“It sounds like fun,” Nicholai said, “but I -”
“Oh, come along,” De Lhandes said. “Rumor is that Bao Dai himself will be there. Not a bad connection for a man hoping to set himself up in business here.”
“I’ll try,” Nicholai said.
He followed the waiter to the back room.
115
NICHOLAI SAT DOWN across the desk from Antonucci.
“You like my place?” the Corsican asked.
“It’s quite good, yes,” Nicholai answered.
The small backroom office was surprisingly cluttered. Somehow Nicholai had expected a neater, more businesslike atmosphere. The desk was a shambles of documents, letters, old newspapers, and overflowing ashtrays. A lamp, its shade stained with dead bugs, hung over the desk.
One of Antonucci’s thugs – a tall, thick man – leaned against the wall, the bulge in his jacket doubtless intentional. Antonucci relit his cigar, rolling it carefully around the flame of his lighter. Satisfied with the even burn, he turned his attention back to Nicholai and said, “You’re a young man. Ambitious.”
“Is that a problem?”
Antonucci shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
He waited for a response, but Nicholai knew that any response to such a wide opening gambit could only be a mistake. So he sipped his brandy and waited for Antonucci to move the next stone.
“Ambition is good in a young man,” Antonucci said, “if he is mature enough to know that with ambition should come respect.”
“Youth thinks it invents the world,” Nicholai said. “Maturity respects the world that it finds. I didn’t come to Saigon to change it or to disrespect its traditions, Monsieur Antonucci.”
“I am glad to hear that,” Antonucci said. “Tradition is that no one conducts certain kinds of trade in Saigon without paying respect to certain other people.”
So, Nicholai thought, the Union Corse already knows about my deal with the Binh Xuyen. Did Bay Vien inform them, or was it their fellow Corsican Signavi? Nicholai would place his money on the latter. “If certain men traditionally control, for example, the armaments trade – ‘men of respect,’ shall we call them – then that is one tradition that a young man would certainly wish to honor.”
“You are wise beyond your years.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Nicholai said, “what is the percentage on tradition here?”
“I am told that it depends,” Antonucci said, “on the particular cargo that is going in and out. But, say, three percent is traditional. So I hear, anyway.”
“Three?” Nicholai raised an eyebrow.
“Three.”
Nicholai raised his glass. “To tradition, then.”
“To tradition,” Antonucci said.
Nicholai downed his brandy and stood up. “I’ve taken too much of your time. Thank you for seeing me and providing me with your wise counsel.”
Antonucci nodded.
After Nicholai left, Antonucci told his thug, “Tell Yvette I wish to see her on the next break.”
Fifteen minutes later the saxophone player came into the office.
“You make eyes at strangers?” Antonucci asked her.
“No! I was just trying to be hospitable to the customers!”
He slid his belt from its loops and doubled it over.
116
SO, NICHOLAI THOUGHT as he walked out to find a cab, L’Union Corse wants its cut.
Why not? The cost of doing business.
He got into the back of the blue Renault, which took him down Gallieni Boulevard, across the Dakow Bridge, and back into Cholon.
The cab pulled up on Trun Hung Dao Street by a two-story art deco building with a gaudy mauve-and-green facade. Nicholai went into L’Arc-en-Ciel, through the long grenade-screened terrace into the restaurant, and upstairs to the nightclub. The bar was packed with attractive Chinese prostitutes in skintight
De Lhandes was at the bar.
“What are you drinking?” he asked Nicholai.
“What should I be drinking?”
“Well, they have Tiger and Kadling beer,” De Lhandes answered,
“I’ll have one of those, then,” Nicholai said, taking some piastres from his pocket. “May I?”
“You’re a gentleman.”
Nicholai ordered and paid for two gin fizzes, then, in Chinese, politely declined the invitation of a working girl who tried to perch herself on his lap and offered carnal delights previously unheard of in the mundane world.
“You are a man of iron will,” De Lhandes observed. “A veritable fortress of restraint.”
“I will admit it is tempting.”
“Give in.”
“Not tonight.”
De Lhandes gave him a long evaluative look, then asked, “Or are you a man in love?”
Nicholai shrugged.
“Ahhh,” De Lhandes said, “not only a man of iron will and restraint, a man of fidelity. I am impressed and inspired.”
“Glad to be of service.”
“But I will doubtless yield to the temptations of the flesh,” De Lhandes said, “later tonight. If, that is, I have the cash to do so. It is a mournful state of affairs when the considerable girth of one’s masculine member is adversely affected by the regrettable slimness of one’s money clip. Alas, the unique nature of the rest of my physiognomy generally precludes amorous arrangements of a less commercial nature. Women find me a charming companion at the table but less desirable for the walk into the boudoir. Suffice it to say, I am therefore limited as to the menus from which I can select. That being the sad case, my sexual future depends on fickle affections of the little wheel at Le Grand Monde – Saigon’s finest temple to the gods of chance – in my unceasing attempt to make one vice pay for the other.”
“And do you?”
“Rarely,” De Lhandes said sadly. “If experience is the best teacher I am an exceedingly poor student. How was your chat with Antonucci?”
“Fine,” Nicholai answered. “He just wanted to warn me off the saxophone player.”
They both knew it was an evasion.
“He’s L’Union Corse, you know,” De Lhandes said, watching for Nicholai’s reaction.
“What is that?”
“Don’t play me for a fool,
“Tell me, then, do I have in you a friend, or a police informant?”
