gunshots. The windows onto the fire escape were open and I saw a man just reaching the street level at the rear. A car was waiting for him—a small black Peugeot. Instinctively I knew there wasn’t anything I could do for the colonel. But there was just a chance I might be able to cut off that little black car before the killer got completely away. Thank God Juliet wasn’t there, I told myself.
“I ran down the stairs, crossed the street to my car, and took off—not having the slightest idea that Juliet, hurrying back from the corner market, had seen me.
“I knew the streets around that area like the back of my hand. I’d come and gone so many different ways. I had to make a guess as to which way the Peugeot would go, and I guessed wrong. I must have cruised around for half or three quarters of an hour before I gave up. I was about to head back for the apartment when I realized I was directly across the street from Paul Bernardel’s office. I thought it was important to get the word to him, and I left my car and went in.
“Bernardel, white as a ghost, had already got word from the Sûreté. Not only that, he had the word that Juliet had identified me leaving the apartment and that there was a general alarm out for me.
“It didn’t seem complicated to me. I should go straight to the apartment. Juliet would know I was telling the truth. When the facts of the case were put before the police, they’d know, too. Bernardel put another light on the whole matter.
“The terrorists and their drug-peddling friends would want to pin this killing on someone else if they could. They had an unimpeachable witness in Juliet. Whatever she might believe, she had seen me running away from the building. Valmont had been after a drug ring. It was a certainty that someone would come forward with the story of my acquiring a fix from Langlois for Al Jenkins. The higher-up, whoever he was, would nail me to the barn door but good. The one way to get me out of this was to provide me with an alibi.” Digger drew a deep breath. “He talked me into it. I tried to get Juliet on the phone—my one condition—but she wouldn’t or couldn’t talk to me. Well, tomorrow I’d be able to make it all clear to her.
“We drove to Bernardel’s country place in his car. It was really just a little hide-out where he went to get away from people. No servants, no near neighbors. The next morning we went back to Paris, and I gave myself up to the police.” Digger stood up. “I need a drink,” he said. He walked over to the sideboard and poured himself about four fingers of bourbon. He drank it like water.
“I know you two have read the newspaper accounts of the hearing,” he said. “They’re far from complete. The first few hours of it were strictly under a blanket. Juliet was there, a stranger, in shock. When I tried to approach her, she started to scream. My enemy that day was Charles Girard. I’d met him once or twice. I knew he resented me. He always looked at Juliet like a hungry man outside the window of a rotisserie. Maybe he was after a murderer that morning, but I had a feeling he was more concerned with polishing off a rival for Juliet.
“Girard listened to our carefully prepared alibi, and I could see he didn’t choose to believe any part of it. Whether he didn’t believe it or whether he didn’t want to believe it, I can’t say. He had a pretty good case. As Bernardel had predicted, he knew about my connection with Langlois and Al Jenkins. He didn’t choose to believe I’d just been doing a favor for a friend. He accused me of being in on the drug racket. He suggested I’d made a patsy out of Bernardel; gone to him with my innocent story and persuaded him to get me in with Colonel Valmont, the most dangerous enemy of the drug peddlers. He documented the fact that after I’d gotten in with Valmont, a half a dozen traps set by the colonel had failed to be sprung. Someone close to the colonel was tipping his hand. Who but me, he asked? He accused me of using Juliet to stay close to the colonel, to win his trust. Valmont had told Juliet the morning of his murder that he had guessed the identity of someone high up in the government who was working the drug racket. He had told her he wouldn’t let her share the secret. It was too dangerous. But he was, he told her, going to tell me. Girard made the shrewd guess that the colonel had gotten in touch with me and that I’d had to move fast to silence him. He said I’d then made a patsy out of Bernardel again, persuading him to supply me with an alibi. He understood, he told the authorities, why Bernardel would help me, believing I was a fighter on his side.”
Digger’s short laugh was mirthless. “It was touch and go for a few minutes there. I could see Bernardel was shaken. It could all be the way Girard suggested. I could have lied to him from the start; I could have been in on the drug racket from the beginning; I could have used him to get in with Valmont; I could have used Juliet to pull the wool over the colonel’s eyes; I could have killed the colonel when I found out he was on to someone higher up in my racket. Bernardel knew I knew the colonel was on to something; that I had been at the apartment. So help me, if I’d been in his shoes, I think I’d have thrown me to the wolves. When the magistrate asked him if he still stood by his story of the alibi, I was certain Bernardel would admit it was a fake. Well—he didn’t. ‘It’s not a story, Monsieur,’ he told the magistrate. ‘It’s a fact.’ ”
Digger put his empty whisky glass down on the sideboard. “I don’t think the magistrate or Girard or any of the police officials in that room believed him. I know Juliet didn’t. Bernardel’s position was evidently such that his word had to be accepted by the officials. I don’t know what may have gone on behind closed doors. Perhaps Bernardel told the truth but convinced them of my innocence. I’ve even thought he may have told them the truth, admitted doubts of his own, and persuaded them to let me go free so that I might lead them to the big shots. At the time, the thing that mattered most was that Juliet had no doubts. She believed everything between us had been false; that I had simply used her to place myself in a position to spy on her father and had then killed him in cold blood. I was never able to get to her, to talk to her, to tell her my story. Girard was now her protector, never giving her a chance to think any way but his way. And in the end he—he got her.”
Digger didn’t go on, and after a moment or two Chambrun asked him a question.
“Surely when you were alone with Bernardel, he must have made it clear to you how he felt?”
“Oh, he told me over and over that he never doubted my story for an instant. But he advised me to leave France for a while. He couldn’t guarantee me protection, either from legal or illegal troubles. Hell, they couldn’t even guarantee the safety of their own President. I didn’t want to go.”
“Why?”
“My dear fellow,” Digger said in a weary voice, “my one chance with Juliet was to find her father’s real murderer—the man I’d seen leaving by the fire escape and driving away in that Peugeot.”
“Would you know him if you saw him again?”
“No. Big man—big as I am. I only saw him from behind. But I didn’t have a chance, working by myself. I couldn’t hope for help from the authorities. They were pretty well convinced about me. Through a friend of mine I got to a high official of Interpol—the International Criminal Police Organization. Their headquarters is located in a dignified old town house on the Rue Paul Valéry in the heart of Paris. I don’t know how much you know about Interpol, but it isn’t a police force in the normal sense of the word. It’s a super-communications center for sixty-odd nations around the world. It has its own radio transmitter, its own identification files. In those files are the names of about a hundred and twenty thousand international criminals with about two hundred and eighty thousand aliases, photographs, fingerprints, and an elite file of about six thousand top criminals. The member countries of Interpol constantly keep the central office posted on where known criminals may be. So, if a cop in New York wants to locate a known smuggler, he gets in touch with Rue Valéry and the chances are they can tell him promptly where his man can be located.
