Hotel Pastis

by Peter Mayle

  “Okay,” Jojo said. “It’s time.”

  They made seven piles on the table. They packed the wide, deep pockets of their jerseys until they bulged and stuffed high-denomination bank notes down the front of their shorts, making their thighs look as though they had developed curious muscular growths. Fernand gave his hammer and the rest of his tools a final careful wipe before throwing them through the opening in the floor to splash into the drain below. The old clothes they had worn were taped over the charges fixed to the door, to be destroyed by the explosion.

  The table was now empty except for the pile of Polaroid photographs, and Fernand insisted on arranging what he called an exposition érotique, using the last of his tape to stick them on the far wall, with Ambrose Crouch in his wrinkled black socks as the centrepiece. It would be a shame, Fernand said, if these photographs were damaged, as they were obviously souvenirs of great sentimental value. He stood back to admire the effect. “Au revoir, mes belles.”

  Jojo looked round the room and slipped the string with the key over his head. “Caps on. Don’t forget the sunglasses.” His watch said 11:25. Near enough.

  They squeezed together in the corner, feeling the shiver of tension run through them like a cold breeze.

  “Ten seconds,” said Fernand. “Don’t get lost on the way home.”

  The gypsy boys, bent over the padlock, heard three muffled explosions so close together they almost blended into one, looked up in shock as the door sagged open, and were too busy running for their lives to find anything curious in the sight of a group of men in shorts and sunglasses and latex gloves emerging from the back door of a bank.

  Jojo jammed the key into the padlock, wrenched it open, ripped the first bike out as the chain fell away. “Allez, allez, allez!” They ran, pushing the bikes through the cars: the screech of metal as a pedal scraped a door; a curse of pain as the end of a saddle, mounted in panic, caught one of them in the testicles; the frenzied fumble of feet into toe clips—and then they were out in the road, going like sprinters through the central gap that separated two lines of jammed and motionless cars.

  It had taken no longer than forty-five seconds, barely enough time for the desk gendarme to look up from his copy of L’Equipe and make the connection between the noise of the alarm and the flashing red light of the bank’s security system.

  He and his partner sat in the Renault, klaxon blaring, tightly wedged among cars that had no room to get out of the way. Merde. He jumped out and started running along the crowded pavement towards the Caisse d’Epargne building, clutching his képi to his head, his holster thudding against his hip. Why had he volunteered for the Sunday shift? Merde again.

  The cyclists heard the wail of the klaxon in the distance, bent their heads lower over the handlebars, pushed their legs to pump faster, felt their hearts going like machine guns, seven men in cocoons of fear and physical exertion. Just keep up with the man in front, watch for stones on the road, don’t think about the car coming up behind you, don’t look up, don’t slow down, concentrate. For Christ’s sake, concentrate. They hurtled along the roads that cut through the fields of vines and lavender, their passing marked by the thrumming of tyres that hung in the hot air above the baked tarmac.

  The General was waiting for them up on the road at the entrance to the track, sweating and chain-smoking, his eyes never leaving the bend five hundred metres away. It should have worked. He’d done everything, planned for everything, anticipated everything. But as he knew, sometimes to his cost, accidents made nonsense of plans. A puncture, a dog in the road, a swipe from a car—a hundred little things could happen. He didn’t even know if they’d got out. Maybe they were still there, barricaded behind a half-blown door with an officious little flic waving his pistolet at them and thinking of promotion. He lit another cigarette.

  He saw the first figure come round the bend, head almost touching the handlebars, then the others in a tight bunch. He let out a great bellow of relief and went into the middle of the road, jigging up and down with both hands clasped above his head in a triumphal salute. My boys! They did it!

  They peeled off the road and skidded down the track, not bothering to dismount, and as the last of them went past him, the smile on the General’s face froze, and then collapsed.

  There should have been seven of them. He’d counted the figures going down the track. And he’d counted eight.

  22

  Boone Parker lay flat on his back on the grass, sucking in air and trying not to throw up.

  As the dizziness began to wear off, he raised his head to look at the men sprawled around him, some lying facedown, others sitting with their heads between their knees. He couldn’t get over how fit they were for a bunch of old guys. When he’d seen them on the road going out of Isle-sur-Sorgue, he’d decided to tag along and break the boredom of his solitary training spin. He thought he’d show them that the French weren’t the only ones who could push a bike around at high speed. But he hadn’t even been able to overtake the last in the line; just keeping up had almost ruptured his lungs. These guys must have had steroids for breakfast. He decided that if he was going to take cycling seriously, he’d better knock off the beer. His head dropped back and he stared at the sky, waiting for the black spots in front of his eyes to go away.

  The General, panting from his dash down the track, looked at the group of exhausted figures. Wads of bank notes had fallen from their pockets as they collapsed, and littered the ground around them. He counted the figures again. Eight. Jesus.

  “Jojo!”

  The little man looked up and grinned. “We did it. Cong! We did it.”

  “Who the hell is that?” The General nodded towards Boone, spread-eagled on the grass, his chest still heaving.

  Slowly, the seven men, slack-mouthed and gasping, turned to look as the young Texan sat up and fanned his hand at them in a casual salute. “Bonjour, you guys.”

  They stared at him in shocked silence. Boone looked around the ring of hard, suspicious faces, looked at the money scattered on the ground, looked at the unusually bulky appearance of their jerseys. Shoot. This wasn’t a normal group of Sunday riders. “Guess I’ll be getting along,” he said. He looked at his watch and gave them what he hoped was an unconcerned smile. “J’ai un rendezvous, okay? Thanks for the ride.”

  He got to his feet. The others stood up in unison, looking at the General for orders.

  Merde. The General tugged his moustache so violently he made his eyes water. Everything had gone so well, exactly according to plan, and now the whole thing was at risk because of this imbecile foreigner. What was he? English? American? And what were they going to do with him? He’d seen their faces; he’d seen the cash. News of the robbery would be in the papers tomorrow morning. They couldn’t just let him go and hope he’d keep his mouth shut. Merde.

  “Take him into the barn.” The General started to follow them, then stopped to pick up the bank notes that were being stirred by a light breeze. The cash in his hands, thick wads and rolls of it, made him feel a little better. He’d work something out. This was a setback, not a disaster. That was the way to look at it. Don’t panic. He squared his shoulders and went into the barn.

  Boone was standing apart from the others, his eyes flicking apprehensively from one hostile face to the next. The General dropped the money on the table, next to the bottles and glasses he’d put out for the big celebration. He lit a cigarette and noticed his hand was shaking. He walked across to Boone.

  “Anglais?”

  Boone shook his head. “American.” He tried a smile. “Texas. You know, the big state? Très grand. You all should come visit one day.” He looked round hopefully for some sign of comprehension, found none, and his smile gave up.

  “American.” The General went to work on his moustache, thinking furiously. “Jojo? We might as well have a drink.” The little maçon opened the pastis and started pouring.

  “Alors?” said Jean. “Now what?”

  “Come outside,” sa
id the General. “All of you. I don’t know how much he understands.”

  They stood at the doorway of the barn, glasses in hand, heads turning towards Boone as they talked. He looked at their bulky silhouettes and wished he’d gone to cookery school in Paris.

  The General was quiet while the others cursed and shook their heads at their lousy luck. He was trying to arrange things in his mind. To profit from a crisis, he had always believed, was the hallmark of the great criminal. And this was certainly a crisis.

  “We could lock him in here and piss off.” Fernand shrugged. “Someone would find him in a couple of days.”

  Jean cleared his throat and spat. “And a couple of days later, the flics would find us. Connard.”

  “All right, Einstein. What would you do with him? Take him to the PTT and airmail him back to America, to Texas?”

  The General held up his hand. “Listen. He’s seen us. We can’t let him go. Not yet.”

  “Well, what are we going to do? Take him with us?”

  “Merde. Shut up for five minutes and give me a chance to think.” Two words had set the General’s mind off in an unexpected direction, certainly risky but possibly lucrative. It was well known that all Americans were rich. One saw them in the feuilletons on television. Even the children had large cars, and their parents lived in mansions, often with curiously impertinent servants. It was also well known that of all Americans, the richest were those men with high heels and oversized hats and properties where oil rigs grew like weeds. And where did they come from? A suburb of Dallas, the General thought, but certainly somewhere in Texas. This inconvenient young man said he came from Texas. Once they could understand each other, he and the young man, a solution to the problem might be found. All he needed was a little time. That, and a dictionary.

  The General felt better. What it was to have a brain! “Bon, mes enfants,” he said. “C’est pas grave. Trust me. For the moment, he stays here, under guard.”

  Jojo relaxed. You could always count on the General to come up with something, even if he didn’t immediately tell you what it was. He looked at the others. “The boy stays here, d’accord?” His thigh was itching. He scratched it and felt the bulge of forgotten bank notes in his shorts.

  Monday morning’s edition of Le Provençal was outraged at the daring and mystifying robbery that had taken place—en plein jour!—in Isle-sur-Sorgue. Where were the police? How did the robbers escape unseen? Was this the start of a crime wave that would engulf the Vaucluse and make honest citizens and tourists sleep with their wallets clenched between their teeth? Conjecture and comment filled the front page, pushing aside news of local lottery winners, boules tournaments, and the birth of triplets to a young and temporarily unmarried woman in Pernes-les-Fontaines.

  Françoise, having a quiet cup of coffee in the reception office, read the news with more than usual interest. She herself would have been in Isle-sur-Sorgue while the robbery was taking place if the hotel hadn’t been so busy. Her father had offered to lend her the car, and she had planned to take Boone to see the market, in the new dress she’d bought specially. She was wearing the dress today. Boone would come in towards the end of the afternoon, as he always did. He’d see the dress then. She smoothed it down over her thighs and wondered if the colour would please him. But he never came, and when Ernest told her how pretty she looked, she just shrugged in disappointment.

  The first official sign of anxiety at Boone’s whereabouts came the following day, when the director of the school at Lacoste called Simon. Boone hadn’t attended any of his classes, and when his room had been checked it was found that his bed hadn’t been slept in. The director was worried. It was unlike Boone; he seemed such a steady young man. There was also, although the director didn’t care to mention it, the possibility that Boone’s father might change his mind about making a grant to the school if he thought it was the kind of place where students were allowed to vanish. All in all, it was a matter of considerable concern, not helped by Simon’s irritation at being presented with another problem to add to his list. How the hell was he supposed to know where Boone was? Probably off in the bushes with some girl.

  Simon put the phone down and looked through his messages. Two calls from Caroline in Antibes. A call from Enrico. A journalist wanting an interview, preferably over lunch in the hotel restaurant. A formidable bar bill, unpaid for several days, signed with a flourish by Uncle William. Simon pushed the scraps of paper away and went to look for Ernest and Françoise. They’d know, if anyone did, what Boone was up to.

  The General was having a problem deciding on the exact figure. He’d started relatively low, at a million francs, and then reconsidered. A kidnap, even an involuntary one like this, was a serious crime with serious penalties. A big risk—and it should have a big reward, enough to set them all up for life. He opened the French-English dictionary that he’d bought before coming down to the barn and looked across the trestle table at Boone’s unshaven, wary face.

  “Alors, jeune homme. Votre famille—” he pointed to the word in the dictionary—“est où? Where?”

  “America. New York City, but my daddy travels a lot.” Boone made one of his hands take off from the table. “Beaucoup d’avion.”

  The General nodded, and licked his index finger, turning over the pages until he came to the word he was looking for. He was interested to find that it was almost the same. “Votre papa. Rich?”

  Boone had passed another uncomfortable and frightening night in the company of the big man called Claude and that mean little mother who kept playing with a knife. This guy seemed reasonable, unthreatening, almost friendly. Now that it looked as though they weren’t going to slice him up, he felt an enormous flood of relief.

  “Sure he’s rich.” Boone nodded encouragingly. “Loaded.”

  The General frowned and turned to L.

  Boone shifted his position on the hard chair. He ached from sleeping on the dirt floor. What were they going to do with him? Sounded like ransom, and his relief faded as he remembered stories he’d read in the papers of kidnappers sending fingers and ears through the mail to encourage prompt payment. Shoot. He’d better do all he could to keep this guy friendly. Maybe they’d let him call Simon. He could help, and he was close.

  “Monsieur? J’ai un ami, anglais. Runs the Hotel Pastis in Brassiere. Je téléphone?” Boone held his hand up to his ear. “He’s loaded too. Pas de problème.” He did his best to smile.

  For another hour, the dictionary passed back and forth across the table as the General gradually discovered what he needed to know. It looked promising—promising, but complicated. They’d need to get out of France very quickly, and they’d need false passports. That meant a trip to Marseille and a bucket of cash. The General mentally added another million to the ransom and wondered whether Boone’s English friend was capable of raising that much in a short time.

  “Bon.” The General closed the dictionary and lit a cigarette. The young man had been a piece of bad luck, but it might all work out very well. It was true what they showed on the télé—Texans were rich.

  He turned to the Borels and Jojo, who were on the day shift. “I’ve got to go and make a few calls. I’ll be back in an hour or so with some food.” He nodded towards Boone. “I don’t think he’ll try anything.”

  Jojo came closer to the General, so he could whisper. “What are we going to do with him?”

  “Sell him, my friend.” The General stroked his moustache with the back of his hand. “Sell him back to his rich papa.”

  Jojo shook his head in admiration. “C’est pas con.”

  The General always saved telephone numbers. It was the habit of a methodical man, a man who thought ahead. One never knew when a contact from the past might come in useful. He placed the call to a bar in the Vieux Port in Marseille, and a voice he’d last heard in prison answered.

  “I need a small service,” the General said. “It’s delicate, you know? I was wondering if that friend of yours could help.”<
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  The voice sounded guarded. “Which friend?”

  “The patron. Enrico.”

  “What kind of service?”

  “Immigration. I need some passports in a hurry.”

  “I’ll have a word. Where can I reach you?”

  The General gave him a number, and then added, “Listen, I can call him myself.”

  “Better if I talk to him.”

  Better for whom? the General thought. Greedy bastard. Everybody wants a cut these days. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  The voice laughed. “What are friends for?”

  Simon finished a hurried dinner and took a glass of Calvados up to the reception office to sustain him through the disagreeable conversation ahead of him. Caroline had left a third message, hinting at an urgent problem and leaving a number where she could be reached on Cap d’Antibes.

  He made the mistake of asking her if she was enjoying herself. She wasn’t. The boat was cramped and uncomfortable, she’d been seasick twice, and the boat’s owner, Jonathan’s friend, was behaving like Captain Bligh. But that was nothing compared to the news she had just received from London.

  It was all Jonathan’s fault, Caroline said with the unshakeable conviction of the woman who is never wrong. An investment opportunity he’d recommended. A sure thing, he’d said—until yesterday, when he’d had a call saying that the company had gone down the drain, taking Caroline’s hard-earned alimony with it. And now she was destitute.

  Simon made his second mistake and asked if she’d thought of getting a job. There was a shocked silence as Caroline looked into the abyss of regular employment, and Simon held the phone away from his ear in anticipation of the tirade to come.