The Last Match Read online

  “What’s your name?” was the first question.

  “Phineas T. Barnum.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “The Bronx, New York, U.S.A.”

  “What street address?”

  “Three thirty-three and a third Joe Doakes Boulevard.”

  “What’s your business? When you’re not smuggling cigarettes?”

  “I wasn’t smuggling cigarettes. I’m a simple, honest tourist—”

  “What’s your business when you’re not smuggling cigarettes?”

  “I just got out of the army. Before that I sold Bibles.”

  “You what?”

  “I sold Bibles. In a Bible store. The Bronx Biblical Basement.”

  “Where’s your passport?”

  “It was stolen from me in Tangier. So were my money, baggage and everything else I owned. That’s why I had to work my way to France on what I thought would be a yacht until I discovered to my horror, surprise and despair that—”

  “Throw him back in the tank.” The flic who was feeding questions in French to the interpreter to relay in English yawned, nodding to another flic to show me back to my suite. “The juge d’instruction will enjoy talking to this one.”

  In France they do not have trial by jury, habeas corpus, Bills of Rights or any of those effete refinements. The law is based on the Code Napoleon, which says in effect that you are guilty until judged innocent. The judging in the initial stages of a criminal investigation is done by what they call a juge d’instruction. He looks at the facts of the crime, he looks at the available evidence, he looks at you, he ponders, he concludes. While he’s concluding, you stay in the violon for as long as it takes, perhaps years if he can’t make up his mind easily. No bail. Sometimes he decides you’re innocent and turns you loose, say after you’ve been on ice for two years. You don’t get a refund of the two years, but you’ve been exonerated. Justice has triumphed. Sometimes, after the same two years, the juge decides that you’re guilty two years worth and turns you loose. You’ve served the same time as the innocent guy, but that’s because you were guilty, see? Justice has triumphed again. Sometimes the juge thinks you’re guilty more than two years worth. In that case he keeps you in escrow for as much longer as he thinks you have coming to you, or turns you over to a formal court for trial on the basis of his findings and recommendations.

  Les juges, I am told, are mostly fair. But they are also practical Frenchmen, and the practicalities in the cases of The Boar, The Plank and Merde Alors were their pressing needs to get back to work at their trade, namely gangsterism, if they were ever going to contribute their bit to la patrie and the French National Treasury. I don’t think anyone ever believed for a minute that they would pay one sou of the huge fines they owed, or a centime in income tax, anything like that. What they were expected to do, what they probably did as soon as they were released, was stick up a bank or a jewelry store for enough loot to buy another boat, if they couldn’t pinch one, and a new cargo of contraband. Sooner or later, maybe not the first time or the second time they tried it, the cops would get them again with another big windfall. And so on, without waste of le juge’s time or taxpayers’ money on free board and room for a trio of Corsican hoods. They were out of the violon and on their way back to their jobs within a week. Trusties, kind of, you might say. Everyone had a lot of confidence that they would be back.

  Jean-Pierre and I were different. The juge didn’t think we would necessarily be back if we were turned loose. We didn’t have what it took to be real gang-staires. If he had known the Honorable Regina’s favorite word he’d have described us as a couple of spivs. He never questioned us together, and we never got to see much of each other in the violon, but I knew he was pumping Jean-Pierre at the same time and along the same lines as he was me because he knew things that only Jean-Pierre could have, I mean would have, told him.

  One afternoon while we were going through one of our Q-and-A sessions and I was having my usual stumbling difficulty in figuring out what his questions meant as filtered through the interpreter’s indifferent English, he said casually, “I’m thinking of letting your friend go.”

  I got that on the interpreter’s first try. I said, “That’s good to hear, sir. When do we get out?”

  “I said, your friend. Not you. You’ll be with us for a while yet.”

  The uncomprehending look on my face was genuine enough when I heard that, first in French and then in English. (Incidentally, there is nothing like a stretch in jail where nobody else speaks your language to sharpen your knowledge of what is being spoken around you. I recommend the experience without reservation to anyone really in earnest about becoming a linguist. After a few weeks in the violon my French was as fluent and polished as that of any waterfront pickpocket in Marseille. I also came out with a fair working vocabulary of alley Arabic from a couple of Algerians who were doing time for a smash-and-grab.) “I don’t understand, sir. Jean-Pierre is just as—I mean to say, I’m just as innocent as he is. Why discriminate against me?”

  “I’ve learned all I need to know from him. In your case, it’s rather more difficult. Because of the language difficulty, you understand.” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “What a pity you speak no French, eh?”

  He was a shrewd old boy, and a decent fellow. I think he kind of liked me, in a disapproving way. I’m pretty sure he would have liked to disapprove of me less than he did. I thought, what the hell. Before the interpreter could translate his last comment, I said, “Pas un seul mot.”

  The juge chuckled.

  “I thought so,” he said, and told the interpreter, who looked shocked at what must have seemed to him pretty close to contempt of court, that he could leave. “Now would you like to tell me anything you have failed to tell me so far? Anything of the truth, that is to say.”

  “I’d guess you have it all from Jean-Pierre already, sir.”

  He nodded. “I think so. Jean-Pierre does not have your native intelligence. It is the main reason I am letting him go. I can only empty his dull mind, not reason with it. Yours I hope to be able to reach and influence. Do you realize the risks you assume, the dangers you are exposing yourself to, when you associate with cut-throat criminals like Le Sanglier and La Planche?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “I think not.”

  He went on to give me a father lecture on the evils of forming bad acquaintances. He didn’t put it on a legal plane or appeal to my sense of Christian morality. I’ll say that for him. He simply set out to scare the hell out of me, and did. In a way he, too, had a hand in nudging me into a life of crime, I mean the kind of life of crime I chose, because he sure nudged me away from further intimate association with Corsican hoods. The Boar had been put away for three murders and The Plank for one, as Jean-Pierre had said. But each had several unscored kills to his credit, known kills but without enough evidence left behind for conviction, plus a large number of probables. They killed business competitors, vendetta rivals, bank clerks who tried to kick off an alarm, innocent bystanders, all with equal indifference, as if they were mosquitoes. Human life, the juge said, meant nothing to them because they were not themselves human. They lived like jungle beasts. They would die like beasts when a stronger beast attacked them.

  “As you can die simply by becoming known as an associate of either man,” he warned me. “To become a friend of Le Sanglier or La Planche is to make blood enemies of all his enemies, of which each has hundreds. Do you know why they were betrayed in the

  calanque?”

  “No, sir. Do you?”

  “I do not. Neither do they. I suspect it was done for vendetta, in the hope that they would be killed, nothing more. No reward for the betrayal has been claimed or paid. Only France benefited from it in a material way. But some day, somehow, either Le Sanglier or La Planche or both will learn the identity of their betrayer, and then he will die more or less horribly depending on how much time they have to spare for him. If they and their friends and the pe
ople suspected of perhaps being their friends are not all brutally murdered first. Am I making an impression on you?”

  “You are indeed, sir.” I wasn’t giving him any blague, either. I could practically feel those machine-gun slugs thumping into me instead of the cigarette cartons. Jerk, flinch, wince. “I give you my word I will associate with no more Corsican gangsters. Not voluntarily, that is.”

  He smiled gently.

  “I have yet to know what your word is worth,” he said. “Or the extent of the reservation you have in mind when you qualify your promise to voluntary association with Corsican gangsters. You may go now.”

  He pushed the button to call the cop who took me back and forth to my cage.

  “When will I be released, sir?”

  “When I make up my mind that you are ready for release.”

  Two days later he made up his mind. Better to say, Reggie made it up for him.

  He had me brought up again for what I thought would be another round of Q-and-A. When the cop delivered me, backed out and closed the door to leave us alone as was customary, we weren’t alone. The Honorable Regina was with us, looking down her patrician nose at me with even greater lack of regard than usual.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” I said. “How nice to see you. What are you in for?”

  I almost added, “Soliciting?” but refrained out of inherent gentlemanliness. I didn’t care what the juge thought, or what her reaction would be. I wasn’t in the mood for chivalrous thoughts. The last I had held toward her had won me a sore tongue and a smart crack on the boko. Besides, I had my own kind of dungeon to get out of, without worrying too much about hers.

  It appeared, however, that my situation had changed, not entirely for the better. The juge said, “Lady Forbes-Jones has persuaded me to release you in her custody.”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  The juge went on. “I am placing you on probation to her for three months. You will do what she asks of you. At the end of that time, if you have broken no more laws and her report on your behavior is favorable, there will be no further restriction on your actions. Other than the normal restraints of the law, of course.”

  I said, “What constitutes favorable behavior?”

  “Lady Forbes-Jones will be the judge of that. I will be the judge of the fairness of her report. You are free to leave now. With Lady Forbes-Jones.”

  “I’d rather stay here. I like it here.”

  “You have no option.” The juge bowed courteously to Reggie. “Good day, Lady Forbes-Jones. I am sure the young man will benefit from your interest in his welfare.”

  “He will.” Her stubborn British jaw was set like the blade of a bulldozer. “He will indeed. Nevah feeyah.”

  We went out to the Mercedes-Benz, which was parked in front of the violon. On the way I said, “What’s with the Lady Forbes-Jones jazz? You’re no lady.”

  I was hoping she’d take it the wrong way. Instead, she said frostily, “The deception occasionally serves a purpose. I do not use it as a device to cheat people. Get in the front seat.”

  I got in the front seat. There was a black chauffeur’s cap on the seat beside me, no chauffeur. She said, still frostily, “Put on the cap.”

  I put on the cap. It fit well enough.

  She said, “Get behind the wheel. Start the motor. Drive to Cannes.”

  I said, “Hey, wait a minute, what—”

  “Do as you are told. Drive. There will be no further discussion.”

  “The hell there’ll be no further discussion! What do you think you’ve bought yourself? A trained poodle?”

  “A chauffeur. Drive.”

  “No, ma’am.” I took the cap off and put it on the seat where it had been. “I appreciate your kindness, but no dice.”

  “You are on parole to me. What I report of your behavior during the next three months will determine whether you go back to jail or not, and for how long. Drive.”

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t give my parole to anybody. You and the juge cooked this up without consulting me. I told him, I’m telling you, I’d rather go back to jail. Anyway, I don’t have a permis de travail. Goodbye. It’s been real cozy knowing you.”

  I opened the door to get out of the car. She said, still with the same frost in her voice, “Get back behind the wheel. Put on the cap. Drive. A permis de travail is not necessary for the employment I have in mind. After you have started the motor I shall explain why you are going to do exactly what I tell you to do, without discussion or opposition.”

  Something about the way she said it persuaded me that she had me by les délicieuses, as The Plank might have put it. I did what she said. She explained what she had said she was going to explain. There was no further discussion.

  The Honorable Regina, a habitual reader of French papers like Nice-Matin, had seen a report of the happenings in the calanque. From it she surmised, with her usual tendency to believe the worst and in view of my disappearance from the Cannes scene a few days earlier, that I might be the American lad involved in the affair who spoke no French, had given his name as P.T. Barnum of the Bronx and was then sitting it out in the Marseille slammer. For my own good, as she said, but in my opinion more to tenderize me for what was to follow, she had let me marinate in there for a few weeks; not, however, without first hunting out my pension and there pinching all my papers by conning an easily conned landlady into believing she was an old family friend. She had my passport, army discharge, everything. With those in her grip, she had me, too. Right where it hurt.

  I could have gone to law about it, probably. She had no right to sequester my identification papers, whatever other authority the juge had given her. But going to law against somebody who can have you sequestered as easily as not for an indefinite period seems kind of shortsighted. I decided not to make an issue of the papers, although I didn’t like not having them. I couldn’t legitimately leave the country, move around freely within it, register at a hotel, collect on a postal or telegraphic money order, cash a traveler’s check anywhere I wasn’t known even if I’d had traveler’s checks to cash—in short, I was cooked, canned and encased. I no longer had my wristwatch, my gold cigarette case or my snappy wardrobe. Nothing but a black chauffeur’s cap—hers—and my remaining personal attire: a pair of dungarees, a pair of rope-soled espadrilles, a denim shirt and an army field jacket.

  “You’ll have to buy yourself a decent suit,” she said, when she had finished dealing out the rest of the cold deck. “Black. I’ll give you the money for it. Also black shoes, a black tie and a white shirt. On second thought, you’re not to be trusted with money. Charge the goods and have the bill sent to me.”

  “Shouldn’t I have a black boutonnière to go with the rest of the mourner’s outfit? If you’ll give me an advance on my salary, I’d just as soon buy my own clothes.”

  “What salary?”

  “I thought you made it fairly clear that I have been inducted into service as your chauffeur.”

  “I do not recall that mention was made of a salary. Were you to be paid a salary you would of course need a permis de travail. You have said you are without one.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yes. I see. Am I going to be allowed to eat during the next three months, or just think about it?”

  “I shall continue to pay your board at your pension. I have already paid a month in advance.”

  “When you stole my papers in a friendly way, no doubt. What about a cigarette now and then, or a pastis?”

  She didn’t answer right away. I drove, twisting over a little in the seat to get a look at her face in the rear-view mirror. She was looking out the window at the scenery, which was remarkably pretty even if I hadn’t been attuned to it by a stretch in the icebox; a typical poplar-lined French country road through green wheat-fields with the blood-crimson splashes of coquelicots. Flanders poppies, among the green, the bright blue cloudless sky of Provence over all.

  Her face, it seemed to me, looked less gr
im than it had when she was chivvying me into the car, although grim enough. Grim, and in a way, sad. Without taking her eyes from the view she said, “Curly, do you remember my words about your need for the strengthening effects of adversity?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Not the words, exactly, but the viciousness with which they were spoken.”

  “Whether you choose to believe it or not, I have your best interests at heart. I want you to be something you are not and will never be without direction.”

  “Yes, ma’am. They used to feed us the same line in the army.”

  “You have potentialities which I hope to see realized, some day. Meanwhile, stop saying Yes, ma’am. I am not going to speak to you about it again. You may say Yes, madame or No, madame, whichever is appropriate.”

  I said, “Yes, madame,” resisting an urge to tell her she was better qualified to be a madam than a lady. I figured the next ninety days were going to be rough enough on the rock pile without making them any tougher for myself with wisecracks.

  Chapter Four

  How right I was.

  When I bought the suit and other stuff she had told me to get, I added to the list a few further essentials like underpants, socks, an extra shirt, handkerchiefs; the necessaries, nothing more. No wristwatches, no gold cigarette cases. She didn’t rack me up when the bill came in, so I figured she was maybe going to be reasonably reasonable about cigarette money and such. Nevah feeyah. For more than a month I literally didn’t have a centime in my, I mean her, pants pockets; no way of picking up a centime on the side the way she kept my nose to the handlebars, and nothing to hock. She didn’t use the Mercedes-Benz much during the day, but she insisted that it be kept clean, shined and polished at all times. It took a lot of massage. The car was a fine piece of machinery; gasoline-engine powered, not one of those rattly Diesel jobs they were putting on the European market at the same time. I fiddled around with the motor of this one until I had it tuned as fine as Merde Alors’ twins on the cutter. It helped occupy my time, not too unpleasantly.