Jules immediately fell under his spell. Here was a man’s man whom he could trust, who was powerful and who – it was hardly irrelevant – might give him a million Euros merely for doing what he loved to do most. This spell was cast not only by the magician but also by his audience and by the set – as Jules had known it would be, having been there before.
The George V was actually richer and more elegant than even the élysée, where Jules had been as well. The first time at the élysée had been when Fran?ois had been the Major of Sciences Po. Jules had met de Gaulle, if only momentarily as so often is the case with heads of state. He went twice on his own steam, once to give a recital and another time to receive one of the very few honors he had been able to collect. But the George V was on an even higher plane. Disassociated from real, political power, its force was confined to the purely material. Its every detail was perfect, its colors rich, its marble polished, and its proportions exquisite.
In preparing to meet Jack Cheatham, Jules had looked online and found the cost of the suite to which he had been invited. With tax it was almost 10,000 Euros a day, and Jack had been there already for nine days. When Jules walked into this extraordinary suite, Jack greeted him warmly and informally in the American style. A thin, too-efficient-looking young man in an expensive suit stood unobtrusively nearby, oozing so much competence it made Jules think of rotting fruit. This precision flunky was not introduced, and before anyone could really say anything, his phone rang. He spoke discreetly. Then he said, one hand covering the tiny phone, “Sir, it’s the pilots, checking in.”
“We’re okay. Not going home tonight certainly. Probably not tomorrow either. We’ll see. Besides, I hate to take off in the rain, and it’s raining heavily.” They were on the top floor, and the beautiful sound of the rain could be heard tattooing the roof. The young man faded into the background to deliver the reply.
“Pilots?” Jules asked.
“Yeah, my pilots. A couple’a pilots, a couple’a engineers, and a stewardess. You’re supposed to call them flight attendants now, but I call them stewardesses because that’s what they are. The crew is always on call, but of course they need downtime. They’re away from their families, but we pay them very well and it looks like they’ll get two weeks in Paris. All they have to do is check out the plane once a day and make sure it’s ready to go. There’s no reason they shouldn’t enjoy themselves as long as we don’t need them.”
“They stay near the airport?”
“No, they’re downstairs. Each one has a room. It’s in their contract. You know why? The insurers wanted to make sure they were well rested and in good shape to fly, so they said they have to stay in the same hotel as the employer, which is us, and we’re the insurers. Beat that. Not at the same level, but the same hotel. This is the George V. They don’t have cheap rooms. That’s maybe sixty room nights. You can imagine the cost of the meals and telephone calls. They buy their own goddamn souvenirs.”
Jules could see that Jack was doing the math faster than he was, and that Jack regretted hinting even indirectly at the hand he had already given away, without knowing it, courtesy of the American Embassy’s Scotch whiskey and Sonoma champagne. When Jack realized he had spoken too freely, for a moment he looked mean. Then it disappeared. He offered Jules a drink, perhaps wanting to lessen resistance, which, from experience, he knew could be lessened a great deal. As he was pouring, Jules did the math.
The cheapest room, he had discovered shortly before, with tax and extras, was about 2,000 Euros, times sixty-eight, with meals and transportation, plus a room for the assistant and perhaps others, plus parking the plane, ground transportation, tips, gifts, restaurant charges, communications equipment, fuel, the amortized cost of the plane.
He assumed that they had come to Paris not merely to find a jingle composer, but, even so, this trip had cost them close to half a million Euros. That information, plus the intelligence Fran?ois had gleaned at the embassy, made Jules confident that were he chosen and his composition accepted, he could indeed get a million. This was so far out of the realm of his experience – money like that does not come from teaching young people the fine points of the cello – that he wasn’t even nervous.
Jack gave him a glass of scotch and sat down opposite him. Jack’s glass, unlike Jules’ was three-quarters full. He whammed it down. “Want some more?” he asked.
“I haven’t had any yet.”
“I do.” Jack got up and drifted toward the bottle. “It’s raining. We were going to go to that restaurant, you know – I don’t know what it’s called. I can’t remember names anymore. But why don’t we eat here instead? Would you like room service, or shall we just go down to the restaurant downstairs? I think there are a couple of ’em.”
“Whichever you’d like.”
“Let’s go down then. The rain makes me restless.”
JACK’S YOUNG AIDE, who styled himself “a concierge without walls” and behind his back was called by Jack “a concierge without balls,” literally ran ahead not to secure a table in one of the restaurants but to arrange for a whole room, which he was able to do perhaps because the weather had made for a quiet evening. Although the aide had smoothed the way, he wasn’t available to escort Jack to the proper place. That – and because Jack, who had been drinking before his drink with Jules (he drank a lot when it rained, and when it didn’t rain), and because he was not used to finding his own way, and because he had a poor sense of direction – was the reason Jack led Jules at high-speed all around the public rooms of “this goddamned hotel.”
“Shit!” he said upon opening a door that he was sure would lead to their destination but revealed instead a room full of Ghanian laundresses ironing napkins and tablecloths. “That’s not the restaurant. Where the fuck is the restaurant?”
“I think it’s on the other side of the lobby,” Jules volunteered.
“We were just there.”
“No.”
“Where were we?”
“We were at the swimming pool. Remember? Water?”
“All right. I’m sorry, I thought it was here.”
“It’s over there. Look, there’s your friend, standing at the door.”