The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian) (24 page)

“You have it all wrong,” Nieves said. “Alex is going to marry me. Believe me, this is no delusion on my part.”

“But what about Rachel, then?”

I said, “He’s supposed to be meeting her somewhere and paying her off. That’s what Rachel thinks. But I think Alex has other ideas.”

“What are you hinting at?”

“We think,” I said, “or fear, that Alex is going to kill her.”

“That seems to me hardly creditable,” Clovis said. But you could see him thinking. He got up and began walking around the room, running his fingers absently over the gilt furniture. Presently he turned to Nieves.

“You are sure he planned to marry you?”

Nieves nodded. “I helped make the arrangements to get him out of France.”

Clovis thought about it. You could see logic wrestle with hero worship in his fevered brow. At last he asked a key question.

“Are you wealthy, Miss Nieves?”

She nodded again.

“Merde!” said Clovis. “Then it’s probably true. Although I always applauded Alex’s idealism, I had my doubts about it, too. The words came too easily to his tongue. Well! I have been deceived.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

Clovis looked at me. His face was serious now. “What does he plan to do when he meets Rachel, if not go away with her?”

“He’s been trying to get rid of her for a long time,” I said. “And now he’s dead, so he can pretty much do as he pleases, and he’s wealthy enough to make it come out right for him anyhow. Rachel is in the way. I can’t prove any of this, but I’d like to get to Alex before Rachel does. Come on, Clovis!”

Clovis stood in the center of the room, looking like a man having an indecision fit. Then he made up his mind, turned to us, barked, “Wait, I’ll be right back.” And he hurried out of the room.

Nieves turned to me. “What is that supposed to mean?”

I shrugged. It was catching. The gesture, I mean.

And then Clovis came back to the parlor. He had taken off his dressing gown and put on a tough-looking leather jacket. He was wearing amber sunglasses, and he was pulling on cane-back driver’s gloves.

“Come,” he said, starting for the door.

“Where are we going?”

“That’s a silly question,” Nieves said, pulling me out the door after Clovis.

CIOVIS

52

“Hey, look, is it really necessary to go so fast?” I asked. The three of us were squeezed into the walnut-panelled cockpit of Clovis’ restored Hispano-Suiza. An dat ole engine, she come a-whoopin’ an’ a-hollerin’ so loud that I had to shriek over it, and got more of a note of panic into it than I intended. Clovis paid me no attention and Nieves acted like she was enjoying the whole thing. I would have enjoyed it, too, if I hadn’t been so certain we were within microseconds of smearing ourselves to death against a bus or taking out a storefront with our heads.

It was late at night in Paris, past two in the morning, and traffic was thin, which was too bad because it allowed Clovis to go that much faster. I remember thinking, he’s probably been waiting all his life for this, a real honest-to-God emergency, so that he can drive his stupid sports car at unsafe speeds and scare hell out of any passengers not imbued like himself with suicidal tendencies.

We barrelled up the Champs-Élysées like a jet-propelled panzer division, screamed around the Arc de Triomphe on two wheels, and then we were doing broken field running down Avenue Kléber. By some miracle we reached the Périphérique without killing anyone.

Once I heard sirens behind me. But we outran them. Be damned if we didn’t outrun the radio advisories the cops were broadcasting to each other.

And then we were on the N135, going down a straight road between plane trees that turned into a blur of leafy shadows, as we eased back to a hundred miles an hour or so.

“Where are we going?” I managed to gasp.

“We’re here!” Clovis shouted as he turned the car at a sign marked aÉrogare annency.

It was a small airfield. There was steel mesh fence ahead of us and a steel mesh gate secured with a chain. Clovis didn’t even slow down. He went right through it and we carried on with only one headlight to the low airport building near the airstrip.

Clovis brought the car to a skidding stop. Somewhat shakily I got out, followed by Nieves.

“What’s going on here?” I asked. “Where’s Alex?”

Three men came out of the darkened airport building. By the three-quarter moon I could make out that they were armed with revolvers. Jean-Claude was one of them. The second man was Nigel.

“Hi, fellows,” I said, more brightly than I felt. “I don’t know how you figured to come here, but I’m sure glad to see you.”

“What’s up with them?” Nigel asked Clovis.

Clovis was standing tall and somber in the near-darkness, tugging off his driving gloves.

“They knew,” he said. “I thought it best to bring them here.”

“Et tu, Clovis,” I said.

Clovis shrugged. “I never promised you a rose garden.”

“Hey, hey, fellows, let’s lighten up,” I said. “Let’s all take one giant step back from the brink of this impending catastrophe, forget about Alex, go somewhere and have a couple of drinks. OK with you?”

“Get control of yourself, Hob,” Nigel said sternly. “We all regret this. But you might as well go out like a man, eh?”

I stared at Nigel. He had always been a weirdo, but this was simply too much. From Jean-Claude I could expect any treachery. You get used to that from people with hyphenated first names. But Nigel? Nigel Wheaton? My old pal Nigel?

“Suppose you sit down over here while we sort this thing out,” Nigel said, gesturing with the revolver.

The third man stepped into the light. Tall, light haired, smiling sheepishly. It was Alex.

And I freaked.

“To hell with this!” I cried. If I were to die in character, that meant I had to go out as a coward. I threw back my head and let out a scream that could have been heard all across France and maybe even in parts of Spain. But Clovis tapped me on the skull with a tire iron just as I was working up to full voice.

SCREAM OF THE BUTTERFLY

53

You could really do a lot worse than be unconscious. You could be dead. That wouldn’t be much fun, would it? So I reasoned with myself. Or rather, one part of my mind reasoned while another part floated in a luminous sea of light. I thought I could hear waves lapping against a shore, and that was strange, Paris being inland. Just as I was thinking this, I saw some figures taking shape out of the mist, and I was just getting ready to work myself into a really nice vision or hallucination or whatever you want to call it when I felt somebody shaking me. Rudely. Vehemently.

“Wake up, Hob.”

It’s one hell of a situation because I don’t even know yet who it is who is telling me to wake up, and I know that someone’s out to get me. I’m still in one of those states I get into when somebody cracks me sharply on the skull. I was sort of floaty and semi-weirded out, and my hearing was playing tricks on me. It was as though I were in a tunnel hearing scary voices which changed and distort as they bounced off the walls.

One thing was clear to me. I had misjudged this situation. Not that I held myself too much to blame for that. It’s not my fault if people lie. Still, I was in trouble. On the whole, since I had no plan in mind, I thought it best to continue to feign unconsciousness. In fact, if I had only known how, I would have chosen that moment to go into hibernation. Things always look better in the spring, don’t you think?

Then a familiar voice said, “Well, old boy, how are you feeling?”

I knew that voice. I opened my eyes. Alex was sitting on a low chair in front of me. He was armed with a small pistol. He wasn’t exactly pointing it at me, but he wasn’t exactly pointing it away from me, either.

I tried to think of something to say. The best I could come up with was, “Hi, Alex.”

“Hi, old buddy,” Alex said. His voice was devoid of irony. His expression was thoughtful. He was wearing chinos, and he had on a black leather flight jacket that looked really butch. He had on those reflecting sunglasses, too. That worried me. In the movies, the guys you see wearing glasses like that are about to kill somebody.

We were in a small office. I assumed it was somewhere within the airport building. Fluorescent lighting was overhead. There was light brown imitation wood panelling halfway up the walls. The ceilings were cream. There was grayish-green linoleum underfoot. There were several desks. One of them was bare, the other with a copy of
Le Monde
, a filled ashtray, a telephone. These details are of no importance, but I was hanging on to them because I was a little worried that they’d be the last things I was going to see, and when the devil asks me, “The room you were killed in, what did it look like?” I want to be able to give him a decent answer.

“You know, pal,” Alex said, “you’ve put me into a difficult situation. Why did you have to go on investigating?”

“I guess it was because of Rachel,” I said. “I couldn’t let you just kill her, could I?”

“Of course you could have,” Alex said. “I suppose I should have explained it to you. But I assumed you understood.”

“Understood what?”

Alex rubbed his hand across his eyes and looked sadly at the ceiling. “The woman’s impossible, you could see that for yourself. She’s in this life to make things miserable for as many people as possible, including herself.”

“Maybe so. But that’s no excuse for killing her.”

“But Hob, of course it is.”

“Alex, don’t start up with me.”

“Hob, we discussed this sort of thing many times in Ibiza. But you were a more independent thinker then. Life in America seems to have softened your head. Hob, wake up; you’ve been converted to television drama morality.”

“Alex, I don’t care what we said back then. A man talks a lot of crap in his lifetime. But you can’t go around killing people because they’re difficult.”

“Oh, I know you can’t make a habit of it,” Alex said. “But an occasional one doesn’t matter much, does it?”

“It’s not right,” I said.

“Well, of course not. But let’s take it out of the abstract. A man has just one life to lead. Can you imagine leading any kind of life at all with Rachel after you?”

“Where’s Rachel now?”

“She’s on her way here.”

“And you’re going to kill her?”

Alex shook his head and shoved the gun back in his pocket. “Stop being so silly. I only kill people theoretically. I was going to buy her off.”

“You think she’d let herself be bought? She loves you, Alex!”

“That’s all quite true,” Alex said, “and she’ll be damned angry when she learns the way things really are. But I think she’s a practical person. A million dollars in small bills will go a long way toward making her feel better.”

“Didn’t she figure to split with you?” I asked.

“Yes, but that’s in the past. The real situation is, a real million in her hands in bills ought to outweigh five million in dream currency.”

“Well, you know her better than I do.”

“She’ll come around. Don’t worry about it.”

Nieves came in. “I saw lights from town. Coming this way. Do you think it’s her?”

“Probably,” Alex said.

Nieves looked splendid. A sort of a Latin Diana Rigg. Digging the scene.

“I’ve been thinking,” Nieves said. “Maybe I’ve been too softheaded about this. Do you really think she’ll be trouble, Alex? Maybe you
should
kill her.”

“Nieves!” I said.

She ignored me. “I mean only if you think that’s best. You know more about these matters than I do.”

“Hey, take it easy,” Alex said. “I never planned to kill her. That was all in your mind.”

“Still, it’s not such a bad idea,” Nieves said thoughtfully.

Clovis, Nigel, and Jean-Claude came into the room.

Clovis said, “Alex, there’s something I want to ask you. All that stuff you told me about doing missionary work in Africa—you were lying to me, weren’t you?”

“Not at all,” Alex said. “I really believe in that. It’s a part of my nature. Altruism. Ask anyone who knows me. Ask Hob; he knew me in Ibiza. But another part of my nature won’t let me do that. That’s the greedy part of me that’s sick of being a schmuck watching other guys grab the goodies and saying, ‘Teh, tch,’ when the television commentators talk their usual moralistic nonsense.” He turned to me. “It’s the national morality play, Hob; we the people of the great t.v. audience going, ‘Tch, tch,’ when the commentators expose year in and year out the drama of men in authority stealing We the People blind. I figure the commentators are shrilling for the politicians because the scandal rights alone on a thing like Irangate must be worth a fortune. Well, this time I don’t want to be one of the viewers; I want to be one of the takers. Get it any which way; that’s the American way. I want to take the money and the girl and go to South America and live like a Mafia prince.”