The Last Match Read Online Free PDF Page B

steal their goods. Even a good fast boat like this one, it can’t outrun a bullet, and they always aim for the fuel tanks, to cripple you. What we do is, we rig an auxiliary feed-line and pump for each engine so we can tap into a drum right away if we’re hit, tu piges? That way, we know we can keep moving. In this business, you keep moving or you’re out of this business.”
    He laughed at his own wit and had a pull at his bottle, not offering it around.
    “Jean-Pierre kind of forgot to mention the bit about the shooting,” I said. “Does anyone ever get killed?”
    “Oh, now and then, now and then. There’s no need for it, though. Not if you stow your cargo right.”
    He didn’t volunteer any further explanation, so I didn’t ask for one. But I found out what he meant when we tied up in the darse at Tangier, where the dockside warehouses are, and began to heave cases of American cigarettes aboard.
    The Boar must have been heading up some kind of a syndicate operation, or else he had knocked off a bank lately. Jean-Pierre and I lugged cartons until our tongues were dragging and still they kept coming, wheeled out of the warehouse to dockside on a hand-truck and dumped there for us to load by hand. I lost count of the number of tons of tobacco we sweated aboard the cutter, but The Boar didn’t, not for a moment. Neither did the warehouse checker. Not at
    $60 a case, cash and carry. The trouble was, they didn’t check their tallies with each other until the loading was finished. At that point The Boar’s count was two cases short of the warehouse checker’s count.
    Cash and carry in this kind of trading means cash down first, on the barrelhead, carry only after the money has been counted. Any other kind of arrangement would mean quick bankruptcy for the sellers, dealing as they are with crooks and gangstaires who would think nothing of loading up and taking off without payment if they could get away with it. According to the checker, The Boar had received the merchandise he had paid for, and that was that. According to The Boar, he still had two cases coming. Difference of opinion. Clash of wills. Argument. Not for long, though.
    The Boar had an odd expressionless voice, without much inflection. I think one of his Corsican amici had tried to cut his throat but succeeded only in damaging his vocal cords. In a later year I saw this happen in Brazil, where a guy pushed a bamboo pig-sticker three inches into another guy’s throat during a fight without doing much more damage than a tracheotomy. An inch to either side of the gullet he’d have caught an artery or a major vein. The Boar had a scar where it would have happened to him, and his odd voice might have been the result of scar tissue on his larynx. He never raised it or strained it in any way. He didn’t need to.
    The warehouse checker was reasonable about it, and patient enough, but a Frenchman himself and therefore a pighead. He said, “Observe, mon vieux. I am paid a wage because I know how to count. I have checked goods out of this warehouse for fifteen years to earn my wage. I do not look at the girls’ tits when I should be minding my business, nor count that which does not pass before my eyes. If you wish you may unload the boat and we will count again.” (I felt my spine go at that.) “Otherwise the transaction has been completed. C’est fini. Bon soir et bon voyage.”
    “Two more cases,” The Boar said in his funny voice, although by “funny” I don’t mean in any way comical. He never joked, laughed, smiled or showed any visible sign of enjoyment that I ever noticed. He may have done so while he was killing people.
    “I don’t make mistakes,” he said. “Other people make mistakes.”
    He was standing on the cutter’s deck, the warehouseman on the wharf. The tide was so low, and the cutter so heavily laden, that The Boar’s head was about at the level of the warehouseman’s knees. He talked to them, or maybe to the guy’s feet,