Mignon

by James M. Cain

  “They’ll suspend the prison term, if you make no defense and if you declare all the assets you have.”

  “Now I’ve got it. Go on.”

  “Well, he can declare the store, which would probably keep him out of prison. They could seize it as soon as they occupy Alexandria. But my father’s biggest asset is his share of his partnership with Burke. You understand, Willie? The cotton has now been made over, all the warehouse receipts, to Burke as godpappy, and articles have been signed giving him half and my father half. If my father declares his share of course it’s gone, so of course he can’t declare. But if he doesn’t declare, he can never claim in court—he can’t sue Burke, even through an assignee. It’s all gone.”

  “How much does this cotton amount to?”

  “We have three hundred twenty-seven bales—worth a hundred twenty thousand dollars clear of charges.”

  “Quite a pot to be playing for.”

  “It’s worth sixty thousand dollars to Frank to do my father in.”

  I’d got the point at last, but we were a long way from knowing what I could do about it. We both agreed, neither of us liking it much, that as he was supposed to take her, she must go to the ball with him as though nothing had happened at all. That left me and what she should tell him about me, which wasn’t too easy, as almost any story was bound to leave him suspicious. At last I said: “Now I think I have it. You tell it just as it happened, your coming to me, since you hadn’t heard from him, on account of Sandy Gregg’s stories and all that. But now that you’ve got me in, you’re getting cold feet. You don’t like it a bit that first crack out of the box I named myself military counsel. And you think it very peculiar the way I’m talking money—a hundred dollars cash now, and a hundred fifty later, to be guaranteed by someone before I lift a finger. If you lay it on right, he’ll not only not suspicion us, but he will suspicion me and feel that he must come to see me. Then he’ll be leading to me, and I’ll have something to go on.”

  “All right, Willie, two hundred and fifty. What else?”

  I said I wanted a list of stationery stores ready for me when I called at Lavadeau’s the next morning, places that might have sold a cheap tablet to an Irishman. “It’s the kind of thing,” I said, “that a clerk would be sure to remember. If I can find where he bought his paper, I’ll have something resembling proof. But I should have a great deal more. I wish I could line it up so I could demand a search by the Army of his home, to turn everything up—stationery, envelopes, memoranda, and so on. But I have to make sure the stuff is there. Where does he live?”

  “The City Hotel, Willie.”

  “Ah-ha. Hotel rooms are easily entered.”

  “Maybe not his. He keeps a gippo, as he calls it—it’s some kind of Irish word. What is a gippo?”

  “I never heard of a gippo, Mignon.”

  “I think it’s a man, but it could be a dog.”

  “Whatever it is, it can be dealt with.”

  “But when he’s not there, it is.”

  “How do you know? From being in his rooms?”

  “No, Willie! But he talks about it!”

  It was just a second’s flare-up, and left us pressing still closer. She said: “It must be going on for nine, and I have to get back. Willie, I’ve figured how I’ll do, so as not to be taken home to an empty flat with somebody pushing in. Everything stops at twelve o’clock on Mardi Gras, so I’ll ask to be taken back to the shop where my clothes are, and then, after I’ve changed, I’ll spend the night with Veronique—Veronique Michaud, one of our dressmakers. Does that please you?”

  “I’ve been worrying about it, plenty.”

  “Then kiss me. And say you love me a little.”

  “I love you so much it’s more like being insane.”

  On St. Charles, Mignon pointed out the hall where the ball would be held; it was across the street from Lavadeau’s, a few doors from the Pickwick Club. When we got to the shop, she pointed through the window past the wax admiral to a big, heavy man in Mexican costume talking with Lavadeau. “That’s him,” she whispered. I said: “I hate his guts already.” She laughed, slipped out of my oilskin and gave it back, put a kiss on my mouth with her fingertips, and slipped inside. When I’d put the oilskin back on I started for the hotel, but on the way decided to take advantage of the cat being away. I kept on to Common, turned, walked down one block to Camp, and went into the City Hotel. It was a nice place, not quite in the St. Charles class, but a good hotel just the same, very gay just now, with quite a few people in costume. I registered: “William Crandall, Algiers, La.” My baggage, I said, was delayed, but I’d pay two nights in advance. The clerk took my money, marked my room in the book, called a boy, and gave him the key. However, I took it, saying: “I’ll go up later,” and tipped.

  Out on the street again, I walked up Common, checking a hardware store as I went. It was closed, but as I remembered it from passing once or twice, it had lettered on the window, in the lower left-hand corner:

  LOCKSMITH

  Serrurier

  At the St. Charles, I had sandwiches and beer sent up and mumbled to myself as I munched: “What the hell have you got yourself into? You’re supposed to have your mind on raising twenty-five thousand bucks.”

  Chapter 4

  BURKE SHOWED AT THE St. Charles next morning, even sooner than I had hoped. I’d sent the corduroys out to be pressed, put on my dark suit, and stepped down the street to the locksmith’s, to get him started on the skeleton I needed, made from a blank to correspond with my City Hotel key, for the rummage job I had in mind. I came back, had breakfast in the bar; when I went upstairs again Burke was in the hall, popping my door with his knuckles. In Scotch tweeds, cloth hat, and brown shoes, with a rain cape over one arm, he looked even bigger than he had in his red Mardi Gras costume, but I sang out loud and hearty: “Mr. Burke, I believe? Welcome to my humble abode—I’m flattered that you’ve come.” His round, pink face broke into smiles and he held out his hand, expressing “the honest pleasure I feel at meeting our Good Samaritan.” He spoke with an Irish brogue, but not a shanty-Irish brogue. I can say plenty against him, but—allowing for small things like iv for of, be for by, and me for my—he handled the English language in a most distinguished way; not saying he couldn’t manhandle it, to the point of just plain filth, when his temper got the best of him.

  But now he was graciousness itself, saying very respectfully: “Could I have a word with you, me boy? Poor Adolphe’s me friend as well as me partner, and I think we should have a talk.”

  “Certainly,” I said, unlocking. “Come in.”

  I hung his cape and hat in the armoire, and seated him; at once he began thanking me “for all you’ve done—not only for Adolphe, but the little one, too, Mrs. Fournet. She told me all about it.”

  “Then she got to the ball?” I asked.

  “Aye—we were late but made a sensational entrance, she favoring the Black Tulip, I a Tipperary cardinal at his golden jubilee mass. I went as a charro, in a red velvet rig I once bought for a Mexican fandango. The hat has bells on’t which I swear play ‘La Paloma.’ ”

  “You’ve been in Mexico, then?”

  “In the cotton boom, early on in the war—at Matamoros and Bagdad. I didn’t do badly. I made a bit.”

  “I’ve heard the sky was the limit.”

  “The sky? Me boy, it showed mirages, with minarets, date palms, and Moorish dancing girls nekkid as when they were born. Bagdad was not accidentally named.”

  “Just exactly where is it?”

  “Mexican side, mouth of the Rio Grande.”

  “Must be quite a place.”

  “The stinkhole iv the Western World—built on pilings, iv slabs and adobe and canvas, populated be sailors, pimps, and muchachas, all drunk as fiddler’s bitches, but paved, here and there, with gold.”

  “Gold made from cotton?”

  “Aye.”

  He seemed quite fond of bragging, and as I measured him up, it came to me that th
e last thing I should be, if I meant to lull his suspicions, was a decent, honest man. So I encouraged him to run on, hanging on his tales, of the fortunes made in Mexico, racked up in just a few months, and the private armies that guarded them. He mentioned one Paddy Milmo, “me partner, who abused me confidence shamefully—though I came off with at least me share, a hundred thousand in gold, in spite of his damned soldados, looking for me all night, to clap me in the picota for the chinch bugs to eat out me neck.” It occurred to me that partners “abusing me confidence” might be one of the mirages he saw all the time, kind of a chronic illusion. But after he’d told a few tall ones and I had made proper mirations, I did some bragging myself. I told of the thousand dollars I’d made at Chestertown one day, on a hurry-up job of dredging for some peach farmers on Chester River whose wharf had got silted up so the steamers couldn’t get in to haul their crop to market. They were ruined unless something was done, “and so,” I said, “as soon as the papers were drawn and the money put in escrow, I told them, ‘Gentlemen, gauge. The agreement says seven feet, and I think you’ll find you have it.’ So, with the witnesses, they all piled into rowboats, with a red rag tied at seven feet on a bamboo fishing pole. And wherever they put down the pole the red rag went under, so they had no choice but to pay. Because what they didn’t know was that while they were up at the bank signing papers with me, Sandy Gregg, my tugboat skipper, was turning his screw at the wharf. The screw churned up the silt and the tide floated it out. We picked up a thousand neat for two hours’ work by a boat.”

  “But you saved the day for your friends?”

  “Who were sore as a boil, however.”

  He burst out laughing and roared: “You’re a man iv me own kind—let the buggers pay, and if they don’t like’t, lump’t!”

  “They paid, but because they had to.”

  “... Aye, you mentioned escrow?”

  “That’s right. I like my money guaranteed.”

  He had a small, gray eye, kind of rheumy, and it looked me over now, very close. In a moment, he said: “If it’s your fee you’re talking about, for acting as counsel to Adolphe, there’ll be no trouble about it, if I accept your ideas. Could I hear them, if you have any?”

  It seemed to me that, starting out to be hostile, he had now made a switch and would fall into my trap if I talked the right way. So I decided to bring up the thing, going by what she’d told me, that had to be the nub of his crooked scheme. I said: “Well, Mr. Burke, I don’t know what you’ll accept, but for my part, having read that informer’s note, having talked with Mr. Landry, and having had some experience with such things, I would say he’s innocent, and doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I mean he may not have done it, but how does he go about proving it? So the only idea I have is: Plead, and get the thing over with.”

  The rheum in his eye took on a glitter. “Do you mean it, lad?” he asked, very excited. “Are you serious in what you say?”

  “Why string it out, Mr. Burke?”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing meself!”

  “They may confiscate—but they would anyway.”

  “And he’ll not have to sit in prison!”

  “That’s the main thing, isn’t it?”

  “And another thing, me boy—what does he have to lose? The store in Alexandria, which they’ll take when the Army arrives there. But these invaded towns have a way of being burned as the invaders leave—so what would he have, assuming he made a defense? A pile of ashes. ’Tis better to get it over with, so he’s out! And another thing: He still will have his cotton, through his partnership with me. But ’twill be worth nothing at all unless we’re on the spot to pick up our seizure receipt, the one the Army gives when the stuff is taken in. But how can he be there, me boy, and also be here awaiting trial? Perhaps I could swing it alone—after all, everything’s in my name. But ’twould be a blight on the whole litigation to have a partner sitting in jail. Time is of the essence! And suppose he loses the store? What do they signify, a few bricks in Alexandria?”

  It was all loyal and warm and moving, except there wasn’t a word about the fix Mr. Landry would be in, not being able to sue, to claim his share of the partnership. So I said nothing about it, and went on: “All right, if we’re agreed on the plan, the next question is: Which of us sells him on it? You? Or, as I’d assume you’d prefer, me?”

  “If you would, me boy, ’twould help.”

  “Well. I should do something to earn my pay.”

  “And, in case he should resent it—?”

  “Better you stand out from under.”

  “Aye! For the sake of me friendship with’m.”

  We fixed it up that he should talk with the Judge Advocate in charge of the case while I was seeing the prisoner, and that then I’d report to him at the City Hotel. He took out his carte de visite and wrote his room number, 346. My heart gave a little flip flop; my room number down there was 301, which meant on the same floor. He said: “Come right up, without asking at the desk—the less they know of me business, the better they’ll sleep o’ nights. But, me boy, please don’t be all day. I’m seeing the little one tonight, and any good news I can give her, something to indicate her father may soon be free, will cheer her up no end. Will you bear that in mind?”

  “I’ll report by lunchtime, at latest.”

  “I’ll be waiting, me boy.”

  “And I’ll do my best to convince him.”

  “I’m sure of’t. And now, the question iv payment.”

  He took out a wallet as thick as a book, slipped a hundred-dollar bill from inside, handed it over, and said: “I believe you mentioned to her one hundred cash in hand, with one hundred fifty more guaranteed. Then would a small escrow downstairs, in care of the hotel desk, take care of the balance you want? If not, say what you want, and I’ll try to accommodate to it.”

  Now if plotting with him was called for, I would do it as long as I had to, but I gagged at taking his money. I stood snapping the bill in my fingers, and then not snapping it, for fear it would come apart, as it had a small tear in one end, a triangular jag half an inch deep. I said: “Mr. Burke, escrow’s according’s according—you ask it if you need it. With you, I figure I don’t—so let’s defer payment until I’ve done what you want. And I’d rather you took this back.”

  “But me boy, you’re welcome to keep it.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “As you like, but if you change your mind——”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  And I handed the bill back, not dreaming it would become the bomb that would free Mr. Landry, and after that, almost blow me sky-high.

  Plenty of cabs for charter today, so I took one by the hour, and reported first to Lavadeau’s, where all the pirates, kings, queens, and harem girls were hanging on hooks, with her, Lavadeau, Veronique Michaud, and two or three others wrapping tissue paper on them, with mothballs sprinkled on. She took me back to a fitting room, a tiny screened-off place with a table in it and a chair, which she gave me, standing close so I could whisper. I told her what I’d done, explaining: “I’m pretending to go along, so he thinks he’ll get what he wants, a plea that’ll ring the curtain down quick. Your father, no doubt, will squawk like a stuck pig, but I have to gain time, and opposing Burke could ruin us. He must think he has things going his way.” She listened, pulling my head to her, and got the point, but warned me: “Willie, don’t be too long, don’t take too much time. I’m going out with him again tonight, to pump him, but from what he said last night, another note’s going in, perhaps has been already sent. And the more he spills in these notes, the worse it’s going to be.” I asked if she’d made up the list of the downtown stationery stores. She said she had and got it out of her purse. It was in her strange, French handwriting, with crossbars on the 7’s, accent marks, and all kind of small touches I wasn’t familiar with. Also, it smelled like Russian Leather. I kissed it, then buried my nose in her ruffle. She pushed her two big bulges to my cheeks, and for a mom
ent, as my arm went around her, it was holy again, and close.

  But her father was a man of ice when I lined things out for him. By then they’d given him a brazier, and he stood over it warming his hands as I brought him down to date, and suggested he “consider a plea.” “I will not plead,” he kept saying over and over. “I will not, not, NOT plead—and I’m astonished, Mr. Cresap, you would urge such a thing on me. Apart from general considerations, it involves a point of honor, the admission of an act I didn’t commit, and therefore am not guilty of. I will not plead.”

  “Nobody’s asking you to.”

  “I—I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “I suggested that you consider it.”

  “That I consider it? ... And then what?”

  “Well, you’ve got nothing else to do, at least that I can see, but put charcoal on that fire. Can’t you consider some more?”

  “... Consider? And then consider?”

  “And—consider.”

  He looked at me quite a while, took some turns around the brazier, then fetched up facing me. “Mr. Cresap,” he said, “you may consider me as considering.”

  “That’s all I want to know.”

  So far, except for some stalling around, getting ready to start, I was strictly nowhere, but then, unexpectedly, I went ten leaps down the road. I went up to the Judge Advocate’s office and was referred by the sergeant to a major named Jenkins. He was a tall, thin, pale man, with a black, spade-cut beard, who kept me standing beside his table and looked at papers as we talked. I led off, as soon as I’d given my name and reported myself as counsel, by asking what my client was charged with. “No charge as yet,” he said. “He’s being held for investigation—as I’d think you’d know by now, if you’re serving as his counsel.”

  “What charge if I get him to plead?”

  “Parole violation.”

  “He hasn’t been given parole that I know of.”

  “All these people are technically under parole—if they don’t like it that way, they can let us know and we’ll fix it by putting them in the stockade.”