The Last Match (15 page)

I never heard what happened to Elmer when he tried to spend his collection of wallpaper. I hope Michelle didn’t get into trouble with him. I had put an envelope of eating money in the package that held the new bikini I had brought her with the dress, so she wouldn’t go hungry on my account. Although if she hung around with Elmer long, she’d end up wearing bracelets. I don’t mean diamond bracelets.

The
teuf-teuf
behaved reasonably well all the way home. I felt so good, about Boda and the other things, that I hardly winced at the stout bill the Arab mechanic handed me for the repair job. Not then I didn’t wince, at least. Not until the hot-iron merchant in Tangier stuck me with the cost of another repair job. The Arab had put in what was needed in the way of “new,” i.e. second-hand, valve stems, plugs and things; patched up the old cylinder-head so it would hold together as far as Tangier, spray-painted everything to make it look shiny and clean and sold me the package as new goods imported from Rabat. It was only a little con, of course. Nothing like the nearly ten thousand dollars I brought home, but still a good clean professional job. It goes to show. If you let yourself do business in the other guy’s store you’re going to end up with his merchandise at his price on his own terms. I sure wouldn’t want to let good ole Elmer get me down on the farm at any time in the foreseeable future.

The next day I was back pounding away at the mill, grinding out further immortal prose on the financial attractions of Tangier for believers. I didn’t need the money anymore, what with the loot I had safely tucked away under the floorboards of the apartment. But the passport had still to come through and the work kept me from worrying too much about Boda.

The time was fast approaching when I would be moving along again, and I couldn’t take her with me. I don’t mean I didn’t want to, necessarily. I couldn’t. She had no papers, she had no wish for papers, she didn’t know what had happened to the papers with which she had left Denmark, if any. She couldn’t remember. Dragging her
avec
would be like dragging a ball and chain, wholly aside from the constant need to beat wolves off her with a club. And I couldn’t leave her alone and unsheltered in Tangier, any more than Jim had been able to. I had to figure something, but I wasn’t quite ready to look around for my successor. So I typed. Until one afternoon there was a knock on the door.

She was up on the roof, and she knew she was never to come down without her robe on. No immediate problem there. I opened the door.

A respectable looking French bank-clerk type was standing there. He wore an incongruously sporty cloth cap that had been set squarely on his head with a spirit level. It made quite a contrast with the rest of his get-up, strictly from middle-class Clerksville.

“Good afternoon, monsieur,” he said politely. “Is this your name?”

He held out some kind of an official-looking document so I could read the name on it. It was mine.

“It might be,” I said. “Why?”

“I have a warrant for your arrest. Interpol.”

He put the paper carefully away in his pocket and took out a wallet with an identification card in it; picture, thumbprint and the rest. It looked genuine. So did he.

I said, “Well, come in, come in. I guess we ought to talk, huh?”

“Thank you. I think we should.” He took off his cap before coming in. If I’d had a doormat I think he would have wiped his shoes, too. Carefully. He was that kind.

We talked. That is, he talked. I listened, thinking hard and fast.

By sheer accident and the chance of having spent some time in escrow with the two
motards
who had on occasion been assigned to Interpol business and had nothing better to do than talk about it, I knew quite a bit about Interpol. More formally, it’s
L’Organization Internationale de Police Criminelle.
The O.I.P.C., which has its headquarters in France and to which most civilized and many semi-civilized nations belong not including Russia and her friends, is not a police force in the sense that the F.B.I, is a police force, for example. It has no body of law-enforcement officers, whatever nonsense you may have heard or read about secret Interpol agents going around nobbling international crooks. The organization’s main function is to receive, correlate and disseminate information about crooks on behalf of its constituent members. It also maintains, in France, a central bureau of liaison through which the police of any contributory country can make quick contact with the police of another contributory country to ask for a pickup-and-hold; on Luigi Giovanelli, say, after Luigi has banged a box in Turino and lammed out for points north, possibly Switzerland or Austria. But any arrests made because of Interpol’s intervention in a case are made by the police having proper jurisdiction on the national soil where the arrest is made, none other. An Interpol agent can no more make a pinch in Tangier, or anywhere else, than the Red Cross can. Furthermore, the warrant, which looked legal as far as it went, was signed by a French judge, and France had about as much jurisdiction over me in Tangier as it would have had in Tokyo. I couldn’t even be extradited for a little thing like cigarette smuggling even if I had been guilty of that, and I’d never been adjudged guilty. In short, the guy was either a complete phony or running a bluff.

I thought it was a bluff. His papers looked real, he looked real. His neat bank-clerk’s manner was right for a guy who probably spent most of his working day wearing sleeve-protectors while sorting mug-shots into alphabetical order in steel filing cabinets. That meant, probably, Reggie’s fastidious British fingers manipulating the shells and pea. When I asked him for a closer look at the warrant, which he gave me readily,

I was certain of it. I wasn’t wanted for the de Lille swindle, just the theft of personal property from the Hon. Regina Forbes-Jones. That lousy graveyard suit, believe it or not. I hadn’t even worn it since leaving France.

All these thoughts went through my head a lot faster than I’ve been able to set them down. The guy stood there holding his silly cap, politely and patiently waiting for me to come along quietly. I didn’t know what to do with him. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him to
foutre le camp.
He was too much of a gentleman for that kind of language. While I was hesitating, trying to decide how best to tell him the disappointing truth, a door opened and closed behind us.

His cap dropped from his fingers, his eyes froze and glazed, his mouth fell open, he stopped breathing as he went into instantaneous shock. Boda had come down from the roof. Thanks be to Allah I always insisted on the robe, even though it wasn’t exactly what you would call Boda-concealing. Naked, she’d have turned him to stone.

I got a chair under him before his knees buckled. He was beginning to breathe again, shallowly.

“Boda, dear,” I said, “this is Mr.—what did you say your name was, sir?”

“What?” He didn’t look at me. He couldn’t have seen me if he had. He was temporarily blinded.

‘Your name. What’s your name?”

“My name? Oh, yes. My name. Of course. My name. Uh, Uh? My name, yes.”

He didn’t know. I said, “Mr. Uh Uh, meet Boda. Boda, sweetheart, go put on some water for tea. Then put on some clothes, lots of clothes. Then stay the hell out of here until I call you.”

“Yes, Carly.” She gave Mr. Uh Uh one of her slow beautiful smiles and went away.

When she had withdrawn from his line of vision he began slowly to come around, although he looked dazed and drawn for some time afterward. He wouldn’t ever have seen anything approximating Boda among his files of mugshots. While he was still semi-conscious I pumped him for the answers to a few vital questions. Not about who had put him up to the bluff, I knew who that was and that she would have paid plenty to buy him. What I wanted to find out were things about himself; his private life, family connections, habits, inclinations and so on. I’m sure he never remembered the questions afterward, or his replies to them.

When I had learned what I wanted to know I went to the kitchen and made tea, bringing it back myself. I was sure if Boda came close enough to him to offer a tea-tray he’d go into shock again. I wanted him reasonably conscious and able to think, a little at least. It’s hard, impossible to con a mark while he’s unconscious.

The details of what I had in mind aren’t important, if they aren’t already so obvious as to need no explanation. He never had a chance. Every time he’d show signs of returning rationality I’d expose him to Boda for the necessary length of time to put him under again without putting him out. I thought I’d overdone it the day I let him accompany us to the beach and she, as usual, dropped her robe as soon as we came down off the esplanade. He barely survived the Boda-ray radiations.

I never let him know I had a new passport coming up. I told him I didn’t have any papers at all, and wasn’t it going to be pretty hard for him to take me back to France without documentation of some kind? Still dazed by Boda in the honey-colored flesh, he let drop that he had my old passport, the one Reggie had pinched. We could leave any time.

It confirmed what I was pretty sure of anyway, that the hand of Nemesis was reaching again. Her instrument of retribution, however, was as malleable as warm goose-grease. I begged him not to say the ugly words. I couldn’t bear to face the hideous reality of the moment when I would have to go off to jail leaving poor Boda alone and helpless in a sink of iniquity like Tangier. I had Mr. Uh Uh figured as a regular churchgoer.

He was. When I confessed further that Boda and I weren’t married, he was horrified, shocked, aghast. Particularly after I had pointed out that when I was gone she wouldn’t have even the dubious protection of a marriage certificate between her and the wolves.

“What?” he said. “You mean that poor child has nowhere to turn? No family, no friends to shelter her, no guardian soul—”

“—no money, and no papers,” I finished. “Only me. Nobody in the world else.” I sighed unhappily. “I just can’t bear to think what’s going to happen to her when I’m gone. Poor kid.”

“But—but—but—but—”

“Exactly, sir.” He sounded just like a toy motorboat. But there was nothing at all phony about his distress and concern. Mr. Uh Uh was a kind man, as well as badly smitten Boda-wise.

After that I had no problems. He was so horrified by the thought that his action in taking me back to France would expose Boda to several fates worse than death that he was about ready to call the whole thing off and go home. I didn’t want that to happen—yet. When my new passport came through at last I had a short private talk with Boda.

“Boda, dear,” I said. “I have to leave you. This is goodbye. Mr. Uh Uh will remain. He is a good, honest, decent man, unmarried and unburdened by family responsibilities. He doesn’t know it yet, but he will take care of you and love and cherish you for the rest of your life if you allow him to do so. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes, Carly. I wish you weren’t going away, though.”

“So do I. I have no choice. After I have left, Mr. Uh Uh will ask you to go back to France with him. You are to agree. If he asks you to be his
petite amie,
you are to agree to that. I don’t think he will. Most probably he will ask you to marry him. You are to agree to that, too. You are to agree to everything he asks you to do, because what he asks you to do will be for your own good and happiness and, I suspect, his as well. Is this all quite clear?”

“Yes, Carly.” She did me the signal honor of blinking back the tears that were in her glorious blue eyes. It was more than she had done for Jim or—I hoped—the German on Ibiza. “When are you leaving?”

“Soon. I can’t tell you the exact moment. First I have to get from here to Cairo, where I am going. Cairo, in Egypt. Say it after me.”

“Cairo, in Egypt.”

“Good. When I am gone, not before, I want you to answer any questions Mr. Uh Uh asks you, honestly and to the best of your recollection. That’s all. Now kiss me goodbye, because I may not have time to say goodbye when I take off.”

“Yes, Carly. But I wish—”

I shut her up in the most effective way I knew. The kiss lasted from about half an hour after Kadoosh’s departure until we heard her come in the next morning and begin uncurtaining herself.

The rest of it was cut and dried. I had only to gather up what was under the floorboards, fold the bills into a money-belt I strapped on next to my skin, stick my passport into the coat of my AEC suit and take off for Rabat and points west via the World’s Most Experienced Airline. Mr. Uh Uh would know that Boda was too simple and too fine a girl to lie about my going to Cairo. It should divert him long enough for me to confuse my trail in the other direction. I didn’t think he would come after me, but if he did I’d just as soon Interpol looked for me in Egypt instead of some place else. I left the mourner’s outfit behind so he would have something to show Reggie for the money he would have cost her.

The next few months were uneventful. Duller than ditchwater, to tell the truth. I went back to the U.S., held a job as a bank-teller for a while and quit. Being caged up with all that cash belonging to other people gave me hives. I bought a car with part of the money in the money-belt, a real sporty convertible, but I didn’t have a girl to occupy either the front seat or the back seat with me, except now and then. After Boda, girls— ordinary girls—didn’t have quite what it takes. I don’t mean to suggest I was ever in love with Boda. Falling in love with Boda would be pretty much like falling in love with a beautiful woman in a moving picture. She just didn’t have the emotional depth to appreciate the fact that she was loved, or reciprocate love. I was fond of her, and I wished her well, but that was it. I thought she was probably doing very well with Mr. Uh Uh, as I had arranged it. She had just spoiled lesser girls for me, somehow.

I traveled around the country a lot, searching for something. I didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t easy money. The marks were so thick and eager at every crossroad they didn’t even offer a challenge. This was at a time when the franchise food chains were beginning to boom and spread out—Colonel Sanders Finger-lickin’ Fried Chicken, Aunt Jemima Pancakes, those things—and every small-town capitalist in America wanted a slice of the pie in his community. A franchise could return a whole lot of steady money on a relatively small investment. I had a few sets of fake credentials printed up saying I represented several of the most successful chains, and I worked the towns with populations of fifteen to twenty thousand or thereabouts. The chains themselves weren’t trying to promote franchises in towns of under twenty-five thousand. They thought that was the minimum necessary for a successful operation. Maybe it was, for them.
I
sold franchises to johns like the village idiot, president and board chairman of the local bank he was, a real shrewd type, who offered me a bribe of a thousand dollars within half an hour after seeing my phony papers. Just to guarantee that he would get preference over the potential competition.