Free The Stiff Upper Lip by Peter Israel Page B

mains ,” which means “Reach for the sky” in local jargon. How she’d spotted him, or coaxed him up to the apartment, I could only guess. Like Delatour had said, she was a resourceful bitch. But by the time they were finished with him, Roscoe had apparently slam-dunked him into the bathtub and they’d taken all his toys. Including his car keys.
    So much for last words.
    Dédé Delatour’s dungeon wasn’t really much of a dungeon. It was a downstairs room with a window fronting on the garden. There weren’t any bars on the window, and all that separated the garden from the street beyond it was a spiked wrought-iron fence. It would have been easy for me, when I came to, to go out the window, jump the fence, and head off into the beautiful Paris night. The only trouble was that when I came to, my hands were tied behind a chair and my ankles to the chair legs and Dédé Delatour’s muscle were taking turns beating out the “ Marseillaise ” on the only body I had.
    I won’t go into the more sordid details. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me. Hoods the world over seem to take naturally to beating up on people—it’s good, I guess, for their muscle tone—and there’s not much difference in techniques. Suffice it to say that they hurt, particularly Jeannot, the little wimp, and that it was a long, long night. But there wasn’t much for me to do but say “Ouch” and tell them whatever fairy tales I could think of and pass out when they got carried away in their enthusiasm.
    The best of my fairy tales was that we’d all been caught up in a big misunderstanding, that whatever they wanted to do with Roscoe Hadley was fine with me, only that they should count me out, I had a lost-and-found service for overfed Americans to worry about and no special interest in basketball or the dope traffic or Odessa Grimes’ murder or whatever it was that had got their boss so exercised. But the truth has a way of paling under such circumstances, meaning that they didn’t go for that one overly. Whereas the one they wanted to hear—about where Hadley and the girl were—I didn’t know. This pissed them off, and whenever the little wimp got really pissed off, he’d pull my chair back by pulling my hair and belt me in the mouth, or now and then in the Adam’s apple.
    A long night, like I say.
    It ended. Even the longest ones do.
    Put it that Dédé Delatour didn’t like eating his breakfast alone.
    When they took me back upstairs, I remember, he was drinking coffee in a raw-silk dressing gown. The dressing gown was wine-colored. There was a tray on a coffee table and two silver pots on the tray, one for coffee, one for milk, and a plate with some crumbs on it. Dédé Delatour, looking fresh like a flower, was lighting up his first cigar of the morning. He was his old affable self again. Whereas for me, I hurt so much, all over, that it was a kind of relief not to feel a thing below my wrists and ankles.
    â€œDid you have a good night?” he asked when I’d been dumped on the divan across from him.
    â€œI’ve had worse,” I managed. My voice wobbled at a high pitch, like it had been changed back. My upper lip was novocaine-stiff.
    â€œHow about some coffee?”
    It seemed like a promising idea. I nodded. Somebody poured me a cup and I leaned over to take it. I couldn’t handle the cup, though. It bobbled in my hand, and I spilled the lot on his mahogany. Nobody gave me a refill.
    â€œNow,” said Delatour, dispensing with the niceties, “what is your interest in Adlay?”
    â€œI don’t have any interest,” I said.
    Apparently this was the wrong answer. Delatour motioned with his cigar and somebody slapped me on the side of the head. For some reason, the slap helped straighten out my larynx. It hurt, my larynx, but I found I could use it.
    â€œI wanted to keep