Long since, in his drinking career, he had learned to get plenty of food into his stomach before going into the next day of a binge. And he had every intention of continuing this particular binge.
By the time he had finished breakfast, the day was waning.
He went on back into the bedroom in which he had slept—he was to find later that there were three bedrooms in the Royal Suite—and looked around. His clothes were strewn about on the floor. He had been wearing one of his colonel’s uniforms.
The hell with that. He went back to the living room and to the phone screen, called the desk and told, them he wanted some clothes. The obsequious sycophant on the screen gushingly assured him that representatives of the men’s shop would be up immediately.
After he had flicked off the screen, he looked at it for a moment and wondered what would happen if somewhere along here someone actually presented him with a bill. He doubted if he had enough credits in the data banks to pay for a fraction of the tab he was running up in this place.
Hell, they could sue him. That’d be a laugh. How could you sue a holder of the Galactic Medal of Honor? He was getting used to just what that meant.
Eventually bathed, shaved and dressed, he got himself another drink and with it went over to the window and stared out again. It was dark. Why in the hell had he come to Paris?
And then it came back to him.
That, conversation he’d had with Harry Amanroder, proprietor of the Nuevo Mexico Bar. The discussion about Colin Casey.
After he’d gotten his clothing requirements ironed out, he left the suite and found an elevator. To his surprise, it was manned by a live operator. This was really taking ostentation to the ultimate. On the face of it, the Europeans- didn’t carry automation to the point they did in America. Admittedly, the operator was beyond military age, but still, if he was willing to work, why wasn’t he in some defense job he could handle? Well, it was no skin off Don Mathers’ nose. As soon as he could swing it, on a permanent basis, he wasn’t going to be working either—ever again. He’d done his share, hadn’t he? He was on record as having destroyed a Kraden cruiser.
He still didn’t know how he had gotten to Paris, but evidently the fact wasn’t known to either the news people or the man in the street. He passed through the lobby unrecognized. It would seem that the staff of the Nouveau Ritz was discreet; they knew who he was, but they weren’t talking.
He told the doorman to summon a cab and within moments a hovercab was there. It wasn’t automated but boasted a cabby. When Don climbed in and the driver looked back over his shoulder and his eyes widened.
Don said, “Do you understand English?”
“Oui, mon Colonel. What is your destination, mon Colonel?”
So. He was recognized. Not that it was particularly important with a hovercab driver.
Don said, “I have heard that Paris boasts the most fabulous bordellos in the world. What is the most, uh, extravagant of them all?”
The driver gaped at him. “Bordello! Pour Monsieur? But mon Colonel, you need but go to the most exclusive nightclub or bar in Paris and——”
“I know, I know,” Don said impatiently. “But I have always heard of the bordellos of this city and would like to witness one. What is the most famous?”
The cabby’s shrug was pure Gallic. He said, “Undoubtedly, Le Chat Noir, the Black Cat, Monsieur le Colonel.”
“Then that’s it.”
They took off in wild Parisian fashion, and shortly crossed the Seine to the Left Bank after passing through the Place de la Concorde with its famed obelisk. The driver was obviously glum about their destination.
They turned left on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, turned right again on a side street and came to a halt before a rather large private house, the doorway of which was only dimly lit.
“Le Chat Noir,” the driver said, still disapprovingly.
Don reached for his Universal Credit Card and said, “Where’s the payment slot? I’ve never been in a French cab before.”
The other said with dignity, “Not in my taxi, mon Colonel. A holder of the Galactic Medal of Honor does not pay in my taxi. I lost a son, mon Colonel, when the Honneur de France blew when in orbit about Saturn two years ago.”
“Oh,” Don said. “Sorry. I remember hearing about it at the time.” He hadn’t, actually, but what could you say? He said, “Thanks, citizen.”
“C’est rien,” the cabby said. “It is nothing. But mon Colonel, are you sure you are safe here, all alone?”
Don said, his voice slurring slightly as a result of his accumulated drinking and the several he’d had in his suite, “My friend, I am beginning to suspect I am safe anywhere.”
The driver looked back at him, “Do not be so sure, Monsieur le Colonel. Not even our Lord Jesus was safe everywhere. Without doubt, there will be some imbeciles who would tear you down.”
Don was to remember his words later.
He got out of the cab, heard it take off behind him, looked at the door and grinned. “Here we go,” he muttered to himself. “What can they do that you can’t get elsewhere and for free?”
There was no identity screen on the door but it opened upon his approach.
He was greeted by the most improbably dressed woman he could offhand ever remember having seen. She wasn’t unattractive, in spite of the fantastic amount of makeup, and appeared to be a chemical blonde of about forty-five. Her wasp-waisted red dress was of another century, her breasts all but bursting out of it, her rear, well bustled.
She began to greet him, then squinted and frowned. She said finally, “Bienvenu, Monsieur.”
He followed her into an ornate sitting room and then realized the wherefore of her costume. The room was done in the decor of the Victorian period, well over a century ago. And it came to him that was the period of the famed houses of ill repute. You supposedly had to go back to the days of Babylon to equal them.
Recognition had evidently come to her, but she didn’t indicate it in her words. She hesitated, momentarily, then said, in English, “If Monsieur will be seated, we will join you shortly.”
Don shrugged inwardly and took a seat on a settee, which visually was one of the most baroque pieces of furniture he had ever witnessed. It wasn’t the most comfortable upon which he had ever sat, either.
She left, for a moment, and then returned, smiling. She said, “Would Monsieur desire a drink… before?”
Before what? he wondered, but said, “Why not?”
“Cognac?”
“Cognac sounds wonderful.”
She had evidently ordered it already, since an aged servant in the costume of a nineteenth century flunky entered with a tray supporting two glasses and a squat bottle covered with dust. It was still corked and the servant, his face stolid, proceeded to open it with an old-fashioned corkscrew.
The glasses were the traditional snifter glasses, meant only for the appropriate brandy.
The woman took hers up and said, “Cheers. And, ah, what do you Americans say? What spins?”
Don tried to arise to the occasion. “My head,” he said, lifting his own glass to answer the toast.
She was immediately distressed. “You are ill?”
He grinned at her sourly. “Not exactly. I have been celebrating.”
She took a sip of her brandy and said approvingly, “And who has a better right?”
So, he was right, she did recognize him. He tried his. In actuality, Don Mathers had never been in a whorehouse before. They were an unknown in Center City; much too much amateur competition. The brandy was excellent. Not as good as what he had in the penthouse gardens of Lawrence Demming, of course, but unbelievably good. Guzzle wasn’t particularly palatable these days, you drank for the effect, not the taste.