Pronto by Elmore Leonard Page B

that together. The sun can be out, it don't matter. I sniff the air. Like that, smell it coming. See, I knew I wasn't going to sell you a umbrella. I can also tell when I ought'n try to bullshit the person."
    "You didn't think I was Italian?" Harry said.
    "Uh-unh, not even you wearing your coat like that, like Fellini. You from somewhere on the East Coast. New York?"
    "Miami. The Beach most of my life."
    "You could be Italian, yeah, but not from around here the way you're dressed. Well, you could come from Milan, I guess, close by. But to look all the way Italian, man, you got to have the suit with the pointy shoulders and the pointy shoes with the little thin soles. You staying here on your holiday?"
    "I've got a place," Harry said, and then came right out and told him, "a villa. I'm making up my mind if I want to live here."
    "Rapallo? Man, this is all there is to it. You hiding out?"
    "Do I look like I am?"
    "I've run into all kinds of people over here hiding from something -- the only reason I ask. I don't care, you understand. I see a man like yourself come to a place like this? Pretty much strictly for locals? I have to wonder, that's all."
    "You live around here," Harry said, "don't you? Or you come over from Africa with your umbrellas?"
    "Where I came over here from was Houston, Texas. Man, a long time ago, after doing Vietnam and not finding things at home to my liking: everybody from up north down there trying the oil business. I came over to the Mediterranean, did Morocco, the Greek islands, Egypt. For a while I became an Islamic brother, named myself Jabal Radwa after a mountain in Saudi Arabia. But then, you know what I finally did? I went to Marseilles and joined the Foreign Legion. I did, I'm not kidding, under the name Robert Gee. And you don't believe me, do you?"
    Harry shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
    "Influenced by a former legionnaire," Robert Gee said, "I knew when I was in Saigon, a Frenchman that stayed over there from the fifties -- you know when I mean? -- married a woman there and became part of that life. He kept telling me what I should do was stay, get me a cute woman like he did. ... But I couldn't see myself going Asiatic. You know what I'm saying? So I come over here instead and join the French Foreign Legion, full of mercenary-type motherfuckers had been fighting in wars in Africa, for pay and also the chance to shoot brothers. And here I am in the same outfit, sleeping and marching with these racists."
    "And if I happen to lean that way," Harry said, "too bad."
    "You might. Though I don't think you lean too much one way or the other. Or give a shit what I think especially."
    Harry let him believe what he wanted. He said, "How long were you in?"
    "The whole five years, made corporal and got my jump wings. Served in Corsica, where they train, and in Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden, over in East Africa. I got out, found myself after a while in Kuwait before Desert Storm and got a job as this sheik's bodyguard and driver. I was the only one he trusted to drive his stretch in some of the capitals of Europe. Pretty soon, though, I had enough of the sheik and his ways. I quit being Jabal Radwa and changed my name back to Robert Gee for the second time."
    Harry said, "I've got a couple of names."
    It brought a smile, Robert Gee saying, "I thought you might. Running some kind of game and they caught up with you, huh?"
    "I retired," Harry said.
    "Well, I'm semi," Robert Gee said. "I sell umbrellas sometimes or can get you whatever you might need, or your imagination allows. You want American cigarettes, Scotch whisky? A pistol, shotgun? For sport or whatever your reason. I can get you some pretty good hashish. Smoke it watching American sitcoms on TV. Andy Griffith talking Italian. Cocaine, you have to go someplace else."
    "What kind of pistol?" Harry said.
    It got another smile from Robert Gee.
    "Beretta. We in Italy, man."
    "You hire out?" Harry asked.
    "To do what?"
    "Hang around. See if anything comes