Soma Blues (11 page)

Harry shook his head. “The only news I got is a letter from Maria. She’s having a good time in Mallorca and coming back the day after tomorrow. What now?”

Hob tried to look keen, but the calm life of the island was already getting to him. “I think it might be well to await developments. What did Fritz Perls say? Don’t push the river.”

“That could be the motto of the island,” Harry said. “Want to go to Agua Blanca this afternoon?”

“Yes,” Hob said. “I can’t remember when I was on a beach last. We’ll have lunch right there at La Terraza.”

“Fine,” Harry said. “Let’s meet at the Agua Blanca road and just take one car down that goat track.”

“We’ll take mine,” Hob said. “It’s only a rental. See you in about two hours. I’ve got some work to do.”

“What work is that?” Harry asked.

“I need to pick up my laundry and buy some club soda and take my
butanos
home. The labor never ends.”

Hob finished his chores and was waiting at the Agua Blanca road when Harry drove up. Harry had brought blankets and a few paperbacks. They transferred them to Hob’s SEAT and drove down the bumpy dirt track that wound through the lower hills and came out at last at the parking space above Agua Blanca. They took their stuff, stopped at the restaurant to reserve a table and order lunch in an hour, and continued down to the beach. It was a glorious day of blue sky and small white clouds and the blue-green ocean and the tanned bodies of bathers scattered here and there across the two-mile-long beach. They parked under a straw umbrella, for which they paid one of the urchins whose job that was, spread out their towels, and lay until they were hot. Then they went for a swim, then came out to heat up again. This routine, repeated twice, brought them to lunch hour. At La Terraza they had the fish fry, a mixed batch of whatever the fishermen had brought in that day, with rough island bread, olive oil and olives, and a couple of San Miguels to wash it all down. Then they returned to the beach, took a dip, and napped under the umbrella for several hours. It was one of those perfect inconsequential days that were the essence of the Ibizan summer life—for foreigners, that is, since Ibicencos didn’t go near the water except to fish in it.

Hob drove Harry back to where he had left his car and arranged to have dinner with him later. He returned to his finca, showered quickly (the gravity-flow tank hadn’t been pumped for two days), shaved, and dressed for the evening. He drove back into Santa Eulalia and went to Sandy’s. Checking his mail, he found a note from Big Bertha, delivered by one of her friends coming into Santa Eulalia. “Got stuff to talk about. Come see me in the morning.” He folded the note and put it into his pocket. Chances were only a few dozen people had read it before he came in. Harry arrived soon after. They had a couple of drinks, then joined several of their friends for dinner, a satisfying lobster mayonnaise at Juanito’s. They had a final nightcap at The Black Cat and then home to bed.

8

“Hob,” Bertha said next morning, over breakfast, after he had come to visit her, “do I get an expense account?”

“What do you need one for?”

“I’ve already run up some expenses.”

“Make a note of it when you hand in your paperwork. Just kidding. What expenses?”

“I bribed somebody. That’s the thing an operative’s assistant does, isn’t it?”

“Depends on what you found out.”

“Well, it’s going to cost you two thousand pesetas. That’s what I laid out in drinks for Dolores.”

“Who’s Dolores?”

“She’s a waitress. Works at Dirty Domingo’s. She has a little apartment right next to Annabelle’s.”

“No problem,” Hob said, peeling some thousand peseta bills from his pocket. “What did you learn?”

Bertha tucked the money into her Ibiza basket. She was beaming. “I really feel like an operative now. This is the most exciting thing I’ve done since my first acid trip.”

“I can’t tell you how pleased I am at that,” Hob said. “Now, if you’re finished gloating, would you mind telling me what you’ve got?”

“Nothing much,” Bertha said archly. “Only the identity of that fellow you’ve been trying to trace. The one who was with Stanley Bower in Paris.”

Bertha told Hob what Dolores had told her. She had been out on her front terrace laying out a wash when a man arrived at Annabelle’s apartment. This was on the day after Stanley had left for Paris. The stranger was not very tall, but burly, with a tanned dark skin and what Dolores described as “evil eyes,” though she did not explain in what respect. Annabelle had not seemed to know the man, but she let him in. By going to her rear terrace with the rest of her laundry, Dolores was able to hear the tone of the conversation, if not the actual words. It had not been amicable. The man had raised his voice. He had been speaking Spanish. Annabelle, replying in English, had seemed to be protesting. Dolores was certain she had heard the sound of a slap, then a cry from Annabelle. Then more conversation, this time lower pitched and urgent. Dolores had been considering leaving her apartment and finding someone who might help—there was a Guardia Civil barracks only half a mile away—when the man came out, slamming the door behind him. He got into a car parked down the block and drove away in the direction of San Antonio, the opposite direction from Ibiza City.

“Did she notice if he had on an emerald ring?” Hob asked.

“She didn’t mention it when she told me the story. But when I asked her she said yes, she thought so.”

“And what about the name?”

“The only words Dolores was able to make out were Annabelle saying, ‘Arranque—please, don’t!’ It was after that he slapped her.”

“Arranque?”

“That’s what she heard. Or thought she heard.”

“You’ve done very well,” Hob said. “It’s a long way from a positive identification, but at least I’ve something to go on.”

“Can I get you a drink?” Bertha asked. “I’m positively aglow with excitement.”

“A coffee would be nice.”

Hob followed her into the tiled kitchen. While she prepared the pot, he said, “Annabelle, told me she had been going with Etienne. Do you know anything about that?”

“Of course I do,” Bertha said. “Milk? Sit down right there and I’ll tell you. Etienne is the French name of a Brazilian boy who is staying on the island. The first thing you should know about Etienne is that he’s beautiful.”

“And the second thing?”

“That he’s rich. Or rather, potentially rich. Give me a cigarette and let me tell you the tale.”

When Annabelle and Etienne met at a party at Ursula Oglethorpe’s new townhouse near Santa Gertrudis, it was lust at first sight. These two beautiful, uninhibited people were made for each other—at least for that month. And it was springtime in Ibiza, with everyone sick of winter and prepared for summer romance. Etienne had just flown in from Rio de Janeiro. He and Annabelle looked at each other over fluted glasses of champagne, and the game was on.

They did all the fun things together: went to the discos, picnicked on the beaches, drank in the quaint little bodegas of the old city, visited Tanit’s cave, looked at the sunset from Vedra, walked along the old Roman wall and saw the cruise ships far below in the harbor like tiny toys on a wrinkled green sea.

When the pleasures of the island began to pall, they availed themselves of Etienne’s unlimited airline pass and went on a trip to Biarritz, Santander, Juan-les-Pins, and then across the Atlantic to Jamaica and even Havana. When they came back, something seemed to have changed. An experienced eye like Bertha’s could tell that a certain disenchantment had set in. Annabelle never told Bertha exactly what had gone wrong. But within a week, she was seeing Stanley Bower and no longer seeing Etienne. Soon after that, Stanley left for Paris. Etienne had retired to his father’s villa in the mountains above San Juan and had not been seen much of late. And that’s where the matter stood.

9

After showering and changing into the easy-fitting white garments customary for a summer evening, Hob left his finca and drove into Santa Eulalia. Finding a parking place only with difficulty, he walked back to Sandy’s, through the violet sunset. Inside Sandy’s, one platoon of the usual crowd was there. Sandy’s record player played baroque melodies of the Renaissance. Ice tinkled in Bloody Marys and gin fizzes. Diffracted light shone through woven straw baskets shielding low-wattage lightbulbs.

Hob pushed his way through the crowd, dense in the small room, and checked the mail piled up on the counter next to the bar. He wasn’t expecting anything, but you could never tell. He was surprised to find a flimsy blue envelope postmarked Paris. Opening it, he found a money order in the amount of ten thousand francs and a note. It was from Jean-Claude. The note said, with Jean-Claude’s customary succinctness, “Here is a partial payment on latest agency deal. Nigel has filled you in on details by now. He is also taking care of the other matter.”

Nigel in Paris? What agency deal? What other matter? Hob’s pleasurable reaction to the arrival of unexpected money—one of the greatest pleasures known to modern man—was clouded only by the unpleasant feeling that something important was going on that he didn’t know anything about.

He checked through the mail again, hoping to find an explanatory letter. Nothing. He caught Sandy’s attention and asked if there had been a telephone call for him recently.

“My dear,” Sandy said, “you know I would have told you. But let me ask the barman.” He turned. “Phillip, has there been a telephone call for Hob recently?”

“Nothing,” Phillip said. “I would have said.”

“Could I use the phone?” Hob asked. “It’s sorta important.”

Sandy had one of the few phones in Santa Eulalia at that time, and he didn’t like to tie it up with customers. But Hob was a special case, and brought a certain panache to the island with his detective agency. “Of course. Just try not to tie it up too long. And be sure to get time and charges from the operator if you’re calling off the island.”

Hob went upstairs to the small tiled room where Sandy slept on nights when he kept the bar opened late and didn’t want to drive all the way to his finca in Siesta. He got the Ibiza operator and put in a call to Nigel’s present digs in Edna Schumacher’s apartment. No answer. He tried to reach him at his small, entailed house in Kew Gardens, London, without success. Then he put in a call to the Kit Kat Bar in Paris where Jean-Claude was currently getting his phone calls. The proprieter said that Jean-Claude was out of town, he didn’t know where, and could he take a message? Hob said who he was and stressed the importance of his reaching Jean-Claude immediately; couldn’t the proprieter even make a guess as to his whereabouts? The proprieter said, “You may well be his employer, m’sieu, but for me you are only a voice on the telephone. But perhaps you know Jean-Claude. If so, you know he would kill me if I told you where he was. And anyhow, I swear to you, I do not know.”

Hob remembered to get his time and charges for the call. When he came down, he asked Sandy to add them to his tab. Then, seeing Harry Hamm had just come in, he showed him Jean-Claude’s note.

“You’ve always told me Nigel is absentminded,” Harry said. “This is proof of it. Do you think Annabelle might know something?”

“She might,” Hob said. “She’s the only person I know who knows both Nigel and Señor Arranque. I’ll take a run in and see.”

“Want me to come?” Harry said. “I got nothing better to do.”

They went to Ibiza in Harry’s car, went around the city to Figueretas, and so to Annabelle’s building, The Beehive, arriving at about ten in the evening. Annabelle’s apartment was dark, and she didn’t respond to repeated knocking. But her next-door neighbor, Dolores, came out in a bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head.

“Are you Hob Draconian?” she asked.

When Hob said that he was, she said, “Annabelle thought you might come by. She left a note for you.” She went in and got it and handed it to Hob.

The note read, “Hob, dear, something very important has come up, and I’ve left for London. With a little luck I’ll be able to find out what you want to know. In case you decide to come, which might be a good idea, I’ll be staying at Arlene’s.” There followed a South Kensington telephone number.

Back at the car, Hob sat for a moment, thinking. Harry waited, then finally asked, “So where to now?”

“Airport,” Hob said.

“You haven’t packed anything.”

“I’ve got my passport, money, and address book. I’ll pick up a razor and an extra pair of jeans in London.”

THREE

London

1

The plane left on time, and the flight was uneventful. The weather was overcast, but the Iberia plane got below the ceiling when it came in over Land’s End. Soon the green and pleasant country of England was spread out below. They arrived at Heathrow just past noon.