The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian)

by Robert Sheckley

  “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 inve
stigations 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.”

  “She never told me all that,” I said.

  Nigel looked extremely pleased with himself. “That’s because you lack the intimate touch, old boy. Kate used to remark on it to me, back in the old days.”

  I let that pass. “When did Rachel tell you this stuff?”

  “Last night, dear boy, when I went round to her hotel to interview her. She’s a rather sweet little thing.”

  “Damn it,” I said, “she should have told me all this at the start. What sort of a mug does she take me for? I think Rachel and I had better have this out at once.”

  I reached for the telephone. Nigel said lazily, “If you’re calling her hotel, I’m afraid you won’t find her in.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I thought she’d be more comfortable in my place. Did you ever see my digs near the Panthéon? Just off St-Michel, a dear little place. She told me she hasn’t had a decent meal since coming to Paris. Really, Hob, you’ve been neglectful.”

  I stared at Nigel, outraged for the moment. Then I had to laugh. I had forgotten Nigel’s womanizing tendencies. Maybe it was the plummy British upper-class accent, or the military bearing, or the air of amused worldliness. Whatever, the women always seemed to go for him.

  “All right, Nigel,” I said. “You’ve done well. But you haven’t found out what I really need to know. Namely, where is Alex now?”

  Jean-Claude smoothed his moustache with a supercilious finger and said, “As for zat, I expect to have an answer for you within twenty-four hours.”

  “Tell me about it,” I told him.

  “But I just have. You don’t think I’m going to tell you the names of my informants, eh?”

  “No, of course not; silly of me. Jean-Claude, is this for real or are you shucking me again?”

  “Qu’est-çe que ç’est, ‘shucking’?”

  “It means, in this instance, to tell an untruth in hope that it will come true.”

  “I would not do that,” Jean-Claude said. “Trust me, ’Ob. Tomorrow evening I will be able to take you to Alex.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “I will require, of course, an advance to take care of my informants.”

  “I could use a little front money too, Hob,” Nigel said. “I more or less promised I’d buy Rachel the best cassoulet in Paris.”

  “Then let her pay for it herself.”

  “Now, Hob, don’t be that way. Let me pay. You can add it to her account.”

  With an ill grace I paid them both. We parted with mutual expressions of esteem, somewhat muted on my part.

  After they were gone, I tried Yvette again. We arranged to meet for lunch tomorrow. She might be able to tell me something. In any event, I was glad that Nigel hadn’t seen her first.

  GOURMET PRISON

  38

  If you think French hotels are bad, you should try their prisons. At least they gave me a cell alone. I had been more than a little anxious when the guard led me down the flagstoned corridor, with prisoners leering and catcalling from their cells on either side. French prisons are really old. They were building and rebuilding these things back when North America was still an Indian reservation. And there’s something about old European prisons. Hundreds of years of terror and misery permeate the soiled cobblestones of my cell. They give off an aura, these places that have been so long dedicated to retaining people against their wills. An old prison site is probably worse than any other contamination, because it’s spiritual, a poisonous effluvium of mood that saps the will of even the bravest prisoner.

  And I was not exactly the bravest. I think I’ve already explained that macho is not my thing. Nor am I accustomed to being hoisted out of my bed just before dawn by three grim-faced Paris Special Forces policemen, who looked ready to fight the Battle of Algiers all over again on my body.

  They gave me time to make a hasty toilette, but not enough time to fasten my shoelaces. Nor to zip up my fly. One of them on either arm, the third opening doors, we marched through the hotel. The prosperous burghers in the lobby, with their simpering Mädchen standing by in their overstuffed dirndls, gave me reproving looks as I was half marched, half carried, out into the early Paris morning. No doubt in the minds of the onlookers, I was guilty of whatever the police were taking me away for; because after all, do the gendarmes pluck innocent people out of their beds? Remembering that livid frieze of accusatory faces, I had the passionate desire to grind them all into the dirt. For a moment I longed for the revolution of a proletariat with teeth such as the world has never yet seen.

  They piled me into the ominous high-backed blue Citröen van that is always to be seen at student demonstrations, two of them in back with me, daring me with their eyes to complain, to protest, to make any move or gesture that would justify their “beating a little sense into me.” I sat mute, my head hanging low, taking on the posture of one who, to an expert physiognomist, as all the French consider themselves, would appear to exhibit indisputable postural proof of guilt.

  We pulled up at the outer gate to La Santé, the big prison in the center of Paris. The police sentries saluted and pulled back the iron gates with their curved and gilded tops. We came to a stop in an interior courtyard. I was swept into a cramped and sweaty room filled with policemen. A sergeant at a desk had a brief argument with one of my captors, in Corsican, I believe, since the only word I could make out was “Ecco!” said by the sergeant as he threw his hands in the air while my captors steered, pushed and dragged me deeper inside.

  And that is why I linger here, alone and palely loitering, though the sedge is withered from the soth and no lawyers ring. Excuse me, that was hysteria. But I really did want to see a lawyer. I wanted a French lawyer who would invo
ke whatever French jurisprudence uses in place of habeas corpus, to get me out of here, get me out of here, get me out of here. …

  Sorry, there goes my hysteria again; it comes over me whenever I relive those days, even here, from the supposedly safe spot in which I am writing these memoirs. My cell was about four feet on a side, solid rock walls, little barred window about twelve feet straight up, a slop bucket (I later learned that plumbing troubles were frequent in this quartier), a small bench that looked as if it had been assembled by chimpanzees back at the beginning of time, and nothing more except a few messages scratched onto the wall. The only one I could make out read, simply, courage! and it was signed, francesco issÁsaga. A Basque name, I believe. But what did that matter?

  A single naked lightbulb, caged in wire, hung by a long frayed cord from the high ceiling. I looked at it but it gave me no ideas. What was really annoying was that I had nothing to read. Funny how that’s one of the first things a man thinks of when he finds himself in jail. My theory is that the taste for reading is so developed in some of us that it amounts to a veritable appetite on a par with eating, sleeping, fornicating, and sitting around feeling sorry for oneself. Most of us never suffer real linguistic deprivation, because, even if we are not actively reading, we are aware of the plethora of reading matter on all sides of us—newspapers, magazines, books, billboards, menus, calling cards, notices on telephone poles, and the like. Thus we are bathed daily in a sea of words, and we take care to be well provisioned when we undertake air, rail, or bus trips, or when we have to spend a lot of time on queues in public agencies trying to get our visas stamped. Prison is a form of travel, too, a foretaste perhaps, of that Great Waiting Room in the Sky which some say is the long-term destination of most of us. Yes, these are gloomy thoughts, but que voulez-vous? I’m in prison; I don’t have to be cheerful.

  There was nothing for me to do but sit quietly and put my thoughts in order. I believe it was Pascal who pointed out that most of the mischief in the world is due to man’s inability to sit quietly in a room for any length of time. Now was my chance to try to solve the world’s problems, at least in microcosm.