Free The Stiff Upper Lip by Peter Israel

Revenge lasts a long time, and in our business there’s only one way that revenge is exacted, isn’t that so? Yet you’ve kept him alive, and that I don’t understand. Unless, that is …”—with a knowing smile—“… Adlay’s concubine has had something to do with it?”
    Marie-Josèphe, I noticed, was Grimes’ whore, whereas Valérie got off as Hadley’s concubine, but I had no time to dwell on the semantic implications.
    â€œA resourceful bitch,” said Dédé Delatour with a certain savor. “Right down to her hideaway. Who would ever think of looking in Neuilly for an American nigger who measures two meters?”
    â€œYou’re pretty well informed,” I said.
    â€œIt’s my business,” he answered. And so it was, and I was duly impressed. But then he had to go and lay it on, in true macho style. He gave me a run-down on the last few days, not only of Roscoe Hadley’s movements and his concubine’s, but also of mine. Which touched my professional nerve. I mean, I like to think I can spot company with my eyes shut and plugs in my ears.
    â€œThen what now?” said Dédé Delatour.
    â€œThat’s our business,” I repeated.
    â€œSo I’d have thought. But it occurs to me now that maybe you need help with Adlay. It wouldn’t be difficult. Unless, that is—much as I’d hate to think it—that he was trying to make a separate deal with you?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œ Alors … ?”
    There it was again, inviting an answer.
    The ploy I tried may have been a dumb one, but it was the only one in sight.
    â€œIt may be,” I said, staring at him, “that we don’t want to dispose of him. It may be that we have other uses for him.”
    He didn’t take to that, not at all. The eyebrows went up thickly, and at the same time his brow tensed.
    â€œWhat uses?”
    â€œSuppose,” I said reflectively. “Just suppose all we want is for him to go on playing basketball?”
    It was a dumb ploy, as I say, in that it was dangerous, and dangerous because I could only see half the implications. But the half I could see had distinct possibilities. Like what it might mean, when the small business of le basket became big and the betting began and the fix went in, to have an experienced fixer like Roscoe Hadley already seeded into the game, at star level, with the right kind of control on him. I was pretty well convinced that Dédé Delatour could be made to see it too, and not only Dédé Delatour but, if necessary, the California Connection that supplied him with basketball bodies. And even—given his precarious circumstances—Roscoe Hadley.
    But then the telephone had to go and wreck it.
    It was an intercom system, giving off an intermittent buzz instead of a ring, and the apparatus was on a small desk in a corner of the room by the window. I could only see Delatour’s face in profile when he answered, but it was clear from his tone that somebody had fucked up. Badly. Whoever was at the other end of the line apparently wasn’t the one who’d fucked up, but he had to take it as if he was. And Dédé Delatour knew how to dish it out all right. When he was done, he listened a moment, his mouth tight, then barked an order and banged down the receiver. Or started to. Then he pulled it back, jabbed a call button, ordered, “Come up here now! ”
    Then he laid the receiver down. Gently. Then gently took a cigar from a humidor while he gazed down on the garden, and ran the cigar back and forth under his nose, and put it down.
    Gently.
    When he turned back to me there was a crooked smile on his face, not the one he wore at dinner tables. I realized it was his way of telling me the fuzz was off the peach.
    The message registered, but too late. By then the door to the room had opened and the Belmondo came in. He closed the door behind him and stood