Cary smiled. Good timing. Good joke. Someone clapped.
The procession reached the chemin de fer table. Bao Dai took his place. The lips of Azzoni and Mariani met the emperor’s ears. Behind him, the wall of heads, necks and pectorals belonging to the bodyguards went up. Bao Dai scribbled out a cheque and held it out to the attendant. A wheelbarrow of fiches was about to be heaped out on to the green table.
*
‘Have you heard, Stiv? Fifteen!’
Words uttered by Salvatore Pagano at the exact moment when, because of his fabulous but, oh dear, pointed and recalcitrant footwear, he stumbled over a strip of carpet and performed a pratfall, like a personal visiting card in the casino hall.
It certainly wasn’t a problem of clothing as such. Kociss was dazzling: twenty years old, olive complexion, gleaming Saracen eyes over the regulation tuxedo hired by Zollo with all the necessary frills. If Lisetta had seen him, this Lebanese prince, she would have jumped on him in a second. Steve hadn’t neglected the details. To the hiring of the smokingjacket he had added the purchase of some decent clothes and a massive helping of instructions consisting of brief, fragmented phrases, and most particularly instructions to be quiet, be quiet, be quiet.
No, the problem was one of bearing, of posture, a long habit of uncontrolled gestures. Like saddling a wild horse. A lot of trouble for little satisfaction.
The Laurel and Hardy sketch drew everyone’s attention. Zollo, unsure whether he should kill him there and then, or calmly later on, opted for the third solution, which also seemed to him to be most risky.
To flash a bosom buddy smile and dash over to the dickhead lying in the middle of the entrance hall, which was lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve, help him to his feet, brush him down, still smiling, slap him on the back, ‘Sal, what are you doing? You haven’t even had a drink yet and you’re on the floor already? Let’s go to the bar, come on!’ crushing his left arm in his vice-like grip.
‘Salvatore. That’s enough crap from you.’
‘Sorry Stiv, sorry, but I feel like I’m wearing flippers. ’
‘Shut up! Enough crap, I said, capisci?’
‘Yes, Stiv,’ Kociss mumbled as he rubbed his arm.
‘I’ve got work to do. Important people to see. I told you. No nonsense. Stay around here. In the bar. Lose some tokens in the fruit machines. Don’t go to the tables. Do you hear me? No tables. Don’t make me regret that I took you here. I’ll be an hour at the most. Wait for me here.’
‘Yes, Stiv, don’t worry.’
‘Salvatore. No crap from you.’
*
So it was that Salvatore Pagano, known as Kociss, feeling as though he’d just stuck his arm into a termite’s nest, found himself alone in this incredible place.
Amazing women. Ludicrous clothes. Lights that made the Piedigrotta festival in Naples look like a joke. That one there, was she made of gold? He couldn’t believe it. And let’s not even mention the ones he had seen earlier on. It was their fault he had stumbled. Christ, what women! Then a crowd of weird-looking blokes, with an endless zoo of dogs, fifteen, he had asked, with that Chinaman in the middle waving all round him like the Pope, but surrounded by those amazing women who would have given the Pope a headache.
Filled to the brim with visions, lights and colours, Kociss took a few minutes to wander through the first wide hall, the area in the middle occupied by four large roulette tables, to the north and south the blackjack tables, and along the walls a long line of chromed, glittering slot machines.
That rapture of the senses, almost as though he had left his body, was interrupted near a roulette table, less crowded than the others.
He was holding Steve’s chips. No tables. The fruit machines.
But that at least was where the people were. Some incrediblelooking girls. There was really no comparison with the fruit machines.
What did the boss say when he set the ball rolling? Rien ne va plus?
Forget the fruit machines.
A chip. The Chinese guy’s dogs. Fifteen.
Obviously Kociss couldn’t suppress a cry of joy and surprise when the croupier, in that language that he couldn’t understand but grasped intuitively, announced that the ball had stopped in hole number 15, black, odd.
The same croupier, the boss, deposited a substantial hoard of fiches right beside his winning chip on the 15 square.
They were his, he could take them, he had to take them. But wouldn’t it be boorish to take them all, in the middle of all those rich guys who were perfectly happy to throw their money away, they had so much of it? Kociss made a big gesture: he left slightly less than half as a tip, to hell with the expense, if Kociss can win anyone can, who gives a damn? But that fool of a boss left them there, without touching them, on the 15, and rolled the ball again.
Fifteen.
‘Pas mal, le garçon!’
‘Oh la la!’
At that point there was a bit of a hubbub, he distinctly heard someone saying ‘beginner’s luck’, because without a doubt the boy had done well. Two wins in a row. On the same number. Multiplying his stake tenfold at the second attempt.
Kociss turned purple when he saw the boss depositing, right in front of him, a real mountain of chips, while everyone slapped him on the back and smiled at him.
But how much were those chips worth? They belonged to him. A long way from the fruit machines, Stiv!
While two guys helped him to put all his coloured pennies from heaven into cloth bags, the vision arrived.
‘Lucky Italian boy,’ she said with an accent from who knows where. She was extremely beautiful. Her skin seemed to be made of gold. She had red hair like Lisetta. She smiled and touched his left arm, which didn’t have pins and needles in it any more.
He followed her without a moment’s hesitation.
There were two of them.
Zollo sat down at the table and stared into Toni’s face.
‘I thought you were going to be on your own.’
The Lyonnese calmly stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, then pointed towards the friend sitting beside him.
‘Jo, this is Stefano Zollo, known as “Steve Cement”. Zollo, this is Jo, known as “the Swede”, mon associé. Jo and I are too old to remember when we first met.’
Jo gave a nod of the head that Zollo did not return. Lyonnese Toni was even more skeletal than the last time he had seen him, in Marseilles, a pile of bones wrapped in a thin membrane of skin. He was very striking, and there was something horrific about his face, something very similar to death.
His friend was a well-built, fair-haired man, who wore his suit with a certain class and had a youthful air, even though he must have been over forty.
A screen separated the reserved table from the rest of the hall. No one could hear what they had to say to one another.
‘Everything ok?’ asked Toni, lighting another cigarette.
Zollo had already prepared his role.
‘Certainly. You’ve just got to tell me when and where I have to meet the buyers.’
‘Garçon, s’il vous plaît,’ said Toni, catching the waiter’s eye. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘Jack Daniel’s. On the rocks, please.’
Toni spoke to the waiter, who disappeared behind the bar.
‘Tomorrow. On the beach,’ said Toni. ‘There’s a little bistro, it’s called Le Grisbi. You’ll have no trouble finding it, everyone knows it.’