A Helpful Wife

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In a very special part of Algiers, where the police did not go without invitation except to pick up their monthly bonus, and where the only customers were the government ministers and the super rich businessmen who came to North Africa for an anonymous and frankly expensive forbidden thrill, Pierre Lemarge plied his trade at his poshly and gaudily decorated night club that was called, not strangely, "Pierre's." Thirty years before, Pierre had been a strikingly handsome, slender and prosperous gigolo and pimp in Paris and Marseilles. Years of self-indulgence and dissipation had left him almost hairless and quite overweight, with a blotchy complexion and a hacking cough, but he enjoyed his life and the money he made at his business running his string of clubs all over North Africa and Mediterranean Europe.

Now he stood at the door of his club in Algiers, welcoming his rich guests who paid 500 French francs, or 100 American dollars, or 65 pounds sterling to see the cabaret. They paid an equal price for champagne, and other drinks were marked up ten times over the normal as well. Of course, that was not all. The cabaret performer always was heavily tipped, but Pierre took all of this for himself. There was no sense in letting the girl have money so she could run away.

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