“Yes, Mr. Cashman, please… He isn’t… Oh, yes, he mentioned that last week and it slipped my mind. Well, listen, would you tell him when he returns that Bob Leeman dropped by, and tell him Jean and I are looking forward to seeing him and Mildred in Junction for the hunt. He’ll know what I mean… Yes, thank you.”
I replaced the telephone and stood up, grimacing. “Doesn’t look like my day,” I said ruefully. “I needed the cash, too. I can’t get to Junction and back in time for this deal. Well, good day, sir.“
I started to turn and the young officer stopped me. “Uh, how big is the check you wanted to cash, Mr. Leeman?”
“Pretty good sized,” I said. “I need $7,500. Do you think you can take care of it? I can give you the number of my bank in Junction.” Without waiting for a reply, I dropped back into the chair, briskly wrote out a check for $7,500 and handed it to him. As I figured, he didn’t call the bank in Junction. He stood up and turned toward one of the glassed-in offices. “Sir, I’ll have to have Mr. James, the vice president, okay this, which I’m sure he will. I’ll be back in a moment.”
He walked into James’s office and said (as I later learned) exactly what I’d conditioned him to say. “Sir, there’s a Mr. Leeman here from Junction and he needs to cash this rather large check. He’s a personal friend of Mr. Cashman, and he wanted to see Mr. Cashman, but as you know Mr. Cashman’s in San Francisco.”
“A personal friend of the old man’s?”
“Yes, sir, business and social, I understand.”
“Cash it. We sure as hell don’t want to irritate any of the old man’s associates.”
A minute later the young officer was handing the phony check to a teller. “Cash this for the gentleman, please. Mr. Leeman, I’m glad I could help you.”
I wasn’t too well pleased with the Pavlov’s-dog swindle. In fact, I didn’t enjoy it at all. I left town that day and several days later stopped in a remote Vermont village to do some meditating. Mine were gloomy cogitations. I was no longer living, I decided, I was merely surviving. I had accumulated a fortune with my nefarious impersonations, swindles and felonies, but I wasn’t enjoying the fruits of my libidinous labors. I concluded it was time to retire, to go to earth like a fox in a remote and secure lair where I could relax and commence building a new and crime-free life.
I reviewed the places I had been on the atlas of my mind. I was mildly astonished at the extensiveness of my travels, recalling my journeys of the past few years. I had crisscrossed the globe from Singapore to Stockholm, from Tahiti to Trieste, from Baltimore to the Baltics, and to other places I had forgotten I’d visited.
But one place I hadn’t forgotten. And its name kept popping into my thoughts as I sought a safe haven. Montpellier, France.
Montpellier. That was my safe haven, I finally decided. And having made the decision, I didn’t give it a second thought.
I should have.
CHAPTER NINE. Does This Tab Include the Tip?
Quantitatively, the vineyards of Bas Languedoc produce more wine than the other three great French wine departments combined. Qualitatively, with one or two exceptions, the wine of Languedoc has all the bouquet, body and taste of flat root beer. The considerate host serves an ordinary Languedoc wine only with leftover meat loaf, and preferably to guests whom he’d rather not see again.
It is, in the main, really bad juice.
Fortunately for France, the vintners, grape pickers, bottlers and the vast majority of the rest of the population consume the bulk of Languedoc ’s wines. France exports only its great wines from the vineyards of Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne, which are justly famous for quality and excellence.
I learned all about viniculture in Montpellier. The first thing I learned was not to drink the local vins du pays.
I was probably the only water drinker in town. However, I didn’t go to Montpellier for either the wine or the water. I was there to hide. Permanently, I hoped. I had reached the pinnacle of a criminal mountain and the view wasn’t that great. Now I wanted an honest valley to shelter me in its hollow.
I had passed through Montpellier, driving from Marseille to Barcelona, during one of my first bad-check forays through Europe. Outside of town I had parked beneath a huge olive tree and picnicked on cheese, bread, sausages and soft drinks I’d picked up in the city. Close at hand, pickers swarmed like ants through a vast grape orchard and far away the snow-tipped peaks of the Pyrenees glistened in the sun. I felt comfortable, at ease, almost happy. As if I were home.
In a sense, I was. This part of southern France was my mother’s native land. She had been born here and after she married my father, and following the breakout of guerrilla warfare in Algiers, her parents had returned here with their other children. My maternal grandparents, several uncles and aunts and a covey of cousins still lived within an hour’s drive of the olive tree. I quelled an impulse to turn aside and visit my mother’s people and drove on to Spain.
I had never forgotten that tranquil, enjoyable interlude near Montpellier. And when, at the ripe old age of twenty, I decided to retire from my life as a counterfeit person, dealing in counterfeit wares, I chose Montpellier as my retreat. I was not happy that I had to return there behind yet another counterfeit identity, but I had no choice.
Montpellier, in many ways, was ideal for my purpose. It was not a tourist attraction. It was situated too far inland from the Mediterranean to lure the Riviera set, yet close enough that a seashore outing was available at the end of a short drive.
It was large enough (80,000 population) that an American taking up residence would not excite undue curiosity, yet too small to command a major airport or to entice large hotel operators. There were no Hiltons or Sheratons in Montpellier and its tiny air facility served only light aircraft. The lack of air service or swank hotels weighed in my favor. There was very little chance of my encountering a pilot, a stewardess or a hotel employee who might recognize me.
I presented myself in Montpellier as Robert Monjo, a successful author and screenwriter from Los Angeles, “successful” in order to explain the sizable account I opened in one of the local banks. At that, I didn’t deposit all the moneys I took with me to Montpellier. Had I done so, it might have aroused some curiosity as to my actual livelihood. I retained treble the amount in cash, hidden away in my luggage. As a matter of fact, the people of Montpellier were not prone to pry. I was asked only the necessary and perfunctory questions as I went about the business of becoming an expatriate citizen of the town.
I bought a small cottage, a charming and gracious little house with a tiny back yard shielded by a high board fence, where the previous owner had cultivated a minuscule garden. The operator of the store where I bought furnishings for the house lent me the services of his wife, a skilled interior decorator, in selecting the proper furniture and arranging the decor. I fixed up one room as a study and library, reinforcing my image as a writer engaged in research and literary creation.
I bought a Renault, one of the more comfortable models but not luxurious enough to attract attention. Within two weeks I felt at home, secure and content in my new surroundings.
And if God had shorted the Mediterranean Languedoc on good grapes, He made up for it in the people. They were a sturdy, amiable, courteous and gregarious populace in the main, quick to smile and to offer any assistance. The housewives in my neighborhood were always knocking on my door with gifts of pastry, fresh baked bread or a serving from their dinner pots. My immediate neighbor, Armand Perigueux, was my favorite. He was a huge, gnarled man of seventy-five and he still worked as an overseer in a vineyard, commuting to and from work on a bicycle.