The Predators (21 page)

“Jesus!” I said.

Buddy turned to me. “I didn’t know any of this about a baby until she told me. But I always told you that he was a real prick.”

“It’s too late now,” I answered. Then I turned to Rosey. “Thanks for telling me about him.”

“Maybe I can help you,” she said. “I’ll give you all the negatives and a copy of the birth certificate. That will get him crazy. Especially since Kitty is about to have a baby in the next few days. I heard that from the super in his apartment, who is a friend of mine. He always keeps in touch with me and tells me the scoop on Harry.”

“What could it do for me even if I have it?” I asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” Buddy said. “Take it. You’ll never know when it might come in handy.”

I looked at Rosey again. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” she said. “Just make sure you and Buddy take me out to dinner tonight. I know the best barbecue restaurant in town.”

“You’ve got a date!” Buddy said quickly before I could speak.

“I’m with you,” I said.

10

Our work had become monotonous. Every three months a new platoon appeared at the factory door and Buddy and I would teach them the same thing. We were both hoping we would be shipped overseas, but the army always did it their way. We requested a transfer, but we were both ordered to stay in Detroit. Apparently the major in the so-called repair school for jeeps thought we were the best teachers he had ever found here. I never knew that Buddy had given the major a twenty-five percent override on his winnings in crap games and poker, as well as horse-racing bets. It wasn’t until the major was promoted to lieutenant colonel that we got an asshole captain who took over. He didn’t think we were so great, but it took him a little time to ship us out. Almost two years.

Buddy thought that we would be shipped to Pearl Harbor, but he was wrong. Our former CO, the major, pulled a few strings and we were transferred to Paris under his command. By September of 1944 de Gaulle had everything under control in France. We had a two-week advance shipping notice so we decided that we should have a goodbye party.

Leroy thought it was a great idea. He said he would do it up right, and he did. He invited our entire platoon for a barbecue dinner, free beer, and a show at the club. It was good publicity for him and the club. He arranged for the party to be over by eleven o’clock and he promised the captain that all of the soldiers would be out of the club by 11:30
P.M.
, because he needed the space for his regular crowd at midnight. Leroy knew where his money came from. He put an ad in the
Amsterdam News
telling all the black world that he was behind our fighting men. Leroy’s Stage Door, he called the club in the ad. He didn’t let anyone know that it was just for one night. He laughed when he showed us the ad in the New York paper. “What the hell,” he said. “Nobody in New York knows anything about Detroit. They think we’re just some small town.”

I had the Saturday off before the party, a one-day leave. I called Carolyn in Grosse Pointe to tell her that I really wanted to see her before I left.

She purred into the phone. “Maybe you can meet me at my apartment out here. Leroy told me that he was working at the club tonight. I’ll let him know that I won’t be home tonight, since I have so much paperwork to catch up on.”

“You sure it’s safe?” I asked.

“Don’t be such a baby.” She laughed. “You don’t believe that Leroy is really working? He’s going to audition some out-of-town whore. That’s the only way he can get his rocks off.”

I was silent for a moment. It’s a crazy world. She cut into my thoughts. “Besides, I know you’re going to Paris. I worked there for three years. One of my best friends owns one of the biggest strip cabarets in Clichy. He’s French but he speaks English perfectly and he can really show you around.”

“I don’t give a damn about him,” I said into the phone, almost able to feel the hotness of her breath.

She laughed. “Okay, but I’ll still give his name to you and the name of his club. You never know when you’ll need a friend there.”

It was after nine o’clock when I knocked on her door. I had picked up a bottle of Dom Pérignon from the liquor store near her apartment. The store was very classy. The bottle was in an ice bucket with a red-ribboned bow tied around with a cellophane cover to keep the ice from falling out. That was Grosse Pointe for you. In downtown Detroit there was not a chance that you could find Dom Pérignon, only American or Cook’s, and never would they give you a decorated ice bucket.

The door opened. I could never tell you what the gown looked like. But there was one thing I knew. It was nothing you could wear out in public. You could see through the sheer silk from the red nipples on her breasts to the winking belly button and the soft curls of her silken auburn hair over her pussy. My hands were shaking and I almost came as she took the ice bucket and her soft warm hands touched mine.

I had been to the apartment before, but I always felt like a millionaire surrounded by the beautiful paintings, delicate antique furnishings, and Persian rugs. On top of it all, there was the heavenly aroma of a sirloin steak.

She kissed me as I came in. “You didn’t have to bring champagne. Especially Dom Pérignon. Fifty dollars is more than the army pays a month.”

I laughed. “I’ve saved up my money down here. There’s nothing to do but go to the movies sometimes and have a beer.”

“But I hear that Clarence is doing well. He’s in the club almost every weekend. Leroy says he’s become a pretty good gambler. He says most of the time he leaves with winnings.” She smiled at me as she opened the bottle and the cork popped off and the champagne bubbled over and onto her hands before she could pour it in the glass. “I’m not really good at this. Leroy usually opens the bottle.”

“I’ve never opened a bottle of champagne,” I said, holding my glass toward her.

She poured the champagne into our two glasses. “I’ll miss you,” I said.

“I’ll miss you, too,” she said, sipping from her glass. “Steak and
pommes frites.
We’ll eat first and then we’ll make love.”

*   *   *

It was nearly six o’clock in the morning when I came back to the barracks. It was Sunday and most of the platoon was already at breakfast. After breakfast was church. Then men who did not go to church took the bus into Detroit and walked around or went to the movies and tried to pick up a girl. There was a way to do this. You waited on the corner outside the church. There were mostly girls at church and their boyfriends and husbands were away at war. There was always one of the girls who would talk to a serviceman. They too were lonely and they wanted to go somewhere on Sunday afternoon.

I was surprised to find Buddy sitting on the edge of his bunk. “What are you doing here now?” I asked. “I thought that you stayed the night with Rosey.”

He shook his head. “I was lucky at the tables. I never made it to Rosey’s. I made a lot of money and I don’t think that Cousin Leroy liked it very much. It’s okay if I win a couple of hundred bucks, but I took out over three grand. Now I don’t know what to do.”

“There’s only one thing that you can do,” I said. “Give it back to him. Tell him that you were only playing for fun. You were not trying to take his money.”

“If I did that he would kill me,” Buddy said. “He’s got too much pride. Leroy is real sensitive.”

I thought for a moment. “Then tell him that since you’re shipping out now, you would like for him to take this money and invest it for you. Tell him that you never had that much money and you don’t know how to take care of it.”

Buddy looked up at me. “Do you think he would go for it?”

“He’ll go for it,” I said. “After all, you are his cousin and he loves you. You do that and he’ll respect that you are a real man.”

“But three grand,” Buddy said, agonizing over parting with his wealth.

“You’ll get over it,” I said. “Carolyn gave me a connection in Paris. She told me that he would take care of us. And this Frenchman owns a strip club in Clichy, like Leroy.”

Buddy looked up at me quizzically. “When did she tell you about that?”

“Some time ago,” I said. I knew right away that I had slipped. “I don’t remember when.”

“When did you see her last?” Buddy asked. He was on the trail. I knew him—he was really smart.

“I don’t remember,” I said. But my face was burning red with my own guilt.

“Rosey told me that you were banging Carolyn but I didn’t believe her. She even told me that Julian had told her about that first night you stayed at Leroy’s place,” Buddy said, still surprised. “What kind of an asshole are you? Don’t you know that if Leroy caught you he would eat both of you alive, and maybe me, too?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and that was the truth. I kept my eyes on him. “I didn’t mean any harm.”

Buddy began to sound like a preacher. “That’s what Adam said when the Lord kicked him out of Eden.”

“But he left with Eve.” I laughed. “I’m not taking her with me. Leroy still has his Garden of Eden.”

“You are a number one prick.” Buddy finally laughed. “And I kept thinking that you were just a little kike asshole.” He stood up from his bunk. “How about some breakfast?”

We had dinner the next weekend with Leroy, Carolyn, and Rosey, and two days later we went to Philadelphia to board a troop ship to Europe.

BOOK THREE

FRANCE
THREE FRANCS A LITER

1

November in Paris was nothing like the songs I had heard. It was raining and cold. It was miserable; there were times when the snow would turn to half sleet and half snow. As it came down, it felt like little needles piercing your skin. In the States it was either snow or rain. I had never been so cold in my life.

But, as it turned out, I had no reason to complain. As the cold months passed by, we were in the warm barracks and not out in the freezing snow that we saw in the news-reels of the battles being fought with the Germans.

We knew that things were bad at the front from all the jeeps that were being shipped to us for repair. We worked three shifts, night and day, to get them into good condition and send them back. But many of the jeeps were beyond repair. These jeeps were retired to a large dumping ground behind the camp.

Buddy with his master sergeant stripes that he had earned took over the recreation program in the barracks. It wasn’t long before a floating crap game was going on every night, and next to it was a large table for those who preferred poker. The games were straight. That was something that he had learned from his cousin Leroy. He didn’t play any of the games; he took five percent from the winners. There were more than two hundred soldiers in the camp, so it turned into a very big business.

One morning Buddy came to my bunk before breakfast. He had been with the master sergeant who had brought us over the night before. He said he was going to pay him twenty-five percent of his part of the winnings. He laughed and said that everybody in camp had been talking about the games and the master sergeant had heard about it and threatened to stop the games. Buddy made him part of the deal. So nobody stopped the games. Everybody just had a good time and Buddy and the master sergeant made a good living.

I found a new world. I met the man that Carolyn had told me to get in touch with, Paul Renard. He was very much like his name, Renard, which I found out meant “fox” in French. He was a fox. Paul was everything that Carolyn said he would be. Bright and always quick to find new opportunities. He and Carolyn had met when he was the manager of the Moulin Rouge. On the side he managed many of the girls’ lives. They all trusted him because he was one of them. He was homosexual. It was he who introduced Carolyn to Leroy. When Carolyn first met Leroy she was worried that it would be difficult for them to live together. It was Renard who assured her that it would be very good. He knew how connected Leroy was and how wealthy he was and because of this the racial issue could be overcome. After all, in France, Josephine Baker loved and lived with many men, both white and black, and she loved them all. In the world of entertainment in France, black and white made no difference. He said that Leroy would give her anything that she wanted. If she married him, she would see all of her dreams come true. They had remained friends and Carolyn had written him about me and told him that I would be contacting him.

War for him was only opportunities. He left his job with the Moulin Rouge and found two profitable cabarets to buy from proprietors who had been drafted into the French army. One was in Clichy and the other was in Montmartre. He changed them quickly from family-oriented cabarets into his own styles of entertainment. One club was renamed the Montmartre Sophisticate and catered to the new tourist trade, which was all soldiers now. The cabaret show was a strip show. And the girls who served hustled the tables for champagne and sex.

The other cabaret was in Clichy and was oriented to a homosexual clientele, the world in which Paul lived. The show was very much like that of the club in Montmartre, but here the girls were more beautiful and brighter. They hustled the champagne but never sex, because this was a more respectable clientele. He renamed this cabaret the Blue Note. He was the first person to play records between the cabaret acts. As the records were playing, he encouraged the boys, men, and girls to dance. Men could dance together, women could dance together, or men and women could dance together without censure from the police. It wasn’t until the American soldiers came into the club from the Citroen factory where all of the jeeps were repaired to be sent back into battle that Paul Renard made a change in the club. Most of the Americans did not know that it was a gay club so, in preparation for the Americans, Paul simply split the room into halves. Up the center of the club was a runway that went from the entrance to the stage. The gay world was on the left of the runway. The straight world was on the right of the runway. And Paul allowed the clientele to choose their own world. Sex or not. He was very tolerant.

I didn’t meet Paul until early in December. Buddy and I had our first weekend pass in Paris. We drove around through Paris and stopped a few times in the afternoon at different bistros and bars. The first thing I found out was that it was very expensive. Working girls were everywhere. American soldiers were their pigeons. To them all Americans were rich and stupid.