A Touch of Danger

by James Jones

  “Jane has followed Con to Athens,” she said with mild hysteria before I could even offer her a drink.

  “Has she?” I said. “How about a drink?”

  “Yes. She has. I don’t want a drink. She flew up this morning on the local morning plane.”

  “And Con called you about it,” I said softly.

  “Sonny is trying to call the hotel in Athens where he and Jane usually stay. He simply has got to do something about it. Or I’ll do something drastic.” She was very angry. I didn’t know what was drastic by her. She was too thin to do anybody much harm unless she caught them asleep.

  “Come on,” she said abruptly, “I want you to meet some friends of ours.”

  “Do you mean those scabby-looking hippies down in your yard? Thanks, I’d just as soon not.”

  “You’re a reactionary,” she said. It was not a point for discussion. It was a statement. “And don’t call them hippies. They hate to be called that.”

  “What do they like to be called? This year. It’s getting harder and harder for them to think up new words to call themselves.”

  She looked startled, momentarily. “Young people is what they are, and young people is what they ought to be called. You could try remembering that. The trouble with you is you’re too old and you’ve gone sour.”

  “I’ll try to remember, Georgina,” I said.

  She stared at me a moment and then started to grin. “You’re a cynic. Those young people are the last hope this horrible old world has.”

  “My God, I hope not.”

  “Oh, shut up.” She was really grinning now. I had gotten her down off a bad hump. Not that it mattered. She would get herself up on another one in fifteen minutes. Her kind always did.

  “Just shut up, and come along now,” she said.

  “Whatever you say, Georgina,” I said. “Aren’t you glad you’ve got me around here to holler at with Con away?”

  “Oh, you’re impossible.” I followed her out.

  Chapter 9

  I GUESS I WANTED TO GO, or she couldn’t have made me. But it was quite some scene just the same. There was a gang of seven or eight of them congregated in the yard. They all acted as though they were quite at home at Georgina’s. It was hard to learn so many new names at the same time but I noted the three that had stood out that morning at the cafe on the town terrace. The skinny myopic boy was called Chuck; the blond Adonis, Steve; and the super-sullen, lumpy-looking girl in the Mother Hubbard, Diane. They were all passing reefers around and drinking immoderately from an apparently inexhaustible supply of Georgina’s local white retsina. Poor Georgina darted anxiously around, serving them. They listened to her record player she had moved outside for them.

  They all seemed to get stiffish when introduced to me. But the girl Diane was the worst with it. She seemed to take an active and open dislike to me. I guess she thought I was some kind of a Puritan. She seemed to dote on her own two men, Steve and Chuck, like a slave, and then would stare at me as if daring me to disapprove.

  The 44-year-old Sonny came chugging up from the taverna with news for Georgina. He had gotten the hotel, and Jane was staying there; but she was out. “Now leave me alone, will you?” he said, and seated himself among the hippies as if one of them. A kind of chorus of “Hey, man!” and “Hi, man!” and “Find the chick, man?” greeted him. It was quite a contrast to the way they treated me.

  I bristled a little under all that belligerence. So when the passed reefer came to me I deliberately sat back and shook my head. There was an exchange of superior glances among the hip. I put on a dumb face and after a moment I said, “Are you people what is known as hippies?”

  There was a general stiffening. And Georgina passed me a warning look.

  “Some people call us that,” the nervous, myopic Chuck said. “We don’t call ourselves that.”

  “I see. What do you call yourselves?” I asked.

  “God’s Chillun,” the Adonis, Steve, said. “We call ourselves God’s Chillun.” He had vague blue eyes that did not seem to see you. They were very cold eyes.

  “You come here every year?” I said.

  “We live here! We live here!” Chuck said, agitated. “Live here, man.” He began to snap his fingers. From the uneasy looks I could tell the finger-snapping was some barometer of Chuck’s agitation.

  “Take it easy,” Steve cautioned him. “I own the bar,” he said to me.

  “What bar?”

  They all looked surprised, as if everybody should know that.

  “The Cloud 79, up on the hill,” Georgina put in urgently. “It’s a new bar, the biggest thing on the island.” By now she was passing me looks like a machine gun passes rounds.

  “And you own it? I thought you couldn’t own property unless you were Greek,” I said.

  Steve blinked. “Yeah, well. I got a Greek partner,” he said.

  “And you smoke a lot of this hashish?”

  “Yeah, we smoke it,” Steve said. “A lot of it. And don’t go telling us it’s illegal. We know.”

  “And you all get it from this guy Girgis?” I asked.

  “Well, no. Not all anyway. He’s a fink. He works for the Syndicate.”

  “What Syndicate?”

  “Bunch of Greeks,” Steve said, and shrugged. “How do I know? Anyway I got a bunch myself. I bring it in with me.”

  “Where do you get it?”

  “Here and there,” he said secretively.

  “Athens?”

  “You can always get it, if you know the right people,” Steve said, and smiled.

  All the others were watching him and they smiled too. Their assumption of superiority would have infuriated a saint. It was at least as bad as that of the bourgeoisie they hated so much.

  “And it’s one hell of a big business,” I said. “Is it pretty good shit? Here, give me that.” I took the nearest reefer from someone who had it and smoked it, deep and long, sucking it back and holding it in while I talked. “Yeah, that’s good quality. Good shit. Is that yours? Or Girgis’s?”

  “Well, that’s Girgis’s,” Steve admitted. “That belongs to Georgina.”

  “So you’re smoking her hash, as well as drinking her wine?” I said. I took a number of quick long drags, and passed the cigarette, or what was left of it, to the next person. Then I slapped my knees and stood up.

  “Well, it was nice to talk to you all. You’re all very nice people. I can see that. See you around,” I said.

  Near me the skinny Chuck said suddenly, in a sort of low-volumed but high-pitched scream, “In our society, there ain’t going to be any pigs, man. No pigs! Won’t need them in our society. Get it? No pigs?”

  “You’re a nice person, too,” I said. “See you.” On the walk I turned back. I could feel the slightest tiniest buzz at the base of my skull from the hash.

  “I’m not a pig,” I said. “I’m more what you’d call a wart hog, I guess. Or a werewolf.” And suddenly, because I just felt like it, I put my head back and let out a wolf howl, the long, drawn-out quavering cry of a mountain wolf, alone at night on the mountain in winter under a moon. I had learned to do it from an old trapper in Wyoming as a boy. It had at least as much vital energy in it as all of them put together. Not only did it startle the kids, but I heard a rustle of quiet pass over all the people down at the taverna across the vacant lot as well. I turned and left.

  Later, while I was sitting on my porch, I saw Chuck, Steve and Diane go out the garden-gate door, and over toward the taverna. They moved in the stiff slow way people do who are well-stoned. Some curiosity made me go down and follow them. In the yard some boy with a high, not strong but pleasing voice, was playing a guitar and singing folk songs evidently of his own creation.

  “You know who that is,” a boy standing by the garden door said to me, in a celebrity-worshiping tone. “That’s Jason. He’s a recording star in Paris.”

  I peered at Jason in the gathering dusk, and saw a thin-faced, haunted-looking boy with a straggly bear
d. I nodded, and went on.

  At the taverna, almost before I could reach it, there was a sudden scuffle and altercation. Myopic Chuck was standing screaming, in a karate man’s stance, his glasses carefully placed on a table. He had just smashed the nose of a much larger boy, who was being helped up, dazed and streaming blood. Steve and another boy had grabbed Chuck, and Diane had thrown her arms around his neck from behind. “Nobody’s gonna talk like that to my friends! Nobody’s gonna talk about my friends!” cried Chuck’s wild high voice. Steve and the others pulled him away into the dark. He reached out with one hand and grabbed his glasses and placed them on his nose.

  A figure had moved up beside me. It was Sonny. His smile behind his bushy mustache and brows was ingratiating. “You sure got to them with that wolf howl of yours. Where did you learn that?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Sonny nodded after Chuck. “He’s sort of Steve’s bodyguard. But he’s a little excitable.”

  “A little. Does Steve need one?”

  “Not really. They—Steve and Diane—sort of picked him up somewhere. Diane likes him. They brought him here with them last year.”

  “Which one is her lover?”

  Sonny grinned. “Steve? Or Chuck? We don’t think in those terms any more. You’re old-fashioned, Davies. Who knows? Probably both. Or neither. We’ve found out that sex isn’t that important to a couple. That’s what the whole thing is about, man.”

  “That, and cops.”

  “Are you really a—uh—private eye?”

  “Is that what Georgina told you?”

  Sonny nodded.

  “Whatever I am, I’m on vacation.”

  We walked out a little way away from the taverna, and sat on the seawall.

  Sonny wouldn’t let go of it. “No. We believe in sex for everybody, with everybody. If so desired by the participants.”

  “I believe in that. As long as I’m not married. I’m not married.”

  “Do you like my wife?” Sonny asked suddenly. It had a peculiar tone.

  “Like her? I don’t know. I guess so. I’ve hardly met her.”

  “You have to understand her. She’s young. Reason I asked, she likes you. That’s rare. She doesn’t usually. She thought you were sensitive.”

  “Look,” I said. “If you’re pulling some kind of John Alden routine between me and your wife, the answer is no dice. Anyway, she seems to be too preoccupied at the moment. And I’m busy.”

  Sonny’s big jaw hardened. “Are you kidding? We don’t go in for stuff like that. But Georgina gave you a bum steer about Jane, I think. She didn’t follow Con Taylor to Athens. She went because she felt she owed it to Con. He begged her to come. Said he needed her. She went to try and let him down easy.” A pause, and he said obscurely, grimly, “They don’t any of them understand her.” Another pause. “Anyway, I’ve chartered a plane. For early tomorrow morning. I’m flying up to Athens to get her.”

  I nodded brusquely. I didn’t really want all these confidences from everybody. “Must be expensive, all those planes. Do you have to chase her often?”

  “I’ve got money,” Sonny said in a kind of arch way. “I’m not proud of it. But it enables me to live like I want to, live in a way that keeps up with the future.” A slight, polite hesitation. “Didn’t Georgina tell you?”

  “Yeah. She did. You’re a millionaire.”

  “That’s right. But I’m not proud of it. Just like I’m not proud of being an American. I just happen to be born both. My old man made his loot in the Chicago stockyards, of all places.”

  I grinned mirthlessly. “Blood money. Well, the blood washes off of properly made currency. Almost everything does. That’s one philosophy.”

  “You’re quite a philosopher.”

  “Sure.” I got up. “It costs very little.”

  “Listen. Let me tell you something. I live off of what I earn. I believe in living off what you earn. We drink the cheapest retsina, we eat what the locals eat. I live off what I earn on the Daisy Mae.”

  “Maybe that’s why your—‘wife’ is so unhappy.”

  “Who says she’s unhappy?”

  “I sort of got that impression.”

  “Well, she’s not. She believes the way I believe.”

  “Well, I hope you find your girl. She’s not your wife, is she? I mean, you’re not married?”

  “We don’t believe in all that.”

  “Well, I’ve got a date,” I said. Then I said, “Where’d you go to school?”

  “University of Chicago.”

  I nodded. “And Jane?”

  “Jane’s Bennington.”

  “You moved East, hunh?”

  “Everybody moves East.”

  “See you.”

  “I hope we become friends,” Sonny said.

  “Why not?” I said. “I thought we already were.—Listen, what about the boat? What about Daisy Mae? I made a date with Chantal von Anders for lunch on her tomorrow. And now you’re going away.”

  Sonny reached in his pocket. “Here.” He tossed me the keys. I caught them. “That’s what I came down here to see you for, actually. She’s yours. Take her wherever you want. Do what you want with her. You know enough.”

  “Okay,” I said grudgingly. I studied the keys. “And thanks.” I put them in my pocket. “I’ll take care of her.” I waved, and moved away.

  Five minutes later a horsecab clopped up with von Anders in it and I got in.

  Chapter 10

  THE DINNER PARTY WAS at some impoverished Danish Count’s. His family had lost everything to the Germans, von Anders told me. I figured his mama must have kept back a little of the family jewelry, when I saw the house. It was on one of the narrow, walled, cobbled lanes halfway up the hill. Inside, geometric figured tiles stretched away gleaming under high ceilings. It was a long way from the hippies I had left down in the Port. It was another world. I was bored with it even before we got inside the big iron-studded door.

  We ate outside on the terrace. I sat between two ladies who tried desperately to find some common ground to talk to me about. It was sheer hell for all three of us. We went back inside for coffee, and four fat hairy Greek maidens started cleaning up the terrace behind us. Inside, the Count broke out a large silver tray on which was laid out a liberal amount of hashish, pipes, picks, cleaners and matches. This was the lark of the evening.

  I had been introduced to a number of people, all in violently colored sports clothes. One of them was the tall, self-assured, white-haired gent I had met at lunch, Ambassador Pierson. When the tray came out, he came over to me and shook hands again. A record player was playing rock music.

  “You’re Freddy Tarkoff’s business friend, am I right? I somehow didn’t get that at lunch.”

  “Yes,” I said. That was certainly one way of describing me.

  “I thought so. Well, it’s nice to have you aboard.” He smiled again, at his little joke. “I’m just saying good night. I hope we’ll see each other again while you’re here.”

  “I hope so,” I said. It was a barefaced lie. “You’re leaving so soon, Ambassador?”

  “Yes, I am. I don’t hold with all this hashish business. I know it’s supposed to be chic. But as long as it is against the law, I don’t feel I can hold with it. Come on, Liza.” His handsome wife smiled and shook hands with me.

  Several others were leaving, too. I didn’t know if it was for the same reason. An awful lot were staying, too, and helping themselves to the pipes. All that baloney von Anders had been giving me in the afternoon about her social disgrace over buying hashish looked like a pretty large-scale exaggeration. Technically, you could even call it a lie. When the Count, who was a big meaty man and rather pompous, offered a lighted pipe to me, I smiled and shook my head. “I’ll take a good stiff drink instead.”

  From somewhere von Anders came toward me holding a glass of her own, her eyes unnaturally bright. She had been at another table at dinner and I had hardly seen her. I shot her a sudden sharp glan
ce, and she flushed. She knew what I was thinking, all right. I said only, “Having fun?”

  She nodded hard. “Yes, I am. But it’s a problem. Some of us are dead set against smoking hash.”

  “A lot of you think it’s a great lot of fun.”

  She nodded again. “I’m in that part.”

  I looked around. “Pretty hip bunch of people. I just left some of the real ones.” There wasn’t a soul under 40 in the room. Let alone under 30.

  Von Anders gave me a long, calculating look. “We’re not really hip. And most of us know it. Do you want to dance?”

  I shook my head.

  “You don’t dance rock? Do you mind if I do?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not having much fun, are you?”

  “No. But that doesn’t matter.”

  “But you’re not having fun.”

  “I’m having as much fun as anybody.”

  She looked around. “You know, it’s true. They all look labored, don’t they? They labor at the dancing, and labor not to look self-conscious. They look awkward and unsure about smoking their hash. They’re a little ridiculous.”

  She laughed. “What can I do to make you have fun? Shall we go talk somewhere?”

  “If you want.” But I didn’t move. She was still wanting me to take care of her “blackmail” case. And I knew I was going to do it. In spite of myself. It was already all set up. And now my feet seemed reluctant to take the first step into it all.

  Beside me, von Anders seemed to gather herself all together, as if consciously fitting herself deliberately to my mood. She leaned back against the wall alongside me.

  At the record player the rock music stopped and some Greek songs were put on. A line formed, mostly of women, and began to do one of the complicated Greek dances, led by one older woman. A few of them did it quite well. When the number ended there was a gay call to all go off to what they called the “dancing taverna,” a place called Georgio’s. A phone call was placed for horsecabs.

  “It’ll take a while,” von Anders said beside me. “Let’s go out on the terrace.”