The Other Side of Silence

It was a nice suite atop the east wing of the hotel, just below a flagpole and the Tricolore, full of summer evening light and the smell of cut flowers, with a fine view of gently sloping lush gardens and, beyond, the deep blue sea. Anchored in the bay, the millionaire Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis’s yacht, the Christina O, with its distinctive yellow smokestack and naval frigate lines, looked like a brand-new Argo in search of some more modern and profitable golden fleece, as devised by Charles Ponzi, perhaps, or Ferdinand Demara.

I looked around the room. There was a big bed, a comfortable seating area, an en suite bathroom, and a sun terrace as long as the Champs-Elysees. On the walls were some French prints depicting anodyne scenes of the French Riviera that always made me think well of gloomier artists like Bosch and Goya, and a large bowl of fresh fruit. On top of a chest of drawers was Hebel’s own portable Grundig tape machine. I switched it on and listened to a minute or two of bebop jazz, which I find is usually more than enough. There was an address book and a diary and a toilet bag filled with an optimistic number of condoms. Not unexpectedly, the closets and the drawers were home to a variety of fine clothes. But on top of a pile of neatly folded shirts from Turnbull amp; Asser I found an envelope addressed to Bernie Gunther, while under the rubble of socks and underwear was a nine-millimeter Sig, recently cleaned. It was a nice gun with a full clip and I was glad to see it there if only because it made me think Hebel wouldn’t be carrying a weapon when I met him later, but it was the cheeky letter that interested me more and I wondered how I might read it without him knowing that I had. Obviously he’d been expecting me to search his room, which made me think I was probably wasting my time in there. So, after a minute of just staring at the position of the envelope on the top shirt-could there have been a hair I hadn’t noticed that would tell him I’d been in that drawer?-I left it untouched exactly where it was. But on an impulse, and thinking I might use it to reason with Hebel later on, I took the gun, tucked it behind me under the waistband of my pinstripe trousers, and went downstairs again; he wasn’t going to complain to anyone about my borrowing his gun, especially if it was pointed at his head. I rarely ever do anything on impulse, however, and almost immediately it was an impulse I strongly regretted.

In the lobby there were two plainclothes cops waiting for me and already making a silent inventory of my face, my manner, my morning coat, the way I walked-their eyes were all over me like ants. I knew they were cops because plainclothes always appear a little too plain in a grand hotel. Cops are the same the world over; they usually look as if they belong somewhere else, somewhere second-rate like the Soviet Union, or Alaska, where cheap suits, tight shoes, and creased shirts with yesterday’s collars are almost standard uniform. These two looked like a couple of dull rocks in a silver punch bowl. I ushered them quickly into the back office in case they disturbed the chandeliers or Monsieur Charrieres, the hotel manager, caught a distressing sight of them. For a brief moment I thought they were there to speak to Hebel and wondered how long it would be before he tried to make a deal with them that involved me, but to my surprise, they were there to ask me about Antimo Spinola. They showed their greasy plastic identity cards and muttered their names through a blue cloud of French cigarette smoke, but I was hardly paying attention because I was now more worried that I might miss my appointment with Hebel than I was about any acquaintance I had with Antimo Spinola. The Italian could look after himself; or so I thought. There was five thousand dollars in it if I handled Maugham’s blackmail money without a hitch-more than enough to buy a new car. Or a ticket to somewhere else; increasingly, somewhere else was a place I was keen to visit.

“How well do you know him?” asked one of the cops.

“Spinola? I play cards with him twice a week at the Hotel Voile d’Or in Cap Ferrat. He’s my bridge partner. Which is to say, not well at all. Bridge is that kind of game. Too interesting for a lot of what-did-you-do-today talk.”

“For how long have you played together?”

“Oh, perhaps a couple of years. As long as I’ve worked here, anyway.”

“It’s a beautiful hotel.”

“Isn’t it? So much beauty.” I almost added, “But so much sadness, too. It’s a beautiful, sad world, I think, that has some beautiful, sad people in it,” only you don’t speak to cops like that when they’re asking questions. Not if you want them to leave you alone.

“Is bridge a game involving money?”

“It can be. But not for us.”

“How did you meet?”

“We were introduced. I can’t remember by who. Someone at the Voile perhaps.”

“Two years isn’t very long. Surely you can remember.”