TOUGH GUY

                                         

          One afternoon a tall man with a dark complexion came into the bar where our afternoon poker games took place in Paris.  Smartly dressed in a blue suit and red tie, his long brown hair ended in a ponytail.  He had dark eyes and a small crooked mouth.  A pair of elaborate mustaches curled from his upper lip to his cheekbones.

 

            “You’re Bill the American, aren’t you?” he asked me.

           

            I said I was.

 

            “I’m looking for the photographer, Herve Simeon,” he said.  “I’m Bertrand Gimont.  Perhaps you have heard of me?”

 

            I admitted I had.  More than once his name had been bruited about.

 

            “Are you expecting Simeon this afternoon?” he said.

 

            “You can never tell with him.”

 

            “The creep is trying to stiff me for 35,000 francs.  That’s seven thousand of your U.S. dollars.”

 

            “Wow,” I said.  “When did he lose that?”

 

            “Sunday.  He lost a lot more.  He says he’ll pay the others, but not me.”

 

            I did not like the way the man spoke out the side of his mouth, or his habit of sucking on his teeth.  I guess he had seen too many gangster films.

 

            “He’ll stiff you too,” he said.  “Wait and see.”

 

            “I doubt that.  He feels comfortable with us.”

 

            “What does that mean?”

 

            “Just what I said.”

 

            “So that’s his game, is it?  He’s telling everyone I cheated him. ‘

 

            “He never said that to me.”

 

            Gimont nodded knowingly.  I declined his offer for a cigarette.

 

            “Maybe we can work something out,” he said.

 

            “I can’t imagine what,” I said.

 

            “If he wins in your game, you can put the money aside for me.”

 

            “You know I can’t do that.”

 

            “All right,” he said, shrugging.  “I’ll have to do it my way.”

 

            Motioning with my head, I called to Madame Nicole.  The damn fool had exposed the butt of a pistol.  The bar owner looked at me with a strained expression.  With thumb and forefinger I made the sign of a revolver.

 

            “You,” she said sharply.  “Out of here.  There will be none of that in this bar.”

 

            Nor would we poker players tolerate any criminality in our games.  Gimont’s tough guy approach was a demonstration of how not to act when faced with a loser who refuses to pay.  No surer way exists to alienate the local bourgeoisie.  While the French might pretend to be attracted to gangsters, nobody wanted to find a genuine underworld character sitting at his table.

 

            Many years later Gimont left Paris and settled in Guadeloupe.  He purchased a second hand yacht that he scrubbed and painted until it looked like new.  A Frenchman who remained in touch with him told me the man lived for his boat.  He learned where fish were running and how to pick up an occasional charter.  He and his boat were always available for young ladies hoping to find a Caribbean adventure.  Neither poker nor money interested him any longer.  When not at sea, he was content to spend his time polishing and repairing his prized possession.

 

            One morning, after an extended evening of partying, Gimont awoke to find his boat was not in its berth.  In a state of shock, he tried to recall if he had made an arrangement with another skipper.  Neither the harbormaster nor any of his fellow yachtsmen had any idea where the boat could be.  There was no sign that a line had been cut, and no witness to foul play.  For all anybody knew, Bertrand Gimont’s boat had disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle.

 

            Gimont spent the following weeks scouring the island.  Not a single harbor escaped his scrutiny.  On foot or by sea, he examined ever hidden inlet and every exposed or unexposed cove.  After a month of searching he returned home empty handed.  Not only had he not found the boat, not a soul knew a thing about it.

 

            With nowhere to sleep, Gimont took a room in a seedy hotel near the port.  Every day he walked along the quays in search of his missing boat.  The police were no help.  After a while they abandoned their investigation.  On a rainy evening, three months to the day following his loss, Bertrand Gimont put a revolver to his head and squeezed the trigger. 

 

              Although all this occurred many years ago, I have often wondered whether or not he used the same pistol he had shown me that afternoon in Madame Nicole’s poker Bar.