Riviera Blues

by Jack Batten

  Nestor pulled back his lips in a nervous rictus.

  “I meant having a good time, Professor,” I said.

  The Stove stood at the bar with a beer at his elbow. The Pittsburgh Boomer hovered at his side. Boomer’s eyes kept spinning my way. He looked tickled pink. The Stove contented himself with occasional glances along the row of tables.

  “Why can’t I just walk out of here?” Nestor asked. His voice was plaintive. “You deal on your own with the robbers or whoever they may be.” The brief spell of kinship Nestor felt toward me had evaporated.

  “Emile may —”

  “No names.”

  “The man at the bar may have reinforcements outside,” I said.

  Nestor slumped in his chair.

  “If you’ll allow me a moment’s reflection, Professor,” I said, “I’ll brainstorm us a scheme to get out of here.”

  Nestor seemed on the brink of collapse.

  “With the disk of course,” I said.

  Another man came into the cafe. It was hard to miss his entrance. He had a smile of thousand-watt voltage, and he was dressed in clothes of many colours. All the colours were electric. He had on a brilliant blue warmup suit, white Nikes with purple stripes, and a yellow and black Hamilton Tigercat football jacket. Over his shoulder, he held a small duffle bag in shades of maroon and gold. The bag carried McMaster University’s name and crest. If this flamboyant fellow was French, I was Albert Camus.

  The man slapped backs and shook hands all the way down the bar. He had handsome features, curly brown hair, a wide build, and a carrying laugh. He gave Pittsburgh Boomer a fraternal pat on the shoulder. He leaned across the bar for a cheery word with the bartender. He accepted a glass of beer and he steered himself to the table where I sat with the gloomy professor. Nestor, head down, didn’t see him coming.

  “Hey, Dave,” the man cheered at the back of Nestor’s head. “Never seen you before in this den of iniquity.”

  Nestor jerked around.

  “Oh, hello, Jake.” Nestor’s voice was flat.

  Jake switched his beaming smile to me. “The last name’s Finney,” he said. He gave my hand a pump worthy of a long-lost frat brother. “I haven’t seen you in here either,” he said.

  “My first time, same as the Professor here,” I said. I told Jake my name. “I’m new on the Côte d’Azur.”

  Nestor stirred from his funk. “Jake is a colleague of mine,” he said to me, “in the English department.”

  “Hell,” Jake barked, “I am the English department.”

  “Nice place to teach,” I said, “if you have to teach.”

  “Better believe it.” Jake’s wide body was blocking my view of the Stove at the bar. “Tell you how good it is, I haven’t missed a day of tennis since November.”

  “Right there, Jake, you got me jealous,” I said. Even if I couldn’t see the Stove, I knew he wasn’t budging.

  “You’re a player, Crang?” Jake said. “Listen, I always need guys for a couple of sets. I’ve got an extra racquet. You want to take me on, name any day.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “my friend and I are moving along to Cannes tomorrow.”

  “For the film festival?” Jake looked impressed. “We had a gal up at the university the other day talking about it.”

  “My friend is the gal.”

  “No kidding.” Jake was noisily delighted. “I sat in on her seminar. Tell her I’m a fan.”

  “Of hers? Or of movies?”

  “I’ll put it this way, Crang, you’re a lucky man. But movies, if you and she got time, I always keep a stock of videos at my place.”

  “That’s nice, Jake, but —”

  “Right now, if you want to come over, I got, let’s see, War and Peace. That’s the Henry Fonda one, not the ten-hour Russian deal. I got Sweet Smell of Success, best movie Tony Curtis ever made …”

  Jake waxed on. He stood by the table, bouncing enthusiastically on the balls of his feet, beer in hand, the other hand describing eager little circles in the air. He remained in a direct line between me and Emile Clutch. Jake’s McMaster duffel bag, full and bulging, swung back and forth from his left shoulder. He talked and bounced, and the shoulder bag swung, and an idea crawled to the surface of my brain.

  “The fifth movie I got right now,” Jake was saying, “kind of a minor epic, very minor, you know what I mean, it’s the 1955 Ulysses, the one Kirk Douglas is in, and Silvana Mangano.”

  “Jake,” I said, “speaking of movies, this may sound forward of me, audacious even … but perhaps you might do me a favour.”

  Nestor came to life in his chair. “Don’t pay attention to this man, Jake,” he said to Finney. “Don’t even think about it. Crang is a very dangerous person.”

  “Dangerous?” Jake’s perpetual smile stretched another inch. “Now you’ve really got me interested,” he said to me. “Give me more of this audacious stuff.”

  “The movie I have in mind,” I said, “is maybe more along the lines of The Third Man.”

  “Absolute work of genius,” Jake said. “Carol Reed, I love his movies, honest to God. That one, Third Man, it had Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, the lovely actress Valli.… Who else?”

  “Trevor Howard and Wilfrid Hyde-White,” I said. “Okay, Jake, don’t look around, there’s a guy at the bar who wants something I have in my possession.”

  Jake didn’t look around. Nestor did.

  “Professor,” I said, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Jake,” Nestor snapped at Finney, “it’s only my duty to someone I’m associated with to say you’re putting yourself in jeopardy if you agree with whatever Crang asks of you.”

  “You’ve probably never seen The Third Man, am I right, Dave?” Jake asked him.

  “No, but that has nothing to do with real life,” Nestor said.

  “See the movie first, Dave,” Jake said. “Then we’ll discuss real life.”

  Jake turned to me.

  “The guy I’m talking about,” I said to him, “is the party behind you who has the very low centre of gravity.”

  “I noticed him,” Jake said. “With my pal who wears clothes from teams that don’t exist.”

  “What is it with the sweaters?”

  “He’s got one for Los Angeles Lakers University,” Jake said. “He keeps telling me his son is gonna head over there and study surfing.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “the other guy with the face like he just swallowed a quart of vinegar, he’s my problem. I’m holding these two items inside the brown envelope that the Nice Matin’s hiding on the table here. I want to smuggle the two items out of the cafe without the guy at the bar seeing the act of smuggling.”

  “So I’m the smuggler,” Jake said. His expression was almost radiant. “I love it.” He put down his empty beer glass on the table. “Here’s how we do it,” he said. His voice was low and conspiratorial.

  “Hold on a minute, Jake,” I said. “This is my play.”

  “Let me,” Jake said. “I’ve seen it done a hundred times.”

  “What? In the movies?”

  “Where else does anybody learn this kind of stuff?”

  “You’re probably right, but —”

  Jake had the manner of a man with no time for quibbling over small matters of detail.

  ‘“Kay,” he said. He was tilting closer to me. “Can your man see what I’m doing?”

  “No,” I said. “You’re shielding the table from him. Besides, you aren’t doing anything.”

  “Now I am.”

  Jake switched the McMaster University bag from his shoulder around to his chest. He pulled back the zipper that ran down the bag’s centre. A copy of Sports Illustrated sat on top of a white tennis sweater. Jake spread the magazine in front of me, open to an article about Mario Lemieux.

  “What yo
u do, Crang,” Jake said to me, “you look real interested in the magazine, like I’m showing you something you’re dying to read.” Jake spoke as if he were Alfred Hitchcock coaching an actor whose talent he doubted. “Try to feel involved in the words on the page there.… Okay, without taking your eyes off the page, reach into the Nice Matin …”

  I followed Jake’s directions. My hand fumbled at the newspaper.

  “Relax into it, Crang,” Jake said. His voice was trying for a soothing effect. My hand got a grip on the brown envelope, my head stayed over the Sports Illustrated. “Very nice,” Jake said. “You’re really getting into the part, Crang.… Now, slide the stuff out of the envelope over to me.… Not that slowly. Let’s get this thing done in one take, know what I mean?”

  Under Jake’s coaxing, I slipped the disk and the printout to the table’s edge. In one continuous motion, Jake accepted delivery of both. He folded them into the duffel bag on top of the white tennis sweater. I continued to act engrossed in the Mario Lemieux article. It speculated on the possibility of Mario scoring one hundred and fifty goals in a single season.

  “You’re not done,” Jake said to me.

  “The disk and printout are in your bag.”

  “What about the brown envelope?”

  “What about it?” My eyes were still fixed on the Lemieux piece. I didn’t give a fat hooray whether he scored fifteen hundred goals in a single season.

  Jake said to me, “You shouldn’t walk out of here with the envelope empty. Suppose the guy at the bar already saw it had something in it?”

  “The Sports Illustrated?”

  “I haven’t finished reading it.”

  “Ah, Nice Matin.”

  “Atta boy.”

  I was improving at the surreptitious moves. I stuffed the newspaper into the brown envelope. The envelope bunched up as if it still held the optical disk and computer printout.

  “Very professional,” Jake said. “That’ll be a wrap.”

  He took back the Sports Illustrated. There wasn’t much room left in the duffel bag. But Jake squeezed the magazine on top of the disk and paper. He zipped the bag shut.

  “Let me ask your opinion, Crang,” he said. “Who do you see playing me?”

  “Pardon?”

  “If what we’re doing is made into a movie, what actor’d take my role?”

  “The old casting game, I get it,” I said. I gave the matter some thought. “Van Heflin.”

  “Really?” It was Jake’s turn for deep thinking.

  “You know the Heflin type,” I said, “decent but courageous without calling attention to himself.”

  Jake looked down at his brilliant blue warmup suit and his Hamilton Tigercat windbreaker. “I’d have to speak to the wardrobe department about different clothes,” he said.

  “Something more self-effacing,” I said.

  “Right.” Jake retrieved his beer glass from the table. “Okay, Crang, you want me to hold the stuff in the bag at my place?” he asked me.

  “It may be a few days.”

  Jake told me his address. He lived in an apartment building a few blocks west of the Café des Nations.

  ‘“Kay, luck to you fellas,” Jake said. His delivery seemed a trifle stagey to me, but it probably came across as typical Finney heartiness to the regulars in the cafe. “Au ‘voir, guys,” Jake barked.

  He returned his beer glass to the bartender. It took him another five minutes to work the room. It was bonsoir to one guy, ça va? to another, an au ’voir here, a kiss on the cheek there. The kiss was for a toothless crone who looked about Madame Defarge’s age. Then Jake was out the door with the disk and printout.

  “Is he always like that?” I asked Nestor.

  “Jake is quite outgoing,” Nestor said, “if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Roughly.”

  Emile Clutch was still holding down a piece of the bar, nursing a beer and eyeballing me.

  “Now what do you intend?” Nestor asked me. His question mixed sarcasm and resignation.

  “Well, Professor, let’s face the music.”

  Nestor groaned …

  “And dance.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  There wasn’t a back way out of the Café des Nations. That cut the options to a precious one. I told David Nestor we would walk out the cafe’s front door, me carrying the brown envelope, then we’d run like hell.

  The first phase of the plan proceeded flawlessly. We walked to the door. Nestor looked like he might swoon at any moment, but he succeeded in getting one foot in front of the other. We stepped onto the small patio outside the front door.

  “To the left —” I said to Nestor. And got no further.

  From behind, Emile Clutch latched on to my left bicep. His grip was so determined that I developed an instant case of pins and needles in my lower arm. Pittsburgh Boomer’s hand rested on David Nestor’s neck. It was nothing like a stranglehold. It didn’t need to be. Nestor’s head hung down in despair and surrender.

  Emile and Boomer quick-marched us to an alley that ran along the west side of the cafe. Mike Rolland was leaning against a car parked a few yards down the alley. The car was the Japanese Jeep I’d seen in the driveway at Villa Pomme. Georges Clutch stood to Mike’s left doing fierce things with his eyes and mouth. Georges’s face was conspicuous for the shining white bandage that covered most of his nose.

  “Hey, fellas,” I said, “together again.”

  Georges Clutch eliminated the space between him and me in four purposeful strides. Georges strode, and Emile’s hand dug deeper into my arm. I was locked in the Stove’s grip. Georges hit me in the stomach.

  It was a punch worthy of Sugar Ray Leonard. It travelled no more than fifteen inches, and it struck me precisely in the solar plexus. Air hissed out of me. I couldn’t breathe.

  Emile let go of my arm. I sank in slow motion to my knees in the dirt and grit of the alley. My hands clawed at my stomach. Behind my eyes, black and red dots whirled.

  Georges leaned over me. He was close enough for the longer bristles of his beard to scratch against my cheek. Georges’s lips formed a grin. His teeth were brown stumps. He broke into a cackle. The breath that his laugh released from between the brown stumps was almost worse punishment than the punch. Georges’s halitosis put him in a class with the chien mechant I had had the tussle with on the sea walk. I wanted to gag, but I couldn’t muster enough air to make my throat function.

  Georges straightened up. He put his hands on his belt and gave his trousers a hitch. Georges wasn’t the fashion plate his brother was. His pants needed a press, and his shoes needed a shine. I knelt in the dirt, my lungs screaming for oxygen. Georges balanced himself on one unpolished shoe and pulled back the other. The son of a bitch was winding up to plant the shoe’s heel in my face.

  “Non, non.” Mike Rolland spoke unhurriedly from somewhere above me. “Peut-être plus tard, Georges.”

  Georges returned his kicking shoe to the ground.

  “Like you say, Crang, together again.” Mike squatted beside me, his face as near to mine as Georges’ had been. Mike passed the breath test. His smelled of alcohol with a mouthwash overlay. “Except I think you are not happy to see us, for sure,” Mike said.

  I could feel life begin to stir in my chest.

  “Thanks for calling off Georges,” I said. My voice sounded like a female impersonator doing Marlene Dietrich.

  “What you have caused to Georges’s nose, Crang,” Mike said, “I think he is not finished with you.”

  I paused before I answered. Partly the delay was a matter of collecting sufficient wind to speak again. Partly it was a piece of fakery while I considered a way out of this predicament.

  “We still best friends, Mike?” I wheezed.

  I pushed myself off the floor of the alley. The little circles continued t
o spin in my head. And my legs felt like they could use some glue. Otherwise I seemed to be regaining health.

  “I got the questions for you, Crang.” Mike sounded combative. “You answer, okay, for sure we be best friends.”

  There was something different about Mike, apart from the hostility. It was his clothes. They featured a colour other than silver white. He had on a leather ensemble, pants and a windbreaker in sea-green. Maybe they were his battle fatigues. Mike stood aggressively close, his forehead to my chin. Ranged behind him, the Clutch brothers, Pittsburgh Boomer, and David Nestor waited for Mike’s questions and my answers. Nestor’s jaw was slack.

  “Fire away, Mike,” I said. The words came out with the normal amount of air.

  “Who is this guy?” Mike asked. His thumb jerked over his shoulder at Nestor.

  “The Professor is no threat to you, Mike,” I said. “No help to you either. He’s just a teacher at the Canadian university.”

  “Another Canadian?” Mike turned and gave Nestor an inspection. Maybe Nestor’s nationality struck Mike as one too many coincidences. “What you teach, you other Canadian?” he asked Nestor.

  “Zoology,” I answered before Nestor could blunder into a reply that might blow the ball game.

  Mike turned back to me. “Zoology?”

  “Cutting up frogs, Mike,” I said. “The study of animal life. You’d be a natural for the Professor’s course.”

  Mike said something to Emile in French. The Stove spun Nestor around, braced Nestor’s legs against the far wall of the alley, and kicked them apart. Emile showed a lot of expertise in his search of Nestor’s clothes and person. His hands patted and poked every fold and crease and pocket. He finished and shook his head at Mike.

  “Told you so, Mike,” I said. “The Professor has nothing to hide. And neither do I.”

  Mike nodded Emile over to me. The Stove did his patting down with a shade more force than was called for. He probably resented coming up empty again. The brown envelope lay at my feet where I’d dropped it during the one-punch TKO I lost to Georges. Emile picked it up. Nice Matin fell out.