The Last Match (7 page)

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 grim 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.

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.

The bad hours were when she went out on the town with one of her quick-turnover boyfriends. I’d have to wait around maybe five or six hours outside some casino with no cigarettes, no
aperitif
money, no coffee money and no nonsense about knocking off and coming back later, James. I did the full stretch every time, listening to the fun and games going on inside the casino, wishing for a smoke and meditating on the strengthening effects of adversity. Sometimes I could bum a
mégot
or a cup
of
jus de chaussettes
from one of the other galley-slaves waiting for his boss, but not too often. French chauffeurs, like other people, are not inclined to lay out for coffee and cigarettes regularly to a guy who doesn’t lay out once in a while in his turn.

I spent many a bare and empty evening that way while she lived the gay, carefree life of the glamorous Riviera with some of the most obvious fortune-hunting phonies you could find even in that part of the world. They were real prize packages, most of the guys who took her out. I learned a few tricks of the trade just by observing where they went wrong with Reggie. Not that any of them was ever right with Reggie, but they kept getting wronger and wronger the longer they worked at it. All of them were so convinced of their own irresistibility to females that her impervious-ness to their magnetic charms and overwhelming sex appeal drove them ape. Sooner or later they would make the mistake of a heavy pass, often enough in the car.

Those were my only moments of enjoyment. I’d hear Reggie’s fine right hand whistle into action, the crack of her fist on the guy’s chin, his grunt of surprise and pain. Then I would say respectfully, over my shoulder, “Does madame wish me to hurl the crumb-bum into the street?” She’d say, as cool as ever, “I’ll let you know if I need assistance,” and that would usually be the end of it. They rarely invited a second pop on the button. I knew why, too.

I had to move in only twice. Both times the guys had had too much to drink. One was a Belgian, easy to handle; a nothing. I pulled him out of the car, kicked his ass and told him to piss off while he was able to. The other was Italian and a gutter-fighter. He’d been around. When I pulled him out of the car he let me do all the work without argument until he got his feet on the ground, then belted me on the back of the neck with his locked hands and brought his knee up as my face went down to meet it. His knee got me smack on the chin. It was my own fault for thinking he was going to be a soft touch, like the Belgian. The knee in the chin stiffened me, but at that it was a lot better than a knee in the nose. He’d have flattened it like a squashed tomato.

I woke up on the ground with my head in Reggie’s lap and a
flic
shining a flashlight on us. He thought I was drunk and had made a pass at Reggie myself. Her dress was torn at the shoulder. We got him straightened out after a while. Reggie said she didn’t want to bring charges, and declined to give the guy’s name. The
flic
shrugged, helped me up, found my uniform cap, asked if I was in shape to drive, shooed away a small crowd that had gathered in the street and went his way. Reggie and I went ours.

My head ached like hell, and I felt cheap. The guy had handled me too easily. Reggie may have sensed something of my feeling, because after I’d been driving for a while she said, “I’m sorry he hurt you, Curly.”

That made me feel a whole lot no better. I went on driving. A while later she said, “Thank you for trying to help,” and a moment after that, “But I did say I’d ask for help if I needed it, and I didn’t ask. I can take care of myself.”

“What were you going to do, let the clown strip you naked before you were ready to yell?” She, the headache and the cheap feeling all combined to make me mad.

“Don’t be impertinent!”

“I’m
impertinent for taking a knee in the face from a guy who’s trying to rape you? Madame, if I may say so without disrespect, you are without doubt—”

“I don’t want to hear your view about my actions! Please attend to your driving.”

I thought she sounded a good bit more independent and sure of herself than she really was. Back there on the ground, when I had woken up with my head in her lap and there’s light shining on us, her face had been white and scared. She had looked lost, abandoned, bereft; I don’t know how to say it exactly. It was one time I saw her with her defenses down. Just a quick glimpse into the dungeon before the gates closed again.