Beggarman, Thief by Irwin Shaw Page A

address a lawyer in France. “How will it all be arranged?” he asked. “I mean—taken to the nearest border?” He frowned. “I mean, nobody I’ve ever known has been taken to the nearest border before.”
    “Oh, that,” the old man said airily. It was an old, commonplace story for him. “If you will be at the Nice airport with a ticket for the boy one week from today, he will arrive accompanied by a detective who will make certain that he boards a plane for some other country. The United States, if you wish. Since the man will not be in uniform, it will arouse no curiosity: he will seem like an uncle, a friend of the family, wishing the boy bon voyage.”
    “Has the boy been told?” Rudolph asked.
    “I informed him myself this morning,” the lawyer said.
    “What did he say?”
    “As usual, nothing.”
    “Did he seem happy, sad?” Rudolph persisted.
    “He seemed neither happy nor sad.”
    “I see.”
    “I took the liberty of looking at the schedules of the American airlines that serve Nice. The most convenient would be the plane that will leave at eleven-thirty in the morning.”
    “I’ll be there,” Rudolph said. He reached out for Jean’s passport and put it in his pocket.
    “I must compliment you, Monsieur Jordache,” the old man said, “on the calm, the gentlemanly equilibrium with which you have endured this painful episode.”
    “Thank you.” The moment I leave this beautiful office, Rudolph thought, I will not be calm or demonstrate equilibrium of any kind, gentlemanly or otherwise. As he started to get up, he felt dizzy, almost as if he were going to faint, and had to steady himself by putting a hand against the desk. The old man looked at him quizzically. “A bit too much lunch?” he asked.
    “No lunch at all.” He had skipped lunch for seven days.
    “It is important to guard one’s health,” the old man said, “especially when one is in a foreign country.”
    “Would you like my address in the United States,” Rudolph asked, “so that you can mail me your bill?”
    “That will not be necessary, monsieur,” the old man said smoothly. “My clerk has it prepared for you in the outer office. You do not have to bother with francs. A check in dollars will do, if you will be kind enough to send it to the bank in Geneva whose address you will find on the bill.”
    Impressive, able, surrounded by gleaming eighteenth-century furniture, with a view of the blue sea and an untaxed account in Switzerland, the old man stood up, slowly, careful of his advanced years, and shook Rudolph’s hand, then accompanied him to the door, saying, “Enfin, I must extend my sympathies to you and your family and I hope that what has happened will not prevent you from visiting this lovely part of the world in the future.”
    First things first, he thought as he walked away from the lawyer’s house along the ramparts toward the port, past the Musée Grimaldi, with all the Picassos in it. The bad news to begin with. That meant Dwyer and Kate. He would have to tell them of his conversation with Heath yesterday. Together, preferably, so that there would be no misunderstanding, no suspicion of secret dealing. After that, the good news for Jean and Gretchen, that they were free now to go back home. He relished the thought of neither meeting. Then there would have to be the jail again, some decision made about where and how and with whom Wesley would stay in America. Maybe that would be the worst conversation of all. He hoped the boy had shaved by now. And taken a shower.
    He stopped and looked out to sea, across the Baie des Anges toward Nice. The Bay of Angels. The French didn’t care what they named things. Antibes, for example. Antipolis, the Greek settlers had called it-Opposite the City. What city? Athens, a thousand miles away by oared galley? Homesick Greeks? He himself was homesick for no place. Lucky Greeks. What were the laws then, what had those exemplary politicians judged a fair punishment for