The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian) (13 page)

He stared at me wide-eyed. “Who did you say?”

I repeated it for him. “Frankie Falcone. I’m Hob Draconian, his manager and friend. I’m also a private investigator.”

“So you know Mr. Falcone?” he said.

Vico was short, barrel chested, in his mid-twenties. He had dark, brutal good looks. But there was something wrong with them. Something ran across his face like a fissure in a cliff, some weakness not even buried under the surface, an exterior flaw to mirror an inner compunction. And it was impossible to think any thing of this face except for the drama it represented. What drama? Weakness versus strength, custom versus spontaneity, the reality principle versus the life of fantasy. I thought, there are so many of these short, dark, barrel-chested people, and for a moment he was as alien to me as a Javanese, or one of the inhabitants of Barsoom.

After giving me a long look, whose intent I did not find clear, Vico said, “You come to me from the great Mr. Falcone? America’s premier maker of sailboards?”

“That is correct.”

“But please, this is wonderful, let me buy you a drink! Next to meeting Mr. Falcone himself, this is the greatest pleasure I could imagine. Mr. Draconian, you have no idea what Falcone’s sailboards have meant to me. Come into the bar, I must buy you a drink this instant, and we will talk.”

People are sometimes hard to get close to in my line of work. They clam up, won’t say a thing. But sometimes you get a break. Especially if you’re me. I’m a private investigator who tends not to terrorize the people I interview. Quite the opposite. Malefactors have told me that, in my presence, they felt a burst of divinely inspired inner power, as though they could succeed forever in a world composed of types like me. In gratitude and grandiosity, they sometimes spill the beans.

But then sometimes you meet a type like Vico. Falling all over himself to talk to me. I followed him into the bar. Already I was getting an uneasy feeling. It’s the feeling you get when they’re not cooperative enough. Or when they’re too cooperative.

Vico ordered champagne cocktails for us both. Fixing me with his beady black eyes, he said, “You cannot know how things were for me last year. My wife, Maria, had just lost her mind. She was suffering from the delusion that I was a vampire bat. Wouldn’t let me anywhere near her. You can imagine the frustration on my part. I also had an argument with Enrique, my elder brother, who was also my partner in the scuba rental business we were then engaged in. This was before I knew anything of sailboarding. All I dealt with was the same dreary old stuff, scuba gear for brawny Germans or Frenchmen so they could go down to the depths of our beloved island, Ibiza, and take away the last of her rapidly dwindling underseas life on the ends of their spears. Scuba divers are a sinister lot, if you ask me, and it was irony that our business catered mainly to them. I won’t bore you with the details of how I got into that unsavory business, except to say that it was the result of a curious bequest on the part of my Uncle Lluit, and is a story which has taken its place in the folklore of the island.

“So never mind how I got it, there I am in this detested business, and then one day I hear about sailboards. They had been around for quite a while, in fact, but when you are sunk deep in the sort of gloom that can come to a man only in a Catholic country with strong family ties when nothing is working out, you stop really tracking. A lot of important stuff was passing me by. For a five-year period I can’t remember a single band name, nor the title of a movie. It is the dreaded cafard, some say caused or at least impelled by the southern wind, the sirocco or levanter, or khamsim as they call it in Israel, the wind of ill repute which visits our shores from time to time, a hot, dusty, dark wind of grit and irritability blowing out of Africa, bringing with it the dreaded mumbo jumbo and foreknowledge of bad times coming. That’s how it was with me, and so the sailboard sensation hit me, belatedly, but with purity. I saw at once how these small boats, so easy to outfit, so simple to man, could become a pathway to ineffable regions, and lead one to areas of accomplishment of both an inner and an outer nature.

“I introduced sailboards into my store, trying now this design, now that, until I came at last upon the incomparable boards of the peerless Frankie Falcone of Hood River, Oregon. Up to this time I had been a merely competent sailboarder, one capable of beating up a windward leg, or whatever it was, with the rest of the pack, but never finishing first. But that changed when I tried my first Falcone board. I began to place in the winning numbers.

“I tried a second Falcone board. My success was even greater. I suddenly saw what I could do: obtain the necessary four or five boards and equipment and enter international competition. With just a few wins I could free myself of my brother Enrique’s callous laughter, the jealous jeers of my father, the catcalls of my own generation who knew the names of the pop idols, but had forgotten their own souls. I could rise above all that, supported by victory money, and all I had to have was Falcone boards under my feet.

“The next step was inevitable. I hadn’t told anyone of my intentions.

“It was expensive but I had to have the boards. It was the biggest gamble of my life, but I sent for them. When they arrived I summoned up all my courage and left the island, left my wife, brother, parents, just me and the boards and a change of underwear. And so I entered my new life.

“Another drink, Señor ‘Obart! Let us signal the beginning of new life, away from all the sorrows and defeats of the past.”

So said Vico and leaned back, beaming but sweaty, a man who felt better for confession, a man trembling on the threshold of transformation and a new life. I sympathized. So you can imagine what sort of a bastard I felt like, when, in the tones of flat pragmatism that I detest but live by all the same, I said, “That’s all very well, Mr. Vico, and I do wish you a lot of luck in your new life. But how about paying for the boards, huh?”

The moment of retribution, the calling-forth of the reckoning! It is the private detective who brings forth this moment.

VICO

30

Vico said, “I beg your pardon?”

“The money for the sailboards. The money for Sr. Falcone.”

“Ah, the money! Yes, I pay it!”

“You paid it? When?”

“Excuse me, I don’t mean I already
did
pay it. I mean that I
intended
to pay it. Excuse me, my English not so good.”

I let that go. “Can you pay it now, Mr. Vico?”

“Well, of course. That is, I suppose I can. But it may take a little while. A matter of days. Then of course I am going to pay.”

“Vico,” I said, “I’m not a cop, and even if I were, I couldn’t arrest you in this country. There’s no case against you in France. But we have our ways of getting deadbeats like you to pay up or wish you had. Have you heard of the newspaper treatment?”

“No, what is that?”

“We take out ads for a couple of weeks in your local newspaper, alluding to your debt and asking you when you are going to pay up. If this fails, we assess how much damage you caused our client and then we make that much trouble for you.”

“In my case,” Vico said, “that will be unnecessary. I have the money right here.” Vico took out his billfold and removed a check. He showed it to me.

I looked. I saw a check drawn on the Banco de Bilbao for two million pesetas and change. It was made out to Frankie Falcone.

“I see the check,” I told him. “Why don’t you give it to me for Frankie, and we’re square.”

“If only I could!” Vico said. “But at present I have no money in this account. But I will have in a few days. I’ll give it to you to give to your client this weekend, and time payment after Saturday.”

“Why must we wait until then?”

Vico’s eyes glowed. “Because Saturday is the day of the sailboard main event race in Honfleur harbor. Cash prizes. For first place, it comes to nearly twenty thousand dollars. I can win it, Sr. Hobart. I’ve already taken two first in Majorca, and one in Barcelona. I know that’s not the big time, but it’s good. I know who’s racing here. I can beat them.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s all pretty iffy.”

“Of course it’s iffy,” Vico said. “I am a man who lives by translating fantasies into realities. The rise of any poor boy to top matador or jockey or sailboarder is beset by impossibilities.”

I had no answer for that. Far be it from me to claim that the unlikely never happens.

“And think of the publicity for Falcone boards,” Vico said. “When I win, it’ll put Falcone boards on the world sailboarding map. Mr. Falcone will have to hire a factory to keep up with orders. How can you pass up such a chance?”

How indeed? And in fact, what other chance was there? I might be able to find a local lawyer and institute proceedings against Vico. But where would that get me? By the time the law had it sorted out, Vico and the boards would be long gone.

“Saturday,” I said, “I will be in Paris.”

“Then it will be my pleasure to come see you.”

So I wrote out the name of my hotel for him. It really was time I got back.

HONFLEUR, ROMAGNA

31

My next caller was not long in arriving. It was evening, a few hours after Nigel’s departure. The Palma-Orly flight had been delayed. I had finished
le grand plateâu des fruites de mer
—also known as the seafood dinner—at the hotel, and strolled down to the harbor for my evening constitutional. I wasn’t entirely surprised when someone waved to me from a sidewalk café table, and called out, in the unmistakable accents of New Jersey, mother of corruption, “Hey, Hob! Come over and have a drink.”

It was Tony Romagna. He had doffed his dark blue mafia suit and was now wearing a beige lounge suit with red piping along the lapels, the sort of thing they sell in the Short Hills Travel Boutique for affluent tourists in New Jersey. In it, Romagna looked like a beige whale with red piping on his fins.

“Hi, Tony,” I said, sitting down at his table. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“I heard this was a historical town,” he said, smiling easy.

“You’ve picked a good place,” I told him. “Did you know that Honfleur dates from the eleventh century? I’d especially recommend the church of Sainte-Catherine, and the shrine of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.”

“That sounds pretty nice,” Romagna said. “Actually, I was hoping to run into you here.”

“How’d you know where to find me?”

“You’re not so hard to find, Hob,” Romagna said. “Creature of habit, aren’t you?”

“When I choose to be,” I said, giving him a subtle look. “What do you want, Romagna?”

Romagna’s broad face took on a serious look. He knocked over a wine glass, reinforcing his image of clumsiness, and said, “You’re looking for Alex Sinclair.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“I’m not admitting anything,” I told him. “But what if I am? What’s it to you?”

“I’m looking for Alex, too,” Romagna said.

“Somehow, Mr. Romagna, that doesn’t surprise me as much as you might think. Quite a few people seem to be getting interested in Alex.”

“Do you know yet where he is?”

“I wouldn’t be sitting in Honfleur if I knew that. And you wouldn’t either.”

“But you do expect to find him?”

I nodded. “The Alternative Detective Agency always gets its man.”

“How would you like to work for me?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you pay? Do you offer Major Medical? Is there a pension plan? What do you want me to do?”

“Obviously, I want you to find Alex.”

“I’m already doing that.”

“Yes, but for a different client. When you find him I want you to tell me first. I could run him down myself, of course—I’ve got plenty of connections in this town—but why should we duplicate our efforts?”

“That wouldn’t be fair to my present employer,” I said.

“Maybe not. But it would pay you well. And save you a lot of trouble.”

“How well and what trouble?”

“I’ll give you a flat five thousand dollars if and when you tell me where to find Alex.”

“I like nice round numbers like that,” I said. “Now tell me about the trouble.”

Romagna smiled. For a moment he looked like a beat-up Rubens angel with blue jowls. “No trouble at all, if you play along.”

“Mr. Romagna, I really need to know more than you’re telling me. Who are you; whom do you represent; why are you interested in finding Alex?”

Romagna lurched to his feet, put down a handful of bills on the table more or less at random, straightened his whale suit.

“Five thousand dollars if you cooperate,” he reminded me, as if I needed reminding. “Unending
tsouris
if you don’t. You can get in touch with me at the Ritz. Do yourself a favor. Don’t get dead.” He strolled off.

I watched him cross the square and get into a chauffeured Peugeot 404. I watched him drive away. I noted down the license plate number, though I had no idea what to do with it. Then I finished the rest of my coffee. When the waiter came by, I paid for the drinks out of Romagna’s bills, left a suitable tip, and pocketed the rest. Waste not; want not.