Barking Man (19 page)

Ton-Ton Detroit said nothing at all. Mechanically, he went ahead with his preparations for the day, making a prodigious mental effort to annihilate the other’s presence from his mind. When his wares were arrayed down the front of the dashiki, he fitted the horned radio over his ears and turned on
France Culture.
Time for
les informations
, and on a day like this one was shaping up to be, he wouldn’t doubt the news would be all bad. Clay walked a little way down the sea wall, stretching and bouncing on the balls of his feet, then turned around and started to come back.

“You know what I used to believe, uncle?” he said. “I used to honestly think that people in Europe still carried real
money.
But I want you to just look here at how bad I been fooled.”

From between the bottom two buttons of his shirt Clay produced one of the flat leather purses the younger Frenchmen sometimes carried and stuck it out at Ton-Ton Detroit at the end of both his arms. Ton-Ton Detroit moved to turn up his radio and drown out whatever Clay might be going to say next, but by some cursed accident he touched the wrong dial and instead was caught listening to a blurry French cover of some American pop tune he knew he had always hated even without being able to completely recognize it now.

M’enlève pas ma yunyunyah …

M’enlève pas ma yunyunyah …

M’enlève pas ma yunyunyah … oooh-ahhhh …

He flinched, his teeth squeaking together, and turned the radio off. All things considered he was not particularly surprised by this development. He had had ominous dreams all night and the
flics
had already flipped him upside down and shaken him this morning on his way out to the breakwater, turning all his gear out onto the asphalt of the parking and leaving him to scrape it back together when they were done. They knew that he knew that they knew that he had had nothing to do with the mugging at Cap Martin, but whenever anything of that kind happened they liked to throw a little scare his way in case perhaps he might inform, though up to now he never had. Clay pushed the zip of the purse back with his thumb and spread it open across his palms.

“What do you think, uncle?” he said. “Don’t try to tell me that’s not pitiful. A guy carries around this fat old bag and nothing inside it at all but what?” He gave the purse an angry shake. “Suntan oil. Address book, okay. Pictures of babes, man, this cat knows some
ugly
women. Here we got a bracelet of some kind of worry rocks or something, I don’t know what. And five different kinds of credit cards, three of which I never even heard of. And not enough cash for a baby mouse to make a nest in.”

Clay shook the bag some more, jogging the contents up and down. Ton-Ton Detroit put on his fisherman’s sunglasses but the inside of the purse didn’t look any different under polarized light.

“I tell you something, uncle,” Clay said slowly. “You just about the best friend I know in this whole town. Man, I know you got to know somebody can help me move this plastic.”

“
Je balance pas
,” Ton-Ton Detroit said.
I don’t rat
. But maybe it was time he changed his policy.

“What’s that you say?” Clay said. “You know I don’t talk all that much frog.”

“I can’t help you any, son,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “You might just as well be showing me a nice handful of radioactive rocks.”

“That bad?” Clay fanned the credit cards out like a hand of five-card draw and then folded them together and stuck them in his top pocket.

“You ought to get rid of that mess, boy,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “I can tell you from here it won’t bring you any happiness at all.”

“Well, you know I
want
to get rid of them,” Clay said. “But I was like counting on you to show me the way how. Come on, uncle, I
know
you know
somebody
.”

Ton-Ton Detroit forced out the bottom of his breath and turned himself to stone. Clay took a few nervous steps back and forth along the wall and then slapped his coat pocket and took out a box of Marlboros.

“You like one of these, uncle?” he said. “Go ahead, I owe you one.”

“I like my own brand,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “You find them in that pocketbook?”

“Ah well, what if I did?” Clay said. “Still not enough to take me very far. “He poked a cigarette in his mouth and dropped the box back in his coat. “While we at it, you got a light?”

Silently, Ton-Ton Detroit handed him a single kitchen match. Clay looked at it a second and then struck it on the wall and lit his smoke. After he had flipped away the matchstick he scooped out the contents of the purse with the motion of somebody seeding a cantaloupe and dropped everything off the edge of the breakwater. Then he zipped the purse back shut and began to fondle the smooth brown leather.

“Nice Spanish leather we got here, uncle,” he said. “Quality workmanship too, all handmade, just look at that stitching, it’s made to last. I wouldn’t doubt it would bring you two, three hundred francs at least if you wanted to hang it on your rack. People around here go for this kind of thing.”

Ton-Ton Detroit reached for the purse, held it close to his eyes for a couple of seconds, then turned and flung it out over the water as far as it wanted to go. It traveled a wide arc against the blurred zone where the horizon should have been, spinning horizontally like a plate, and landed far enough away he couldn’t hear the splash. When he turned back, Clay’s face had drawn so tight the bones were sticking through the skin and Ton-Ton Detroit made ready to trip him off the breakwater if he decided to lunge. However, in a few seconds Clay had relaxed.

“They put a
flic
on l’Escalier de la Plage already,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you found one just about anywhere else it might occur to you to try.”

Clay sagged back against the wall, crossing his shiny black shoes in front of him. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and stared at the long tube of ash on the end. There wasn’t even enough breeze to blow it off of there.

“All right, uncle, it’s your beat,” he said. “If you think the thing’s too hot, it’s too hot, I guess. Can’t be too careful in this business, right?”

Behind his sunglasses, Ton-Ton Detroit squinched his eyes tight shut. Clay pushed himself upright off the wall and brushed a little white dust off the tail of his coat.

“Dig you later, uncle, I guess,” he said. “And just keep me in mind if you have any ideas.”

When Ton-Ton Detroit still did not answer Clay shrugged and started away toward the harbor with his head tucked in and his hands pushed deep in his pockets. Once he was good and gone, Ton-Ton Detroit lit a Gauloise Blonde, but it tasted stale and gritty to him now. It was already hot and the day was still suffocatingly calm. When he looked up for the mountains he saw only a blank. He readjusted the radio, gazing out over the pale tinny water. Time for the science program;
les informations
had passed. He hoped that the purse wasn’t planning to come floating back up to the breakwater; it would give the
flics
an edge on him if it did, since they knew he hung around the place.

Mindy had come to the conclusion that until she managed to get to a store, her white beach pajamas were the best thing she had going. She didn’t bother to put a top on underneath. Daddy gave her the
oh God
look when she went out the door but she didn’t think he’d really noticed or he would have pitched more of a fit. That was it, she was cool till lunch or later, since he’d have to stick close to Mom all day.

So naturally
all
the beaches were pebbles, of course they wouldn’t have heard of sand yet in France. She explored a little way down the shore, but let’s face up to it, rocks were rocks, and there really wasn’t any place better than the section below where the stairs came out. You could rent time on deck chairs here and there, she saw, but her cash flow was a little constricted at the moment and she’d rather hold on to what she had for maybe a couple of
long-drinks
that night. It wasn’t particularly crowded and she found a decent-looking spot and spread her towel on it, pounding the gravel in a few key places as if that might make it a little softer. Actually it wasn’t as bad as it looked once you got it all kind of adapted to your bod. She stepped out of her white trousers and folded them neatly for later and then sat down and rolled off the blouse.
Shazam,
first time ever on a topless beach, not counting skinny-dipping at night, but it didn’t look like any applause was going to start up right away.

She put the blouse away in her bag and started giving herself a long slow coat of cocoa butter, checking out the area on either side while she rubbed it in. You could tell the French women must come here all the time because none of them had the ghost of a strap mark, but apart from that Mindy felt well ahead on points so far. Most of the others had stretch marks if you looked close enough, and seemed at least a little droopy up top, and they all seemed to have little kids along with them, which probably explained why they looked a little run-down. The guys, well, first of all most of them looked like husbands, and none of them were that great to start with. The basic trouble with French guys was like hardly any muscles, they all seemed to have those little chicken-wing arms, not that it seemed to slow them down much. Actually there were a couple of hunkier ones stretched on platforms back up by the steps, but some way or other they seemed kind of out of it, lying there still as statues carved out of meat.

Maybe they were all gay or something; anyway, it was pretty early still. Mindy stretched out on her back and shut her eyes, breathing in the sweet smell of the warm cocoa butter. The sun seemed hotter on her breasts than anywhere else, if she wasn’t imagining it, and for a minute she felt just a little self-conscious, but pretty soon she forgot all about it and started to daydream. When she woke up she’d broken a sweat from the sun and she sat up to check for sure she wasn’t burning; she had an okay poolside tan from California but it would be dumb to end up with a pair of blistered tits. Time to see what the water was like, but hey, walking barefoot on these rocks was no joke, she didn’t see how the French people could hack it. Way out near the line of buoys were some people lying on another diving raft, but Mindy was only a couple of steps in before she knew she’d never make it, man, it already was making her eyeballs hurt and she was barely up to her knees. She could tell the shelf dropped off a few feet more right in front of her because there was this fat lady swimming right by, with a bathing cap on and also a pair of flip-flops—so that was how you got over the rocks. Farther out, a guy with a snorkel popped out of the water, and he was also wearing a wet suit, and she would bet he needed it.

Well, okay, forget about swimming. Blue had never been her color. She turned around and went mincingly back toward her towel. More people had showed up while she’d been napping, but they all still looked like little families and stuff, and surprise! but all of them were French. Nobody seemed to be cruising at all, it was kind of an antisocial scene, everybody just rooted to their own patch of gravel. The French boys seemed to all hang out up there on the promenade, slouching around on their bikes and like that; she wondered how they kept those great tans without ever coming down to the beach.

Well, once she had her moped she could probably make it to Monaco, for sure there’d be something more going on there. Mindy dropped to her knees and then stretched out on her stomach, but it was tougher trying to lie on that side, every little rock seemed to be out to get her from under the towel, and after a minute she had to sit back up. Yep, she was starting to get just a little bit bored, should have brought a magazine or something, she wished she’d remembered the radio. Back home she had a mini-TV, but she’d been told it wouldn’t work over here for some reason. She stared down the beach; even with sunglasses it was getting too bright. One of those black street peddlers, or beach peddlers, whatever, was coming along the strand her way, repeating a phrase in a kind of low grumble.

“
Regardez-moi
ça, messieurs, mesdames, c’est pas cher, regardez, c’est pas cher
…” Ton-Ton Detroit came to a halt, his sandals about an inch back from the fringe of Mindy’s towel.

Mindy rose to her knees to peer at his stuff. The jewelry was okay but too heavy for her, and though the radios were kind of neat she already had a radio back in the apartment. She couldn’t quite remember the French word for “purse.”

“Uh,” she said, pointing, “
montrez-moi
ça
.”

“Ees a booteeful purse,” Ton-Ton Detroit said, turning up his French accent as far as it would go and unhooking the thing from its little strap.

“Hey, you speak English?” Mindy said.

When she all of a sudden remembered she was topless she almost blushed, but she didn’t think she had all the way, and she was tan enough in the face she didn’t really believe it would show all that much.

“Onlee a leetle,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. The Americans usually liked it better that way. “Vayree good deal, onlee one hundred frawncs.” He grinned at her from one ear to the other.

Mindy snapped up the flap of the purse and peeked inside at the lining. Cute idea, snakeskin, but it looked fakey close up and she could tell at a glance the stitching was junk. And a hundred francs was practically twenty bucks, for God’s sake. She didn’t feel a bit embarrassed anymore, she felt sort of cool and Continental, and she knew she was maintaining just fine.

“
Non, merci
,” she said, flopping back on her towel. “
Je ne l’aime pas
.”

In spite of all the omens, Ton-Ton Detroit had sold more this morning than the morning before, though that didn’t make him feel any better, since he now had to look for the bad luck to strike him from some unknown direction. By noon he was still not very hungry and he walked back toward Menton on the street behind the hotels, hoping his appetite might improve. On his left-hand side the
midi
rush hour traffic buzzed and roared, all the people fighting their way back home for lunch. Since he had a little extra money Ton-Ton Detroit went into La Régence and ordered one of their cheaper salads, but his mouth remained obstinately dry and he might as well have been kneeling down to eat grass for all the taste the lettuce had. On his way out he paused at the
zinc
for a glass of red wine, which made him feel a little better by the time he reached the street.