CHASING LIFE (18 page)

A few beeps and two more attempt
s: ‘Insufficient Funds’ popped up on each occasion. He was getting seriously concerned and took a nervous puff of his cigarette before putting it out. By now it was 11:30 in the evening, but he knew of an Internet café still open—the hostel where he originally got his map of Paris. He could check his finances there. He knew that he had enough money in his account. After selling his mortgaged house and paying medical expenses for Julia’s treatments, he was left with $20,000. It wasn’t much and he was lucky to even have that. His life savings amounted to twenty grand but it was money they had both saved together. ‘Shit. Now what?’ he murmured.

Staring blankly at the uncompromisi
ng machine wouldn’t solve anything. Choosing between the Internet café or seeing Vincant at the Jazz Inn posed a dilemma. An apology to Vincant was certainly in order. Dave had to find out how much of a fool he’d made of himself the night before. Vincant knew nothing about this guy from Australia, he’d looked after him and he ended up embarrassing him in front of his friends. The least that he could do, he felt, was to apologise for throwing up on Vincant’s suit and offer to pay the dry-cleaning bill. Jazz Inn first, he decided in the end. A quick word with Vincant, then check finances.

He rubbed his hands and blew on them to warm his stiff cold fingers
. They felt like icicles. The Jazz Inn’s lights were visible from a distance, like a beacon for stray souls. Apprehension and embarrassment accompanied him as he walked through the doors, practising his best sincere smile on the way. It was a quiet night in the establishment. A crowd hadn’t gathered yet, save for a few tourists clustered in small groups. A DJ was playing familiar jazz tunes and busboys scrubbed tables to pass the time.

Dave headed directly for the bar where a new guy was serving, someone he hadn’t met before.

‘
Excusez-moi
,’ he said. ‘Is Vincant here?’

‘Vincant? No,’ the man answered curtly.

‘Where is he?’

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘I just want to speak to Vincant. I’m a friend of his.’ Dave already didn’t like this new character.

‘I don’t know where he is. He is not here.’

‘Well, can someone else tell me please? Where’s the guy who usually works behind the bar, the skinny blond guy with a goatee? Bennie.’

‘Bernard? He doesn’t work here anymore.’

‘What do you mean?’ Dave queried. ‘He’s been here every time I’ve come.’

‘He quit yesterday. He’s gone,’ the new barman answered.

‘Look, I really need to speak to Vincant. He’s the owner; he knows me.’ Dave was getting frustrated. He felt like punching this guy in the mouth. He was still groggy and in no mood for attitude.

‘Vincant is not the owner
.’

‘
What? Yes, he is. When I was here last night, he came out of his office.’ He was irritated. He pointed behind the barman and shouted, ‘We went out through the back door together.’

The barman scoffed and spoke in
an irritated tone, ‘Vincant used to be the owner, but not anymore. He went broke months ago and lost the business. The office is upstairs. Back there are the toilets and the rear-exit door.’ He continued wiping the counter and moved away as he went.

Finally, it all sunk in and a dreaded feeling overtook
Dave. The massive hangover, the memory lapse, Insufficient Funds, and now, Vincent nowhere to be seen or heard from. He was being scammed.

Dave followed the barman
and pleaded, ‘I need to find out where he is. Please, someone here must know where he is. You have to help me.’

‘I don’t know, now go away
.’ The barman yelled over him in French to other staff and laughed.

Dave was shaking and ran his hands th
rough his hair, gripping it as if he would rip it out of his skull. ‘This man has taken my money. I think he drugged me . . . ’ The barman wasn’t listening. He’d turned his back and started wiping the shelves.

‘Please
, listen to me,’ he reached over the bench and placed a hand on the barman’s shoulder. The barman turned around and yelled profanities at him
‘Va te faire foutre, trouduc.
Fuck off, you English arsehole!’

Dave
threw himself over the bar in desperation and grabbed the man by the collar. ‘Why the hell was he here last night? Where is he?’ he screamed, spitting with anger. The barman tried to shake him off and waved his hand at the security.

‘
Sometimes Vincant comes to see Bernard. They were friends, but I think they left Paris. I don’t know where he is,’ the man yelped and struggled to pull himself away. Dave shoved him into the shelves full of drinks and walked off just as a bouncer rushed toward him.

‘
Hey, get out,’ the bouncer ordered and reaching for him, but Dave knocked his hand away.

‘Don’t touch me!
’ he screamed and burst through the doors and outside on the footpath. Suddenly, he bolted and ran like a madman.

Chapter 21

The h
ostel’s café on rue Mouffetard closed at midnight, but the receptionist let him use a PC for access to the Internet. It was late. Around the room, young backpackers were plugged into Skype or updating their Facebook profiles. One PC was still available. Dave was hot and sweaty from the long run and peeled off his jacket in a hurry before logging on. Web banking was the only thing on his mind; he needed to check his bank details and balance. The web pages came up excruciatingly slowly as he went through the process of entering his security number and password.

Once he was in, his fears were realised. Two accounts were displayed: one was his savings and
the other his credit-card account. One had a balance of zero; the other was $5,000 overdrawn—Dave’s limit. In a panic, thinking it might be an error, he clicked on the mouse to refresh the page. The same result came back. A twist in his gut spread throughout his body and gave him the shakes. He resisted an overwhelming urge to go to the bathroom.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ h
e muttered. He was frantic and had no idea what to do. He just kept clicking on his accounts in case there was some mistake. The result was the same over and over: $20,000 gone, and he owed $5,000 on his credit card. It was a traveller’s worst nightmare. Dave was broke in a foreign country and had no one to turn to.

Surely,
he could trace the disappearance of $20,000. The withdrawal logs for his savings account held the answer. They showed two payments, each for $10,000, to separate accounts. Both were listed as foreign: one indicated the recipient as Gerard Pompei, the other as Pompei Gerard.

‘
Whose are these?’ he mumbled as he held his grumbling gut.

The credit-card transaction was equally puzzling. A payment had been made to a
Liechtenstein Travel Agency for two airline tickets to Buenos Aires.

‘
Where the hell is Liechtenstein?’ Unable to hold it any longer, he rushed to the bathroom. It was disgusting in there, but he was in a rush and didn’t care. He tore strips of paper, lined the seat quickly and dropped his pants, letting loose of what his body desperately wanted to expel. Cold sweat made him shake all over.

Thinking he was done, he tried to pull his pants up
—but he had to sit back down immediately. The more his mind tried to comprehend the situation, the more stress his body went under. He must have flushed five times—nothing came out but still he had the urge to go. Finally, he came out, exhausted and pale-faced. He sat back down at the computer. The hope of a different result faded when the same account balances showed up. How did someone manage to steal $25,000 from his accounts? He struggled to understand it all. How was it possible? His web-banking details were compromised, but he hadn’t recorded his PIN anywhere. It wasn’t possible! What had happened recently? He tried to think. The last time he had checked his accounts on the web was the day before he met Vincant.

‘
Vincant!’ He was the only connection, but how could he have done it? The time between Dave’s throwing up on Vincant’s suit and his being taken home was the key. He couldn’t account for what had happened during that period of nearly four hours. The other thing was the mystery of how he had gotten so wasted that evening. He’d drunk more in Hong Kong without suffering the same debilitation, and at the party outside Paris he’d been careful. He was even drinking a bottle of water to make sure he’d be all right. He wasn’t in a state to lose his memory anyway. Anastasia was the other link, she must be. Anastasia had given him a Viagra pill. It must have had more than manhood-enhancing abilities. Vincant and the Bennie the bartender were the ones who took him home and Anastasia was involved. He was convinced now.

He was
devoid of money in a foreign country, and he had no one to turn to. What was he to do first? Call the police, the Australian embassy, the bank, his friends? What? What was the most effective course of action? Arsehole, how could you let this happen? He cursed himself and checked his wallet. After buying dinner and cigarettes, he now had twelve euros left. The thieves had left him with next to nothing.

He could just see
the three of them laughing about it, ‘Leave the poor fucker at least something.’ In French, it would have sounded more elegant.

‘Fuck you.
A very funny joke, you bastards,’ he spoke aloud through gritted teeth. ‘That arsehole, Vincant.’ His fists clenched, his body shook with rage, and his teeth ground like crazy; he was breathing heavily and coming very near to punching the screen in front of him.

‘
Fuck!’ he finally let it out loud. The receptionist popped her head up from behind her computer screen like an alarmed meerkat. Dave put his head down, wishing a hole in the ground would open up and swallow him whole.

‘
You dumb-arse. How could you let this happen? How?’ He shook his head and went back to his previous state of shivering. His dream of opening an accounting business was whisked away. The money he and Julia had saved together! It wasn’t much but it was a piece of her he still had with him. It was supposed to be invested together. And now, some strangers had whisked that away from him. Stolen it and destroyed it.

How did they do it
? Convince him to access his bank account? Not likely, he thought. Whatever was in that drug must have placed him under their control. They had even taken him home, put his pyjamas on and tucked him into bed. At least he still had his wallet and phone. Dave found the emergency number for his bank in Australia and dialled. Successive beeps indicated that his phone’s battery was in need of recharging.

A woman
on the other end answered, and it was an immediate relief for Dave to talk to another Australian. When he explained his desperate situation, she promised to help him as much as she could. She said that his credit card would have to be cancelled immediately and that the bank’s fraud department would need to investigate. There was a chance that some, if not all, of his money could be recovered because of the transfer delay from one country to another. They would get in contact with the receiving bank, she told him. If the transaction were caught in time, they could freeze the account and stop the release of funds. This was good news, but the bad news was that Dave would have no money in the meantime.

‘
Do you have traveller’s insurance?’ the bank representative asked. ‘In a worst-case scenario you’d be able to claim it back.’

‘Yes, but only to Hong Kong. I hadn’t planned on coming to Paris,’ Dave replied.

‘Oh, that’s unfortunate. Let me check on what type of credit card you have,’ she said. He waited anxiously and prayed that his phone wouldn’t die on him. ‘You’re in luck. Your credit card gives you automatic travel insurance coverage.’

‘Great!’ Dave responded. ‘I needed some positive news.’

              ‘You’ll have to file a police report, however, in order to submit a claim.’

‘Okay, I will,’ he said.

‘We’ll call you back. Is this the best contact number?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right, Dave. We’ll do our best to help you.’

The phone beeped one last time before the line went dead. ‘Shit,’ he murmured. Before logging off
, he printed his bank-account statements, paid two euros for the Internet access and rushed out. He now was down to ten euros.

Dave
walked back to his apartment, thinking about what had happened Vincant had been dodgy from the start, and Dave had fallen in the trap. Sam had even cautioned him about the man. Was he set up the moment he met him? He remembered the laptop in the car. Vincant must have used it to get to his bank details.

He grabbed the TV remote and pressed hard on the buttons, flicking through channels
, but that just frustrated him more, and he threw it against the wall. The batteries fell out of the case, and he got up and put them back in carefully, examining the device for any damage.

‘
Treacherous bastard,’ Dave muttered to himself. ‘Rip off the Aussie! He’s cashed up and clueless. We’ll split the difference and holiday in Argentina.’ He constructed a movie in his mind about the three conspirators. Vincant would rely on Anastasia, if that was her real name, to drug the victim, and Bennie the bartender was partners with Vincant from way back. They all would disappear when they had the house money.

Where the hell would a tourist look for someone like them? As he thought of it,
he realised the same thing could have happened any other time, on account of how trusting he was. He felt betrayed, lonely and that looming depression of his was knocking at the door. Who can I trust? he asked himself.

Eventually he pulled himself out of his funk.
There was work to do, and he must keep his mind occupied, he concluded. Dave got up and plugged his mobile at the power outlet. If he didn’t get active right away, he would sink into one of his depressive states for days. What would Julia do in a situation like this? If she’d been there, it never would have happened. She was a good judge of character and would have picked up on Vincant straight away.

Calling his parents would only make them worry. He decided to turn to Mike and Amy instead. When the mobile phone switched on, a signal returned. It was two in the morning in Paris
, so close to midday back in Melbourne. Dave dialled Mike first, but his call went straight to voicemail. He left Mike a short message explaining what had happened and hung up. He tried Amy next.

‘Hello, Amy speaking
,’ her voice was pleasant and professional.

‘It’s Dave,’ he quavered with a lump in his throat.

              ‘Hey, how are you? Is everything okay?’ Even from the other side of the world Amy could detect his mood.

             
‘Not really. I’ve run into a problem.’

             
‘What? What’s happened?’ she spoke with that alertness again.

Words just wouldn’t c
ome out of his mouth. Get it together man, he told himself.

‘
Dave! What’s wrong? Are you hurt?’ Amy repeated.

             
‘No, I’m okay,’ he finally replied.

             
‘Then what’s going on? You’re scaring me, Dave.’

             
‘I haven’t been hurt. I was robbed. I just checked my bank account and all my money is gone.’

             
‘What? How did that happen?’

             
‘I was at a party. I don’t know exactly what happened. I must have blacked out. Anyway, when I woke up today in my apartment, I couldn’t remember how I had gotten back. I tried to take money out, and the ATM said I had insufficient funds. When I checked my account over the Internet, I found that twenty grand had been transferred out. My credit card is overdrawn by five grand too.’

             
‘Jesus, Dave. Was it someone you met?’

             
‘This guy and a girl. I must have given them my bank details somehow.’

             
‘But why can’t you remember anything?’ Amy sounded more stressed than he was.

             
‘I think I was drugged. Actually, I
know
I was drugged. I threw up at one point and the next thing I know I’m waking up in my apartment in my pyjamas with a hangover bad enough to kill a horse.’

             
‘Have you called the police? Have you told your parents? What are you going to do?’

             
‘It’s okay, Amy. I’ll sort it out. Please don’t tell my parents. They don’t need to know. What I do need is some money to keep me going and pay for my stay here in the apartment. I’d appreciate it if you could help me out.’

             
‘Of course. I’ll transfer it to your account,’ Amy replied without hesitation.

             
‘No, not to my account, not until I hear back from the bank. Send it through Western Union, and I’ll pick it up here.’

             
‘What about ID? How will you withdraw it?’

             
‘I’ve still got my passport. It wasn’t taken.’

             
‘Oh, thank God for that!’ He could hear her exhale deeply. ‘How much do you want?’

             
‘Just send me $1,000 or so if you can, Amy. I’ll understand if it’s too much.’ He felt rotten for having to ask her, but he was desperate and she was the only person he could trust without any reservations.

             
‘Don’t be stupid. I know you’ll pay me back. I’ll do it right away.’

             
‘Thanks Amy.’

             
‘Why don’t you come back? Sort this out and come home, Dave.’

             
‘I will, I will,’ he said in a calming tone, ‘but not just yet. I’ve still got more trouble to get myself into.’

             
‘You’re a dick.’ Amy lightened up. ‘Look after yourself. I’ll call you back as soon as I put the money through.’

             
‘Thanks, darling.’