The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian) (16 page)

“How did you come to that conclusion?”

“For one thing, El Grupo Blanco wouldn’t approve. Not really. You know how often they change their minds. Right now, discretion is the order of the day. Don’t make waves; otherwise you’ll compromise a lot of carefully laid plans.”

“What do you know about El Grupo?” Esteban asked.

“What I know is my business. I’m not going to reveal what I know to you or anyone else. That’s protection for you, too, you know.”

“You take a lot of chances,” Esteban muttered. “I don’t know; perhaps we’re safer with you dead.”

“Don’t you believe it,” I said. “For one thing, if you kill me, you compromise Juanito. Inspector Fauchon of the Paris Police knows my every movement. He has me under constant surveillance. Don’t think that this little kidnapping has gone unnoticed. Fauchon and his men are ready to move against you at any time.”

“No one could have followed us,” Esteban said. But he didn’t sound sure. How can you be sure?

“They don’t have to tail you direct.” I told him. “If I know Fauchon, he planted a bug on your car as soon as he saw how things were going. He’s subtle, Fauchon is. But I guess that’s the sort of thing you’d expect of the French.”

Esteban turned to his helpers and they talked in the language I didn’t understand. Listening more carefully, I decided it wasn’t Albanian. Sounded more like one of the Turkish languages to me, Azerbijaini, maybe. It wasn’t until later that I learned it was Guaraní, the main Indian language of Paraguay.

“Are you going to stop looking for Alex?” Esteban demanded.

“I’ll think about it. Meanwhile cross my palm with silver, or paper notes, and I’ll try to make it easy on you when this whole ball of wax comes unstuck.”

“This is ridiculous,” Esteban said. “You are in no position to demand anything.”

“That’s not the way I see it,” I told him. “Come on, Esteban, pay up. It’s not your money, anyhow. It belongs to El Grupo Blanco. They won’t even notice a few thousand dollars if you mark it down as petty cash.”

“A few thousand? That is impossible. We are operating on a very tight budget. It is very expensive for us South Americans to live in Paris.”

“Well, it’s up to you,” I said. “Hell, I never asked you to bribe me. Do what you please. But please do get on with it. Fauchon is probably sick of crouching in the bushes, and I’ve got more important things to do than hang around the Bois de Boulogne all night with you.”

Esteban held another hurried conference. Then he took out his wallet.

“I’ll give you ten thousand francs,” he said. “But you must promise to stop looking for Alex.”

I took the bills and stuck them in my pocket. “Actually, Esteban, you’re better off with
me
looking for him instead of someone else. I have to find Alex because that’s my job. But I’m also a friend of Alex, and I’ll do the best I can for him.”

“You said you would stop looking!” Esteban said. He sounded genuinely outraged. These hijacking types have a pathetic belief that they can lie all they want; everyone else is obliged to keep his word.

“I have to go on looking, but I won’t try very hard.”

Esteban must have realized he’d met his match in the art of obfuscation. His retort was weak, “Just remember, you have been warned. Watch yourself. The next time we have to talk with you, it could be for keeps.” It was pitiable, his blustering that way, but I guess he was trying to save face.

As Esteban and his friends started to walk back to their car, I called out, “Hey, how about a ride back into Paris?”

“Get a ride back with your friend Fauchon!” he cried.

Soon I heard their car start up and drive away.

I heard a rustle of underbrush. Out of the bushes stepped Inspector Fauchon with a plainclothes detective beside him.

“Very good, ’Ob,” Fauchon said. “We’re keeping an eye on those fellows. But how did you know that I was close by?”

“I didn’t know, really,” I said. “But it was what I wished for more than anything else in the world.”

“It is nice when dreams come true,” Fauchon agreed. “You may turn over the ten thousand francs to me.”

“Hey, come on! I went through quite a bit of unpleasantness to get it!”

“You’ll get it back, at the end of the case,” Fauchon said. “Marcel, give him a receipt.”

The other cop, a tall cadaverous plainclothesman with a crew cut, got out a pocket notebook, scrawled something, handed it to me. I gave him the money. Easy come; easy go.

JEAN-CLAUDE AND NIGEL; ABOUT ALEX

37

Jean-Claude was waiting outside my hotel when I drove up in Fauchon’s Peugeot. He stepped back discreetly into the shadows until Fauchon and I had made our farewell salutations.

“Well, Inspector,” I said, “thank you very much for rescuing me. Actually, I had the situation well in hand. But a little backup is always nice.”

Fauchon gave a shrug and made a grimace. “Take care of yourself, ’Ob. I think you are—how do you Americans say it—playing in a sticky wicket over your head.”

“That’s what we say, all right,” I said. “I suppose you want me to report to you at regular intervals on everything I’ve seen, heard or done concerning Alex?”

“Oh, no,” Fauchon said, chuckling. “Just carry on as you are doing. You’re not a hard man to follow. And it’s a change for us from the usual routine.”

“Would you mind telling me,” I asked, “what it is about Alex that has excited the attention of the Paris Police? Is he wanted for something?”

“Not as far as I know,” Fauchon said. “But of course, who knows what the morrow will bring, non?”

He strolled back to his car whistling “Auprès de ma Blonde” in his own inimitable fashion.

After Fauchon had driven off, Jean-Claude came out of the shadows, mouth downturned, eyebrow raised. I knew I was in for some tedious French irony, so I forestalled it by shrugging and saying, “Come up to the room. We’ll have a glass of wine and exchange gossip, n’est-çe pas?”

Jean-Claude shrugged and followed me into the hotel.

Nigel Wheaton was already in my room and had helped himself to a healthy tote of the Haig & Haig I’d bought on the airplane. Nigel likes to just show up like that. He claims that subterfuge and lock-picking keep him in practice for more serious things. This evening he was wearing his Harris tweed jacket, cotton twill officer’s trousers and highly polished Spanish boots.

“Ah there, dear boy! None the worse for your little outing to Honfleur, I see.”

“That’s something we have to talk about.”

“Now, ’Ob,” Jean-Claude said, “I tried to warn you. I telephoned you, left word it was urgent.”

“And then you weren’t in when I called back.”

“I had gone down to the café for a pack of Gauloises. Why didn’t you phone back?”

I was unable to find a crushing rejoinder for that, so I contented myself with pouring a shot of scotch, swirling it moodily in my toothbrush glass for a moment or two, then tossing it down. “That’s better,” I said, and then, annoyingly enough, I had a coughing fit and Jean-Claude had to pat me on the back.

“Get your greasy paws off me,” I growled. “I always cough when I drink. Jean-Claude, just what in hell was it you were going to tell me when you telephoned?”

“I was going to warn you not to get into a car with any South Americans.”

“And how did you know to tell me that?”

“I found out something late this afternoon. Didn’t I, Nigel?”

“Yes, I’d say that you most certainly did,” Wheaton said. “Do you have anything to munch on while I consume your excellent scotch? Cheese sticks would be nice.”

I don’t know what it is about Paris. Nobody seems to get anything done without food entering into it.

“Gee,” I said, “I’m clean out of cheese sticks. Jean-Claude, why don’t you telephone Le Zinc down the street and ask them to send up some sandwiches.”

Jean-Claude looked at me as if I had gone crazy. “French cafés do not deliver!”

“They do for Maigret!” I countered.

“Oh, never mind,” Nigel said. “But you used to keep a better table in Ibiza.”

“That was when Katie was cooking for me.”

“What a hand that girl had with Chinese spareribs!” Wheaton said.

I didn’t want to get into it. I turned to Jean-Claude. “What did you learn?”

“I have a friend,” Jean-Claude said, “who is a waiter at El Mango Encantado. He overheard a group of these gauchos talking. He said they were discussing Alex.”

“What were they saying?”

“He couldn’t make it out. It was in a language my friend didn’t know.”

“Could he ascertain their attitude toward Alex?”

“Yes, of course. We discussed that. He said that they were noncommittal.”

“That makes about as much sense as anything else in this case.”

I reached for one of Nigel’s cigarettes, then remembered that I had given up smoking a few months ago, or possibly a few weeks ago. Then I took it anyway, since it didn’t look right now as if I’d live long enough to develop lung cancer.

“I have a little more information for you,” Nigel said. “Do you know what Alex was doing in the last several years?”

“Selling underwater real estate in Florida, I’d imagine.”

“You’d be very wrong. Alex was employed by Aaron, Murphy, Steinmetz and Frunken.”

“Lawyers?”

“Yes, but not a law firm. They are fund-raisers, Hob.”

“Fund-raisers? You mean like for political campaigns and stuff?”

“Yes, that sort of thing. But for the last year or two they were working on a special project. A project that relates to the recent revelations about Iran and the Contras funding.”

“Must I pry this out of you word by word?” I asked. “Forget about dramatic presentation, Nigel; just tell me the facts.”

Nigel told me that Alex had left Europe about five years ago. With the help of his socially prominent Virginia family, he was able to get taken on by the Selwyn Group, a firm of professional fund-raisers. Several groups were involved in the private effort to raise money for the Contras. Alex had been very much of a junior lawyer in this effort. As matters had proceeded, he had started to worry. What was going on seemed to him to exist on the shady side of legality.

Then Attorney-General Meese belatedly blew the whistle. Investigative committees were formed; witnesses were called. Alex took stock of his situation. He hadn’t liked it from the beginning. Too many people coming in and out of the office with conspiratorial looks on their faces. His superior, Tom Ogden, had told him straight along that he was all right, everything was covered, no one was going to have any trouble. But then the congressional investigations began. Casey, North, and Poindexter were asked to give testimony. Casey had a stroke and never recovered. McFarlane tried to commit suicide. Alex realized belatedly that it was time to look after his own ass.

Of course, he had been following Ogden’s orders. There was nothing they could get him for. Not as long as Selwyn was there to testify.

Then Selwyn went into the hospital for triple bypass surgery. He came out of it in good shape and was recovering nicely until three weeks later when suddenly he died.

After Selwyn’s death, everything changed rapidly. Selwyn had had a lot of friends in high places. But that didn’t do Alex any good now. The investigating committees were looking for people to fit into the conspiratorial structure they had uncovered. Alex began to feel the heat.

Ogden’s papers would clear Alex, of course. But suddenly these papers were no longer forthcoming. Alex learned via the grapevine that Selwyn’s widow might have done something with them. She was taking all necessary steps to protect her husband’s good name, and his sizable pension that came to her now that he was dead.

The Selwyn Group disbanded. Alex took his separation check and thought long and hard about what to do next. It looked like, if and when the committee got around to calling him, he could find himself facing criminal charges. As a lawyer, he figured he might get from two to five years for conspiracy and other counts.

He discussed the matter with his secretary. She had been with him from the beginning of his working for Selwyn. His secretary advised him to get out of town. It was by no means certain that the committee would call him up. But they would be likelier to if he stayed in Washington. Better he should get away now, while no one was looking for him, and take an extended holiday somewhere abroad. Like Paris, for example.

Alex decided to go immediately. He emptied out his bank account. It wasn’t much—the government had put a hold on his main account. He still maintained a checking account in Paris, at Crédit Suisse. There was only a few hundred dollars in it. It would have to do. He signed an authorization for his secretary to withdraw his money when it was released. And took off.

Nigel paused to pour himself another drink. I said, “Where did you learn all this?”

“Rachel told me. As you might have surmised, she was Alex’s secretary.”