Lucky Bastard

by Charles McCarry

  Jack shook his head, grinning: What a comedian.

  The girl drank wine and lifted her eyes, looking at Jack again. He smiled at her, as if apologizing for his friend.

  The smile was a sunburst—everything that Arthur and his spies had reported. The girl was startled, as if she had just realized that she knew Jack, that she had seen him before but could not quite place him. She studied him for a long moment, then shook her head, hair tossing, as if to tell herself that she was mistaken. But before she turned away she brushed Jack with a look that was like a tongue flickering across skin.

  After that, for a while, they ignored each other. Waiters and sommeliers came and went. Danny got progressively more drunk. Jack did not drink at all. As instructed, Arthur drew Jack out, asking him questions, challenging his answers, making him talk, think, defend. The boy was remarkably fluent, but always sincere and respectful. Humorous but never witty. Because of the girl, Jack was charming everyone in sight, which meant that he smiled frequently. And when he smiled, you saw what the girl had seen—something elusive but unmistakable.

  The waiter, a sore-footed, gruff New York type who had seen it all, saw it, too. He hovered over Jack, explaining the menu, advising him to choose the cannelloni, followed by a nice porterhouse steak alla fiorentina. He liked Jack—it was obvious. And, effortlessly, Jack was making the waiter believe that he liked him.

  The girl continued to stare at Jack. She was searching for something. A resemblance. He smiled. She saw it. I saw it myself. It was in the smile, which lasted just an instant too long. It was fleeting, not quite strong enough to be arresting, puzzling. And yet it made you stop and try to remember. You saw a face you could not quite summon up, a gesture you could not quite place, a charm that reminded you of someone. But who? And then Jack spoke in a staccato Kennedy tenor, Ohio-accented instead of Bostonian, and suddenly you got it, and black-and-white images from the past tumbled into your mind.

  Between questions from Arthur, Jack took care of his friend Danny, who by now was at the point of passing out. There was nothing feigned about Jack’s solicitude. These boys really were friends, in the unashamed way that only American boys can be friends. There was perfect trust and understanding between them. It was quite touching.

  Toward the end of the evening, Danny had to go to the men’s room. He could hardly stand up. Jack went with him.

  Peter called for the check, and while he waited for it, his girl excused herself. We were the last customers. She was the only woman in the place. She was even more interesting to look at when she was standing up—high heels, long legs, no stockings, bottom like a peach, covered by narrow white panties that were visible through the thin white cloth of her dress. Even Peter seemed a little distracted, watching her walk away.

  She was gone for less than fifteen minutes, but when she came back, though her hair was in perfect order and there was not a wrinkle in her dress, she was not the same woman as before. She moved with a certain unmistakable languor. The white flower was gone from her hair. Her eyes were different—no mascara, no makeup. She had washed her face.

  Peter raised his eyebrows: Shall we go? She responded with a little nod, as if there was no more to his unspoken question than that. She took Peter’s arm, swaying a little on her high heels, as if—I am not an imaginative man, I look for evidence—she was weak in the knees. Her back was to me. On her right buttock, through the thin cloth, one could see a tattoo and, looking more closely, identify it as a butterfly. This had not been visible when she walked away from the table. Was she wearing one less garment than before?

  She felt my eyes on her and turned to confront me. In my case it was a quick inspection, a glint of contempt. But she showed me enough of her face for me to see that it had changed. The lips were a little swollen, and her dark wahine eyes looked inward, as if at a memory of pleasure.

  She and Peter left. After a moment so did I, without waiting for Jack and Danny to reappear. To observe the departure of Jack and the others, I took up my post in the doorway across the street.

  Quite soon the three of them emerged. While Arthur scouted for a taxi, Danny and Jack stood together on the sidewalk. Danny was laughing, pointing a finger at Jack, shouting, “Bwana Devil!” Less than half an hour before, in the restaurant, Danny had been so drunk he could hardly stand up. Now, strangely, he was no more than tipsy—a little loud, a little unsteady, but by no means helplessly intoxicated as he had seemed to be inside. There was no crosstown traffic. Their boisterous young voices were perfectly audible.

  Jack said, “You owe me ten bucks, Miller.”

  Danny said, “That’s your story. Let me see the evidence.”

  Jack shrugged. He reached into his pocket, then handed something white to Danny. Danny held this object up to the light, shaking it out. It was a pair of panties—the same ones that had formerly covered up the wahine’s tattoo.

  “You son of a bitch,” Danny cried.

  He dug into his own pocket, then handed Jack the ten dollars he had won.

  Danny put the panties on his head like a hat, and he and Jack walked away, arms around each other’s shoulders, Danny singing a tuneless song.

  There is nothing one man admires in another so much as sexual luck. So it was with Danny and Jack. In my sour wisdom, earned by years of watching puppet shows, I knew that the girl had been under orders. But on the evidence of the look on her face after she carried out her assignment, she had enjoyed it.

  Very impressive. I knew that Peter would think so, too.

  4 As prearranged with Peter, I walked uptown along Fifth Avenue. Somewhere in the Sixties, Peter stepped out of the shadows of Central Park and joined me. By now it was past midnight, a dangerous hour. As usual Peter had no bodyguards; we were alone except for a few other pedestrians, scurrying and furtive and fearful of the dark—in other words, behaving far too suspiciously to be FBI men assigned to tail us.

  I said, “I assume the girl was not an agent.”

  “No,” Peter said. “A whore who specializes in fantasies. I told her my wife had been seduced by a stranger in a ladies’ room, and I wished to reenact the humiliation.”

  Peter handed me a small tape recorder. We sat down together on a bench while I listened over an earphone. The prostitute’s tone was matter-of-fact. Sex was her métier. She was used to speaking to men in language that would arouse them. She described her experience with Jack expertly, in the jargon of her trade.

  Peter had told the girl exactly what to do and in what sequence: flirt with Jack, then break it off, then give him a sign, then follow him when he left the table. She was under orders not to make the first move. Jack must do that. It was part of the fantasy.

  As she walked along the passage toward the ladies’ room, she caught a glimpse of Jack, who was just disappearing into the men’s room. She stared straight at him and, against orders, gave him a tiny sign—the tip of her tongue running sensuously over her lips.

  Minutes later, as she stood before the mirror combing her hair, there came a tap on the door. She opened it, Jack was there. She let him in.

  Here I will summarize: She had already removed her panties, which she held crumpled in her hand. She put them into Jack’s hand. He grinned, lifted them to his nose for a moment. She stripped off her dress, but not her high heels. Wordlessly, smiling, Jack lifted one of her legs, put a finger between her legs, drew it out slowly, then put it into his mouth like a boy who had stuck his finger into a bowl of frosting.

  Then he grasped her buttocks, spreading them as he picked her up—she was a small girl—and fitted her onto himself, sliding her, gasping, all the way onto his member in one deft effortless gesture.

  The suddenness of this took her breath away. “It was absolutely the smoothest move I have ever seen,” she said. “I was wet—this was a kinky situation—but he must have greased it. He’s huge. My eyes were popping. My shoes fell off. He pumped about three times and came, and I thought, Shit! Already? But he kept on going as if nothing had happened,
and even though he’s just a kid he knew exactly what he was doing. I don’t come with tricks, you just don’t do that and usually it pisses me off if it happens by accident, but for once I wanted to.

  “I came like I was turning inside out, about three different ways. I was dripping all over the place, I bit the shit out of his shoulder to keep from screaming, I pulled his hair, I said things. It was so kinky—like being raped in a wet dream. It was, like, unreal. Not that he was rough or weird in any way—all he wanted was an absolutely straight fuck. He was way, way inside himself, like hypnotized. His body would not quit. He kept it up forever, it was amazing. I began to cry. I never cry. I didn’t even know I was crying at the time. But I heard myself sobbing, and with every sob, wham-wham, he was trying harder to tickle my backbone.

  “Pretty soon he was getting off again, and I thought, this time it’s over. So I put my hands on his chest and pushed a little—not hard, a friendly hint. My ass was on the sink, it was uncomfortable. Right away he stepped back, a perfect gentleman. Now, this is funny. All this time, all this going on, and he never tried to kiss me, never touched my breasts. I take his hand to put it on a tit and he pulls my hand down and puts it in my hand and it’s still absolutely rigid, like nothing has happened.

  “He smiles, asking permission, and puts the tips of his fingers, both hands, on my shoulders, and I think he wants a blowjob. But no. He says, ‘May I?’ He turns me around, and in the mirror I see my face, black with mascara, and he bends me over and slips it in again like it can see out of its eye. He’s watching my face in the mirror, which is as close as he gets to intimacy. Not a word, not a hand on my tits, just in and out, in and out, touching everything, which in that position is quite a trick. I could see his face was in the mirror, all squinched up. He was loving it. This position is what makes him happy. I expected it elsewhere, but it was vagina only. He just liked coming at me from the back. I like it myself as an encore—there’s less weight on you and if the guy is really hung you can tickle yourself at the same time, get a little bonus.

  “I gave the kid some moves he maybe hadn’t known before. He begins to breathe hard, finally, eyes squeezed shut. It was intense. I closed my eyes, too. Pretty soon I was coming like hiccups—I mean I couldn’t stop if I wanted to—and so was he. I thought it would never end. But then it did. He stepped away. I’m half blind, holding on to the sink, gasping, limp as a wet rag, I can hardly stand up.

  “And when I open my eyes again, he’s gone. Vanished. Out the door. I think: Oh shit! My purse, my dress! I have this picture of myself walking back into the restaurant in my birthday suit and I think, a tablecloth, I’ll grab a tablecloth! But everything was right where I left it. All he took was my panties. I looked at my watch, which was all I had on. Nine minutes by the clock, standing up and nonstop, and even then he probably had to throw cold water on it in order to get it back in his pants. I was staggering, trying to wash my face, wash the rest of me. I never saw anything like it.”

  I switched off the tape recorder and offered to hand it back to Peter. He waved it away. It was now part of my files.

  Peter said, “She may be embroidering slightly, to give the old masochist the good time I paid for. But mainly, I think, she told the truth. Opinion?”

  “That we go slowly. Learn more. Assess carefully.”

  “That’s not an opinion, it’s a recommendation.”

  “You want an assessment?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  At this stage, I knew from experience, he wanted a devil’s advocate. I said, “All right. Tonight I saw a boy of twenty-one who has charm, guile, and the gift of gab. Also a potentially disastrous case of Don Juan psychosis. And I think if we recruit him he will do to us what he did to your call girl.”

  Peter was amused—determined to be amused. “Steal our underwear?”

  “No. Fuck us cross-eyed.”

  Peter did not like my answer. I had stepped out of character without permission: Flippancy was not one of the privileges he had granted to me.

  I said, “May I ask what you see in this subject, Peter?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I see talent in the raw. A cold heart. Boldness, contempt for the rights and feelings of others. Ruthlessness. He took the girl like a bandit because he wanted her, even though she wore a wedding ring and was accompanied by another man.”

  “She was a prostitute.”

  “He didn’t know that. For all practical purposes he raped her. He created a diversion, made his friend act drunk for him, then paid him off with a pair of panties. And that smile, so American, so like the man he thinks is his father.”

  “Thinks is his father. An important point.”

  Peter shrugged. “Is it so impossible?”

  Clearly Peter did not think so. That was all that mattered. Many times in the past I had seen him proven right when nearly everyone else thought that he was wrong. He was like Einstein: He saw the universe as a whole, he proposed the existence of things that other men could not see. The measurements, the mathematics, the proofs of his theory he left to others, who suffered the consequences of any small mistakes he might have made.

  “I wish to proceed with this operation,” he said.

  “It will be a gamble.”

  “Yes. That’s the beauty of it.”

  “If we win.”

  “Why shouldn’t we win?” Peter said. “We will deal the cards. For the rest of his life.”

  My heart sank. Peter had long-term plans for this boy who lived in a dreamworld, to whom no one else was real, who did not even want to touch the women he fucked with any part of his body but his penis. He wanted to bind Jack to us, turn him into an agent of influence. He wanted to keep him as he was, but at the same time transform him into an operative who would live by subterfuge his whole life long.

  “Are we sure we can do what we want in this case?” I asked.

  Peter lifted a hand. My role as devil’s advocate was over. What he expected now was acceptance, obedience.

  “We are never sure,” he said. “But it has been done before, with less promising material.”

  This was certainly true. We had taken many, many gambles on imperfect men, all over the world. Some had achieved success, even very great success, through the combination of our help and advice and what seemed, especially to the man himself, the exercise of inborn talent. The others were dead or in prison, and no further concern of ours.

  As if reading my mind, Peter said, “I want you to put your heart into this case.”

  “Very well. What is the first step?”

  “Get him to Germany.”

  “You mean, give him a ticket?”

  “No. He would ask questions. He mustn’t know we are helping him. And he must stay in Germany for several months.”

  “Perhaps a fellowship.”

  Peter considered this. “Good,” he said. “By all means get him a fellowship.”

  “May I consider other countries?”

  “No,” Peter said. “It must be Germany, the American zone. But not Berlin.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “You will succeed.”

  Peter looked at his watch, flicked a glance at a single set of headlights approaching along Fifth Avenue, and changed languages. “I leave tomorrow,” he said in English. “For Cuba. Shall I say hello to anyone for you?”

  I shook my head. Peter smiled, looking into my eyes, expecting great things of me.

  He said, “We’ll discuss this again soon. After Cuba.”

  A limousine pulled up at the curb. Without another word, he strode across the sidewalk. He opened the door. I glimpsed a woman’s legs, crossed at the ankles—not the legs I had admired in the Italian restaurant, but another pair, longer and even more shapely. This one must be an agent under discipline if Peter was allowing her to see me.

  I said, “A clarification, please, Comrade General.”

  Peter closed the car door. The lady could look, but she could not listen.

  I said
, “This asset will be unwitting?”

  “Of course. As you say, he is deeply unstable, committed to nothing. How can we trust him?”

  In the jargon of espionage, an unwitting asset is a dupe who does not know (or may not wish to know) that he is working for a foreign intelligence service. Such an operative sometimes believes (or pretends to believe) that he is working for an entirely different secret entity from the one that actually controls him. He may never even meet the case officer who is handling him, but report instead to a third person who carries instructions to the unknowing agent and reports of his activities back to the case officer.

  “There must be no one in his life but you and me,” Peter said.

  “Understood,” I replied. “But I will need Arthur for the fellowship business.”

  “All right, but only that,” Peter said. “When you’re through with him, tell him goodbye. Tell him another man will work with him in the future. I will make some arrangements in Cuba.”

  “When will this happen?”

  “As soon as you’re through with him.”

  The conversation was over. Wordless departures were part of Peter’s stage business. He whirled, got into his limousine, and drove away.

  Alone, like a figure in a movie—which in a way I was—I walked downtown through the sleeping metropolis. In those days they still opened the hydrants to wash the streets in the early hours of the morning. The air smelled laundered, and where water gushed from the standpipes, creating mist that enveloped the street lamps, there were miniature rainbows.

  5 By the Metropolitan Museum, where there were coin telephones on the sidewalk, I called Arthur. We met an hour later inside the park. He arrived by cab, having directed the driver straight to the place where I was waiting. This was a serious breach of security, but I didn’t have the heart to reprove him.