The Last Match Page 20

  He said, “While I no longer have greed in my soul, I do have a peasant’s stubborn determination to cling to what is my own. That is bred in my bones. I would like to enlist your help in a venture for which a certain deviousness I detect in your character will be useful. You will be well rewarded, and I believe you may enjoy the occupation I have in mind for you. Will you cooperate with me, young man?”

  I said, “Sir, I believe I am your pigeon. Before I commit myself, however, tell me the tale.”

  What I really said was, “Glissez-moi l’appât.” (He spoke no English to amount to anything.) It means, Slip me the come-on, more or less, and is best said out of the side of the mouth without moving the lips. He smiled and told me the tale.

  He had built the popular summer resort of La Baule, in Brittany, out of a fishing village, a sand dune and a fine empty beach. It had cost him a potful, but he gained large income-tax advantages from investing his profits in such projects, and of course they returned even larger profits to him in time. From his viewpoint, which I could easily understand, the project had been worthwhile for the enjoyment of doing it. It gave him an interest, and activity, other than watching the money roll in. It was a pleasure to him to roll the money out and see the town, his town, grow with his planting; its sproutings of casino, hotels, boîtes, golf course, tennis courts, parks, pretty villas, all the incidentals. He wanted to do the same kind of thing on an even bigger scale with the Costa Smeralda, on the northeast coast of Sardinia; the so-called Emerald Coast. (He didn’t live long enough, but the project was ultimately carried out by the Aga Khan, young Karim.)

  To do it as he wanted to do it, he had to buy the whole until-then undeveloped coast outright, and he knew damn good and well what would happen to prices if word got about that François André‘s millions were bidding for the land. He was willing to pay a fair price, even a generous price, but not a sky-high stick-up. What he wanted me to do, since I was already in the land-buying business, was front for him while ostensibly fronting for an American syndicate with plenty of dollars to put into land speculation but no firm ideas what or where the speculation should be.

  I couldn’t grab it fast enough. It was a con without any of the risks or drawbacks of a con. Even Reggie couldn’t disapprove if I brought it off. I didn’t even care what kind of a score I made out of it for myself, it was that attractive. Sure, it would lack some of the spice of a real swindle, but on the other hand it had interesting fringe benefits. I sat down to write Reggie that I had a new and interesting land deal coming up, that I missed her, that I was well, that I hoped she was well and that our bonne a tout faire at the Villa Parfumée had had a toothache but was no longer complaining about it.

  I couldn’t think of anything else to report. How the hell people manage to fill up four pages of stationery, letter after letter after letter, beats me. I wrote about twice a week, and all I had to say could have been put on the back of the stamp. Reggie wrote every day, acres of driddle about death duties and chancery courts and probate courts and entail and solicitors and her family estate down in dear old Kent and what people I’d never heard of were doing. Cecil and Bunny and Tony and Roger and Lord Poopsy and Lady Bickerstaff, Christ knows who or what else. She never repeated herself, either, except in her regular sign-off: I love you Curly. Once, only, I wrote back, I love you, too, Reggie. Her reply covered six pages instead of the usual four. The two extra ones crisped me like so much fried bacon for having the temerity to he to her in writing. It was even worse, she said, than lying to her orally.

  I didn’t tell her about the fringe benefits of André‘s job because they would have been too hard to explain. His people had already done all the necessary spade work for me, working very quietly. The biggest and most important piece of the property he wanted for his project was owned by a wealthy Italian industrialist named Petruzzi. It had been in his family for generations without exploitation. He and his signora spent a lot of time on the Cote d’Azur, much of it in André‘s gambling rooms and other playground areas. Petruzzi was the kind of industrialist who let other people be industrious for him, although I don’t mean to imply he was any worse than the rest of us capitalists. Actually he was a nice guy, good company when I got to know him.

  I did that easily enough at the baccarat tables. He was a nut for baccarat. Tout va, the big no-limit game.

  His signora, Stefana, was also attractive in a kind of full-blown, spaghetti-fed way. She called me Cici, pronounced chee-chee, short for cicisbeo. The word is often used in Italy as roughly equivalent to gigolo, although strictly speaking a cicisbeo is a married woman’s public escort who may or may not be her lover in private as well. Because Stefi was easily bored by the gambling that had her husband hooked, she got her kicks out of pretending we were having a heavy affair behind his back. I would take her to some boîte to dance—at Petruzzi’s request; he wanted to play baccarat, she wanted to play something else—where she would cling fast and wiggle her crotch against me on the dance floor, croon Neapolitan spumoni in my ear and whisper, “Ah, Cici, amore, do you burn so with passion for me, then?” Glued to me the way she stayed glued when we danced, she knew damn good and well I was burning with something for somebody. It couldn’t very well be concealed from her. She was only teasing, it never went any further than that, but I could neither brush her off nor try to follow through. Staying on the right side of Petruzzi was too important. But Stefi had me charged up for action the way they charge a stallion on a horse-breeding farm with a brood-mare in heat to get him snorting for the lady who is going to get the real workout. When Odile came along—but events first, alibis afterward.

  To assist me with Petruzzi, André gave me one of his personal cards. On it he wrote, in a beautiful clear flowing hand you would never think to associate with a

  barrel-maker’s boy, Le porteur est notre invité. That’s all but my God, what a passport it was. I couldn’t pay a check or a bill or buy a drink or a meal or anything else anywhere within the old man’s empire. Every casino has one or more spotters always watching the people who come in to play, on the lookout for sharpies and troublemakers but with an eye open as well for the big wheels. In France these housemen are called physiognomistes, and they never forget a face or its connotations. The first time I flashed André‘s card at one of his pleasure domes—it was the same winter casino in Cannes where he had his birdnest office up under the eaves—the receptionist’s eyes widened slightly before she bowed and said, “Bienvenu, m’sieur.” I don’t know what went on after that, but before I left the gambling rooms a couple of hours later everybody in the joint from the caissier to the chasseurs who empty the ashtrays knew I was with it, for it and of it. I couldn’t even tip the hatcheck girl, or the doorman who called me a cab. When you can’t do that on the Cote d’Azur, you are really riding a reserved seat on the gravy train.

  There were even fringe benefits to the fringe benefits. I had to move slowly and cautiously with the Petruzzis—slowly with him, cautiously with her— because I could not show interest in his property, or even indicate that I knew it existed. He knew that I was interested in buying land, and had the money behind me for large-scale dealing. It was as far as I could go on openers. The next play had to come from his side of the table.

  Evening after evening I waited for it in one casino or another while he bucked the tout va bank, the cynosure of all eyes. I mean I was the cynosure of all eyes, not Petruzzi. I wore the faultlessly tailored evening clothes that had set Reggie back at least a hundred quid, and always had a generous pocketful of hundred-thousand jetons (André‘s, naturally) to toss negligently into a game whenever I felt like it. Always I got more than my share of bowing and scraping from the minions. Inevitably I caught the eyes of other people like myself, crooks and swindlers, every one, eager to take me into camp and pluck my gorgeous feathers.

  Many of the hustlers were female. One in particular was markedly so. Her name, let’s say the name she used with me, was Odile Lumaye. Madame Odile Lumaye. Husband,
dead; a war casualty. Age, indefinite, but several years more than my own, probably in the early thirties. Height, about five-four or five-five, along in there. Weight, perfect, and well balanced. Color of hair, a kind a light pink, very attractive. Color of eyes, greenish. Color of lipstick, approximately the same as her hair, and tasty. Perfume, Ma Griffe, I think, although I’m not an expert. Sex, oh, yes, indeed.

  In my whole life I never knew a woman who radiated sex as Odile did. Not even Boda. Boda’s sex was simple, uncomplicated, a natural aura surrounding her. Odile’s sex was polarized, or maybe laserized; focused, concentrated and projected in a beam that could burn the suspender buttons off a man’s pants if she chose to turn it that way. When she smiled her thanks at a waiter or chasseur for bringing her something, he would bump into tables going back to wherever it was he came from. She made men, including me, dizzy with her impact. She was as crooked as a bolt of lightning, but with four times the voltage.

  She picked me up at a baccarat table. I don’t even remember exactly how it was done. That’s how dizzying she was. I do remember that before I looked up from the play to fall drowning into the big green eyes, the Greek who was dealing for the Greek syndicate fumbled a card in taking it out of the shoe. Any time a dealer for the Greek syndicate fumbles a card you can bet he’s just had a coronary occlusion or worse. This one had been hit by Odile’s lightning. As I was immediately thereafter. My next conscious recollection is of buying her a drink at the bar. After that we were in bed in her hotel.

  I don’t remember any prolonged intervals between steps A, B and C, but intervals must have existed. Shortly after stage C, I got a wire reading: ARE YOU ALL RIGHT. WHY DON’T YOU ANSWER MY LETTERS. HAVE TRIED VAINLY SEVERAL TIMES TO REACH YOU BY PHONE. PLEASE CALL WRITE WIRE ANYTHING EVERYTHING. TERRIBLY WORRIED. LOVE YOU ALWAYS. REGGIE.

  By then I was back in my own bed with plenty of time for sending wires, writing letters and the other things you do in bed, like convalescing. I cabled that I had been involved in a land deal, out of town for a while, now back, in good shape (ow!), letter follows.

  Have you ever slept with a bolt of lightning? Sweet Odile knew tricks of her trade I’d never heard of, or even imagined. Where Boda had been as simple and unaffected and joyously wholehearted as a bunny rabbit about screwing for the sake of screwing, and Reggie was a lusty lady in love, Odile made a technique of it. It was part of her planning, I believe, so to drain a man’s vitality in bed that he would have no resistance to her in other departments, and could only cooperate as she wanted him to. She was much like The Boar in this respect, an extortionist, except she used sex where he used brutality. I had about fifteen hundred dollars worth of André’s jetons in my clothes when we launched our first orgy, and if she’d been working a badger game I wouldn’t even have been sorrowful about losing them when the outraged husband broke in on us with a gun. Provided he didn’t break in too soon, of course. That’s how good she was. I mean bad.

  She was after more than a lousy fifteen hundred. When she had reduced me to will-less pulp, she went into her pitch. We were still in bed. The only way I could have got out of it was by falling out.

  “Mon coeur,” she said. She had a pleasantly husky voice like a tiger’s purr. It went with the green cat’s-eyes. “Listen to me. Would you like to make a lot of braise? A great quantity of braise?”

  “No,” I said. “I’d like to sleep. Good night.”

  “Do not sleep yet. There is a fortune within our grasp, if you will but take it.”

  “I haven’t the strength left to grasp five francs. Good night.”

  “If you do not listen to me, mon ange,” she purred. “I shall do to you thus-and-so-and-thus-and-so and thus-and-so—”

  I listened. She was perfectly capable of doing thusand-so to me for the rest of the night, and it would have killed me stone cold dead.

  She wanted me to help her swindle André. She had in mind a gimmick that had been successfully worked years before in Monte Carlo. She knew I was André‘s fair-haired lad from observing the treatment I got from his hired help, although not why. She sensed, knew instinctively with that it-takes-one-to-know-one instinct, that I was a hustler like herself. She was also without doubt that she could buy me with her body and tricks. I listened to her pitch because I was too debilitated not to, also from professional curiosity.

  Her gimmick was to counterfeit André‘s jetons. The big ones, nothing less than a hundred thousand francs. At the time, a hundred thousand francs were worth between two hundred and two hundred and fifty dollars, and the jetons were as good as cash in whatever casino had its name on them, either for play or for redemption at the caissier’s window. A couple of hundred of the fakes, as Odile pointed out unnecessarily in her wicked purr, would make a nice score for us to split between us. We didn’t have to stop at a couple hundred, either. With my entree and my favored position with André”—

  “Eh alors, what is it with you and the old goat, mon chou? What do you have on him, that he gives you the keys to his kingdom? If he likes pretty boys, you are no tournedos. Of that I have reason to be certain. Tell me the truth.”

  A tournedos is a cut of filet mignon. But the word is also obscure argot for a male homosexual, passive posture, although not known in this usage to polite society, or even semi-polite society. Scrumptious sexy Odile had to have been around, to have learned about things like tournedos. Furthermore, a doll like that on the crook wouldn’t be allowed to freelance even if she wanted to. She was too valuable a property. She would have hard-case pals lurking somewhere in the woodwork, ready to pop out and take over when the time came for us to split the grab. I had a strong feeling that I was being set up for a fall, somehow.

  I said, “Mon âme, André and I are good friends, no more. We used to roll barrels together. I know nothing about counterfeiting except that the penalties for it are rough. Get yourself another boy. Again, good night.”

  “Mon amour, wake up or else. All you have to do is help me pass the fakes. I will attend to everything else. Besides, it is not counterfeiting, only copying. Counterfeiting is the making of false money. André‘s jetons are not money.”

  “Ma petite brioche, is this all your idea, or have you been coached? You seem well informed.”

  “Mes yeux, it is my idea. I have given it thought and study. Now listen to me further.”

  Somebody had sure given it thought and study. The matrices for shaping the fakes were to be made by using genuine jetons as molds. Plastic of the same color and texture as the originals would then be poured into the matrices, and plaques of the size and shape of the originals would be obtained when the plastic had hardened. These would be carefully checked for dimension with a micrometer, since an experienced caissier, blindfolded, can run his fingertips up and down a stack of chips once and pick out phonies if they vary from the norm by as much as a couple of thousandths of an inch. (The picture of luscious Odile sweating over a hot plastic crucible, then checking the results with a micrometer, was fascinating in its incredibility.) The plaques would then be finished off for denomination and identity by hand. It was not intended that they be good enough for play on a table watched by three or four sharp-eyed croupiers. But if size, shape and texture were right, a busy caissier could be expected to accept a stack of them topped by one or two genuine jetons, count it visually and pay off without taking the stack apart before putting it in his rack.

  “Until the fakes end up in a croupier’s box and are immediately discovered to be fakes,” I said. “Then what? The caissier will check every jeton from then on. And how many people cash in ten million franc stacks of jetons without being remembered?”

  “We will not cash ten million franc stacks, mon soleil,” Odile purred. “We will cash half-million franc stacks. Pah, it is a nothing to a caissier, half a million. Then, when he does begin to check the jetons, we move to another casino until he is no longer alert, and return to do it again. Who will suspect a good friend and favorite of the court of François André of
such an activity?”

  “François André,” I said. “Like a shot.” To stay with the swing of the conversation, I added, “Ma violette.”

  “Pah, mon coquelicot. You are a sheep. I thought you would be a lion.”

  “Let me have a few hours rest and I will roar again, ma pivoine.”

  “You will reflect on it, mon astre? If you do not promise I shall do to you thus-and-so-and-thus-and-so—”

  “I promise. For God’s sake, let me get some sleep.”

  “Good night, lumière de ma vie. Sleep well.”

  I reflected on it just long enough to decide that the best way to handle Odile was to peach on her to André. I didn’t want to get her into any more trouble than was necessary, but the only way I could see to keep her from stepping into trouble up to her lovely lo-lo’s was to prevent her from taking the step. Her scheme had gaping flaws in it. She and her patsy, whomever she found to help her with the passing, were almost certain to be spotted sooner or later if they kept it up long enough to make the deal worth the effort. André had not operated his empire for the best part of half a century without knowing the ways of crooks, and what to do about them.

  So I was surprised when, having heard me out in silence on the subject of Odile, he asked me what I thought should be done about her.

  “I thought you would decide that, sir,” I said.

  “I am capable of making the decision, young man,” he said dryly. “First I should like to hear your suggestions for handling the lady.”

  “Well, she’s committed no crime against you, so far. Wouldn’t it be enough just to bar her from your gambling rooms? She can’t very well operate if she can’t get in.”