wouldn’t cooperate until I’d promised him ten percent of the profit. With that settled, he sent me to Merde Alors, who had a job on a boat then tied up in Antibes harbor. Merde Alors was as grumbly as ever, but he passed me along to a pal on a contrabandier that was about to take off for Tangier.
I got a job aboard her by swearing I knew all there was to know about cigarette-buying. The captain questioned me a bit, but he didn’t know beans about it himself and I gave him all the right answers, at least as far as he knew. He said, Veddy well, I could work my way. He was British. The boat was a pretty white yacht with two masts; a ketch, I think, nautically speaking, but with enough auxiliary power to move her when the wind failed. She wasn’t in the same class with The Boar’s cutter, because she couldn’t have out-raced a Spanish patrol-boat or a pirate with a two-day head start. Her captain didn’t seem to think anything like that would be necessary. Whether he was the boat’s owner or just borrowing it in the owner’s absence I never knew, but what he seemed to have in mind was taking her into Tangier under her own name and registry, loading her up with cigarettes and sailing her back to France without let or hindrance from anybody. I was glad I wasn’t planning to go back with him.
Packing wasn’t going to be a problem. I could get everything I owned into a small bag and cram Reggie’s mourner’s outfit in on top. I figured that pinching the suit made up in part for her theft of my papers. I also had the equivalent of a little less than a hundred dollars in francs from Bernard’s advance. Where he was headed, he wouldn’t be needing it.
He didn’t call on me for help with the new scheme for the marquis before the yacht sailed. If he had, I’d have got out of it some way. I carried out my usual Reggie-routines right up until H-hour of D-day. Just before we pushed off, I dropped my resignation in the mail.
It read:
Dear Hon. —
Sorry to have to take off so abruptly, but I never gave my parole to you or the juge, remember? Please try to believe, for your own happiness, that all men are not as contemptible as your ever untrustworthy —
Spiv
Then I went aboard the yacht.
We trudged across the Mediterranean, mostly under sail, until we raised the Algerian coast five days later, then turned westward for Tangier. The captain didn’t even put into Gib to fuel up, not that fueling up would have done him any good. He was a real pigeon. I don’t know what happened to him and the yacht. When we docked at the darse in Tangier and I had helped him secure the mooring lines, I went below to get my bag, walked down the gangplank and started off.
The captain was on deck. “Hoy!” he called after me. “Where the devil do you think you’re going?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I called back. “Thanks for the ride.”
Well, His eye is on the sparrow, as they say, and when He isn’t too occupied with the sparrow’s affairs I know He watches me. Within ten days I had acquired a job and a blonde poupette named Boda, a Dane. I got them both from the same guy. He was an American; Jim something or other. I forget what the something or other was, and Boda said she never knew. She was that kind of poupette.
The way it happened, the first thing I did after getting off the yacht was to go to the U.S. legation down in the medina and apply for a passport. I said that mine had been stolen from me, the truth. But I had memorized the number and date of issue, those being the two things you have to know about a passport when you are asked unless you want to consult it every time you check in at a European hotel or border crossing, and of course I remembered my army serial number as well as the date of my discharge in Germany. They could check on me easily enough. They said they would get right on it. However, for various reasons it might be some time before a new passport could be issued. I said that time was
I got a job aboard her by swearing I knew all there was to know about cigarette-buying. The captain questioned me a bit, but he didn’t know beans about it himself and I gave him all the right answers, at least as far as he knew. He said, Veddy well, I could work my way. He was British. The boat was a pretty white yacht with two masts; a ketch, I think, nautically speaking, but with enough auxiliary power to move her when the wind failed. She wasn’t in the same class with The Boar’s cutter, because she couldn’t have out-raced a Spanish patrol-boat or a pirate with a two-day head start. Her captain didn’t seem to think anything like that would be necessary. Whether he was the boat’s owner or just borrowing it in the owner’s absence I never knew, but what he seemed to have in mind was taking her into Tangier under her own name and registry, loading her up with cigarettes and sailing her back to France without let or hindrance from anybody. I was glad I wasn’t planning to go back with him.
Packing wasn’t going to be a problem. I could get everything I owned into a small bag and cram Reggie’s mourner’s outfit in on top. I figured that pinching the suit made up in part for her theft of my papers. I also had the equivalent of a little less than a hundred dollars in francs from Bernard’s advance. Where he was headed, he wouldn’t be needing it.
He didn’t call on me for help with the new scheme for the marquis before the yacht sailed. If he had, I’d have got out of it some way. I carried out my usual Reggie-routines right up until H-hour of D-day. Just before we pushed off, I dropped my resignation in the mail.
It read:
Dear Hon. —
Sorry to have to take off so abruptly, but I never gave my parole to you or the juge, remember? Please try to believe, for your own happiness, that all men are not as contemptible as your ever untrustworthy —
Spiv
Then I went aboard the yacht.
We trudged across the Mediterranean, mostly under sail, until we raised the Algerian coast five days later, then turned westward for Tangier. The captain didn’t even put into Gib to fuel up, not that fueling up would have done him any good. He was a real pigeon. I don’t know what happened to him and the yacht. When we docked at the darse in Tangier and I had helped him secure the mooring lines, I went below to get my bag, walked down the gangplank and started off.
The captain was on deck. “Hoy!” he called after me. “Where the devil do you think you’re going?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I called back. “Thanks for the ride.”
Well, His eye is on the sparrow, as they say, and when He isn’t too occupied with the sparrow’s affairs I know He watches me. Within ten days I had acquired a job and a blonde poupette named Boda, a Dane. I got them both from the same guy. He was an American; Jim something or other. I forget what the something or other was, and Boda said she never knew. She was that kind of poupette.
The way it happened, the first thing I did after getting off the yacht was to go to the U.S. legation down in the medina and apply for a passport. I said that mine had been stolen from me, the truth. But I had memorized the number and date of issue, those being the two things you have to know about a passport when you are asked unless you want to consult it every time you check in at a European hotel or border crossing, and of course I remembered my army serial number as well as the date of my discharge in Germany. They could check on me easily enough. They said they would get right on it. However, for various reasons it might be some time before a new passport could be issued. I said that time was
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