“Hi, guys,” said Charlie.
The door to the WC swung open and Borra lumbered into the café, his blue blazer and tie combo winningly askew enough to make Charlie feel somewhat better about his own high-water trousers and crooked bow tie.
“Right on time, Charlie,” said the Russian. “You look . . .” He paused in his assessment once his eyes landed on the hem of Charlie’s pants.
“Barely passable,” said Jackie. “Really, Charlie. Aren’t you the son of some important minister?”
“Consul general,” said Charlie. “I think it shrunk.”
“You’re a growing boy,” said Jackie.
“That,” said Charlie, “is just what my dad said.”
“We’ll have to get you something tailored,” said Pluto. He then made a mental count of his accomplices in the room. “We’re all here. Shall we head to our party?”
A young couple in the corner watched them disinterestedly as they made their way out into the street. Molly caught Charlie’s eye as they clustered near the door of the café.
“Amir ain’t here,” she said, guessing his thoughts.
“We don’t want to wait just a little longer? See if he shows?”
“He’s out, Charlie,” said Molly. “And out is out.”
“He ain’t coming back,” said Michiko.
Charlie nodded, trying to remain resolute in the face of his friend’s defection.
Out on the avenue, Pluto and Jackie walked at the head of the gang, carefully cataloging every facet of the upcoming tip. They’d already planned the operation, back at the scatter, but at Pluto’s insistence, they reviewed everything down to the smallest detail.
“Right,” said Pluto. “Listen up. Organization is key. This place’ll be crawling with fuzzy whiskers. If anyone gets a whiff, if a single soul is rumbled, we’re out. First off: me, Charlie, Jackie, and Michiko go in as guests. Charlie, Michiko’s your date. Jackie’s mine.”
“How romantic,” said Jackie.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Michiko said to Charlie, winking.
Charlie felt his face redden. “How do we get in again?”
“Our impeccable charm,” said Pluto.
“Wait,” said Charlie. “You don’t have invitations? I thought you said we had invitations.” This struck Charlie as a pretty big oversight, if true. He’d been to enough high-level functions to know that lacking an invitation was tantamount to enjoying the party from the street. Charm, no matter how impeccable, would not get you far.
“Security’s real tight on this one,” was Pluto’s answer. “They’re taking names at the gate. I put the bee on this one through a fellow I know. We’ve got one name on the list, good for myself and three guests.” He looked at his watch. “Once we’re through, Jackie will get to the staff entrance door by seven fifteen, provided there are no holdups. Sembene, Fatour, Borra, and Molly, you guys know where to be?”
“North side gate, by the garbage bins,” said Molly.
Jackie took up the story: “Good. From there, Sembene and Fatour, you boys head straight to the kitchen. Hopefully you’ll be out on the floor quick. Borra, to the coat check. Molly . . . Just try to act regal.”
“’Tis in my nature,” said Molly, adopting a posh accent.
“What if we get hung up at the front gate?” asked Charlie.
“Relax,” said Jackie. “We’ve been through this dozens of times. It always works out. There is always a way into a party.”
At this point, Borra, Molly, Sembene, and Fatour bid their colleagues good luck and broke away down a side street, presumably leading to the Palais’s staff entrance—but not before Borra had gripped Charlie firmly on the shoulder and said, “To you, Charlie, I wish most luck.”
Charlie accepted the Russian’s well-wishes with a cringing smile (his grip was incredibly strong), while a wave of nervousness crashed over him. He adjusted the lapels to his tuxedo, straightened his tie, and thrust out his elbow to Michiko, who was walking at his side.
“Shall we?” he hammed.
Michiko smiled and took his arm.
The two couples fell into step on the avenue, and with each block they began radiating more confidence until they were all but indistinguishable from the flocking partygoers who were arriving, two by two, at the front gate to the color gardens that surrounded the Palais du Pharo like a leafy moat. Limousines and taxicabs birthed lavishly dressed men and women onto the sidewalk by the gate—two couples even arrived by horse and carriage—and the pickpockets were forced to take their place in the queue that was forming.
A quartet of tuxedoed giants, armed with clipboards and pencils, guarded the entrance to the grounds. Each couple was forced to announce their names, which the gatekeepers would locate and tick off their list with a scrawl of a pencil. They were scrupulous in their attention, and the flow of humanity into the Palais had slowed to a trickle. Charlie could feel his heart rate quicken. He looked at Pluto, who seemed unshaken. Michiko’s grip tightened on his arm as they arrived at the head of the queue.
“Comment vous appelez-vous?” asked one of the men as Pluto stepped forward.
“Baron Marius d’Anton,” answered Pluto, his voice dripping with what Charlie assumed to be some aristocratic dialect. “And three guests.” He said this, of course, in French.
The man did not blink at the outrageous name—he’d been hearing similarly ostentatious titles all evening—and began searching the register for Monsieur Le Baron. He evidently came up empty-handed, because he looked at Pluto after a time and shook his head.
“No,” was all he said.
Pluto laughed uncomfortably. “That’s impossible. Please check again.”
Out of what might be a reluctant deference to the upper classes, the man gave another survey of the neatly stacked paper on his clipboard. The answer, at the end of the search, was the same.
“No,” said the man again.
Jackie leaned forward. “Dah-ling,” she drawled, in Southern-soaked English. “What in heaven’s name is the holdup? Certainly Father is expecting us inside. Ah haven’t come all the way from Nah’leans to be held up at the do-ah. Or my name isn’t Peabody.” She glanced at the man after her recitation and was shocked to see it had no effect.
“This is an outrage,” said Pluto. “I demand to see whoever is in charge here. I will not be treated like some common riffraff!”
Charlie felt Michiko pull on his arm; she led him closer to the fray, though for what purpose, he could not know. Seeing their attempt at gaining entry go so horribly awry, he was ready, in the argot, to nash it and nurse the Whiz Mob’s failure over grenadines at the scatter. Several couples behind them began to grumble impatiently at the delay; Pluto and Jackie were holding their ground, their complaints growing louder with every moment. Several other similarly dressed security personnel began to gravitate toward the fracas; Charlie felt himself being pushed forward by the crowd.
“What’s going on here?” shouted one of the elder gatekeepers. “What’s the holdup?”
“These . . . kids, sir,” said the man who’d been denying Pluto entrance. “They’re not on the list.”
The other man glanced at them; Charlie was surprised to see the man’s attention alight on himself. The man peered closer and said, in English, “Is that you, Charlie Fisher?”
Pluto and Jackie fell away. Michiko remained clinging to Charlie’s arm.
“Y-yes?” answered Charlie.
“Are these”—he paused, taking in Charlie’s confederates—“your friends?”
Charlie did not know the man, nor how the man knew him, but he knew well enough when to seize an opportunity. “Yes,” he said. “And we’re not being allowed in.”
“Well, that would be a grave mistake,” said the man, now looking at the clipboard-armed guard. He then switched to French, saying, “This is the son of the American consul general and his friends. Let them in.”
Unperturbed by his mistake, the guard waved the four of them forward. Within mome
nts, they were through the gate and into the gardens.
“Three cheers for Charlie Fisher,” Pluto said.
“What just happened?” asked Jackie, her hand to her lips.
“I don’t really know,” said Charlie. “They must’ve recognized me.”
“Why didn’t we think of that before?” shouted Michiko, tugging on Charlie’s arm. “It’s ingenious.”
“Nice work, Charlie,” said Pluto. “You really came through.”
Charlie smiled and said, “It was nothing, really. Benefits of my upbringing, I guess.”
As if on cue, a servant appeared with a tray full of champagne glasses. Pluto gathered four of them, one for each of the pickpockets, and doled them out. Holding his glass out in front of him as if it were some holy relic, he said, “To quicken the pulse and quench the nerves.”
The four glasses met in the center of their circle, making a melodious ting. “To the whiz, cannons,” said Pluto.
“To the whiz,” said Jackie.
“To the whiz,” said Michiko.
“To the whiz,” said Charlie. He waited till they’d thrown back their heads to ingest the bubbly stuff before he upturned his own glass and emptied its contents onto the grass. Say what you will about Charlie Fisher and the serial larceny he’d been accomplice to for the last several weeks, he wasn’t about to go so delinquent as to drink alcohol. Besides, if he did, what librarian or bookseller would possibly order this book, let alone recommend it to a bright and studious reader such as yourself? Let’s all be thankful he abstained and continue with our story. For now, the Big Tip was on.
Chapter
SIXTEEN
But first, a quick aside.
You might be interested to know that the Palais du Pharo was built in 1858 by Napoléon III (not that Napoléon, but another) for his wife, Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick. The emperor and Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick did not live in the residence during the emperor’s life, and Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick ended up donating the property to the city of Marseille after Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick’s husband’s death. The city, undoubtedly, was very thankful to Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick, because the Palais was a fine neoclassical building with commanding views of the Old Port and the Mediterranean Sea. It is anyone’s guess why Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick chose not to live in such a fine residence, but we can assume that, being an empress, Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick had her pick of the litter when it came to extraordinary addresses.
You might also be interested to know that Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick was commonly called Empress Eugénie, but it’s a bit late for that information, since that is likely the last time she’ll be mentioned in this book.
While Charlie had not lived the life of an empress, he had set foot on the grounds of many an exceptional house, those marvelous buildings at which we, the common folk, might only steal glances from between the chinks of the close-set trees and hedgerows that guard them from trespassers, through the bars of the wrought-iron fences that separate the haves from the have-nots of this world. Charlie, being the son of a well-respected career diplomat, was allowed passage.
And the Palais du Pharo put many of those houses to shame. Especially on that particular May evening, when the gardens surrounding the building were aflame with torches casting flickering light on the milling partygoers, each one decked out in the best finery of the day, and music from a distant bandstand drifted in the air like a wandering stream. The building itself looked like some great Greek edifice, the sort of place where one would expect to see philosophers, playwrights, and politicians, dressed in drapery, meandering about and engaging in high-minded conversation about the future of civilization. And while one might be tempted to loiter in the outside grounds the entire evening, the golden light shining from the Palais’s many windows, the shadows that leapt about its ceilings, and the silhouettes on the balconies promised that the party indoors was an equal to anything the gardens had to offer.
Pluto rubbed his hands excitedly before sauntering off, refilled champagne glass in hand, to the rendezvous with the rest of the mob. Michiko wrapped her arm tightly in the crook of Charlie’s. Jackie circled a group of chatting socialites with the temerity of a lioness.
The binging was beginning.
With a single look, Michiko was able to communicate to Charlie that she would run cannon to his duke on several older men who were standing near an ornate gazebo; Charlie fell in behind her as she approached. She wandered into the crowd like some kind of spirit or sprite, a figment of the viewer’s imagination, so completely was she able to avoid detection. Charlie followed doggedly, pretending all the while to be some party guest, looking for his partner. Wallets tumbled like dice from a cup into Charlie’s palm; watches flipped neatly from Michiko’s hand into Charlie’s. It took only one circumnavigation of the chattering push before the gentlemen had been neatly stripped of valuables and the two pickpockets were onto their next press.
Nearby, a pavilion had been assembled in the center of the gardens, and a sweeping tune was being played by a small orchestra on a bandstand, while a smattering of guests danced blithely on the grass.
“Care to?” asked Michiko.
“I’d be honored,” replied Charlie.
And they were off, waltzing to some cheery melody the conductor had just ushered into life with a wave of his baton. A new crowd of dancers arrived, and soon the pavilion was abuzz with swaying bodies, clasped together in pairs.
“Well,” said Michiko, her right hand lazing on Charlie’s left, her left hand on his other arm. “Not bad, Charlie Fisher.”
“Dance lessons,” Charlie explained sheepishly, his right hand gently pressed against the small of Michiko’s back. “My mother made me take them. You know, in order to be a good society brat.” As if to punctuate the comment, he navigated them in a deft double turn that made Michiko shout.
“Don’t whirl me away,” she said, laughing.
“I’ll try not to.”
“You know, Charlie,” said Michiko as their feet shuffled through the grass, “I don’t typically care for Americans.”
“So you’ve said.”
“But for you, I think I may have to make an exception.” She laid her head on his shoulder.
“Don’t go soft on me now,” said Charlie.
Michiko laughed before saying, “Say, Charlie. Why don’t you waltz me a little closer to one of our neighbors?”
“Gladly, mam’selle,” replied her partner.
It was a sneak job as old as the honored profession itself, the dance tip. Charlie guided his partner gracefully up to the nearest couple, allowing Michiko to make the slightest contact with the back of the woman’s gown. Before this touch was even registered, Michiko’s hand would drop from Charlie’s arm and find its way to the sucker’s purse. A squeeze of the leading hand let Charlie know the tip was won and he would spin her away, breathing a quiet apology to the suckers; they smiled, if somewhat annoyed. Charlie felt something heavy and undoubtedly valuable slide into his left hip kick.
“Older couple, two o’clock,” whispered Michiko, her lips close to Charlie’s ear.
And so it went, as the band segued into a loping Spanish melody, that Charlie and Michiko swayed and swung around the pavilion floor, casually brushing against each of their fellow dancers in turn, with every orbit filling Charlie’s pockets with ill-gotten items lifted from their pockets and purses. At one point, an older gentleman with silver-streaked hair asked to step in and dance with the radiant Michiko; Charlie could only oblige.
As she was spun away into the center of
the floor, her right hand inconspicuously making its way down the gentleman’s back, Charlie shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled off the dance floor.
“Hey there, sailor,” he heard someone say. He turned to see Molly.
“Oh, hi,” he said, smiling. “You made it in.”
“Easy peasy,” replied the Mouse. “You swinging?”
It took Charlie a moment, considering the context, to realize what she was asking. “Yes,” he said. “My pockets are loaded.”
“Well, look no further.” The girl waved him over to the shelter of a nearby hedgerow and, once they were both concealed, pulled at a hidden waistband in her gown. “Night depository box, at your service.”
Charlie peered down and saw that Molly had sewn a large canvas stash bag into her dress, hidden by the enormous bell of her gown.
“No need to stare,” chided Molly, causing Charlie to blush deeply as he began transferring all of his stolen items from his pockets down Molly’s dress. Once he’d finished, the girl adjusted her clothing and walked away, looking not unlike someone who was recovering from some kind of pelvic surgery.
Charlie watched her leave, then turned his attention back to the dancers under the pavilion. Michiko was still matched with the older gentleman; a new song had been struck up. Charlie walked through the dance floor, excusing himself as a swaying couple swept into him and revolved away, lighter in the pockets than they’d been just moments before. It was as if Dennis himself were there on the dance floor. Approaching Michiko and her older paramour, Charlie said, “May I have this dance?”
The man acquiesced, somewhat reluctantly, and Michiko was back again in Charlie’s arms.
“What took you so long?” she asked.
“I had to unload. Molly is duking.”