The Last Match (14 page)

The money was mostly in dirhams, with a small mixture of dollar scratch. Some of the Daddies had tried to pay off with large leaves out of their books of travelers checks, but travelers checks are hard to convert into the real thing unless they’re your own and you have a passport with the right name in it. Also there is the small but significant matter of vigorish, or breakage on the exchange when you convert from one money to another kind of money. We didn’t want to assume any unnecessary expenses. So we had collected in cash; as aforesaid, mostly dirhams.

Elmer didn’t want dirhams. He meant to blow along fast, after he had conned me, and dirhams would be a handicap to him for several reasons. There was an exchange control on them at the time, prohibiting the export of Moroccan currency from the country. You could always smuggle it, but if you got caught you lost not only the loot but usually your freedom to move about unhampered for a year or two. For another thing, the dirham wasn’t too strong outside Morocco. You could trade it for something else in Tangier, but the Tangier price wasn’t too favorable if you were after pounds, dollars, something hard like that. Elmer wanted dollars. He could have bought dollar traveler’s checks at a fair rate there in Marrakech, but he shied away from that because of the passport business. You’re supposed to be able to change a traveler’s check anywhere simply by countersigning it in front of the guy who’s going to give you the cash for it, but try and do it as a practical matter. They want to see your passport first, match the picture in it with your face, the signature in it with the signature on the check before you go any further. Since Elmer Wiggins was, for the moment, doing business as Elmer Wiggins, with

Michelle as with everyone else, things could get a bit hairy if he had to produce a passport with another name on it. Elmer was in a spot. It left him open to a little counter-bagging.

I made him an offer. I said, “Elmer, neighbor, I tell you what. I’ll buy your dirhams. You’ll have to make me a price, because I’m not going to do you any favors” he’d have shied away from me like a startled milk-cow at any hint of generosity), “but I’ll take them off your hands for pounds sterling and pay you in cash at a better price than you could get in Tangier or anywhere else. Want to deal?”

He was suspicious, naturally. Right away his instincts made him say, no; no deal. I expected that. But he thought about it—I expected that, too—and he began to see a way he could deal and con me at the same time. I expected
that.

“Hey, now, neighbor,” he said, in his best cornpone drawl. “This here now deal you was talking about. What’s in it for you?”

Money,” I said. “What did you think?”
“I
thought money,” he said. “What kinda money?” “Vigorish money,” I said. “I’m spending dirhams here.
I’m
going to spend a lot more before I leave here.” (I had told him and Michelle about the
teuf-teuf.)
“I have to buy dirhams with other kinds of money. If I buy them from you at a better price than you can sell them to a bank but still get them at a better price than I have to pay the bank—you figure it.”

He figured it. He was still suspicious, but it sounded right. Besides, he was counting on cleaning me, of hams as well as everything else, before he moved on. He agreed to deal, after some hemming and hawing.

“All right,” I said. “We deal. But first I have to dig up five-thousand-odd dollars worth of sterling in Tangier to buy your dirhams, and that’s not the kind of cash I ordinarily carry around in my pants. You’ll have to let me take my half out of the box.”

He balked there. It hurt him to let that kind of money get away, even temporarily. But he had to come around if he wanted to do business, and by then he had his own con adjusted to the new developments.

After we had cut the melon we argued some more about who was going to stand the costs of the Tangier trip. Both of us put up a good fight to show what square-shooters we were. In the end we split it down the middle, as we expected to do from the start. There was only one other small difficulty.

“Druther have dollars,” he said. “I don’t trust this here now sterling stuff.”

I shrugged and said, All right, I’d get him dollars if I could, as many as possible, but pounds sterling were easier to come by in Tangier because of its busy trade, in part legitimate, with Gibraltar. I wouldn’t be able to give him as good a price in dollars as I could in pounds. He finally agreed to take pounds. Still suspicious, of course.

“How long you gonna be gone?” he wanted to know.

“Well, let’s see. There’s only one Tangier flight out of here a week, on Saturday. That’s tomorrow. It’ll be back a week later. I ought to be back with it if I don’t have any trouble finding the money or get knocked over going or coming. Why?”

“I don’t want to git to worryin’ about you.”

“Why would you git to worryin’ about me, neighbor?”

“I’m jest a natcheral born worrier, I guess.”

“That’s sweet of you, but don’t go bald worrying about me. I’ll be back.”

In her own time Michelle got me alone to ask much the same questions. We spoke French whenever Reuben wasn’t tuned in, so her accent disappeared while mine, which wasn’t as cute as hers, cropped out.

“You will come back, will you not, Curlee?”

“Of course I’ll come back. Why wouldn’t I come back?”

“Elmaire thinks you may forget.”

“What Elmer means is he thinks I’m going to run out and leave him holding the sack.” By then she knew that there wasn’t going to be any camel caravan, although not that we had planned it that way from the beginning. “There isn’t any sack to hold, Michelle. Whatever happens, the money to meet our guarantee is already in the hands of the travel agent. Elmer is clean if he wants to move along tomorrow.”

“He doesn’t want to leave. He feels a responsibility until the people have made the trip. He thinks you should share the responsibility with him. So do I.”

I couldn’t very well tell her that Elmer’s only sense of responsibility was toward getting my share of the loot away from me. I said, “If I give you my word that I’ll be back as soon as I can get back, will you believe me?”

“How could I not?”

“How could you not what?”

“How could I not believe your word?”

“There are dozens of ways you could not believe my word. There are lots of words not worth believing for three seconds. Mine could be one of them.”

She shook her head, smiling. “No, Curlee. You would not lie to me. I know.”

For some reason she made me think of Reggie, who was equally positive I couldn’t tell the truth. I said, “Damn it, I would too lie to you! I lie to people all the time. Everybody lies to everybody else all the time. The world turns on an axis oiled by lies. Don’t be naive.”

“I am not naive. You have given me your word that you will come back. You will be back.”

“Yes. Certainly. I did. I do. I will. But I’d give you my word just as readily if I weren’t coming back, so where does that leave you?”

“With your word. Thank you, Curlee. I’ll tell Elmaire he has no need to worry.”

She left me defeated.

If Elmer thought his only worry was that I might not come back with my half of the boodle, he could think again. There I was taking all the risks of smuggling the money, losing it to the law and ending up in a smelly Moroccan jail while he sat on his ass with his share in his pocket and his cute doll to keep him company (Boda, Boda, poor innocent child, I would have done anything to save you) while he enjoyed the entertainments of the Djemaa El Fna. You big hay-shaker, I thought resentfully as the plane took off, putting me to all this trouble. If it weren’t for Michelle I wouldn’t even leave you carfare.

My heart was as heavy as lead when the plane put down in Tangier. Even the feel of all that money in my pants didn’t help. Boda was lost to me forever, already on her way to Buenos Aires or some Middle Eastern den of depravity if she wasn’t locked up in an Arab joint down in the medina where I couldn’t find her in a thousand years. Poor, beautiful, simple, harmless, honey-golden Boda. I was darn near in tears when I opened the door to the empty, lifeless apartment—it was long past Kadoosh’s quitting time—and found her sitting there in her slacks and sweater. Not doing anything, just sitting there with her hands in her lap. She gave me the great big slow smile, like the sun coming up out of the sea at dawn on a clear still morning.

“Hello,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Oh,” I said foolishly. “Have you?”

My mind had ceased to function. I had been so completely convinced that she was lost to me forever that I couldn’t accept the reality of her presence.

“You told me to.”

“So I did.”

“Can I take my clothes off now, Carly? I need a bath. It’s been three weeks.”

“You mean—you mean—you mean—you mean—?”

That’s what she meant. I had told her, to be emphatic, to keep her clothes on night and day, except for the
kaftan,
and by God that’s what she had done. Night and day for three weeks.

“Except that I changed my underpants a couple of times, Carly,” she said. “Was that all right? I didn’t think you’d mind if I changed my underpants. I did it in the dark.”

She hadn’t put on any makeup, either. I had told her not to. Or go up on the roof, or open the door to anyone but Kadoosh, or the other things. She hadn’t even once gone out of the apartment. She had obeyed instructions to the letter, sitting there without makeup or a bath or as much as a walk in the street for three whole weeks because that’s what she thought I had told her to do. I guess I had, at that. Anyway I was real glad to see her, and greatly relieved. No more about Boda at this point, except that after she had her bath and put on her makeup I took her out for the best dinner sucker-money would buy in Tangier. I bought her a new lipstick, too. It was all she wanted or needed that she didn’t have.

I got back to Marrakech one week later, heavier by a lot of pounds. (Get it, neighbor?) I expected to find Elmer at the cafe near the Djemaa El Fna, chiseling marks with Thirteen Matches. He wasn’t there. He and Michelle had had to retire from public view a few days earlier. Daddies and Mommies had been buttonholing him in the street wanting to know when the camel caravan would take off for glamorous far-off dreamy romantic Timbuctoo. Since he couldn’t very well tell them the caravan was scheduled to leave the day snow fell on the Sahara, he had gone into hiding. I ran him down after first making sure that the round trip air-tickets, hotel vouchers and the rest were all ready at the travel agent’s, each in its properly addressed envelope for delivery to the happy travelers the day after we blew town. I also checked to be certain the
teuf-teuf
was in running order. Everything was fine in both departments.

I gave Michelle the dress and bikini I had picked out for her in Tangier, got a sisterly kiss of thanks in return, and generously took her and Hayseed Henry to the Mamounia for dinner. The Mamounia’s food is by no means the best in Marrakech, but I had reasons for choosing the hotel. In the gay spirit of the evening I let Elmer stick me for two bottles of champagne with the Thirteenth Match. Even good champagne didn’t taste good to him unless he bilked somebody for it. During the course of the evening, at a time when Michelle had excused herself to go to
le petit coin,
we made the dirham-sterling trade.

I sent a waiter out to the desk for a couple of the big hotel envelopes. Elmer pulled out his wad, I pulled out mine, we made the exchange; counting the bills right there on the table under each other’s nose so there could be no kickback. Right? Right. Into the envelopes, envelopes into jackets, the whole thing over and done with before Michelle came back with her nose powdered. We were raising our champagne glasses in a congratulatory toast to each other when she arrived.

In the abstraction business every crook has his own M.O. A second-story man climbs porches. A peterman robs peters. A strong-arm clobbers you, a con man cons you. We do not commonly cross over into fields other than our own, although we may vary the M.O. within those fields. Which is to say, if a peterman can open a box by twisting the dial, he is not going to take the trouble to blow it as an artistic effort. Similarly, a bunco man may get into your pockets in any of several
ways,
but he does not stoop to violence. It is beneath his talents. I knew I had nothing to fear in that respect from Hezekiah Hayloft, although he was plenty big enough to give me a hard time if he had wanted to. He didn’t want to. He merely itched to get his hands on that envelope in my jacket to join up with the one already in his own jacket. Thereafter he would fade over the nearest horizon with Michelle, leaving me with my memories and the last match.

The signal came when the yokel volunteered—
volunteered,
mind you—to
pay for
a third bottle of champagne to cap the evening. I allowed as how that was right neighborly of him. The bottle came and was opened. We toasted each other again, toasted Michelle, drank, and the party was over. According to schedule I passed out cold with my face on the tablecloth as a result of too much champagne and the knockout drops he slipped into my glass with all the ham-handed dexterity of a stableboy forking dung. And who do you suppose paid for the third bottle of wine along with everything else when he woke up with a splitting headache several hours later? Right? Right.

I can only guess how he got the envelope out of my pocket under Michelle’s slightly oversize but otherwise attractive nose. Maybe she wasn’t wholly innocent as I thought she was, although if she fooled me she was a lot too smart to run with Elmer. I suspect that he said something like, Well, golly, gee, honey, looky here, that pore drunk feller has got this here now envelope full of money on him, I guess it would only be neighborly of me to put it in the hotel safe for him before somebody steals it, huh? Anyway, he got it—the envelope in my jacket pocket, that is. Full of dirham green-goods I had prepared earlier to look like the envelope of genuine dirhams he had just given me and which I had carefully inserted into the lining of my jacket through a slit therein, also prepared earlier. I figured he wouldn’t take time to examine the dirhams before getting out of town with them. Any more than he would take time to examine the sterling green-goods I had bought him for two shillings on the pound in Tangier. Even if he did, he wouldn’t know a real five-pound note from a counterfeit Irish Sweepstakes ticket. As for the dirhams, he wouldn’t believe they were phony when somebody told him. Golly gee, hadn’t he
seen
me put that there Mamounia envelope into my jacket after watching me stuff if with the genuine dirhams he had just given me in exchange for pounds? It goes without saying that the most important part of a good con is to make sure the mark never suspects he’s getting the phonus bolonus when you slip it to him with something as elementary as the old Envelope Switch. The gratifying part is in letting him think he is conning you for it.