The place was as colourful as ever. As he was paying the cab driver, two men approached. They were stubby little black men, each with a straw hat cocked jauntily over one eye and each holding a fighting cock in hand. Behind them, an amateur fire eater popped a flaming torch in and out of his mouth.
‘Excusez-moi, monsieur, s ‘il vous plait,’ said one of the cockfighters, doffing his hat and smiling broadly enough to show a gold tooth at the side of his mouth, ‘Parlez-vous francais? Habla Usted espanol? Speak English?’
‘Je suis americain,’ O’Hara said.
‘Ah, monsieur! You have the privilege to meet the greatest coq in the islands. This fellow once pecked a tiger to death.’
The rooster had seen much better times. Its cone was chewed and ragged, and it only had one leg.
‘Merde! his companion exclaimed. ‘A blind old grandmere hen bit off his leg.’ He held his cock high in one hand. ‘This guy once killed an eagle in flight.’
‘Ha! Such lies! Monsieur, ten dollair americain and we will settle this thing right now,’ said the man with the one-legged chicken.
‘Some other time,’ O’Hara yelled back, following the doorman up the stairs to the main lobby.
The two locals were undaunted.
‘Je m ‘appelle Toledo. Donnez-moi de vos nouvelles!’ the man with the one-legged bird yelled t him.—I am Toledo. Let me hear from you! And they all laughed.
Double French doors led to the hotel’s enormous main room, which served as its lobby, bar, waiting room, restaurant and registry. Sitting just inside the doors vas a large hulk of a desk, littered with letters, bills, telegrams, messages, and an antiquated French telephone. The hotel’s old-fashioned registration book lay open on one corner. The oak bar, smoothly polished by time, was to the left. Its twenty-foot-long zinc top had once decorated the main room of a famous Parisian brasserie until old Gustavsen had won it from the owner in a game of baccarat and shipped it to the island at great expense. A Montana rancher who had been a regular customer of the hotel for years had presented the old man with a brass plaque when the zinc top arrived. It was mounted at one end of the bar and read: ‘Won fair and square in a game of chance between old man Gustavsen and Gerard Turin, Paris, 4 December 1924.’
To the right of the desk was the restaurant, nothing more than several tables with wicker chairs, but the food was prepared by a young native who had been taught his skill by the previous chef the great Gazerin. The food alone was worth a trip to the island.
The room itself was a collection of oddities, things left behind or donated or bartered across the bar for drinks: an airplane propeller over the bar, hurricane lanterns of every size and shape, an enormous anchor that had lain in the same spot in one corner of the room for thirty-four years, a wine cooler that Hemingway supposedly gave to old Gustavsen, an Australian bush hat, a blow gun and several darts which, according to legend, had been left there by a pygmy in a seersucker suit. There were several autographed photographs of prize fighters and wrestlers and musicians, hanging awry on the walls, and a good-sized tarpon over the upright piano. The room was dark and comfortably cool, stirred by ceiling fans.
‘Tiens, voila le Mann! Bonjour, bonjour, mon ami,’ someone yelled from the bar, and O’Hara peered through the darkness to see Justice Jolicoeur approaching him.
Justice Jolicoeur stopped a few feet from O’Hara and posed for a moment, as though he were studying a painting.
‘Alors! he said. ‘You have not changed by so much as an eyelash. Obviously you weathered your exile well.’
He was a wiry little man, and every inch, every ounce, was pure dandy. He wore a white-linen three-piece suit, a thin fire-engine-red tie and a blood-red carnation in his lapel. His boots were of black English leather and his cane was polished enamel with a hand-carved golden swan’s head grip. His curly black hair was slicked back tight against his skull, and when he spoke, his polished and cultured patois was superbly refined Creole, although for effect he sometimes lapsed into French, which he spoke like a scholar. Jolicoeur was a Haitian who had left the country with the Tontons, Papa Doe’s vicious secret police, hard on his heels. What he had done to earn the wrath of the dictator was a mystery. Joli, as he liked to be called, never discussed the past. But it was rumoured that he had arrived in St. Lucifer with two hundred one-hundred-dollar gold sovereigns in his hollow cane, and immediately conned Gus Junior into a retainer as the hotel’s official ambassador of good will. It was worth it to Gus to have Joli around. He gave the place a touch of class.
‘Quite,’ said O’Hara. ‘And you, you’ve never looked more prosperous, Joli. Are you keeping busy?’
‘You would not believe it. Thanks to the new hotels I have hardly a moment to myself.
‘Voodoo? There isn’t any voodoo on this island.’
‘There is now,
‘I see you’re still working the rooster scam at the door.’
‘That’s almost a bad pun, Joli.’
‘Monsieur?’
‘Forget it. You know, you really oughta get that one guy a new chicken. That one-legged rooster doesn’t even look good enough to eat.’
‘Hey, that’s one mean bird, Sailor. Think about it — would you not be mean if you were that ugly and had to hop around on one leg to keep from getting your brains pecked out?
‘I must tell you, Joli, among the many resourceful people I’ve known in my life, you are the most resourceful of
