Barking Man (20 page)

The heat was at its maximum but he felt too listless to try to evade it. It was not the right time of day for people to buy things, so he climbed to the stone catwalk inside the harbor wall and spread himself like a lizard in the full glare of the sun. The heat of the wall soaked into his back, and as he began to feel more comfortable and sleepier he let his feet slide slowly forward until they dangled slackly between the posts of the steel railing. In the shade of his sunglasses, his eyes narrowed to slits. The entire spread of the harbor was almost too bright to be visible, and on the beach beyond it the sunbathers lay fixed to the ground as though particular beams of light had nailed each of them down.

The only movement was a steady trickle of people going back and forth along the concrete ramp that led up into the town, and there was a place where it was blocked by a lump of people clogging an area shaded by several trees. Ton-Ton Detroit’s eyes came open a little wider when he saw that Clay was at the center of this thickening crowd. The boy had set up a stack of old boxes and his hands were flying across the lid of the top one, light and nervous as a couple of bats. His movements were so rapid and ardent that from this distance his whole body seemed to shimmer. It looked like he might be doing pretty well too; at least he had a good enough crowd to draw pickpockets.

Ton-Ton Detroit leaned forward a little more, hooking his elbow up around the guardrail. For Clay the game must just be starting to get sweet. The cards spun and flashed crazily along the lines his fingers stroked, catching the light when he turned them face up. A hundred-franc note looked almost pink at this distance and Ton-Ton Detroit thought he could see quite a few of them changing hands. The boy might make out all right if only he knew when to quit. Ton-Ton Detroit would have given him about fifteen more minutes, but as it turned out he got almost twenty before the
flics
arrived. The shovel-nosed car rolled slowly to the end of the parking and stopped just in front of the Cocteau Museum. It was the same pair who had rolled him over early that morning—the one who’d dumped his bag was slightly bowlegged, the other tall and razor-faced. Both wore short-sleeved white shirts with little pleats on the pockets, and their browned forearms swung out to a stiff clicking beat as they moved up toward the edge of Clay’s crowd. Still caught up in the heat of his game, Clay didn’t seem to have noticed them yet. Ton-Ton Detroit thought in an abstract way of giving a shout, but he didn’t think his voice would carry so far, and besides, he doubted he was going to miss Clay all that much either, if something should happen to cause him to leave.

What Clay could have used was a whole boatload of things he just hadn’t got and didn’t see coming: a fresh jacket with no scrape marks down the sleeves, a crowd that spoke English, more money to lose and above everything else some kind of a partner, a dude to get the betting started and then watch down the street once the action warmed up. But the only one he’d been able to think of was old uncle, and the man didn’t appear inclined to be helpful, so Clay hadn’t even felt like he wanted to ask.

This would be as close to the bone as he’d ever cut it, and he’d had some doubts about whether he should try it at all, but the short of it was, he didn’t have all that much left to try. If that one guy he’d already hit was average, he’d need to do around ten more like him to make enough for a flight, and it did seem like that would be really pushing it. He’d figured out that you probably didn’t need all that many words to run a simple game of three-card monte, and he’d spent a few minutes with a dictionary, standing up in a store, to check out the couple he thought he should know. After that there was nothing much to it but grab a few boxes out back of a restaurant and stack them waist high in the likeliest spot.

“
Trouvez le
rouge, trouvez le rouge
.” Clay figured he could get by with that and
Pariez cent
and handle the rest in pantomime. It should work out if he could just get it started, but now was the moment he most needed a shill. If he looked up, he could see old uncle perched high up there on the wall of the harbor; why couldn’t he come down here where he might be some use? Clay made the cards flash and flicker and dance, finding the rhythm, fondling the beat. People were just glancing at him and going on by, man, they must think he had time enough to stand there all day. There were enough of them, but none of them stopped, and it was hot as the devil even here in the shade, his face was already running with sweat.

“Trouvez le rouge, trouvez le rouge
…” Okay, so it wasn’t the most exciting line of patter. But stop for me, somebody, come on, just one. He faced the cards up, aces all: the spade, the club and the lucky diamond. A couple had just now halted in front of him—thank you, Lord—old lady in a blue-striped cotton dress, old guy with gold teeth in a cockeyed denture and silver hair swept back in a sporty wave. Come on, sport, bet me one.

“
Pariez cent
.” Clay spread a hundred-franc note on the box top behind the cards, smiling steady as a corpse as he felt a fresh wave of sweat break over his forehead. The old cat smiled back at him, half his top teeth sliding the opposite way from the rest, but he wasn’t showing out any money. Oh man, Clay thought, if I had some more
words
. He flourished the cards as eloquently as he knew how to do it, still no action, but one more guy stopped, big heavy dude with a face that looked like it might just have been stepped on, black wraparound sunglasses hiding his eyes. He had a white bulldog hooked to him on a chain, and one fat mother dog it was too. Clay watched it sit down on the toe of the guy’s shoe and start licking all over its own smashed-in face, foaming clear slobber from the hot-pink inside of its mouth.

“
Pariez cent
.” A fresh breeze levitated his bill from the box and Clay caught it under his elbow, still working the cards. The guy’s face was like rock, but he was getting the message—thank you, Jesus—he was pulling out a bill. Clay nodded to him, stopped the cards and let him have the first one, gave him the red diamond his thick finger had pointed out.

“
Pariez cent
.” A couple more people had already stopped and behind them he could see there were more slowing down. Clay let the meaty guy have a second bill. He’d fibbed a little to old uncle back then; there’d been four hundred-franc notes in that purse, though he’d busted one for smokes, and food. He’d thought of running the game on fifties but the problem was it would have been much too slow, when something like three thousand francs was the best deal he could find on a flight to New York. He beat the guy back for the middle bill and then let him get it again on the next play. Up to ten people were standing there now, but still, this could get boring quick. Then he saw the silver-haired guy unwinding a bill from a money clip and at the same time another one landed on the front of the box, mashed under a hand he hadn’t matched with a face yet. Finally, they were catching on. He lost the first one and beat the next two, kicked back and started making his money.

The main thing on his mind now was time. Old uncle said the game wouldn’t go over at all around here, which made Clay think that at least he didn’t want to get caught. He thought he’d be good for a half hour or so of fairly fast action and then he’d be a lot better off gone. When he’d guessed the time was nearly up he checked his wrist, but still no watch. Letting the cards stop for a second, he looked up to see if there might be a clock on a building somewhere, but he was facing the harbor and there was nothing that way but Ton-Ton Detroit, still roosting on the wall like a vulture. The old cat was in the perfect position; Clay only wished he had him signed up as a lookout. The silver-haired dude had a watch on anyway, and it said about ten after one. The crowd was good and thick and wrapping the whole way around him now, so anybody coming through it wouldn’t be able to see him right away. He thought he could give it five or ten minutes yet before he blew.

He’d been pushing the money down in his back pocket, where it was easiest to stuff it in quick. How much he had in there he had no idea, but a few more minutes and he’d get off somewhere and count. If it wasn’t all he hoped for, he’d take the train to Nice and see what kind of a thing he could put together over there. The crowd was packed in tight around the box now, it was getting hard to keep a handle on it all, every couple of minutes he had to wave them all back to make room for himself to breathe and keep working. The only one that wouldn’t move out was some kid that wasn’t even betting, a moon-faced brat with a little poodle strapped to him by a red leather leash. Clay had a foggy feeling he’d seen him around somewhere before, but he sure didn’t need to be seeing him now.

“Beat it, kid,” Clay said, wishing he’d looked up the French for that. “Go on, take off, get out of here.”

He made a disappearing gesture right under the kid’s nose, but the kid just stared up at him with his soft stupid eyes. He was mumbling some kind of I-don’t-know-what right along, though Clay had the feeling he was just talking to his dog. Where was that bulldog when you wanted him? It could have finished off this fluff of a poodle in half of a mouthful. The poodle had drifted around the corner of the bottom box and started licking its way up the side of his shoe. Clay gave it a light kick in the chops and the dog sat back on its haunches with an outraged yelp. Maybe that would get rid of the pair of them. When he turned his attention back to the game he could see a wedge opening in the rear of the crowd. What was coming that way he couldn’t quite tell, but people were making room for it like swimmers for sharks, and that was convincing enough for him. He kicked the stack of boxes over, letting the cards go flying with them, and took a couple of long strides back into the crowd behind him.

People back here had all been trying to peer over one another’s shoulders and they were still trying to see past one another now; they didn’t quite know he was what they were supposed to be looking at. The center of the ring had dissolved by this time, but Clay could see the two cops moving in the area right where it had been. He didn’t see those rubber sticks he’d been hearing about yet, but he still didn’t feel like he wanted to be spending much time with them. But for the moment he held his ground. Nowhere to run to anyway, and if he got lucky nobody would point him out. The cops were saying some kind of stuff, asking questions or giving orders, he couldn’t be sure. When the people around him began to move off, Clay turned and started to drift along with them. Right away he felt eyes drilling into the back of his head, but he wasn’t going to turn back to see if it was his imagination or not. Once he’d made it a few yards into the regular foot traffic, the feeling passed over and he thought he was cool, but it was right at that moment that something tripped him. His stomach seized up on him as he whirled around, but it was nothing but that same fat kid again: he’d got his foot hung up in the dog leash.

“Little bastard,” Clay snapped at him, kicking free, and remembered he probably wouldn’t know what that meant. He threw a slap toward the kid’s head, but somehow he misjudged the distance, and by the time it got there the boy was long gone out of range.

Martin had always liked to take his vacations on the beach, even though none of the conventional beach amusements attracted him all that much. He was not a great swimmer and had no interest in the other main water sports. As he liked to tell people, he was naturally tan and didn’t have to go fry on a field of hot sand to achieve it. If fishing was proposed to him, Martin’s line was: “Life is boring, fishing is worse.” What he did like was walking on the shore or near it, and sitting somewhere he could look at the water. Whenever Nadine had one of her sunburns he fell back hard on the second pastime.

It was a really bad one this time around and it didn’t look like it would get much better before day three. On day two she didn’t wake up until midmorning, when Mindy had already gone to the beach, which was good luck for her, or so Martin thought. He gave her a fresh coat of cortisone cream, fed her her pills and brought her a tall glass of orange juice when she kept on saying she didn’t want to eat. A little later he left her lightly dozing and went out to see what was new on the balcony. The glass water pitcher still stood on the white table where he’d forgotten it the night before, and it seemed extraordinarily noticeable to Martin somehow, though at first he couldn’t have told why. The water had caught no particular ray but it was nonetheless so full of the sun that it glowed inwardly, swollen with light. He went into the kitchen and brought back a glass and poured it brim-full of the water. When he had sipped from it and set it back down, it became at once another such jewel, a crystal absorbed in a quiet inner radiance.

On the other side of the highway there was still dense fog and where the mountains had been was now nothing but cloud. The fog smoked and moiled and formed itself into phantasmagoric shapes as it peeled away layer by slow layer and burned off into the upper air. Behind it, within it, the mountains took on line, then form, playing across a scale of color from the dimmest blue to a patchy gray and green. At last the fog had been all sucked away into a sky that was now an uncompromised ultramarine; in the small corner which Martin could see past the pine, the ocean had begun to reflect it. Down in the town, some reflecting surface had caught the sun and flung it back with nearly a laser’s concentration. Along the skyline ridges of the mountains, the conifers stuck up like little hairs. On the table before him, the pitcher and glass shone forth a brilliant diamond light.

When he finally got up he felt he was starving and he went into the kitchen to cook some spaghetti. Mindy would be staying out for lunch or skipping it, probably—well, never mind. He carried a bowl into Nadine and found her sitting up crosslegged on the bed, flipping desultorily through a copy of
Palm Beach.
Trying to find a good part, she said. They ate together without saying much, and when they were done Martin greased her back again and went into the kitchen to clean up. Back on the balcony, the light had tilted, becoming a little less bright, more blue. He sat in a deck chair with a magazine opened across his knees, but his jet lag was still dragging at him and in a few minutes he dropped into an echoing sleep.