Джеймс Кейн - Mignon

Out on the street again, I walked up Common, checking a hardware store as I went. It was closed, but as I remembered it from passing once or twice, it had lettered on the window, in the lower left-hand corner:

LOCKSMITH

Serrurier

At the St. Charles, I had sandwiches and beer sent up and mumbled to myself as I munched: “What the hell have you got yourself into? You’re supposed to have your mind on raising twenty-five thousand bucks.”

Burke showed at the St. Charles next morning, even sooner than I had hoped. I’d sent the corduroys out to be pressed, put on my dark suit, and stepped down the street to the locksmith’s, to get him started on the skeleton I needed, made from a blank to correspond with my City Hotel key, for the rummage job I had in mind. I came back, had breakfast in the bar; when I went upstairs again Burke was in the hall, popping my door with his knuckles. In Scotch tweeds, cloth hat, and brown shoes, with a rain cape over one arm, he looked even bigger than he had in his red Mardi Gras costume, but I sang out loud and hearty: “Mr. Burke, I believe? Welcome to my humble abode — I’m flattered that you’ve come.” His round, pink face broke into smiles and he held out his hand, expressing “the honest pleasure I feel at meeting our Good Samaritan.” He spoke with an Irish brogue, but not a shanty-Irish brogue. I can say plenty against him, but — allowing for small things like iv for of, be for by, and me for my — he handled the English language in a most distinguished way; not saying he couldn’t manhandle it, to the point of just plain filth, when his temper got the best of him.

But now he was graciousness itself, saying very respectfully: “Could I have a word with you, me boy? Poor Adolphe’s me friend as well as me partner, and I think we should have a talk.”

“Certainly,” I said, unlocking. “Come in.”

I hung his cape and hat in the armoire, and seated him; at once he began thanking me “for all you’ve done — not only for Adolphe, but the little one, too, Mrs. Fournet. She told me all about it.”

“Then she got to the ball?” I asked.

“Aye — we were late but made a sensational entrance, she favoring the Black Tulip, I a Tipperary cardinal at his golden jubilee mass. I went as a charro , in a red velvet rig I once bought for a Mexican fandango. The hat has bells on’t which I swear play ‘La Paloma.’ ”

“You’ve been in Mexico, then?”

“In the cotton boom, early on in the war — at Matamoros and Bagdad. I didn’t do badly. I made a bit.”

“I’ve heard the sky was the limit.”

“The sky? Me boy, it showed mirages, with minarets, date palms, and Moorish dancing girls nekkid as when they were born. Bagdad was not accidentally named.”

“Just exactly where is it?”

“Mexican side, mouth of the Rio Grande.”

“Must be quite a place.”

“The stinkhole iv the Western World — built on pilings, iv slabs and adobe and canvas, populated be sailors, pimps, and muchachas , all drunk as fiddler’s bitches, but paved, here and there, with gold.”

“Gold made from cotton?”

“Aye.”

He seemed quite fond of bragging, and as I measured him up, it came to me that the last thing I should be, if I meant to lull his suspicions, was a decent, honest man. So I encouraged him to run on, hanging on his tales, of the fortunes made in Mexico, racked up in just a few months, and the private armies that guarded them. He mentioned one Paddy Milmo, “me partner, who abused me confidence shamefully — though I came off with at least me share, a hundred thousand in gold, in spite of his damned soldados , looking for me all night, to clap me in the picota for the chinch bugs to eat out me neck.” It occurred to me that partners “abusing me confidence” might be one of the mirages he saw all the time, kind of a chronic illusion. But after he’d told a few tall ones and I had made proper mirations, I did some bragging myself. I told of the thousand dollars I’d made at Chestertown one day, on a hurry-up job of dredging for some peach farmers on Chester River whose wharf had got silted up so the steamers couldn’t get in to haul their crop to market. They were ruined unless something was done, “and so,” I said, “as soon as the papers were drawn and the money put in escrow, I told them, ‘Gentlemen, gauge. The agreement says seven feet, and I think you’ll find you have it.’ So, with the witnesses, they all piled into rowboats, with a red rag tied at seven feet on a bamboo fishing pole. And wherever they put down the pole the red rag went under, so they had no choice but to pay. Because what they didn’t know was that while they were up at the bank signing papers with me, Sandy Gregg, my tugboat skipper, was turning his screw at the wharf. The screw churned up the silt and the tide floated it out. We picked up a thousand neat for two hours’ work by a boat.”

“But you saved the day for your friends?”

“Who were sore as a boil, however.”

He burst out laughing and roared: “You’re a man iv me own kind — let the buggers pay, and if they don’t like’t, lump ’ t! ”

“They paid, but because they had to.”

“... Aye, you mentioned escrow?”

“That’s right. I like my money guaranteed.”

He had a small, gray eye, kind of rheumy, and it looked me over now, very close. In a moment, he said: “If it’s your fee you’re talking about, for acting as counsel to Adolphe, there’ll be no trouble about it, if I accept your ideas. Could I hear them, if you have any?”

It seemed to me that, starting out to be hostile, he had now made a switch and would fall into my trap if I talked the right way. So I decided to bring up the thing, going by what she’d told me, that had to be the nub of his crooked scheme. I said: “Well, Mr. Burke, I don’t know what you’ll accept, but for my part, having read that informer’s note, having talked with Mr. Landry, and having had some experience with such things, I would say he’s innocent, and doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I mean he may not have done it, but how does he go about proving it? So the only idea I have is: Plead, and get the thing over with.”

The rheum in his eye took on a glitter. “Do you mean it, lad?” he asked, very excited. “Are you serious in what you say?”

“Why string it out, Mr. Burke?”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing meself!”

“They may confiscate — but they would anyway.”

“And he’ll not have to sit in prison!”

“That’s the main thing, isn’t it?”

“And another thing, me boy — what does he have to lose? The store in Alexandria, which they’ll take when the Army arrives there. But these invaded towns have a way of being burned as the invaders leave — so what would he have, assuming he made a defense? A pile of ashes. ’Tis better to get it over with, so he’s out! And another thing: He still will have his cotton, through his partnership with me. But ’twill be worth nothing at all unless we’re on the spot to pick up our seizure receipt, the one the Army gives when the stuff is taken in. But how can he be there, me boy, and also be here awaiting trial? Perhaps I could swing it alone — after all, everything’s in my name. But ’twould be a blight on the whole litigation to have a partner sitting in jail. Time is of the essence! And suppose he loses the store? What do they signify, a few bricks in Alexandria?”

It was all loyal and warm and moving, except there wasn’t a word about the fix Mr. Landry would be in, not being able to sue, to claim his share of the partnership. So I said nothing about it, and went on: “All right, if we’re agreed on the plan, the next question is: Which of us sells him on it? You? Or, as I’d assume you’d prefer, me?”