‘Imagine you’re at that party. You’ve just been dancing with your Charlotte. You’re sitting down on the edge of the dance floor. In your chest you feel the warmth of the community congratulating you. You’ve done your duty. Finally you feel a certain lightness after years that seemed they would never end, you think of the days to come. Your whole body is filled with expectation, and the ambition of a happy life.’
While Grant spoke, the double breathed deeply. A new smile started to form.
‘That’s good, Mr Bondurant. Now, from this position of strength, think about Hitler!’
‘Pardon?’ Bondurant opened his eyes again.
‘That’s right, Hitler. You’ve won the war, Mr Bondurant, and the Nazis have lost. You’re alive while that son of a bitch with the moustache is dead. The good people have won, and you’ve made a contribution to that. You and Charlotte have blue skies above your head, Hitler and Eva Braun are six feet under. You’re part of the future, you’ve dreamed of the enemy, and you’re happy, yes, Mr Bondurant, you’re happy, touch the sky with a finger. The war is over. The bad people have been defeated. I want to see you smile, because you have the right! Who more than you? You’re at that party, and you’re smiling!’
‘Oui, je suis aux anges! Zut! Je suis aux anges, et je souris!’
Bondurant opened his eyes in triumph. The war was over. Hitler was gone.
Grant was staring at him.
Not bad.
‘Fine, Mr Bondurant. As my wife said, you’re a quick learner. And now it seems appropriate to me to show you a sequence from I Was a Male War Bride, in which. ’
Bondurant fell back on to the sofa. How long was this going to go on?
Chapter 29
Naples, 16 March
He chose a bar on the other side of the city. Perhaps it was a pointless precaution, but neglecting the details wasn’t a good habit to fall into. Experience tells us that it’s the insignificant things that trip you up. He had known so many clever men who had been ruined by blunders. One word too many to a prostitute, a fuck that would have been better postponed, a forgotten ticket in a jacket pocket, a worn tyre that had popped. You would have bet on them 100 per cent, but they had all made one small mistake. And found themselves staring into the blue lights, or keeping company with the fishes at the bottom of the bay. He had caught some of them out himself, surprised with themselves for having coming up with such shrewd and meticulous plans. And then they’d been fucked over a detail. Perhaps it was the universal law of chance, which applied to anyone who put all his eggs in one basket, knowing that he risked losing. That there wouldn’t be another chance.
Zollo went in and ordered a coffee. Then he asked where the phone was.
The barman pointed to it.
He picked up the receiver and dialled the number.
A young woman’s voice said, ‘Hello?’
‘I need to make an international call.’
‘Where to?’
‘Paris.’
‘Please give me the number.’
Zollo read out the digits, giving her time to jot them down.
*
In a bar in rue des Abbesses, in Paris, the phone rang three times before a fat, sweaty man picked up the receiver.
‘Allô?’
The clear voice of the operator said, ‘A call from Italy. One moment, please.’
An Italian-American accent butted in: ‘Lyonnese Toni, please.’
‘Toni? Attendez, monsieur.’
The fat man set down the receiver on the bar and walked through the gloomy bar, rubbing his neck. He opened a door at the back and entered a little smoke-filled room. Four people were sitting around the circular table. The green top was scattered with fiches and cigarette burns. Cigarette butts spilled from two glass ashtrays.
The fat man turned to one of the gamblers. ‘Toni. Téléphone.’
An emaciated man, a cigarette dangling between his lips, eyes half closed, replied with a grunt. He looked at his cards: two aces and two eights. The dead man’s hand. Merde. A glance at the pile of fiches. He was already 10,000 down and it was his turn to call. He picked up everything in front of him and put it in the middle of the table. He folded his cards together and got to his feet. His exhausted muscles responded after a delay: it must have been about ten in the morning. They had been playing for twelve hours.
As he headed for the telephone, he was seized by a coughing fit that left him breathless. He spat into his handkerchief, and when he folded it up it was full of blood He heard the men in the other room exchanging useless comments. ‘That lunatic should look after himself’, ‘If he goes on like that he’s going to pop his clogs’, ‘He should stop smoking like a Turk.’ Hypocritical fools. After tapping a load of money out of him, they worried about his health.
He went behind the bar, poured himself a generous shot of brandy, then picked up the phone.
‘Ouais?’
‘Lyonnese Toni?’
‘C’est moi.’
‘Zollo.’
‘Zollò, it was high time to hear from you.’
Apart from his pronunciation, his Italian was good. He’d consorted with more immigrants than an Antwerp whore.
‘Still interested in this deal?’
Toni gulped down the brandy and felt it burning his guts like redhot iron.
‘Sure. The way the poker’s going, I’m going to have to make it up somehow.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Rien, nothing. When do you think you’ll be ready?’
‘In two months. I’m going to need all the money. Clean.’
‘Pas possible. Non. I haven’t got that much. But if I have a sample of the goods, I can get it valued by a guy I know who’s interested in the whole deal. He’s willing to pay the figure you’re asking.’
There was silence at the other end of the line. Toni felt he could hear Zollo thinking.
‘Zollò, no one buys blind, you know that. This person trusts me. Give me a sample and I’ll let you have the money.’
‘I’ll be in Marseille in about two months because of Luciano. And he’ll have the sample.’
‘Not in Marseilles, too dangerous, the walls have ears.’
‘Where, then?’
‘Cannes.’
Another silence.
Then: ‘Ok, Cannes in two months. But tell your friend the price stays as it is. I don’t want any nonsense.’
‘Don’t worry, I told you, he’s loaded. If it’s good stuff, he’ll pay.’
‘I’ll call you on the same number in exactly twenty days.’
‘Bon, I’ll be here.’
The communication was interrupted.
Lyonnese Toni drank down a second glass, and returned to the poker table.
Someone had matched his cards.
He set down two pairs.
The other man put down three tens. Of course.
Toni repressed a cough, the taste of blood in his mouth. His ashen face contemplated the cards without any particular expression. He remembered why they called it the dead man’s hand. History related that when a glory-hunter fired into the back of ‘Wild’ Bill Hickok’s head, he was sitting at the green table holding a hand of two aces and two eights. God knows why he had turned his back to the door.
Toni got up, slipped on his jacket, put the money on the table and went out without saying goodbye to anyone. As he raised the shutter and the light of the morning burned his eyes, he heard them talking in low voices.
‘He hasn’t got long to go’, ‘He should get some treatment’, ‘He can’t go on like that’.
Bloody jinx. He walked along the street and disappeared behind the first corner.