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“My pleasure, sir,” Delchamps said. “But let me continue since you seem to find this of interest.”
“Please do,” Castillo said.
The conversation was momentarily interrupted by the sight of an incredibly beautiful, long-legged blonde coming out of the Hotel Ritz. She was surrounded by four muscular men who might as well have had SECURITY stamped on their large foreheads. She got into the rear seat of a Maybach, in the process revealing a good deal of thigh. One of the gorillas with her got in the front seat of the car, another trotted quickly to a Mercedes in front of it, and the other two trotted to an identical Mercedes behind it. The convoy rolled majestically away toward the rue de Rivoli.
“I regret being unable to identify that young woman for you, Mr. Gossinger, as I can see you are really interested,” Delchamps said after they had passed the entrance to the Ritz. “But I’m sure she’s someone famous.”
“Either that or a high-class hooker,” Castillo said.
“The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive,” Delchamps said.
Castillo chuckled.
“But I was telling you about the Continental, wasn’t I?” Delchamps asked and then went on without waiting for a reply. “And it was in the Continental—I seem to remember in 1880, but don’t hold me to that—that what many regard as the advertising coup of all time took place.”
“I’ve always been interested in advertising,” Castillo said. “Tell me about that.”
“Tourism was just beginning to blossom and become big business,” Delchamps said. “The British, the Italians, the Germans, and of course the French were in hot competition for the Yankee tourist dollar. There was hardly a building on Manhattan Island without a billboard urging the Yankees to come to England, Italy, Germany, or France. There were so many of them that not one of them really caught people’s attention. And the advertising was really expensive, which really bothered the French.
“The matter was given a great deal of thought, and, in studying the problem the French realized that the ideal advertisement would be something that incorporated novelty. Edison had just given us the lightbulb, you will recall, so the new advertisement had to include one of those. Yankees, the French knew, also liked amply bosomed females, so the advertisement would have to have one of those, too. How about an amply breasted woman holding an electric light over her head?”
Castillo laughed aloud.
“You sonofabitch, you had me going. The Statue of Liberty.”
Delchamps smiled and nodded.
“And if we give it to the Yankees, the clever Frogs realized, call it a ‘gift of friendship’ or something, not only will the Yankees never take it down but—desperate as they are to have people like them—they’ll put it someplace where it can’t be missed. And if we give it to them, they’ll pay to maintain it. If we play our cards right, we can probably even get them to pay for part—maybe most—of it.”
“God, isn’t history fascinating?” Castillo said.
“That meeting took place right in your hotel,” Delchamps said. “And here we are on rue Danou, site of the legendary Harry’s New York Bar. Wou
ld you be interested to learn that Ernest Hemingway used to hang around in Harry’s?”
“Absolutely,” Castillo said as Delchamps held open the door to the bar for him.
“Paris was known in those days as the intellectual center of the world. The truth is that before we sent Pershing over here to save their ass, they had emptied the French treasury and wiped out a generation of their male population in a standoff with the Krauts…”
He paused to direct Castillo, pointing to the stairway to the basement. When he had followed Castillo down the narrow, winding stairway and they had taken stools at the bar, he picked up where he had left off.
“And, presuming you had the Yankee dollar, it was one of the cheapest places to live. Not to mention that since most of the young Frogs had been killed in the trenches, there was no shortage of places for you to hide your salami.”
The bartender appeared.
“They have other stuff, but they make a really good hamburger,” Delchamps said.
“Sounds fine,” Castillo said.
Delchamps ordered—in fluent Parisian French, Castillo noted—the hamburgers, medium rare, and two bottles of Dortmunder Union beer.
“Do you find it interesting, Herr Gossinger, that your tail is resting where very possibly Hemingway’s tail once rested?”
“Yes, I find that interesting,” Castillo said.
“And would you be interested in hearing the true story of Hemingway’s war service as an officer?”
“I would be interested.”
