by David Dodge
Reggie said, “We communicate better in English.”
“French,” The Boar said. “Keep it short.”
“Very well. He wants a hundred thousand pounds to let me go. That’s over a milliard of francs. I haven’t got that much money, either in francs or in pounds. I can raise it through my bankers in London by liquidating securities, but they won’t act on an oral authorization. They won’t release that much cash without a proper receipt, either. I’ve already discussed it with them by telephone. You’ll have to go to London and get the money for me.”
I gave her an incredulous stare.
like that. I suppose maybe the responsibilities of incipient parenthood had something to do with it. I turned around to face him and said, or tried to say, “No.” A Bon defying death to protect the mother of his young.
The trouble was, I didn’t have enough lion in me to get it out. But I did face him, and made no move to obey his order.
Behind me Reggie sucked in her breath. He had a gun all right. Held at just the right height to give me an extra navel if he twitched his finger, and at the right distance to discourage any foolhardy ideas I might have about trying to get it from him before he could use it. But the villa wasn’t so isolated that a gunshot might not attract the attention of the neighbors, as he would have figured when he did Rose and Jean-Pierre in the way he had, and he needed me; for a while at least. One hundred thousand pounds worth. Until I got that for him and unless I did something directly to endanger him, he just couldn’t afford to shoot me. Any more than he could afford to shoot Reggie.
I can’t say I was as confident of my reasoning as it sounds in the writing. I defy anybody to be confident while standing bellybutton to bellybutton with a gun in the fist of a killer who has just cut the throats of two people. But the fact of their deaths and my survival when he could have got me quickly and quietly with a stab under the short ribs as I stormed into the kitchen spoke for itself. I had a while to live yet. If I didn’t challenge his security, and did nothing stupid.
“Be reasonable,” I said, having sold myself the bill of goods. “She isn’t going to ask for a bang in the mouth and the gag put back by screaming. I’ll get the
“It has to be done, love. We’re in no position to bargain. I’m into my fifth month, and it’s not a good time to be bashed about. Or even tied to a chair for too long.”
“You’re in your fifth month of what?”
She really did smile, this time. It was wan, but it was real.
“Surprise, surprise,” she said. “Haven’t you noticed?” “Haven’t I noticed—?”
“That’s all,” The Boar said. “Put back the gag.”
Reggie said nothing. She wouldn’t stoop to plead with a pig like him. But her eyes pleaded, with me. I stood there, a pillar of salt, taking it all in with my mouth open; the soft new fullness of her throat, the new swell of the beautiful breasts, the boastful beginning bulge of the belly that had always been trim and flat. I got it in about a second and a half. Another second and a half after that I had counted back five months and put the finger on the contemptible bastard who had knocked up the Honorable Regina Forbes-Jones higher than the Tour Eiffel. Me! She was carrying my child! And with my child in her—
“Put back the gag,” The Boar said again.
I heard him, but the command didn’t register. My head was still going round in cartwheels. My child! But then what—why—who—where—how the hell— that Athol character…?
“Put back the gag,” The Boar said again.
That time, I caught it.
I caught something else, too. He had told me three times to do something I hadn’t done, and I was still alive. Your mind can shift gears awfully fast at a time
money for you as long as nothing happens to her or the baby she’s carrying. If anything does happen, all bets are off.”
No response. But he didn’t tell me again to put back the gag.
“I’ll help you get out of the country afterward, too,” I said. “You’ll need all the help you can get for that. You’re a cop-killer now. You know what that means.”
He knew. D.O.A., when the flics caught up with him. French cops feel about cop-killers the way other cops feel about cop-killers.
Still no reaction, for all of half a minute. His pocked face showed nothing of what he was thinking, just fatigue and strain. Then he said abruptly, “For a time. But no talking, and no tricks.”
“I must say something,” Reggie spoke up. “I have to use the toilet.”
She must have been really desperate to say it like that. But as fastidious as she always was about such things, she was above all a realist. She went on talking about it while she had a chance to talk.
“I have to use it at least as often as every two hours, sometimes more often. It’s because I’m pregnant. If you’d lock me in the bathroom instead of tying me up like a—”
“No,” The Boar said. “You stay there.” “But I’ve just told you—”
“Untie her,” The Boar said. “Take her to the pissoir. Leave the door open. No talking, no tricks. Bring her back.”
I did what I could to give her an illusion of privacy, standing with my back turned in the open doorway while she did what she had to do. Then I tied her to the chair again, as directed. The Boar tested the knots afterward to make sure I hadn’t fudged them. I hadn’t. I wanted her immobilized and out of the way while I thought further about guns and things. I was still scared, but not scared silly. There’s a difference.
The Boar’s flashy clothes weren’t so flashy anymore. They were stained with what looked like paint, engine oil and something else. Blood, undoubtedly. He wore a clean shirt I recognized as my own, and one of my neckties. Some time that day he had shaved and laid a thick layer of pancake makeup over his pig’s face to diminish the conspicuousness of the pockmarks. My raincoat, enough too long for him to hide the disreputable appearance of his clothes, with a beret I carried in one of the coat pockets, had been tossed on a chair. His shoes were muddy and, like mine, tracked blood on the tile of the sunroom whenever he went to the window to peer cautiously up and down the road, as he did every few minutes. He smoked constantly, lighting one Gauloise from the butt of another before tossing the butt on the tiles to step on it. The butt tended to cling to his shoe sole until it disintegrated.
His diamond pinkie ring was gone; the price, possibly, of escape from Marseille. He’d have to buy his way out of France now. It would cost a lot of money; the money I had to live long enough to get for him. After that, no reason at all for me to survive. Or Reggie. Or her baby—my child! (It flashed in my brain like a neon sign every time I thought it.) Poor Reggie, who had to pee for two every two hours on the hour or oftener, tied to a chair in the power of a monster, trying to smile to show that the old British upper lip was still stiff, there’ll always be an England, chin up, old boy, good show—it was pointless even to consider the possibility that he might let us survive our immediate usefulness to him. When the usefulness would end in Reggie’s case was something I didn’t want to think about. But I dared not leave her without protection, even a protection as inadequate as mine was in the circumstances. Come what may, somehow, some way, I had to con that cutthroat Corsican son of a bitch out of control of the situation in which we were trapped.
The Boar said, “Pick up the phone. Call the airport at Nice. Ask for information.”
I picked up the extension phone we kept by the breakfast table, called the airport and asked for information. Information about what, the other end of the line wanted to know? I passed it along.
“Put the phone on the table,” The Boar said. “Move back against the wall.”
When I had done that he took the phone to ask his own questions; never taking his eyes from me, never permitting the pistol to waver from its unblinking stare at the part of me a bullet would hurt most. I listened to his end of the conversation, learned what I could from it, and tried to figure a gaff to hook him with. It was no good. My mind wouldn�
�t track. I just couldn’t seem to think my way around, over, under or behind that damn alert gun.
I like to believe that it was solely my concern for Reggie and what she carried inside her that made me decide to go for broke. Other reasons could logically have influenced me, although I don’t remember whether they occurred to me then or later. My chances of walking into a London bank, handing over a note and walking out again unmolested with the cash equivalent of more than a quarter of a million dollars were non-existent. The bobbies would have the arm on me faster than you can say Old Bailey, shake me down, bust me open and put the whole story on the wire to the Sûreté Nationale within an hour. Even a hog’s mentality like The Boar’s should have been able to see that. Of course, he was desperate, and knew he was going to die the moment the law caught up with him unless he got out of France first. His death would be fine by me. But I didn’t want him to die in a hail of bullets poured into the Villa Parfumée while Reggie sat there helplessly gestating our joint effort, most probably being used as a shield by the son of a bitch. So you might say that even if this reasoning did help me decide, it was still my feeling for her and her baby—our child!—that made me decide to try for the gun.
Having bravely made up my mind to it, I got the shakes all over again when The Boar made a reservation in my name for the first available plane to London. The time-clock had begun to tick.
“BEA has a flight at seventeen-thirty hours,” he said, hanging up the phone. “Check-in is from an hour to half an hour before the flight. It will take you half an hour to get there. Toss me your watch.”
I tossed him the watch, first checking the time. Twelve minutes to four. One hour and forty-two minutes to takeoff. Less a minimum half-hour wait after check-in and a minimum half-hour to get there. Forty-two minutes left at the outside to put together the most important con of my life. Her life. Our lives.
The watch had an expandable band, no clasp or fastener. Getting it on his own wrist didn’t cause the pistol barrel to waver perceptibly. If he’d had a watch of his own at one time, it must have gone the way of the pinkie-ring. Engraved on the back of the one he now wore were the words: To Curly from Reggie. I’ll love you always, and the date of my last birthday. I mean my latest birthday. It didn’t help the shakes at all to think about last birthdays. Forty-two minutes. Nearer forty-one now. Still no new thoughts. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. I couldn’t hear my watch running, but I could feel it.
“Get moving,” The Boar said. “Your ticket is at the BEA window.”
“There’s plenty of time,” I said. “Let me take her to the pissoir once more first.”
“She doesn’t have to go. Move. Vite!”
“Just to make her more comfortable.”
I’ve said before that he never made threats. Like his piggish namesake, he acted where a dog might have growled a threat or a rattlesnake buzzed a warning. When I still argued after his second order he took a single quick step toward Reggie and slapped her so hard in the face with his free hand that he almost knocked her to the floor, chair and all. The pistol remained unwaveringly pointed at me.
“Move,” he said. “Vite!”
The cracking blow had spun Reggie’s head away from me, so that for a moment I couldn’t see her face.
I was just as glad. My own would have looked sick. I knew what was going to follow, what had to follow.
Still without moving, I said, “The—”
He hit her again, backhand this time, just as hard as before but with knuckles on it. Her head snapped around. Her mouth had been knocked open and lopsided by the force of the blow, but she never let out a whimper. I may have. I don’t remember. Her lip began to leak blood while I watched, and her eyes made me cringe. They were full of fear as well as pain now. I’m certain it was not so much fear for herself as fear of what might happen to her baby if she were bashed about, as she had said it. But the eyes held no recrimination, no reproach for what I was submitting her to. I’ll love you always, Curly.
“—receipt,” I said, trying to keep it steady, hoping the single word would stop him. “Her signature. I can’t do anything without it.”
He heard it, he got it, but his hand was already lifted to smack her again. He smacked her again, as hard as before, before backing off. It would have been out of character for him to waste a blow already started.
The need for a receipt had slipped his mind. It was a good sign. He was under too much strain for his pig’s brain to function at its best. Maybe something else important would slip his mind in the next forty minutes, if I had as much as forty minutes left. How long could I stall him without subjecting Reggie to more punishment than she could take? Twenty minutes, maybe? Ten? Five? Two? God, give me a gaff of some kind to sucker him with. I just haven’t got the nerve to jump the gun cold without a gaff. Please. While there’s still time.
Following instructions, I brought a sheet of Reggie’s monogrammed notepaper, a pen and a small table, then untied one hand so she could write. Then I gagged her again, also as instructed, after first wiping the blood from her chin and mouth. Blood still leaked from her split lip. My face was only inches from hers, flushed bright red now from the force of the slaps, when I knotted the gag at the back of her head. It wasn’t the time to say what I wanted to say aloud, but I shaped the words with my lips. She couldn’t chew me out for it with a gag in her mouth.
She gave no indication that she read me. Her eyes were dim, dazed, frightened. I think for the first time she had begun to realize the kind of animal that had her in his cage, and how dismal her chances were of escaping it alive.
I held the paper unmoving on the table for her while she wrote. The Boar stood by the Venetian blinds where he could watch the road as he told her what to write. Outside, the drizzle continued steadily.
While I still stood between him and Reggie’s chair I said, “If I’m to get the money without trouble I have to shave and change my clothes. Slapping her won’t change that. Receipt or no receipt, no British banker is going to hand over a hundred thousand pounds to a clochard with a dirty shirt and a two-day beard.”
“Tie her again,” he said. The receipt was finished. “Leave the paper where it is. Step back.”
I thought he was going to hit her again, but all he wanted was to make sure the receipt was right. He knew enough English to spell it out as she had written it from his French dictation. It contained no trickery, simply acknowledged receipt from Barclay’s Bank, Ltd., King St., Covent Garden, London, of one hundred thousand pounds sterling in cash, chargeable to her account, to be paid to the bearer of the receipt without question, and was signed with Reggie’s normal signature. A little shakier than usual, understandably. How many minutes did I have left? The gaff, God, the gaff. Send it to me. I can’t think.
“D’accord,” The Boar said, folding the receipt before looking at my watch. “Shave and change your clothes. Vite!”
I shaved—my razor was still dirty with his hog bristles—and changed with as little vitesse as I could arrange under his watchful goat-turd eyes. The message came down from heaven, exactly as the mango had come down that day in Belem, when a lace snapped while I was putting on a pair of shoes unsoiled by mud or blood. Of such small things are fateful decisions made. I made mine while I fitted a new lace.
When I had finished dressing, The Boar tossed the receipt on the floor where I could pick it up without coming too close to him.
“On your way,” he said. “No more blague. Move.”
I moved, ahead of him and the pistol back to the sunless sunroom. L’audace, l’audace, et toujours l’audace, the old barrel-maker’s boy had said, that day in his office. If you don’t have the guts to play for the stakes of the game, then you don’t belong in it. Something like that. It would make a lovely epitaph.
He said, “Not that way,” behind me, but I kept on going until it was obvious that I was going on through the sunroom into the kitchen. At that point, he said, “Stop.” I stopped.
“The front
door,” he said. “The other way.”
“I’m going to get her a glass of water before I go.”
“No.”
I turned around.
Reggie’s head had fallen forward so that her chin rested on her chest. Enough of the gag remained visible to show how the blood from her lip had stained it. Her whole body slumped with defeat. I couldn’t tell if she was conscious or unconscious, but I hoped she could hear me.
“Look at her,” I said. “I’m going to bring her a glass of water and wash her mouth. Nothing you can do will stop me except a bullet, and that will finish your chances for escape. I won’t miss the plane. I told you I’d cooperate to get you the money as long as nothing happened to her or her baby. Those slaps are the last mistreatment she is going to take from you. Because if I come back to find that you haven’t fed her or given her water or taken her to the pissoir when she has to go, or have harmed her again in any way, you don’t get a centime. Don’t think I’m going to walk in here carrying it in a satchel for you to grab. We make an exchange; the money for the woman. In good shape. Assure-toi.”
On that bold exit line I bravely turned my cringing back on him and went into the kitchen, letting the swinging door swing shut behind me. I knew it wouldn’t stay shut for more than a second or so, but that was all right, too. I wanted him to see that I was doing exactly what I had said I was going to do.
I had to pick my way carefully around the edge of things and over things to keep from getting blood on my clean shoes. One of the things I had to step over was Rose, her mouth still open in her last vain effort to scream with the knife in her gullet. She lay by the stove, which offered me a handhold as I stretched across her body without stepping on it. I got a glass from a kitchen cabinet, rinsed it at the sink, filled it, wiped its outside with a clean dishtowel, moistened half the dishtowel in warm water to serve as a washcloth, picked my way carefully back as I had come carrying glass and towel in one hand so the other would be free to accept the stove’s support again. The Boar watched me from the doorway, tracking me with the pistol as a compass-needle tracks north.