The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian) (11 page)

Fauchon made occasional notes, but mainly he just listened, his heavy-lidded eyes slit against the smoke from his Gauloise, resting his dark, closely shaven jowl against one chubby fist. He made a note of the spelling of Sinclair, and said he would look into it, and might perhaps have some information for me in a day or two.

We shook hands and Fauchon got back into his car, to return to the Préfecture, I suppose, that being what French police inspectors do when they are away from it. I returned to the warehouse and Clovis.

Clovis was directing the setting up of another scene in the warehouse. He seemed subdued, thoughtful.

“Thank God you are not hurt,” he said. “This should never have happened. Fauchon will get to the bottom of it, however.”

“The bottom of what? I thought it was an accident.”

Clovis shook his head. “The only accidents on my sets are those I plan. This, I can assure you, was not planned by me. Come here, let me show you something.”

I followed Clovis back to the upper level. We walked down the corridor to the place where I had fallen through. Clovis showed me how the floor supports, joists I suppose you’d call them, had been sawn through and then neatly fitted back into place. Loose rubbish had been strewn over them. It was as neat a deadfall as I’ve ever seen.

“But who did it?” I asked. “And why?”

“Interesting questions,” Clovis said. “I’d hoped you might have some answers.”

“Why me?”

“You’re the person most apt to know who would like to see you dead.”

“But I don’t know.”

“Then perhaps you should find out.”

SECOND THOUGHTS

24

i have noticed that private detectives do not spend much time discussing the injuries incurred in the line of duty, or whatever it is they call their work. They all seem to have this incredible ability to shake off serious beatings, sometimes with blunt objects, with a remark to the effect that they were a little stiff the next day but a good shower and massage would take care of it.

There is reason for this reticence, of course. Most private detectives tend to be heavily muscled mesomorphs, whose idea of a really good time is a workout in the local gym with their buddies around a Nautilus machine. I’m talking about the sort of person who plays handball when he’s bored instead of lying down on a couch and waiting for the mood to pass like any normal human being. People like this have a lot to be stoical about.

I’m not like that. I bruise easily. The contusions I suffered from that fall in the warehouse in Bicêtre left ugly yellow and purple blotches. I’d probably have them for months. And they hurt. I won’t mention it again, but I did want you to know.

I returned to my hotel room, had a long soak in the tub, and a couple hours’ sleep. After that I felt almost well enough to keep my date that evening with Yvette.

Almost, but not quite. I just couldn’t face the perfumed decadence of the Paris night, not even for Yvette. I was still thinking about that old guy in the funny hat I’d hallucinated earlier. And I was thinking about this whole case involving Rachel and Alex, thinking vague, discontented thoughts which I wouldn’t care to reveal, but will anyhow. I was thinking that I was being pretty poorly paid for what was turning out to be a complicated and dangerous job. I was thinking that it was all getting to be a little much. I was approaching a dark moment; I could feel it; you always know when you’re going into a tailspin. I wondered what in hell I was doing back in Europe. I began to relaize, with dismay, that I had done it again, sold myself a bill of goods, plunged myself into complications and risk because of some romantic fallacy concerning a Paris that never existed, and a me who never existed, either. I had tried to make a livelihood out of a romantic halo, the warm glow of temps perdu in which I wrap my memories, building a kingdom of nostalgia and hot air. As if my years in Europe hadn’t been bad enough, here I was trying to do the whole thing again.

Have you ever noticed that anyone can have a crisis in a detective novel except the detective himself? Well, just remember that you saw it here first—a detective turning resolutely away from his appointment with a prime informant. Instead, I went downstairs and asked the concierge if she could send a telegram for me. She could. I wrote, DEAR RACHEL, I QUIT. LOVE, HOB. and had it sent to the Crillon.

You could say I was overreacting. But the fact is, I hate being dropped through floors. Especially when I’m not even making a profit on the case.

RACHEL AGAIN

25

Two hours later I was taking a nap, when Rachel came to the door. “What do you mean, you quiet?” she asked.

“Let me see that,” I said, taking the piece of paper out of her hand. It was my telegram. “I said ‘I quit,’ not ‘I quiet,’“ I told her. “The bloody frogs get everything wrong.”

“Not so high on Europe today, are you?”

“My enthusiasm began to fade at the precise moment I fell through the floor at Kremlin-Bicêtre.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have been acting in a movie anyway. I hired you to find Alex, not start a new career.”

“On the money you’re paying me, I need another job in order to support myself while I’m working for you. You know the motto of my guild: Don’t risk your life for
bupkes.
”

“I don’t know that word,” Rachel said, “but I guess I understand what you’re saying. I want you to continue. What do you want?”

“First, a little honesty.”

“Are you accusing me of lying?” Rachel asked. Her voice, as you might imagine, was cold.

“No, not at all,” I said. “I just want you to tell me the truth.”

“You’re contradicting yourself,” Rachel said. A little less coldly. “What do you want to know?”

“Why do you want to find Alex?”

“But I’ve told you,” she said. “He’s a friend. He’s missing. I care about him.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Go on where?”

“What’s the payoff?”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Rachel,” I said, “I like you. But if what you’ve just told me is the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, then we’d better call it quits. I should be back in the States for my daughter’s graduation anyway.”

“But why are you suddenly going to quit like this?”

“Because, Rachel, this thing is getting dangerous. Lots of people seem to be involved, and there seems to be something, or maybe several somethings, that I know not of. That puts me at a disadvantage, since everyone else knows more than I do. What I do know is this.” I paused dramatically.

“What?” she asked.

“I know that Alex hasn’t simply dropped out to go run with the bulls in Pamplona. I know he’s involved in something complicated and probably illegal. And I’ve got a feeling that a lot of money is involved.”

“What makes you think so?”

“A lot of people are interested in Alex. People don’t keep up that kind of interest unless there’s money in it.”

She thought about that. “I see what you mean,” she said after a while.

“Good. Then what are you going to tell me?”

“Hob,” she said, “the best thing I can say at this point is, it’s worth five thousand dollars to me to find Alex.”

“Is that real money or play money?”

She flushed. “Are you calling me a liar again?”

“Not at all. I’m just pointing out that I have expenses, people to hire, bribes to spread around, plus my own payroll to meet.”

“I can give you a thousand dollars right now.” She opened her purse, looking at me.

“Tell you what,” I said, “give me two thousand now, and eight more when I turn him up.”

“That’s ten thousand dollars!”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t a very nice thing you’re doing, holding me up like this in the middle of a case.”

“You can take your complaint to the guild. It’s little enough, considering that you still haven’t told me anything useful.”

“All right,” she said. “How soon do you think you can turn him up?”

“Get your money ready,” I said. “I figure three days, a week at the most, and this case is going to blow wide open.”

Afterwards I was to marvel at my prophetic soul.

HARRY, MARIA

26

Harry Hamm felt a little self-conscious, walking down the pier at the port of Ibiza with Maria Guasch beside him. But he felt good. Maria was a handsome woman with a lot of class, and he was happy to be with her. He had begun hoping that they wouldn’t find out about the Guasch brothers too soon, so maybe they could have lunch together.

But then Antonio Plannells told Maria that he’d seen the brothers leave. Once beyond the breakwater they’d set a course for Barcelona.

Maria frowned when she heard that. Barcelona was far from their usual fishing grounds. “Why would they be going there? Antonio, could you try to call them on your radio?”

“They’d be beyond my range,” Plannells said. But he agreed to give it a try. He told Maria and Hamm to wait on the deck while he went below into the crowded, messy little cabin and tried to raise the brothers on short wave.

It was a bright, fair day. The wind whipped the little dark tendrils of hair that escaped from Maria’s kerchief. A white cruise ship from Mallorca was just coming around the island of Tagomago. Harry found that he was ridiculously happy, and for no reason he could think of.

Then Plannells came back. “I didn’t get them. But I talked to Diego Tur, who saw them before he turned for home.”

“Where were they?” Maria asked.

“About twenty miles east of Cadaqués.”

“Where’s that?” Harry asked.

“North of Barcelona,” Maria told him, “almost in the Golfe du Lion.”

She turned to Antonio Plannells and questioned him in rapid-fire Ibicenco. Then turned back to Harry.

“They seemed to be going north. In the direction of Montpellier, or Marseilles.”

Harry drove Maria to her finca. He wanted to ask her out again but he didn’t know how to go about it. You just didn’t invite Ibicenca women out for a drink.

Later that day, reading the newspaper in a café in Santa Gertrudis, he came across an article, on page five of the
International Herald-Tribune.
Harry read it twice, then decided he’d better telephone Hob.

Making an international telephone call from Ibiza is a major undertaking that can use up the better part of a day. Harry drove to Santa Eulalia, Ibiza’s third largest town. Some sort of festival was going on; the streets were crowded and there wasn’t a parking space to be found. Harry circled the streets twice, finally drove nearly a quarter of a mile out of town to the Hotel Ses Rocques where his friend Carlitos, who guarded the parking lot, let him park free. Harry started along the path back to town, exchanging good-natured pleasantries with friends and acquaintances he met along the way. He wasn’t hurrying, because it wouldn’t do to hurry in Ibiza where time is measured by weeks and months rather than minutes and hours. But he was feeling a little edgy because he did have a message to deliver, and the indolent charm of Ibiza stood in his way of getting the job done.

Harry came to the filled-up parking lot on the edge of town, walked through it, cut between buildings and reached the central promenade, the Calle del Kiosko. It was called this because at its upper end was an outdoor café where you sat and met your friends, or your enemies, or just plain anybody, Ibiza being that sort of place.

Harry had no time for pleasantries right then, although he had to engage in them, because no emergency was so great in Ibiza, not even your house burning down, that you would ignore the pleasantries. He nodded to the señora who did his shirts; he exchanged greetings with Irish Alec who ran El Caballo Negro, the bar where he mostly hung out. And at last he reached the telephone kiosko.

The telephone kiosko was the most recent sign of modernization in Santa Eulalia. Until a few years ago there was no public telephone in Ibiza. You had to get permission at one of the bars or restaurants or hotels if you wanted to make a call. But then La Compañía Telefónico de España put in a telephone exchange, a prefab cubicle about the size of a small trailer. Six telephone booths take up two walls. On your left as you enter is the desk where you place your calls. On the other side, a wooden bench where you can wait.

Don’t bother taking out your telephone card. These phones don’t even have a slot you can put it into. Here long distance calls are made the old-fashioned way, by having your operator talk to another operator and then seeing if between them they can locate your party.

In summer, in peak calling hours, this could become high comedy. The international telephone exchange was Santa Eulalia’s introduction to high stress and modern living. There were people in it all day long, mostly foreigners, clamoring at José in the incomprehensible syllables of their unknown tongues. José, short, barrel chested, broad faced, a cheerful yet serious man, was not at all intimidated by the situation. Like many Spaniards, he loved an emergency and was able to take control instantly and get the job done. There was only one proviso: you shouldn’t question his way of doing things, and above all don’t tell him it’s taking too long.