Farnsworth’s Revenge

3. Cradled in the Shameless Palms

Chapter Three

Cradled in the Shameless Palms

The brief train trip to St. Tropez was uneventful, and it gave me a chance to practice my tradecraft. I was itching to get out of that hotel, and now I had an excuse to take chances. If I was going to make a career as a fugitive from justice for however long, I’d best take a page from the spymaster’s book. I had read enough of them to think I could make a short journey by train without being followed.

I took the Metro from the Luxembourg station to the Gare de Lyon, where I boarded the southbound TGV for St. Raphael. Before setting out, at various retail stores near the Sorbonne and without drawing attention I hoped, I boosted the crude makings of my cover characters—a trench coat, a hat, a hoodie, a small backpack, a canvas overnight bag, and a pair of sports shoes.

I wore the hoodie underneath the trench coat, topped off with the hat. I zipped the new shoes into the backpack, then put the backpack in the overnight bag, which I carried onto the train. First Class all the way, I’ll freely admit, since classless democracy does not, never has, and probably never will extend to the passenger rail services of France.

The passenger seats were big as lounge chairs, overstuffed and luxuriously upholstered, with fresh linen doilies on the neck rests. f*****g in one of these would be a joy, accompanied by the gentle rocking and throbbing of the carriage. The compartments are not all that private, though, so the chemin de fer equivalent of the Mile High Club would be an impractical dream, if not downright impossible.

Such are the fantasies of a lonely man. This is my last apology.

Just before I disembarked, I lingered as others got off, and in that brief interval I shucked the coat, the hat, my leather shoes, and the overnight bag, casually leaving articles here and there throughout the now-empty car as if left behind by various travelers in haste. Stepping down onto the platform, I was just another American tourist in hoodie and jeans, with brilliant white sneakers and the ubiquitous camouflage-canvas knapsack slung over my shoulder.

The spies will tell you, if you change anything, change your shoes. No matter how good the disguise, failing to change out of the same tired pair of battered Sketchers is a dead giveaway. Was I worried about those brand-new, too-white shoes being too noticeable? Not at all. If the casual witness recalled anything, she’d remember the shoes, and little else.

I had a prepaid cell phone, which I kept turned off for the duration of the trip. I wasn’t sure when I’d need to turn it back on, actually. No one, including Felicia, had the number. And even if I’d had Farnsworth’s contact info, I wasn’t about to phone ahead so he could have a few polite gendarmes waiting for me.

There aren’t that many boat slips in the small crescent harbor of St. Tropez, perhaps a few hundred. As in all but the largest Mediterranean ports, the big yachts and the cruise ships anchor a ways out, and passengers are ferried to the docks. Close in along the docks, private slips hold an assortment of pleasure sailboats and motorboats, nothing longer than about thirty feet.

So hailing weekend captains in my prep-school French was downright easy. “Ou peut-on se trouve le naveau ‘Shameless Palms’?”

Without fail, it got a smirking laugh. So either the suggestive name needed no translation, or they’d actually met the eccentric British-born American who’d boldly had it painted on the ass end of his modest-sized yacht.

On the fourth try, a dapper fellow looking like Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot—shameless enough himself in blazer, white ducks, and ascot, minus the cap—gestured erratically with his martini glass toward a sailboat tied up in its slip on the far end of the dock. “Il est fou, ce clochard,” (that bum is crazy) he slurred, as he waved me on. He seemed to be alone, so if his girlfriend was running late, she’d have to toss back several cocktails to catch up. Or if she’d already left after too few, he was well into his own method of drowning his remorse.

Four out of four skippers were men, Frenchmen of a certain age—in their floating retirement homes, I thought. Heading out to sea one last time with your own hand on the tiller would be a respectable way to go.

And with a pretty friend who didn’t give you too much back-chat? My respect for Farnsworth was growing.

As I approached the Shameless Palms, I heard a loud scritch-scritch before I spied a gangly old man in torn denims and sweat-soaked tee-shirt crouched over and laboring with a sanding block on the boat’s wooden deck.

His back was turned and he didn’t see me approach. So I was already standing over him on deck by the time he saw my white shoes and looked up.

“Permission to come aboard, sir,” he said, out of breath. He didn’t seem the least surprised to see me.

“I don’t get it. We’re already on board,” I said.

“No, you say, ‘Permission to come aboard—sir.”

“But as you can see, I’m already…”

“Motherfucking landlubbers,” he mumbled as he straightened up with some difficulty.

He pushed past me and disappeared below, returning moments later with two frosted cans of beer. He tossed me one as he sat down with an exhausted thump, popped the top on his cold one, and took a long swig.

“Nice launch you have here,” I said, toasting him with my can.

He snorted so hard in mid-chug the beer came out of his nose. After a brief coughing fit, he wheezed, “What the f**k did you call my boat?”

“A launch, sir. Isn’t that like, ah, a fancier name for a boat? Like a classy boat that has its own, you know, space at the dock? That it, you know, launches from?”

“For your information, you ignorant little putz, if you were not half as dumb as you do indeed look, that was about as insulting a piece of nautical jargon as you could throw at the skipper of a yar boat such as this.” And he drank.

“I had no idea…”

“Oh, you didn’t, eh? Lost on you, is it, the distinction that a launch is a craft small enough to be launched from a boat? A rowboat, a dingy, is a launch. So is a f*****g inflatable raft, for all that matters.” He was fuming, but I sensed that letting off steam was something he needed, perhaps for the same reason he’d been furiously sanding a wooden deck that hadn’t yet lost the gloss on its last coat of varnish.

“It’s yar, you said?” Putting him back in the role of mentor seemed a wise move.

“Yar means sleek and fast. Yes, now you’re spot-on. She is yar.”

Looking around with what I hoped appeared to be stark admiration, I said, “I’m sure she is.”

“Sailboats can be yar, but not motor craft, my view. Big, fat, and ugly, those gas-guzzling things. They fart fumes and leave an oil slick in their wake. Drunken captains with their trashy blonde whores. Halter tops on a sad pair of saggy boobs that should be hid inside a sweatshirt. Short shorts and cellulite. You get my drift.”

Picking perhaps the precise worst moment to mention it, I asked, “So where’s the P.M.? Freshening up? Taking a nap? No risk of cellulite there!”

Farnsworth’s face went slack, and for the first time I noticed his jowls looked more flaccid than I remembered. He set his beer can down on the deck and sighed.

“Thank you for coming, Rollo,” he said without an ounce of sarcasm. “I heard you’d hit a patch of trouble. I do hope I haven’t put you at any risk.”

“I do have to be careful,” I said.

“What do they want you for? Faking the death of a rubber doll? Murder of the real thing? Monica’s still very much alive, isn’t she? Who the f**k cares about any of it?”

“I helped her disappear into obscurity, and she got me a top job with this high-toned charitable foundation. But then I found out it was a money laundry for spooks and maybe even drug dealers. Maybe the whole reason I was there was to take the rap for some kind of international fraud. I doubt Monica knew anything about that part of it.”

“You don’t say.”

“She didn’t even know what Keppelhoffer’s Syndrome is.”

“Neither do I. Never gave it a thought, actually.”

“Prolonged erection of the p***s—downward,” I confided.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “But handy for the old pile-driver, what?”

I shook my head. “Too painful to be any practical use at all.”

“Hmm,” he mused. “And what do they do for it?”

“Nothing, apparently,” I replied. “They took in tons of cash and gave a lot of it to Spaulding Putter University. Supposedly for medical research, but I couldn’t trace a dime of it after that.”

“Spaulding Putter. Not exactly known for turning out doctors, are they?”

“More like pro golfers and hell-raising preachers,” I said. “And it turns out my father—you know, the disappearing financier?—he was involved somehow. Although I don’t think he was behind it so much as making it all possible for someone else, for a fee or a cut.” I took a pull on my beer and went on, “And of course, as you predicted, some of the big players were Dutch.”

“The Dutch!” he cried as his face turned red and his eyes bugged out.

As we both knew all too well, the Dutch conglomerate Fragrant Tulip had bought Wuthering Palms hotel where I had spent my probation parking cars. Farnsworth had been my boss, and to this day it seemed unnatural to address him as Hugo, much less consider him a friend.

“Things seem to have turned out well for you,” I said quietly. “You have what you wanted, and maybe without intending to, at least you could say I helped you get it.”

“That’s just it,” he whimpered quietly, as tears welled up in his leathery eyes. “She’s gone,” he said, and his voice cracked.

Hoo-boy. Here it is, the reason for his invitation. So maybe he doesn’t want to scold me or screw me or scream at me after all.

He’s going to plead with me.

“Some… sneak thief?” I asked, thinking it was the obvious possibility.

“We’d had a quarrel,” he sighed, “as we often did, now and again. Kept things interesting, my view. But it was one of those ‘Do I look fat in this dress?’ kind of tiffs, the kind a man just can’t win. I went ashore to cool off, knock back a few whiskeys at the local establishment, and when I came back on board, she’d disappeared.”

I tried to sound reassuring, as if celebrity lookalike dummies go missing every day. “Like I said, it was a thief. She was a valuable… work of art. A celebrity in her own right.” I reflected a moment. “Tabloids, that’s it. Of course, it’s just the kind of stunt they’d pull. Someone sniffed it out, discovered she… ” and I had to be careful here, “… isn’t… real? You have to admit, it’s a helluva story.”

“I’d do anything to get her back. I just wish I could take back those things I said.”

Does he have a grip? I wondered.

“And I suppose you didn’t inform the police?”

“Are you kidding?” he almost chuckled. “If perchance the paparazzi weren’t involved, that would most assuredly invite them right in.”

He looked at me soulfully. For the first time in the years I’d known him, he didn’t regard me as an underling, as an object of scorn, but as a kindred male, a directionless libido in search of a cause, a jouster at windmills, a rescuer of damsels.

“Please help me, Rollo,” he said simply, and he rested his gnarled hand on my knee.