William McGivern - The Caper of the Golden Bulls

“Then why is it always changing? Why am I always getting screwed by it?” The mountainous ranges of fat on Morgan’s ribs trembled indignantly. “Just tell me that!”

“The rate in one place is not the same as the rate in another place,” Mr. Shahari explained with an air of exhaustive lucidity. “Now. How many dollars do you wish to exchange?”

“All I’ve got. Twenty-eight.”

“Mr. Quince?”

“I’ve got twelve pound ten.”

Quince was as thin as Morgan was fat. A thoughtful man, one of his favourite fancies was to imagine what might happen if a group of mice learned how to link arms. Might they then attack rats?

Mr. Shahari counted out pesetas, collected dollars and pounds in return, moved to another table. Morgan stared after him furiously.

Strange wild thoughts blew about inside his head.

“I’d like to kill him,” he said to Quince. “There’s the true evil of the world. The middleman. Clipping a fat profit from both sides of every deal. In Hong Kong, Calcutta, Tangier, Paris; they’re everywhere. Stealing our money whenever we cross a border. They’ll have it all one of these days.”

“Now then, Ah wouldn’t kill ’im,” Quince said thoughtfully. “Ah wouldn’t do that. Cause a bloody row, it would.”

“It wouldn’t be a murder; it would be an execution.” Morgan’s excitement grew; his mad eyes sparkled happily. “It should be in public; with crowds to witness it. In a mood of holiday, of fiesta. Amidst music and fireworks, Mr. Shahari should be terminally collected for his sins against humanity. Don’t you think that would be appropriate?”

“Ah wouldn’t execute ’im either,” Quince said doubtfully. “Cause a bloody row, it would.”

Morgan smiled at clouds that were like wisps of cotton on the horizon, and called up a vision of Biblical retribution and justice, which was tinged, however, with respectable existential overtones. Pamplona? He nodded slowly, his chins rising and falling like pneumatic shock absorbers. Appropriate, he thought, most appropriate.

“Angela, I simply cannot do it,” Peter said. “It’s not a matter of spirit, but of flesh. You commented on my drinking yesterday. You asked if it were something new. I wish to God it were. But it’s been going on for years. And lately it’s been accelerating at a cyclical rate of increase. Francois, give me a glass of whisky. One ice cube, if you will.”

Peter paced the floor of their suite, his eyes rolling about in his head, his movements jerky and erratic. “Just look at my hands! Do you remember how I used to take watches apart without tools? I tried it last night. It was ghastly! Screws and wheels clattering all over the place.”

“I think you’re lying, Peter.”

“Why should I lie about it? I’ve deteriorated badly, Angela. Would you like your life hanging on my skills? My reflexes? They’re shot, I tell you. Gone.”

Francois did something unexpected then, something which rather surprised Peter. He took a revolver from his pocket and swung the butt in a vicious arc at Peter’s head.

Peter thought fleetingly of defending himself with a basic judo take-down which would in all likelihood have broken the Frenchman’s wrist and elbow. But he decided against this.

He moved his head and let the gun butt whistle by. As Francois lost his balance, Peter plucked the gun from his hand and spun him into a chair.

“Now that was very stupid,” he said quietly. “I dislike physical violence.” Peter broke the gun, knocked the bullets from its chambers.

“Let me tell you something, Francois. If you ever try anything that silly again, I shall pound one of these bullets up each of your nostrils. It’s the quickest and most painful way to deviate a septum I know of.”

Francois was smiling. So was Angela.

“I was only checking your reflexes,” Francois said casually.

“Oh,” Peter said. Fool, fool, fool! he thought.

Francois stood and took the revolver from Peter. “Give me the bullets.”

Angela said mildly, “Peter, that wasn’t like you. It was extremely foolish. Please don’t make us impatient with you. Remember your friends.”

That night Peter wrote gloomily in his journal: Do not feel antagonistic towards people who are cleverer than you. They may have advantages you lack: i.e. brains.

That wasn’t too bad, he decided. The aptness of the phrasing cheered him; it lay like balm on his wounded ego. He continued writing. The superior person is always surrounded by inferiors; that is the curse of excellence. How trying it must be for God! To look down and find everyone on his knees! Begging favours. Give me money, God. Please don’t let them score, God. I don’t want to be pregnant, God, I’m a good girl But did God listen?

That was a scary notion.

Of course, He listens. What else does He have to do? God is love and grace. The association tempted him towards cliffs of blasphemy. Slowly he wrote: God is Grace. But the words seemed to form a happy union, innocent of disrespect or cheekiness. God is trumpets and bugles, he wrote. God is surrender. God is cellos.

Made whole again by these annealing reflections, Peter raised a glass of brandy to his reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. “They have heard the lion whimper,” he said. “Now they shall hear him roar.”

“Que dice, senior—”

“Nothing, Adela, nothing at all,” he said to the maid who stood in the doorway. She went away frowning.

Peter picked up the telephone and called the Pez Espada.

“Pepe, this is Senor Churchman. Listen. Monsieur and Madame Morel. Is there any way you can get them out of their rooms for about half an hour?”

“But of course, Peter. I shall tell them the suite needs to be fumigated.”

“Perfect. Will you do it right away?”

“Of course, Peter.” There was a pause. “Is that all?”

“Yes. And thank you, Pepe.”

Peter fancied he heard a sigh as he replaced the receiver in its cradle.

Morgan found Mr. Shahari in a bar on the beach. The Indian was tallying his scores. Stacks of cheques and bills covered the table.

“Well, this is a break. Mind if I sit down?”

“I’m busy, Mr. Morgan.”

“I wondered. Are you going up to Pamplona?”

Morgan sank into a chair. The swell of his vast stomach caused the table to rise and tilt mysteriously, as it might have under the hands of a swami at a seance. “Watch it,” he said.

Mr. Shahari clutched at cheques and bills. “No, I am not going to Pamplona, Mr. Morgan.”

“Well, what if I have to change some money? There’s a pound note behind your chair, I think.”

Mr. Shahari’s voice came from beneath the table. “How much do you have to change?”

“Well, right now, nothing. But next week I’ll have quite a lot.”

Mr. Shahari’s head rose in the air. Morgan’s stomach swelled once more and drove the edge of the table against the Indian’s gullet.

“Damn, I’m sorry. Watch those cheques.”

“How much will you have to change?” Mr. Shahari said hoarsely.

“They’ve just settled my father’s estate. I get twenty thousand dollars next week.”

Mr. Shahari made it his business to know bits and pieces about his clients; even such a little fish as Morgan, whose father he knew to be an international lawyer of formidable reputation, and to be if last week’s issue of Time could be trusted in excellent health.

“I congratulate you, Mr. Morgan. Good-bye.”

“Then you’re not going up to Pamplona?”

“Most certainly not. Good-bye.”

Morgan confided his disappointment to Quince. “It’s just that he doesn’t trust me, you see. But he’ll come all right. If someone he knows has money. That’s what’s so flawless about it. So perfect. A symbol of greed annihilated by greed. You’ve got to help me, Quince.”