The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian) (5 page)

I shook Millie into consciousness. She’s a big woman, with streaks of gray in her shoulder-length brown hair. Nice looking still, and competent, too, despite her habit. I got her to understand what I wanted: two round trip fares to Paris, open end, cheapest possible way. Try one of the courier services. I also wrote it all down so that she’d know what this was about when she woke up again, after going back to sleep when I left as she inevitably would.

I left then and started back to my office. As I was passing the Thom McAn Shoe Store, I caught a reflection in the window and realized I was being followed. Across the street, a portly man in a dark blue suit was loitering. Come to think of it, I’d seen him earlier, too.

I started walking and by discreet use of the reflecting surfaces of cars and windows ascertained that he was still behind me, ambling with too casual an air. I came around Argyll Street and quickly circled the block, hoping to jump out at him from behind. But when I came around the corner again, he was gone.

I tried to think of all the people who might be following me. After fifteen names, I gave up. But it bothered me. It had been ten years since I’d been in Europe last. After the Turkish thing, it had seemed wiser to stay away.

But what the hell, that had been long ago, and not my fault, anyhow, not really. And you can’t spend the rest of your life avoiding Europe. Not if you’re Hob Draconian.

Paris, queen of cities. And the rest of Europe. Hob’s Europe: Ibiza, Majorca, Barcelona, London, Amsterdam, Athens, and the islands of the central Cyclades. And Rome, incomparable Rome.

How I longed to see them again. All that stood in the way was the memory of a day ten years ago, in the Ankara airport.

It had been hot as hell that day. August in Turkey. The airport was crowded, and there were plenty of tourists. We had been counting on that. We had done this before; everything was going to go all right.

Then why this apprehension, this tingling panic, this sensation of having bitten down on an ice-cold toad? What was wrong with me; what subtle clue had jangled my alarm system; why was my head full of snapshots of Turkish prisons?

Just as I reached the emigration booth, I saw Lieutenant Jarosik bulging out of his starched khakis, his black moustache a neat triangle against his sweaty olive cheek. My response was unconscious, automatic. I turned like a marionette, noting that he hadn’t noticed me yet. I walked steadily out of the airport without a backward glance and got into a taxi. I took it down to the docks and caught the last ferry across the Bosphorus to the European side.

I can’t really explain why I did that. Jarosik didn’t have anything on me. But he wasn’t the sort of man to hang out in the airport checking people as they passed through. I knew that something had gone wrong; somebody had talked. I knew they had called in Jarosik because he knew me by sight, as he also knew Jean-Claude and Nigel.

Once in European Turkey, I joined a sight-seeing tour to the ruins of Edirne. After that I made a normal crossing through the checkpoint into Greece. Took a taxi to Komotini, and then trains and busses to Athens.

Two days later, while I was having a beer in the George V in Syntagma Square, I saw a story on page five of the
International Herald-Tribune.
A Frenchman and a Britisher had been seized at customs in the Istanbul airport.

They found the hashish, of course. The false bottoms I’d built into the Samsonites couldn’t stand up to the sort of inspection the customs people give when they know what they’re looking for.

The trial was held later that month, and they gave Jean-Claude and Nigel life sentences. But those were reduced to two years when their lawyer proved that they were innocently carrying the suitcases for a third man—Mr. Big—name withheld—who was also supposed to get on the flight but had evidently panicked at the last moment.

Some money changed hands, and my friends were out in a year. But they were angry, so I was told. And they blamed the mishap on me. In fact, they had been quite abusive about it, even threatening. But that had been ten years ago.

I had tried to carry on with my life. I was a professional poker player in those days, not of the first rank, but good enough for the competition you encountered in Europe. The main action was never in the casinos, although you could make a living at them. The real poker action was at private parties, and in the hotel rooms of the rich at Cannes, Nice, Rome. The games were easy to beat. What was difficult was to lose often enough so they’d continue inviting you.

It called for walking a certain line. You had to
appear
not to win too much. When you lost, you called attention to it: valuable publicity. You kept track of your real wins and losses in a lined school composition book. You kept that money separate from the rest. When it was possible. Although sometimes you and Katie had to eat on winnings. Then you played on paper, praying it would work out, reestablishing your nut, as they called the poker stake, when you won again.

It was a tightrope, but at least I knew what I was doing. Until I started losing. Then I tightened up, began to make bad moves, errors of judgment, trying to get even, trying to win. And the drugs didn’t help, either.

And then it all started falling apart.

Panic, paranoia, cold flashes, bad ideas, and The Fear.

And so I came back to America. And now I was going back to Europe again.

After Turkey I realized that life was not a dream. I realized I was playing with dangerous stuff. Everybody smuggled in those days. I hadn’t really believed I could get caught. That’s because I’d gotten used to the warm glow of safety and invulnerability that drugs can give you, especially ludes, when sweet lassitude floods you and your face goes numb and you sink into a twilight place called The Way You Like It.

Well, that was then and now was now. I was off the stuff; the past was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery with my hero, Jim Morrison, and I was returning to Paris.

MARIA GUASCH

9

Harry Hamm wasn’t feeling so good the morning my detailed cable reached him. He was feeling a little flat. The first flush of pleasure at being on the island had passed. He had fixed up his house, applied for his
permanencia
, the papers you need to reside in Spain as a full-time resident. His garden was doing nicely, he had some friends. But something was missing, and he wasn’t sure what.

He told me he had been glad to get my cable, because at this point he was ready to do anything, just to be occupied.

He started up his SEAT and drove the twenty minute trip to the port of Ibiza. He spent a lot of time walking around, looking for Industrias Marisol. He finally found it, a little sailboard and scuba gear shop tucked into an alleyway off the Calle de la Virgen. The shop was closed.

Harry walked around for a while, peering in the window, wondering what to do next. It was a fine day, the port was humming—it was June, fine weather, tourists arriving every day, a big season coming up by July.

After a while an old Ibicencan in a shoe repair shop across the street noticed him trying to peer in the window.

“Are you looking for Vico?”

“This his store?”

“Yes, Vico and his brother, Enrique.”

“Where can I find them?”

“Enrique left the island last night. Flew to San Sebastián, so I heard. As for Vico, he’s gone fishing with the Guasch brothers.”

“Will they be back soon?”

The old Ibicencan shrugged. “
¿Quién sabé?
”

“Don’t the fishing boats usually come in around sunset?”

“The ones tourists hire, yes. But the Guasch brothers are commercial fishermen. No telling how long they’ll be away.”

“Is there some way I could get in contact with them?”

The shoemaker laughed. “You could ask a sea gull.”

Antonio grinned, then turned away, his eyes going sly. Harry recognized it, the island look, don’t tell the outsiders anything.

“What about their business? Who looks after things when they’re away?

“Maria Guasch, of course. Their sister.”

Harry wrote down the directions and went to Maria’s finca in Santa Gertrudis.

Maria’s place was a small, scrupulously kept farm in the hills near Santa Gertrudis. The low stone house was one of the old-fashioned fincas, built in accord with the length of the ridgepole, which was the longest piece of seasoned oak obtainable. There were two fields of almond trees. A few acres for crops such as cabbages and potatoes. Spaced neatly in the middle of the fields were the
algorobos
, the carob trees whose pods the Ibicencans dry and grind and feed to their animals in winter. A dog announced Harry’s arrival. It was one of those long, lean, yellow-eyed Ibicencan hounds that have been part of the island history since the time of the Carthaginians.

Harry parked on a shoulder of the lane that ran in front of the farm. A woman had come outside and was standing just in front of the doorway, shading her eyes with one hand, looking at him. Harry called out, “
¿Con permiso?
” When she nodded he opened the gate and walked to the farmhouse.

The woman was an Ibicenca, but her clothing was not the unrelieved black of the older island women. She still wore the long full skirt and long-sleeved blouse and little jacket. The women of Ibiza had been dressing like this for centuries. But the material of her skirt was a patterned brown and white rather than black, and her blouse was cream-colored with little figures. Her features were strong and beautiful. Her hair was black and straight, lustrous, tied back in a knot at the nape of her neck. She was tall for a woman of the islands, and slender. There was a serenity about her that Harry liked. She seemed to be in her late thirties or early forties.

Harry introduced himself. In the Ibicencan fashion he told the woman where he lived, and how long he’d been on the island. He explained that he was looking into a problem for a friend, a problem which concerned a shipment sent to Señor Vico at Industrias Marisol and not paid for. He had just learned that Señor Vico had gone fishing with the Guasch brothers. Harry wondered if she knew where they had gone and when they’d be back.

“They didn’t tell me anything about this,” Maria said. “But sometimes Pablo and César go fishing and stay out for several days at a time. Sometimes they put into a mainland port to refuel and stay a few days. They could be gone a week or more.”

“And you don’t know where they were going this time?”

“No,” she said. But he could see that it was bothering her, Vico going along with them, and maybe she was wondering like Harry was what Vico had brought along for the ride. Five sail-boards, maybe, fully equipped, to flog off somewhere along the Côte d’Azur?

“Is there anybody who might know where your brothers went?”

“The fishermen know everything about each other,” she told him. “You could ask on the docks. But they won’t tell you anything.”

“Well,” Harry said, “thanks for your help. I guess I’d better try.”

Maria hesitated. She was looking at him curiously. Then she asked him if he would like a glass of water. Harry said he’d like that very much. She offered him a seat in the shade of the porch, under the grape arbor. She went in and brought him a glass of water.

“Hey,” Harry said, after a couple of sips, “this is some water!”

Maria looked pleased. “It’s from the well on my grandfather’s farm, across the island behind San Juan. It’s the best water on the island.”

“Well, it’s great. Thanks.” He finished the glass and put it down on the porch, stood up.

“My brothers are not in any trouble, are they?” Maria asked.

“Not that I know of,” Harry said. “But if they’re smuggling stolen goods out of Spain they could get into some trouble.”

“You think that Vico has stolen these boards and is using my brothers to transport them somewhere?”

“It looks that way,” Harry said.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “My brothers may smuggle a little whiskey or cigarettes, just like all the fishermen. There have been
contrabandistas
in these islands for centuries. But my brothers would never transport stolen goods.”

“Maybe they don’t know those boards are stolen,” Harry said. “Maybe they’re just taking them somewhere for Vico like general cargo.”

Maria thought about it, then went inside the finca. She came out almost at once with a black kerchief around her hair and a shawl around her shoulders.

“I will come with you and speak to the men on the docks. You’ll get nowhere otherwise. Somebody may know where my brothers went.”

FLIGHT TO PARIS

10

Rachel told me a little about herself during the flight to Paris. She claimed to be the only daughter of short parents, but had herself grown to the height of five feet nine, the tallest occurrence in her family in almost a hundred years. She had gone to high school in Waukegan, Illinois, and movingly described to me the cold winters they used to have, and how in February the neighborhood dogs, turning wild, began to run in packs and bring down the occasional delivery man. She told me how her father, a Church of England minister, had turned to repairing McCormick reapers when his entire congregation, a family of twenty-three from Little Dorking in Hampshire, moved to Hawaii.