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  At the Sudden Death Café

  Jerome Charyn

  A MysteriousPress.com

  Open Road Integrated Media

  Ebook

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  1

  He hadn’t broken anyone’s windpipe in years. Holden was one more ex-bumper who disappeared into the landscape. The woman he adored had died on him, had fallen off a ladder and suffered an aneurism at thirty-six. And he sold his condo on Central Park West and returned to Europe, where he had been born. He settled in France, the home of his mother, a mother he couldn’t even recall. His father had served as an American military cop stationed in the north of France right after World War II and married some local girl, a lace maker from a town near the Belgian border. Her name was Nicole.

  That was all he knew about her, except that she had been murdered by a gang of plunderers from across the border in Brussels. Holden’s father, it seems, had worked for the same gang, had used his cover as a military cop to get rid of the gang’s rivals in Belgium and France, and somehow Nicole fell into the crossfire.

  His father left the military and hid out a mile or two from Manhattan, in the borough of Queens, for the rest of his life. He was a chauffeur at the Aladdin Fur Company, another gang of plunderers. And Holden climbed right over his father’s back to become a vice president. He bumped for the firm, collected bad debts, like Aladdin’s very own military cop. His father died in a drunken stupor, and Holden, who had a lifetime annuity from Aladdin, opted for early retirement.

  He lived at the Hotel Aiglon, overlooking the Montparnasse Cemetery, always went to the same restaurant, the same cinema on the boulevard Montparnasse, the same bordello on the rue du Dragon. He would have done this until the day he died had his bank not informed him that there was no more cash in his account; his lifetime annuity had suddenly dried up. He couldn’t even pay his bill at the bordello.

  But a letter arrived at the Aiglon, with a wad of euros inside, a ticket on the bullet train to Belgium, a credit card in his name, and a note:

  Holden, your future is in Brussels.

  I’ve booked your father’s old room at the Métropole,

  Place de Brouckère 31.

  Please don’t miss your train.

  Yours Most Truly,

  An Unknown Admirer

  2

  He had little to lose. He checked out of the Aiglon, rode to the Gare du Nord, and got on that “bullet” to Brussels, a town where he was only half a stranger. He’d been to the Grand-Place, with its candied roofs and gold on the walls, its figures of angels and demons, its leaded windows that could make a prisoner of the moonlight, its statue of Saint Michael trampling on the devil. He hadn’t gone there as a stinking tourist, but to collect from a furrier who lived in one of the ancient guild houses on the Grand-Place and owed money to Aladdin. And he’d visited the vaulted lobby of the Métropole once before, delivering a message to another one of Aladdin’s clients. And now, as he checked in, the concierge smiled at Holden and handed him a fairly large trunk.

  “What’s this?” Holden had to ask.

  “Your father’s belongings.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Your father kept a room here, and after he passed away . . .”

  “That’s impossible. My father lived in Queens.”

  “But he had a room at the Métropole, nonetheless, rented it by the year. It’s your room now.”

  Holden took a fragile wire elevator up to the fifth floor with his father’s trunk and marched to 505, the room he’d inherited from Holden Sr.

  Suddenly, the room made sense. It had a panoramic view of the place de Brouckère, with a solid row of nineteenth-century houses across the street and a Cineplex, where Casino Royale was playing. Holden liked Daniel Craig, the current James Bond, who looked more like a bumper than a secret agent.

  He ordered a pot of black coffee for his room. It arrived with three squares of milk chocolate—a little thing like that could irk him. He’d always had bitter chocolate at the Aiglon with his coffee, but Belgium was the land of milk chocolate. He decided to take a bath. And as he sat naked in the tub, a man appeared at the door. At first, Holden thought he’d come to collect the coffeepot, but this guy wasn’t wearing a porter’s uniform. He was carrying a piece of rope.

  He lunged at Holden without a word. Holden felt embarrassed with his genitals exposed. But he didn’t panic. He rose up out of the sudsy water to sock this guy in the windpipe.

  3

  Holden had a corpse on his hands. His visitor gurgled once and closed his eyes. Holden couldn’t call the concierge to cart the guy away.

  There was a knock on the door. He could have hidden the corpse in a closet, but Holden propped him on the toilet seat, like some kind of soft statue, and rasped, “Who is it?”

  “Pest control.”

  “Thanks,” Holden said from his side of the door, “but there aren’t any cockroaches in my room.”

  “Mr. Holden, please. Allow me to do my business.”

  Holden unlatched his door. A man in a porter’s uniform entered with a wheelchair.

  “I’m speechless,” Holden said. “You work for this hotel?”

  “Yes and no,” said the man. He and Holden lifted the corpse into the wheelchair. And this man who was and wasn’t a porter put a cap over the corpse’s head, covered him in a blanket, and carted him out of the room.

  “Holden, your benefactor is waiting for you. Mr. Raab.”

  “Where the hell can I find him?”

  “In room 727.”

  Holden still hadn’t opened his father’s trunk. But he got dressed, wore a tie that had once belonged to the Duke of Windsor, went out onto the landing, stepped into the elevator cage, and soon discovered that the hotel had no seventh floor. The halls themselves were tricky at the Métropole. As he wandered on the fifth floor, the landing had a sudden incline, and he found himself on the sixth. He continued to wander about. He saw a maid’s closet. The door of the closet opened, and the same man from “pest control” stepped out and invited Holden into the closet.

  It wasn’t a closet at all, but a winding stairwell that led up to a hidden seventh floor—an attic of some kind with a single suite: 727.

  The porter knocked twice and shoved Holden into a room that was like a strange little museum with a skylight, paintings on the walls, and furniture from another epoch.

  Sitting on a rumpled settee was a man who could have been a hundred years old; he had thin, bloodless lips, a bird’s beak, and ears mottled with blue veins.

  “I’m Jonathan Raab,” he said, “and you owe me your life.”

  4

  Holden sat down with this Methuselah. They had some green tea and speculoos, gingerbread that was peculiar to this country; you could find a speculoos that was six feet tall, with an image of Saint Nicholas stamped onto it, or some wicked priest with a long nose.

  The porter himself had brewed the tea.

/>   “What is this place?” Holden asked. “It’s not even on the Métropole’s map. I’m beginning to feel I landed in a rabbit hole.”

  “You did. You’re in my béguinage.”

  “I’m speechless,” Holden said. “What’s a béguinage?”

  “A convent, a sanctuary, a retreat.”

  “Yeah,” Holden said, “a hotel within a hotel. You even have your own porter.”

  “Ah, you mean Gilles . . . yes, he works for the Métropole and for me. Don’t you, Gilles? But how many other guests have been loyal to the same hotel for eighty years? I began living here in my teens. I won’t lie, I became filthy rich stealing diamonds and selling them back to the same dealers in Antwerp and Brussels. The police couldn’t touch me, Holden, because the dealers hid all their cash under the table and couldn’t disclose their inventory.”

  “But they could have hired a bumper like me to get rid of pests like you.”

  “Only if they’d had your imagination and a pair of balls on them, and they never did. And pretty soon, I didn’t have to steal. I sold insurance to the dealers, guaranteed that their goods wouldn’t be touched. I had my own private police, lads who kept tabs on every little thief in a hundred-mile radius. That’s where Holden Sr. came in.”

  “My dad worked for you?”

  “Indeed, he did. That’s why he had a room at this hotel for half his life. He’d fly in and out, warn some crummy jewel thief, or slap him or her into the ground.”

  Holden was speechless again. “My dad bumped women, too?”

  “On occasion, yes . . . I lost my interest in diamonds years ago. I switched to real estate once I sniffed out that Brussels would be the new nerve center of Europe. The Eurocrats landed here like little competing armies, and all I had to do was buy, buy, buy.”

  “And where do I fit in?”

  “Holden, I couldn’t swallow the world. There were other builders, other realty trusts. Dutchmen, Yanks, and Brits who would love to steal everything in sight and send me to my grave. They got together and hired a flamande, Louiza Boogarden, from Ghent. She was in our Royal Marines, a sharpshooter and quite a little murderess.”

  5

  Holden wanted to run out of Raab’s secret enclave in the attic and return to the Aiglon. What did a lady bumper from the Royal Marines have to do with him? But Raab could sniff out Holden’s restlessness.

  “Your father owed me one more piece of work. I wanted him to bump a rival of mine from Bruges. I paid him a fortune. And he went and died on me. Holden Sr. was like a son,” Raab said, wiping his eyes with a silk rag that was so dirty it could have come from some ancient sarcophagus or crib.

  “Crocodile tears,” Holden hissed into Raab’s face. “You kept my father a chauffeur at Aladdin, because that was a terrific cover. He was at your beck and call. He’d fly to Brussels, live like a little king at the Métropole, hit whoever was on your shopping list, and disappear to Queens.”

  “But he always had the time of his life whenever he was here.”

  “I’ll bet. You must have fed him a lot of speculoos.”

  “He loved Belgian beer. He would have dinner every day at a restaurant in the Galerie de la Reine. He sat on a banquette near the window and the waiter brought him his waterzooi without fail.”

  “What the hell is waterzooi?”

  “A Flemish stew. But he wouldn’t have his coffee there. He’d stroll across the arcade to one of our landmarks, a café called À la Mort Subite means ‘sudden death.’ ”

  “That’s a bumper’s paradise,” Holden muttered to himself. The café of the Sudden Death.

  “And he’d bring his own speculoos . . . because this café served another kind of biscuit.”

  “It’s all a fantasy, Mr. Raab. I never saw my father gobble Flemish stew. He’d have grilled salmon with French mustard on the side and no sauce.”

  “Where would he have found waterzooi in Manhattan or Queens. It hardly exists outside Flanders. How could waterzooi travel to New York?”

  “Fine,” Holden said. “But I’m not bumping Louiza Boogarden or anybody else.”

  “Holden, do you really have a choice? The stranger who came into your room with his cord was sent by Louiza.”

  “I’m speechless. How does that lady bumper know I exist?”

  “Louiza has her informants, like you had in your heyday.”

  “And kindhearted as you are, Mr. Raab, you let out little rumors that I was your number-one murder boy, like my father before me. Jesus, I’m not even packing a gun.”

  And Holden ran out of Raab’s room.

  6

  But that tale of waterzooi intrigued him. His father had been a creature of habit, like Holden himself, and just as secretive, Holden now realized. He got the name of the restaurant from Raab’s porter. La Taverne du Passage it was called. Holden found the restaurant with the help of his map. It was tucked away at the far edge of the Galerie de la Reine, behind a curtain. Holden’s father ought to have loved a restaurant like that, hiding in plain sight. But Holden was still suspicious of Raab.

  He entered the restaurant. The waiters wore white duck jackets with yellow epaulettes, like Flemish admirals, Holden imagined. He didn’t even have to say a word. One of the admirals bowed and showed him to a banquette near the window.

  “It’s reserved for you, Mr. Holden. We were all devoted to your father, may he rest in peace. He never missed a night whenever he was in town. What would you like to eat?”

  “Waterzooi,” Holden said.

  The admiral smiled. “Your father’s favorite dish.”

  “But he’s been dead for fifteen years. How could you remember?”

  “Ah, Mr. Holden. Memory is all we have. Memory and tradition.”

  “But waiters move and change jobs.”

  “Not at a restaurant of tradition. We’re the sons of fathers who worked here, and sons of ours will take our place when the time comes.”

  Holden had an enormous bowl of brown beer and his waterzooi, that dry soup with chunks of chicken and some vegetable strings.

  The admiral wouldn’t accept Holden’s cash. Whenever Holden Sr. came to Brussels, his first meal would always be on the house.

  He stepped across the rue des Bouchers and into another arcade with a glass ceiling and stumbled upon À la Mort Subite on the rue Montagne aux Herbes Potagères. It was a café that looked like an old theater with a long gallery. But Raab had been right. Holden’s coffee came with a butter cookie and a square of milk chocolate.

  A woman at the next table kept giving him the eye. A tart, Holden figured. She was surrounded by five or six men, her blond hair coiled in a braid that sat on her head like a crown. She could have been a bus driver or a milkmaid from the provinces. She wouldn’t stop winking at Holden.

  Fool that he was, he forgot that he’d come to a bumper’s paradise—Sudden Death. That bitch with the braided hair was Louiza Boogarden, he was willing to bet.

  7

  They’d sit with him all night and drag him out to their black Mercedes, or whatever else bumpers in Brussels used for wheels. And Holden, back in business without his Llama .22 long, couldn’t even deliver a lightning bolt that would dance inside a man’s skull.

  He wasn’t scared. He winked back at the bitch.

  She smiled and ventured over to his table without her menagerie. She was drinking a glass of pale beer. Her perfume wafted inside Holden’s head. She had scars under her mouth and a muscular jaw. But Holden was still attracted to her. He could feel her own wildness under the caution of her smile, as if she were about to scream.

  “Holden,” she said, “old man Raab is a relic. Come and work for me. Nothing rough. There’s a deputy in parliament who needs a little scaring. One visit from you, and he’ll vote the way we want him to vote. I could pay you six figures a month. You’ll walk away from Brussels much, much more than a millionaire.”

  “Miz Boogarden, I never change horses in midstream. That’s my policy.”

  “Ah,” she
said, “be a sport, Holden, and call me Louiza . . . I knew your father.”

  “I’m speechless. You couldn’t have been more than a kid when he died.”

  “I was a kid. He needed a runner and someone who could watch his back when he went somewhere that wasn’t safe.”

  “But where did you meet?”

  “At Midi Station. I was half starved, selling my ass for a hot meal.”

  “And my father trusted you?”

  “From the second he saw me,” said Louiza.

  Holden was the same way. He’d picked up half his snitches on the street.

  “And you shacked up with him?”

  Louiza laughed, and it gentled her face.

  “Come on, Holden. He fed me bonbons and banana splits. I was a kid.”

  “Selling her ass in Midi Station.”

  “It wasn’t such a hard sell. Your father taught me English and gave me rent money. I’m beholden to him. That’s why you’re still alive.”

  “I might not be if your strangler had been a little less of a klutz.”

  “Ramon?” she said. “Holy Mother, I wanted to get rid of him. That’s why I lent him a piece of string. He couldn’t have strangled a blind cat. . . . Holden, I’ll give you one more day and night. Either join up with us, or get out of Brussels.”

  She went back to her table and left the Mort Subite with her menagerie. No one would let him buy his own food in Brussels—Louiza Boogarden had paid for his butter cookie.

  8

  Holden left the rue Montagne aux Herbes Potagères and marched down the rue de l’Écuyer, which was full of debris—old hats, old gloves, old sweaters were strewn about the street, as if some maniac, or series of maniacs, had started to undress in the middle of the road.

  He returned to the Métropole, and now that he’d been to the Mort Subite, sat at his father’s old banquette and swilled a bowl of brown beer served by an admiral in yellow epaulettes, he was ready to open his father’s trunk. His hand trembled as he undid the old rusty lock.