The Last Match (26 page)

There were even fringe benefits to the fringe benefits. I had to move slowly and cautiously with the Petruzzis—slowly with him, cautiously with her— because I could not show interest in his property, or even indicate that I knew it existed. He knew that I was interested in buying land, and had the money behind me for large-scale dealing. It was as far as I could go on openers. The next play had to come from his side of the table.

Evening after evening I waited for it in one casino or another while he bucked the
tout va
bank, the cynosure of all eyes. I mean I was the cynosure of all eyes, not Petruzzi. I wore the faultlessly tailored evening clothes that had set Reggie back at least a hundred quid, and always had a generous pocketful of hundred-thousand
jetons
(André‘s, naturally) to toss negligently into a game whenever I felt like it. Always I got more than my share of bowing and scraping from the minions. Inevitably I caught the eyes of other people like myself, crooks and swindlers, every one, eager to take me into camp and pluck my gorgeous feathers.

Many of the hustlers were female. One in particular was markedly so. Her name, let’s say the name she used with me, was Odile Lumaye. Madame Odile Lumaye. Husband, dead; a war casualty. Age, indefinite, but several years more than my own, probably in the early thirties. Height, about five-four or five-five, along in there. Weight, perfect, and well balanced. Color of hair, a kind a light pink, very attractive. Color of eyes, greenish. Color of lipstick, approximately the same as her hair, and tasty. Perfume, Ma Griffe, I think, although I’m not an expert. Sex, oh, yes, indeed.

In my whole life I never knew a woman who radiated sex as Odile did. Not even Boda. Boda’s sex was simple, uncomplicated, a natural aura surrounding her. Odile’s sex was polarized, or maybe laserized; focused, concentrated and projected in a beam that could burn the suspender buttons off a man’s pants if she chose to turn it that way. When she smiled her thanks at a waiter or
chasseur
for bringing her something, he would bump into tables going back to wherever it was he came from. She made men, including me, dizzy with her impact. She was as crooked as a bolt of lightning, but with four times the voltage.

She picked me up at a baccarat table. I don’t even remember exactly how it was done. That’s how dizzying she was. I do remember that before I looked up from the play to fall drowning into the big green eyes, the Greek who was dealing for the Greek syndicate fumbled a card in taking it out of the shoe. Any time a dealer for the Greek syndicate fumbles a card you can bet he’s just had a coronary occlusion or worse. This one had been hit by Odile’s lightning. As I was immediately thereafter. My next conscious recollection is of buying her a drink at the bar. After that we were in bed in her hotel.

I don’t remember any prolonged intervals between steps A, B and C, but intervals must have existed. Shortly after stage C, I got a wire reading:
ARE
YOU
ALL
RIGHT
.
WHY
DON
’
T
YOU
ANSWER
MY
LETTERS
.
HAVE
TRIED
VAINLY
SEVERAL
TIMES
TO
REACH
YOU
BY
PHONE
.
PLEASE
CALL
WRITE
WIRE
ANYTHING
EVERYTHING
.
TERRIBLY
WORRIED
.
LOVE
YOU
ALWAYS
.
REGGIE
.

By then I was back in my own bed with plenty of time for sending wires, writing letters and the other things you do in bed, like convalescing. I cabled that I had been involved in a land deal, out of town for a while, now back, in good shape (ow!), letter follows.

Have you ever slept with a bolt of lightning? Sweet Odile knew tricks of her trade I’d never heard of, or even imagined. Where Boda had been as simple and unaffected and joyously wholehearted as a bunny rabbit about screwing for the sake of screwing, and Reggie was a lusty lady in love, Odile made a technique of it. It was part of her planning, I believe, so to drain a man’s vitality in bed that he would have no resistance to her in other departments, and could only cooperate as she wanted him to. She was much like The Boar in this respect, an extortionist, except she used sex where he used brutality. I had about fifteen hundred dollars worth of
Andr
é’
s jetons
in my clothes when we launched our first orgy, and if she’d been working a badger game I wouldn’t even have been sorrowful about losing them when the outraged husband broke in on us with a gun. Provided he didn’t break in too soon, of course. That’s how good she was. I mean bad.

She was after more than a lousy fifteen hundred. When she had reduced me to will-less pulp, she went into her pitch. We were still in bed. The only way I could have got out of it was by falling out.

“Mon coeur,”
she said. She had a pleasantly husky voice like a tiger’s purr. It went with the green cat’s-eyes. “Listen to me. Would you like to make a lot of
braise?
A great quantity
of
braise?”

“No,” I said. “I’d like to sleep. Good night.”

“Do not sleep yet. There is a fortune within our grasp, if you will but take it.”

“I haven’t the strength left to grasp five francs. Good night.”

“If you do not listen to me,
mon ange,”
she purred. “I shall do to you thus-and-so-and-thus-and-so and thus-and-so—”

I listened. She was perfectly capable of doing thusand-so to me for the rest of the night, and it would have killed me stone cold dead.

She wanted me to help her swindle André. She had in mind a gimmick that had been successfully worked years before in Monte Carlo. She knew I was André‘s fair-haired lad from observing the treatment I got from his hired help, although not why. She sensed, knew instinctively with that it-takes-one-to-know-one instinct, that I was a hustler like herself. She was also without doubt that she could buy me with her body and tricks. I listened to her pitch because I was too debilitated not to, also from professional curiosity.

Her gimmick was to counterfeit André‘s
jetons.
The big ones, nothing less than a hundred thousand francs. At the time, a hundred thousand francs were worth between two hundred and two hundred and fifty dollars, and the
jetons
were as good as cash in whatever casino had its name on them, either for play or for redemption at the
caissier’s
window. A couple of hundred of the fakes, as Odile pointed out unnecessarily in her wicked purr, would make a nice score for us to split between us. We didn’t have to stop at a couple hundred, either. With my
entree
and my favored position with André”—

“Eh alors,
what is it with you and the old goat,
mon chou?
What do you have on him, that he gives you the keys to his kingdom? If he likes pretty boys, you are no
tournedos.
Of that I have reason to be certain. Tell me the truth.”

A
tournedos
is a cut of filet mignon. But the word is also obscure argot for a male homosexual, passive posture, although not known in this usage to polite society, or even semi-polite society. Scrumptious sexy Odile had to have been around, to have learned about things like
tournedos.
Furthermore, a doll like that on the crook wouldn’t be allowed to freelance even if she wanted to. She was too valuable a property. She would have hard-case pals lurking somewhere in the woodwork, ready to pop out and take over when the time came for us to split the grab. I had a strong feeling that I was being set up for a fall, somehow.

I said,
“Mon
âme
,
André and I are good friends, no more. We used to roll barrels together. I know nothing about counterfeiting except that the penalties for it are rough. Get yourself another boy. Again, good night.”

“Mon amour,
wake up or else. All you have to do is help me pass the fakes. I will attend to everything else. Besides, it is not counterfeiting, only copying. Counterfeiting is the making of false money. André‘s
jetons
are not money.”

“Ma petite brioche,
is this all your idea, or have you been coached? You seem well informed.”

“Mes yeux,
it is my idea. I have given it thought and study. Now listen to me further.”

Somebody
had sure given it thought and study. The matrices for shaping the fakes were to be made by using genuine jetons as molds. Plastic of the same color and texture as the originals would then be poured into the matrices, and plaques of the size and shape of the originals would be obtained when the plastic had hardened. These would be carefully checked for dimension with a micrometer, since an experienced
caissier,
blindfolded, can run his fingertips up and down a stack of chips once and pick out phonies if they vary from the norm by as much as a couple of thousandths of an inch. (The picture of luscious Odile sweating over a hot plastic crucible, then checking the results with a micrometer, was fascinating in its incredibility.) The plaques would then be finished off for denomination and identity by hand. It was not intended that they be good enough for play on a table watched by three or four sharp-eyed
croupiers.
But if size, shape and texture were right, a busy
caissier
could be expected to accept a stack of them topped by one or two genuine
jetons,
count it visually and pay off without taking the stack apart before putting it in his rack.

“Until the fakes end up in a
croupier’s
box and are immediately discovered to be fakes,” I said. “Then what? The
caissier
will check every
jeton
from then on. And how many people cash in ten million franc stacks
of
jetons
without being remembered?”

“We will not cash ten million franc stacks,
mon soleil,”
Odile purred. “We will cash half-million franc stacks. Pah, it is a nothing to a
caissier,
half a million. Then, when he does begin to check the
jetons,
we move to another casino until he is no longer alert, and return to do it again. Who will suspect a good friend and favorite of the court of François André of such an activity?”

“François André,” I said. “Like a shot.” To stay with the swing of the conversation, I added,
“Ma violette.”

“Pah,
mon coquelicot.
You are a sheep. I thought you would be a lion.”

“Let me have a few hours rest and I will roar again,
ma pivoine.”

“You will reflect on it,
mon astre?
If you do not promise I shall do to you thus-and-so-and-thus-and-so—”

“I promise. For God’s sake, let me get some sleep.”

“Good night,
lumière
de ma vie.
Sleep well.”

I reflected on it just long enough to decide that the best way to handle Odile was to peach on her to André. I didn’t want to get her into any more trouble than was necessary, but the only way I could see to keep her from stepping into trouble up to her lovely
lo-lo’s
was to prevent her from taking the step. Her scheme had gaping flaws in it. She and her patsy, whomever she found to help her with the passing, were almost certain to be spotted sooner or later if they kept it up long enough to make the deal worth the effort. André had not operated his empire for the best part of half a century without knowing the ways of crooks, and what to do about them.

So I was surprised when, having heard me out in silence on the subject of Odile, he asked me what I thought should be done about her.

“I thought you would decide that, sir,” I said.

“I am capable of making the decision, young man,” he said dryly. “First I should like to hear your suggestions for handling the lady.”

“Well, she’s committed no crime against you, so far. Wouldn’t it be enough just to bar her from your gambling rooms? She can’t very well operate if she can’t get in.”

“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.