Reunion with the French Flower

The Case Minister was quite right: something had to be done about “the Paris situation” — a masterpiece of euphemistic language, Ellis thought. Speaking plainly, it would be more accurate to refer to the “imminent disaster in Paris”, but that wasn’t how the upper brass delineated their views. The Time Bureau did not promote alarmists to the upper brass, reasoning that if something had already happened, it could no longer constitute an imminent anything.

Of course, field historians knew only too well that an event need not happen only in the future to pose a menace to their world… which a Second Class Researcher training to become a First Class knew, too. Historically speaking, the calamities that proved to be the hardest to prevent were those in the past, hence, the Case Minister’s decision to summon Ellis, to dispatch her into the vortex of the so-called fourth dimension. It would not be a boilerplate expedition, for sociological research, in the field of ancient eras, this time, the Minister warned —

She found the fashion choices of the year, 1977, questionable, but no unsuspecting Parisian would be able to pick her out from the crowd, satisfying the Bureau’s principal requirement for its Researchers: an emotional, not literal, kind of invisibility. Trouble was, Alycia would certainly do likewise, and she was a First Class, which obligated such anonymity for extended periods, years in some cases. Defiance of an extraction might be a career-ender for Alycia, which must have been motivating for the Case Minister, in his choice of extractor.

Teased hair; flared blue jeans; a blouse, knotted above an exposed belly, and painful, high-heeled boots contributed to her “local” appearance. A pair of large tinted eyeglasses concealed her efforts to scan, for signs of Alycia. Wobbling to the front entrance of the Café de la Côte de Barbarie, Ellis found herself subject to no other pedestrian’s research. Good news, but she was not here just for the espresso and the chocolatine pastry.

She stepped toward the front entrance, darting a glance inside. The man rubbing his hands together looked to be the proprietor, a man she knew only as Najjir, and that was only from the fragment of intelligence Alycia had sent “forward”. He looked to be bursting with nervous energy, as his pretty young waitress kept leaning to and fro, trying to make eye contact with him, holding a tray of glasses with both hands. He was not to be the victim, Alycia’s report made that clear, unless… something changed. Or, someone changed it.

Customers sat at tables, or stood in line at the counter. From the jukebox, Richard Anthony sang “Nouvelle Vague”, a sax-drenched rock/dance tune, from the year the local ghosts knew as 1959. Ellis paid for her espresso as another woman sidled up beside her to poke her in the ribs with an index finger. “Bonjour, ma belle amie,” the pest said while dragging her outside, to her table. Ellis glanced at her pest, ready to unleash some vitriol; her eyes grew wide, as she sucked in her breath. “A moment of your… time?” joked the pest.

Alycia swung in a half-circle around her and gently pushed her to a sitting position, opposite her own. “You’re looking magnifique, Ell. What did they tell you about me in our happy tomorrow? Let me guess: I’m the impacted molar, and they’ve sent you? You, of all people? To yank me out, before I… overturn the apple-cart? You kids, and your ambition. I used to be just like that — ”

“Researcher Cairstairs,” Ellis breathed, regaining her composure, “you may rank me, but right now, I’m asking you to comply with my directives. Your reports ‘Forward’ have been erratic, incomplete. Two of our staff empaths believe you are under unacceptable job-related stress. You mentioned the murder of a local crime figure will take place in this arrondisement, if not this very street, in a matter of hours.” She frowned. “This is not likely the best moment of our friendship, coming up, but I have to ask: do you plan upon interfering in some way with this murder?”

Alycia had the best laugh of anyone she knew in the Bureau, Ellis thought. Providing further evidence of this, Alycia threw back her head and just let herself convulse with mirth, pounding the table. Ellis had to seize her cup of espresso before it slid off to crack on the pavement. “You are precious, old girl,” Alycia said, and then she leaned across the table to slap her hand upon the one Ellis wasn’t using to hold her cup. “Fact is, I’m here to commit this murder.”

^^^^

Alycia brushed back a lock of her shiny blond hair, and it fell upon her shoulders, a bit too heavily. Ellis, succumbing to impulse, tugged at it; Alycia yelped, and pulled away from her. “What’s the wig about? Part of your disguise?” Ellis marveled at the lunacy of her own words. “You don’t have a violent bone in your… what’s this all about, Aly? You mentioned a young woman…”

“Hala is her name. She’s Najjir’s daughter,” Alycia confirmed. “I befriended her, coming in every so often. She says I’m the first English friend she has made in ages. Her family is Algerian, and you know that their country was at war with France, to gain its independence? They gained it, but… Najjir’s family lives here, and some Parisians are still angry about losing that war. One of them is this fellow, this… Babineaux” — she almost spat his name. “Bâtard absolu, that’s what he is. Saw him threaten to cut Najjir’s nose off once, just inside. He’s going to burn this place to the ground, Ell, just for hate. Najjir owes him a payment… one form, or another.”

Ellis reeled back in her seat. It was much too hot, all at once, for her tastes. From inside the Barbary Coast café, someone had dragged the jukebox, in a matter of speaking, into the nineteen-sixties: Michel Polnaroff sang “Love Me Please Love Me” — the title in English, the other lyrics in French — over a rolling piano and syrupy strings. Ellis couldn’t have cared less about this. They were ghosts, all of these people — dead for centuries, before she and Alycia had drawn their first breaths, and now… What had happened to her friend, the older girl who had invited her out to mixers, when she was too introverted to eat in the Bureau dining room?

“It’s already happened. All of this. How can it make much of a difference now?” Ellis snapped her fingers. “Right, I remember. Because murder is wrong, isn’t it? And even if it weren’t… any change you make ‘here’ could shred the history we know, going forward.” She set down her empty cup, rose to her feet and glared at Alycia. “I’m ordering you to… no, pleading with you, to give up this madness, before the Minister sends some of his muscle to drag you out by the scruff of your — ”

A ten-year-old Citroën DS series 3 executive car, with front-wheel, front-engine drive and directional headlights, came to an erratic stop outside. Ellis thought it was peculiar-looking, but Alycia saw little mirth in it. “It’s the messenger of death. You’ve got to get on your bike, Ell,” she warned. Ellis blinked; she got a look at the man who emerged from the car, and Alycia’s gush of fear seemed more credible. This man pushed aside the pedestrians who were luckless enough to be in his way, stomping to the cafe entrance; others made an opening for him, out of intimidation.

As Ellis tried to formulate a query about him, he passed close by her; she found his Gallic features brooding, but symmetrical enough to be, in the words of her own century, “cubic” — attractive. His behavior, though, took the shine right off of his looks; he was snarling, waving his arms at Najjir, in full view of his waiting staff and a few customers seated inside. She was almost certain she heard him utter Hala’s name, causing Najjir to recoil in fatherly concern.

Alycia was on her feet, rooting around inside of her glitter-painted purse for something. A weapon, perhaps? She had mentioned a desire to bring this Babineaux to his doom, but what was she going to use to do the deed, her cutting wit or her open-toed, high-heeled shoes? Ellis marveled at the crazy thought she had: Pete Anholts is living in New York, right now, and he doesn’t suffer fools like this gladly. Wonder if he’s at the same phone number? This was no time to think of a former flame from the Bureau, of course — and besides, he couldn’t blink across the Atlantic for something like this, without prior authorization from persons yet unborn —

The handsome thug seemed to be in the middle of summoning a reply to something. “Monsieur Laplanet, puis-je avoir un mot?” Alycia called into the café, and his head snapped to one side; he squinted at her and all at once, he was looming before her, the sun in her eyes as she tried to meet his withering gaze. Ellis tried to summon a useful strategy, and realized an answer was inside of her own mouth: the dental implant all Researchers carried. She couldn’t make use of it here, in front of so many witnesses!

“Alycia,” she sighed. Then, it seemed like a moot point, a mere academic discussion for her and a few colleagues, over a few drinks, maybe dinner, in a much safer place a few centuries distant. Laplante, if that was his real name, grabbed Alycia’s elbow and nearly threw her against the Citroën DS, to screams and shouts, useless protestations from lawful citizens present. They knew better than to remonstrate too much with a gangster-like figure, a genuine menace. The blond wig careened right off of Alycia’s head and dropped onto the table where she and Ellis had just been seated. He tore the car door open and pushed her inside. Before he made it all the way around to take the wheel, Laplante locked eyes with Ellis, and she knew that she, too, was going with him and Alycia, to whatever unhappy fate that meant.

^^^^

Taking in the lobby of the hotel, Ellis was forced to admit that it did not seem especially frightening to her, but her abductor was not going to be content to show the women around downstairs. The attendant waved to them, from a waiting elevator car; Laplante rode in ominous silence, as Ellis and Alycia tried to communicate nonverbally, with only their facial expressions, but that was more comical, inappropriately so, than useful; also, Alycia was without her purse, meaning she was unarmed — at least, Ellis hoped that was the case. It would go down better, back at home…

Laplante walked them down the hallway to room 49, and knocked once. “Oui?” a gruff voice issued from behind the door. “Claude?” Laplante had but to clear his throat, loudly, to elicit a sigh from within the room, as a hand pulled the door open. Laplante clasped his own hands, in front of himself, and awaited some reaction from the ladies. Alycia pushed Ellis inside. A turntable spun Magali Noël’s “Fais moi mal Johnny!”

The man whose very name seemed to make Alycia’s stomach churn was in his T-shirt and slacks, with suspenders to hold them up, instead of a belt, and polished brown shoes. He seemed bored, rather than angry, until he exchanged a few mutterings with his lieutenant. Then he shot Alycia his most carnivorous look and whispered in a cognac-and-cigars voice, “You will have to do, I suppose. Alysse, is it?” He mused about something for a moment, then smiled. “You have a proud name. There was a ship called Alysse, what we call a corvette. A ship of war. A German submarine sank her, I think. She went down fighting — for France. A Flower-class corvette. My uncle died on one, just like her.”

Ellis summoned some unexplained calm and offered, “That’s what you do, as well. Isn’t it, Monsieur Babineaux? You have to fight for our nation, and that takes money. So, you have to make these people, who run cafés in our city, contribute, what? A modest fee, to cover the cost, of letting them do business here?” She smirked at Alycia, so subtly that it might be visible only to someone who had known her for years. Ellis expected Laplante’s eruption of violence; it had to be building up, she thought, inside of him.

As if reading her mind, he began to circle her, as if inspecting her for an unsavory reason. There was nothing romantic about his behavior; it was simple precaution, a hired goon checking out a stranger an arm’s length from his crime-lord boss. Babineaux had picked up Alycia’s topic, but he seemed unaffected by her ironic tone, stating flatly, “This is how we got Adolph, after all, when the Vichy ‘invited’ him.” He spat, to show scorn. “Time we stopped inviting these… this fellow, this Najjir, did you know, inside that place, he has a portrait of Lalla N’Soumer, that terrible, evil woman? Who killed and burned to drive us out of Algiers? You say, oui, Pierre, that was a hundred years ago, but we do not forget — nor do we forgive!” He seemed winded by his outburst, and sat down on his bed.

Laplante muttered, not from a fear of public speaking, “Pierre, really: about these two, what do you want me to do?” He looked at Ellis, right through her, if anything, and seemed indifferent to whatever fate his employer had in mind for her. Babineaux, however, smiled at Ellis; a paternal, dismissive quality in his expression annoyed her, but it also offered the possibility that she might not die in this seedy hotel room, centuries before she would be born. He picked up the telephone and handed the corded receiver to Al. “Najjir’s daughter,” he said. “It’s important that we speak with her. Call her.”

She hesitated. Babineaux wrapped the phone cord around her neck. “Call her, Alysse,” he hissed. She nodded, as if resigned to the situation, which ignited something inside of Ellis. She reached out to grab Alycia’s forearm and pulled her away from the gangster. Laplante stepped in, to restore Babineaux’s authority, but Ellis looked at Alycia, Alycia looked at Ellis, they understood each other, and they gritted their teeth. Two men in 1977 recoiled from a sudden atmospheric disturbance, within Babineaux’s hotel room, as the air collapsed in around the empty spaces abandoned by the women, who were nowhere to be found in the place. Laplante raced out —

Ellis and Alycia — Alysse — stepped out of the receiving pool, back into the outer alcove at the Time Bureau facility, in a Paris far removed from the one they had left behind. Ellis mustered a smile for her her friend, then ran a hand through her reddish-brown hair. “That seems to have sorted that,” she declared. “Here you are, safe and sound, home again, not one drop of anyone’s blood on your hands. Welcome home, Aly.” Her friend’s grave expression did not reward her. “What’s the matter? You didn’t kill Babineaux. It ended well.”

“It did, yes,” Alycia said, “but not for the reasons you think, Ellis Mundy, because… I know how the crime happens. How it happened, I mean. A blond woman shoots him in his hotel room, and she disappears. I left a blond wig, and a purse with a gun, back at the Barbary Coast.” Her smile, so unexpected, so radiant, did little to reassure Ellis, but… it was vintage Alycia, who continued: “I think someone picked up my wig, and my gun, and made use of them. I’m not a detective, but I have a suspect in mind. Hala did it, Ell. She pulled the trigger, and I made it possible.”

© Eric Wolf 2023.

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