The Last Match Page 21

  “It would be something of a deterrent, yes.” He was sitting at his desk, I was standing in front of it. He looked up at me from his shaggy white old man’s eyebrows. “Having her jailed would be more effective.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Charges can be arranged.”

  “I’d rather we didn’t do it that way, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I—it’s—the thing is—I just wouldn’t feel right about it—if you see what I mean.”

  He nodded again, gravely. “I see what you mean.”

  If he did, he saw more clearly than I did. I guess I just didn’t like the idea of putting Odile in jail for something she hadn’t yet done. Maybe it was because I had slept with her. I don’t know. But André agreed to let me take care of her in my own way, and if he thought I was being unwisely quixotic or downright stupid, he didn’t say so.

  My way was to wear her on my arm that night to three different casinos. Normally I stuck pretty close to Petruzzi at whatever casino he chose to play, waiting for the run of bad luck that would net him for me. That night I told Odile I wanted to check the different caissiers, observe how their procedures varied. The real reason was to give the physiognomistes at all three places a good hinge at my lady-friend. The word had gone out from André‘s office that M. Curly’s companion of the evening was to be regarded as de trop from then on, and once you are declared de trop at one gambling parlor in that part of the world, you are dead at all of them. This kind of news gets around fast. You can’t just walk into a French gambling casino as you can into a casino in Las Vegas, for example. You have to identify yourself, prove you’re over twenty-one and get a carte d’admission. The receptionist, who is also a physiognomiste, keeps a record of your membership, to call it that, in his file, although if you are a regular he doesn’t have to look you up but bows and greets you, by name if you are somebody of importance, as you pass into the games-rooms. I was of course a regular in all of André‘s places. So was Odile, probably— until the second evening we went casino-crawling together.

  This time I took her to still another casino for the physiognomistes to look at. It wasn’t necessary. She was already blackballed all the way from Aix-en-Provence to Menton and points north. That’s how fast an organization like André‘s can work when it wants to.

  The receptionist bowed, smiled and said, “Good evening, m’sieur et dame,” but made no move to pass us on in. “Madame’s name?” he asked me politely.

  I said, “Lumaye.”

  “Lemay?”

  “Madame Odile Lumaye.” I spelled it out for him.

  He said, “Thank you, m’sieur. Excuse me one moment,” and went to look it up.

  Odile’s perfect brow was faintly troubled by a frown. She was by no means used to having the personnel of a gambling casino forget her. The receptionist came back too quickly to have looked up anything but his sleeve.

  “I regret it, m’sieur, but madame’s name is not in our files.”

  “You are completely mad,” Odile snarled at him in her tiger’s voice. “I have been here many times, idiot.”

  The receptionist ignored her, politely. Before Odile could bite him I said, “It doesn’t matter. We’ll get you another card,” and reached for my pocket.

  “I regret it, m’sieur,” the receptionist said, still polite. “It will first be necessary to talk with the management.”

  That did it. He hadn’t once addressed Odile directly, or even looked at her. The management gag meant that she had just been thrown out of the place on her luscious behind. Figuratively speaking, of course, but effectively. She snarled something at the receptionist that no lady has any right ever to call a gentleman without knowing a whole lot more about the peculiarities of his sex life than she could have known if he was what she said he was, and we left.

  She began to get the message at the next place, understood it fully when the same thing happened a third time. I was in the middle of a suggestion that we run down to Monte Carlo and try there when she spat in my face and called me the same thing she had called the receptionist.

  “You did this to me, you piece of filth!” She sounded more like a cobra than a tiger now, or maybe a green mamba. “But I will make you pay!”

  She left me wiping her venom from my face.

  You may say I was a pretty clumsy bunco artist not to be able to keep my face from being spat in. I was, but with reason. You’ve got to love your work in the hocus business trade. You’ve got to be with and for a con to bring it off properly. You can’t go at it halfheartedly or you’ll flop as badly as any other salesman who knows in his heart that his product is a turkey. Although I’d done Odile a favor in keeping her out of jail, my heart wasn’t in the way I had done it. I felt guilty about it. As I had never felt guilty for the smalltown banker who had wanted to bribe his way into a phony franchise, or the Daddies and Mommies in Marrakech, or the marks Smitty and I had circularized with the Spanish Prisoner letter in Lima. So I bobbled it, and got spat on.

  I also got banged on by some of Odile’s hard-case friends. It happened two nights after the spitting.

  They got me in Nice, where Petruzzi had gone to tackle the Greeks at the Palais Méditerranée. His luck was running discouragingly well, and I didn’t feel like putting up with Stefi’s horseplay on the dance floor. She had seen me squiring Odile around and was in a mood to give me a hard time. I went for a stroll up the Promenade des Anglais to get a breath of fresh sea air while I thought about Reggie’s letter of the day.

  She had written her usual four pages of news. She thought she might be able to come home in about another month or so. Lady Bickerstaff had gout, Tony had asked her to marry him, Simon had asked her to marry him the week before, somebody else the week before that. Every cheap grifter in London including a couple with titles had either asked her to marry him or was standing in line waiting his turn. Who the hell did those guys think they were, mousing around with my girl? She said she’d only marry for love and she loved me, although she wouldn’t marry me. That left it tied up nothing to nothing, but I didn’t need outside help to break the tie, by God.

  My thoughts along these lines were terminated by a casse-tête or something equally hard that took me in the back of the head and put me away. For this I had reason to be grateful rather than otherwise. I didn’t feel what they were doing to me while they were doing it, only afterward.

  They didn’t try to kill or cripple me, just worked me over good. With their feet, probably. They cracked three ribs and my left cheekbone, loosened several teeth, broke one off. Nothing serious, and no damage either internally or to the family jewels. But when I woke up my face was so swollen I could see out of only one eye, not very well with that one. There wasn’t much to look at in the room where I was but a big bunch of beautiful pink roses.

  When a nurse came in to do what nurses do to patients, I gestured toward the roses. I didn’t want to use my mouth unnecessarily. They’d torn my lip, too. She brought over a plain white card that had come with the bouquet. I pried my good eye open enough to read what was on the card.

  It said, Pour me rappeler, mon coeur. To remember me, my heart. No signature, just the imprint of a kiss in pink lipstick.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Petruzzi’s luck held while I was healing enough to get out of bed and creak around. If it had changed while I was still laid up I could have missed getting the gaff into him. But it didn’t, and I did.

  I’d sent word to the bonne at the Villa Parfumée that I’d been called away on business, then rented a room in Cannes near the office of the dentist who was going to rearrange my teeth. Driving back and forth to Mougins with three cracked ribs would have been no pleasure. Besides, if I had let the bonne see my face as it looked for a couple of weeks she’d have told Reggie I’d been brawling in her absence and got me a chewing out.

  I let Stefi see my face at its worst, while it still looked like a stuffed ripe eggplant. It served her right. If it hadn’t be
en for her—but I’d only be conning myself to blame her for the beating. I’d asked for it when I stepped between Odile and the jail André wanted to send her to. I told Stefi and anyone else who asked that I’d fallen off a roulette wheel. If they didn’t believe me, it was their privilege.

  Tout va is one of the roughest games in the world, as well as one of the simplest. It’s nothing more than baccarat with a bank that stays in one man’s hands instead of moving around the table as in chemin defer, with no limit on the amount you can bet against it.

  French law, for reasons of its own probably having to do with the no-limit rule, says that no casino operator can bank a tout va game. He can have a tout va on the premises, as he usually does, but the players do not bet against house money. In southern France most tout va games are banked by the so-called Greek Syndicate, which is not to be confused with the Syndicate that runs the numbers racket in the U.S.A. Nobody has ever charged the Greek Syndicate with dishonesty or double-dealing or tough stuff, anything like that. They’re strictly legitimate. They have a small percentage going for them with the bank, a whole lot of money behind them. You want to bet a hundred thousand dollars at a Syndicate dealer on two cards and an optional one-card draw? Go right ahead, pal, you’re faded. And the next time. And the next time. And the next. Paid off then and there if you win, too, with no expression on the banker’s face even when he’s just finished laying out half a million dollars of his own and his partner’s money. As long as you keep bringing it back to play again, friend, you’re welcome.

  Petruzzi’s streak had lasted most of the month before it fell apart, as I had been waiting for it to do. He was a moderately high roller; not up there with Jack Warner, Darryl Zanuck, Farouk, the Argentine millionaires, and La Môme Moineau, people who couldn’t enjoy the game unless they won or lost a fortune, but heavy enough. He must have been into the Syndicate for the equivalent of around a hundred thousand dollars when the percentages caught up with him.

  I was there when it happened. Not playing, just watching the game. Stefi was ignoring me, thank God, in favor of another Cici she had picked up to tease on the dance floor. Petruzzi lost four consecutive bets of two hundred thousand francs each when the dealer turned eight, seven, eight, nine. He doubled his bets, lost twice more, won once, lost twice again. I never saw a bank with such a run. The dealer was beating both sides of the table three times out of five, losing to both sides only about once out of five.

  Most of the other players, recognizing the developing run, reduced their bets to ride it out. Not Petruzzi. He kept doubling up. In tout va, if you’ve got inexhaustible funds and nerves of vanadium steel, you can ride out any run of bad luck until it turns for you. There’s no ceiling on the amount you can bet except the one you set for yourself or your cash reserve sets for you. In Petruzzi’s case, he ran out of money before he ran out of nerve.

  I could see what might be going to happen when it started happening. Stefi and her Cici came by the baccarat table, but I herded them both into the bar for a champagne cocktail before Stefi could see what was happening and try to get her husband to stop play. I needn’t have worried. Only one thing in the whole wide world could have got him away from that table. As it did in about thirty minutes.

  He came into the bar looking white, shaken and as clean as an empty piggy bank.

  “Have a drink,” I said hospitably. “What’ll it be?”

  The way he looked, he might have ordered hemlock. He said, “Scotch. Double. Straight,” and threw down the drink in a gulp.

  “How did it go, amore?” said Stefi.

  “Not well.”

  He fiddled with his empty glass for a while, then said he had to go to the vater, meaning water-closet. He gave me the look that says, Come along, amico. We excused ourselves and went to the vater.

  He was blunt and to the point.

  “I need money,” he said. “How well do you know François André?”

  “He’ll cash a check for a reasonable amount for a steady customer. You don’t need any help from me for that.”

  “I don’t want to cash a check. I want to borrow.”

  I didn’t crowd him to find out what had happened to his finances besides a bad streak of luck at cards. It didn’t matter. He was coming up to the gaff nicely.

  I said, “I can let you have four or five thousand.”

  He made a quick gesture of dismissal. “Thanks, but I need at least ten million, fast. That game is just about to turn around and run the other way. I’ve got to get back in.”

  “André doesn’t lend money to bet against his money. No gambler does. You know that.”

  “It’s not his money I’m betting against, pazzo! It’s the Syndicate’s money. For God’s sake, you’ve got to help me! I’m desperate!”

  “Gee, that’s right. It is the Syndicate’s money, isn’t it? I’d forgotten that. Well, I’ll speak to André, but I don’t know. Ten million is a lot. I’ll try, though.”

  I went away looking dubious and thoughtful.

  If Petruzzi hadn’t already used the pissoir while we talked, he’d have wet his pants for sure waiting for me to come back. I stalled around for half an hour or so to let him sweat, then came back to find him hanging over the tout va table like a man nailed to a cross. The luck was running the other way now, against the bank. Every time a player took a coup Petruzzi would flinch as if he’d been hit with a whip. When I came up beside him he whispered hoarsely, “Did you get it? Did you get it?” almost without taking his eyes from the game that was killing him.

  “No,” I said, feeling sorry for the poor bastard. Gambling can be worse than dope or even love, when you’re badly hooked. “But I can get it for you. Part of it, anyway.”

  I had him. Gaffed and hanging on the wire. He’d have sold me his wife, his mother, his children, his balls, anything in the world to get back into that game with a fair stake. The tale I told was that André wasn’t lending because he was superstitious about such things. He would cash my check for five million, which I would myself lend Petruzzi out of friendship and fellow feeling. However, since the money was not mine but funds of the land-buying syndicate of which I was the front-man, I would of course have to have some kind of solid security for my principals. It would have to be real estate, naturally, since that was all I had authority to deal in, but if he had anything to put up, a piece of speculative land maybe—?

  He didn’t even haggle about valuation, he was burning so with eagerness to clobber the Greeks. André had told me how high he was prepared to go for the land, a fair price that Petruzzi settled on like a shot. André‘s lawyers had typed up, on plain stationery with a few artful erasures, non-invalidating mistakes and typeovers, an air-tight agreement which made me the option holder for my “principal or principals”; during such and such a period, with such and such terms of payment if the option was exercised after examination of the property, a recovery clause if the property or its title was not in every way as represented (more window dressing since everything had been carefully checked out), the other things. It was quite clearly an option to purchase, not just a pledge of collateral he could redeem if he chose, but he raised no fuss about that. A lousy piece of Sardinian coastline that had been kicking around in his family for generations, what was that compared to a quick pocketful of cash when he needed cash in a hurry? He signed the agreement without hesitation in front of two barmen as witnesses, and I brought him five million francs worth of jetons from the caisse simply by signing a receipt. I could have easily have got him the ten million he wanted, or fifty million, or a hundred million. I just didn’t want him to lose more than another five million on top of what he’d already lost.

  He made a comeback. Not a big one as far as I know, and certainly not to the point where he was into the Greeks as big as before, but a pretty fair recovery. I watched him pile a few more millions on top of the working capital I had got for him, then left the tout va table feeling that I had done my daily good deed.

  André was plea
sed with the news when I reported it. I had been avoiding him since the pounding I had taken from Odile’s friends, not wanting to confess that if I had sabotaged her his way instead of my own it wouldn’t have happened to me. My face looked a lot better, my teeth had been repaired, I could see out of both eyes. Some of the discoloration still remained. When I had finished reporting he said, “You did well. What happened to your face?” “I fell off a roulette wheel.”

  He looked at me sharply from under his shaggy eyebrows, but only said, “They do spin a bit rapidly at times. Tell me, young man. You have done me two favors, I suspect at some cost to yourself. What do you think your reward should be? Within the limits of my purse, you understand.”

  He’d promised me a reward, and I knew that whatever it cost short of the contents of the French National Treasury he could afford it. What I hadn’t expected was to be asked to name it myself. I thought fast and hard.

  “Would this piece of property you have acquired include a small island or two, sir?”

  “I believe so. Even one or two fairly large islands, I am told. I have not seen the land myself, only photographs of it.”

  “A small island would do me nicely.”

  He gave another sharp look from under the eyebrows. “You may have your choice of the availabilities. Will you tell me why you want an island?”

  “Well, sir, it seems like a good investment if you are going to develop the coast off which the island lies. Aside from that, I’ve always wanted an island of my own. Like Onassis.”

  “A yacht to go with it, perhaps? A tame opera singer? A fortune to spend?”

  “No, sir. I’ll take care of the small incidentals myself. Just the island.”

  “Very well. You shall have it. Go select the one you want and let me know.”

  That night I wrote Reggie a longer letter than usual. Nearly a whole page. I told her I had a surprise for her which I would give her when she came back to the Villa Parfumée, that I had had some dental work done, that the bonne was fine, I was fine, I missed her, best regards.