The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian)

by Robert Sheckley

  I adjusted my shoes and clothing, took off my jacket, folded it, put it down on the bench, sat down on it. No sooner had I done that than the heavy old-fashioned lock on the outside of my door turned with a grating sound, and the door flew open. I stood up rather hastily, because a horrid thought had gone through my mind. There is a famous scene in French literature and movies which portrays the criminal in his cell, waiting to hear whether he will be executed or pardoned. He waits, his eyes fastened on the door. Suddenly it flies open. Policemen rush in, seize him, and, despite his screams and struggles, drag him off to the guillotine. Pardon denied!

  Yes, they still use the guillotine over here. Not that I was in immediate danger of that. There is generally a rather long and complicated trial before it is brought into play. But I had forgotten that, or, rather, I had considered it but had thought that maybe they had forgotten about it.

  And so I was prepared to act like my predecessors, all the convicted, guilty and innocent alike, who have been seized and carried through these portals to meet their ends in one of the more stylish executions still extant in the world today. But of course, what happened was nothing of the sort.

  My visitor was a guard, dressed like all the others, but with one exception: instead of a round policeman’s hat, he wore a tall, spotlessly white, rakishly curved to one side chef’s hat.

  “Good day, m’sieu,” he said. “I am Henri, a representative of Le Repas Obigatoire of the Santé kitchens. I can take your dinner order now, m’sieu.”

  I was dumbfounded, but managed to retain sufficient sang froid to enquire, “What would you recommend?”

  “Our fare is simple, but has won awards in L’Incarcerátion, the International Magazine of Prisons. Potage parisien, to start, accompanied by le bloc de paté fois gras trufflée, then gigot de mouton de Sologne à l’eau, accompanied by a medley of fresh asparagus and cut red peppers decorated with a sheen of finest olive oil. If m’sieu would prefer a fowl course, today we are featuring pêche de caneton in a delicate sauce of Montmorency cherries.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said. “The duck, I mean. If that’s all right. Although, I’m not saying anything against the gigot. And I know you mentioned it first. So if you’d prefer—”

  I was being cautious, not captious. I had no idea what this chef-guard’s behavior signified. France is a strange country, after all, especially when you are forced to deal with the French.

  “The choice is entirely up to you,” Henri said. “Might I recommend a little-known Grâves ’82 which we managed to secure only last week?”

  “By all means,” I told him. “But tell me something—if I might ask a question?”

  “But of course, m’sieu,” Henri said.

  “What is this all about?”

  “M’sieu?” Henri said, evidently puzzled.

  “Where I come from,” I told him, “prisoners don’t get to choose to order gourmet food from a guard in a chef’s hat with a wine list in his pocket. I always knew that France was ultracivilized, but this is too much!”

  “We do like to think of ourselves as civilized, m’sieu,” Henri said, “but I can assure you this is not an everyday occurrence in the Paris prison system. It is just that this year we are celebrating the Year of the Prisoner. No, no, I didn’t mean that last; just my little joke, m’sieu; the fact is, I am not at liberty to say whence comes this most excellent repast, this prison fare fit for an emperor. All will be revealed in due course, never fear.”

  Smiling, bowing, Henri departed from my cell, not forgetting to lock the door behind him. I sat back on my bench and permitted myself just the faintest degree of relaxation. It is hard to explain why I felt that sense of relief, but I will try to explain, since it is directly relevant to the strange events that lay immediately ahead of me.

  It is my belief or let us say theory, that the actions of men are ruled to a very great extent by the Spirit of Place. What do I mean by Spirit of Place? I refer to the individuating specificity that certain geographic regions possess; in other words, the congeries of associations and interconnections that binds a place to its past, shapes its future, determines the behavior of its citizens, and even sets the tone of the adventures experienced by those who visit it.

  Put even more simply: in Venice, Venetian things happen; in Hoboken, Hobokenese things happen; and you can bet that in the stony mountainscapes of the Chiricahua, Apache things happen.

  So it is with Paris, a city which draws you quickly into its Zeitgeist. Paris has not a single aspect, of course. Multiform and multiplex, it presents a variety of faces, of possibilities, of moods. It all depends on which Paris you’re traveling in. Or, more exactly, which Paris is traveling through you. Is it the Paris of Jean Valjean, of Victor Hugo, the Paris of Haussmann, the Paris of Danton, the Paris of the Comédie Française? The possibilities are many, but each of the choices is a French one, and all together represent the collective moira of the Gallic entity, the still-developing collection of tendencies that is France.

  What I thought I had detected, as Henri the chef-cop bowed himself out, was the strong possibility that the ground rules for my situation were about to change. We were leaving the gritty world of detection and entering a new realm of farce, French farce, of which there’s nothing sillier. Or so I hoped.

  FAUCHON

  39

  “Yvette!” I said. For I had been thinking about her, and now she was standing before me. She had that smile on her face. That certain smile. You know the smile I mean? The smile that tells you you’re in play.

  “Hi, babe,” I said huskily. “I kinda thought it’d be you.”

  “Really?” Yvette said, also huskily.

  “Vraiment,” I replied. “Are you really the right one, the one and only, the one who was promised me long ago in another country?”

  “Search no more,” Yvette said. “Here I am, the eternal feminine dwelling in the ephemeral me.”

  “I love the way you talk,” I said. “Where did you ever learn it?”

  “At the Barbizon School of Metaphysical Shuck.”

  “Landsman!” I cried.

  “Weimeraner!” she replied.

  I reached out for her, touched her face. Encountered stubble. Opened my eyes. Beheld Inspector Fauchon, smiling patiently, lower lip outthrust, waiting with commendable patience until I had awakened completely and pulled myself together.

  “Are you all right?” Fauchon asked me.

  “Oh, sure, I’m great,” I told him. “Has sentence been passed yet? Where are the authorities going to send me? Devil’s Island? New Caledonia? If I have a choice, I’d kinda like to do my time in the Château d’Îf. Great admirer of Dumas, you know.”

  “Control yourself,” Fauchon said with paternal sternness. “Accompany me to my office. There has been a ridiculous mistake.”

  We went through corridors measureless to man, down to a sunless office on the second floor of the gloomy Gallic gaol in which I had been incarcerated. Fauchon told me to make myself comfortable in the big armchair he reserved for respectable visitors, and sent out for café au lait and croissants.

  “Kind of you,” I said, “but what about the gourmet dinner I ordered earlier from Henri, the chef-guard?”

  Fauchon looked puzzled, then smiled with evident pleasure. “Ah, you make the ironic jest! Very good! You must have been hallucinating. Sorry, we have no gourmet service for the prisoners, but I would be happy to take you to a first-rate restaurant this evening in partial atonement for the silly error of my subordinates. You see, I told Jacques Lefevre, my subaltern, if that is the correct word, to go to your hotel and ask you to come in and see me. Jacques was unable to go himself; as he was leaving, word came in of some strange occurrences in the Rue Morgue, and so he detailed his batman, if that is the correct term, and his assistants. He told them to bring you in, and they, considering you a common criminal, made their usual rude entry into your hotel room. Again, je suis desolé; I do beg your forgiveness.”

  “No harm don
e,” I murmured, accepting Fauchon’s outstretched hand. The thought did occur to me that the entire thing might have been staged, the arrest and then the apology, in order that I might consider the benefits of cooperation.

  “What did you want to see me about?” I asked.

  “This is going to please you very much. We have located the whereabouts of your friend Alex Sinclair. Not so bad work on the part of Paris flatfeet, non?”

  “No,” I said. “Or rather, yes, very good indeed. When can I see him?”

  Fauchon set fire to a Gauloise. Cigarette in the middle of his faded rosebud mouth, French blue eyes squinted against the smoke, he leaned toward to me and said, “Ah! As for that, I am afraid there is a difficulty.”

  ARNE; ALEX FOUND

  40

  Le PÈre Tranquile was crowded as usual, its outside café portion crowded with sunglassed light worshippers. I ordered an omelette and a bottle of Orangina, and sat gazing upon the crowd with a jaundiced and dyspeptic eye. At the moment I could say, with Hamlet, man delights me not, no, nor woman, neither.

  Arne the mime came by, white face, painted rosebud clown’s mouth, baggy black trousers and checkered W.C. Fields vest. He did his number for a while, then came over to my table and sat down.

  “Ça va?” he enquired.

  I made an Italian gesture denoting nothingness.

  “As bad as that?” Arne said.

  “Made none the better by my recent experience with your friend Esteban.” I related to him briefly the events of the previous night in the Bois de Boulogne.

  “I never said he was a friend of mine,” Arne pointed out. “Anyhow, maybe he was kidding. These South Americans are great jokers.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  “Don’t worry,” Arne said. “Something will break soon.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Arne went back to his miming, and left the world to darkness and to me. I sat there trying to figure out where the South Americans fit into the picture and trying to make sense out of what Fauchon had told me. This was the mood I was in when Nigel came strolling by, immaculate in summer whites, twirling a malacca cane, a panama hat tilted rakishly over one eye, his beard bristling heroically.

  “What ho?” Nigel said, the very image of hateful bonhomie.

  “Besmirch me your what ho’s,” I said.

  “Ah, we’re a bit peevish this afternoon, are we?” Nigel sat down, and, catching a waiter’s eye with an ease that I found unpleasantly knowledgeable, ordered a gin and tonic.

  “So, what’s new?”

  “Not much,” I said. “Except that Alex has been located.”

  “Then the case is completed?”

  “Not quite. I still have to see him and give him the money Rachel has for him.”

  “But that’s a mere detail,” Nigel said. “Why don’t we go do it now?”

  “Because there is, to quote Inspector Fauchon, a difficulty.”

  “Just a minute.” Nigel took a long pull at his gin and tonic, found a dented cheroot in his engraved silver cigar case and lit up. Leaned back and crossed his legs. “OK, I’m ready for anything.”

  “Inspector Fauchon told me that he knows where Alex is. The difficulty is, he’s promised Clovis not to tell anyone about it until Clovis has finished shooting his film.”

  Nigel groaned and took another gulp of his gin and tonic. “I’m not ready for this. Why did he promise such a thing to Clovis?”

  “Clovis needs Alex in his film. Alex has appeared in two weeks’ worth of shooting. It would be expensive to shoot all over again. But worse than that, Clovis wouldn’t do it. You know his reputation. Either he shoots a film through from beginning to end or he abandons it.”

  “But what does that have to do with Alex? I mean, why can’t people see Alex?”

  “Fauchon told me that Clovis is worried because Alex has disappeared from the shooting schedule twice now, causing costly delays and turning the whole project on its ear. Now that he has Alex again, he’s keeping him in seclusion until the final squences of the movie are filmed.”

  “In seclusion where?”

  “That’s the part that Fauchon promised Clovis he wouldn’t tell. Not until the shooting’s finished.”

  “But why would Fauchon do this for Clovis?”

  “That takes a little explaining. You know that the French government, through its various grants and facilities, bankrolls most of the French films in production. Clovis’ film has already cost the government close to ten million dollars. They’ll recoup when it’s released, of course, unless Clovis throws a fit and doesn’t finish it. The Minister of Culture wants to see this film finished. As a matter of fact, his daughter is working on the production.”

  “Yvette?” Nigel asked.

  “Of course, Yvette. So the thing is, important people want to see Clovis finish his movie. Alex is necessary to Clovis; Alex is not wanted for any crime, and so Fauchon figures if an American wants to drop out, there’s no law against it.”

  “But he told you that Alex was all right?”

  “Precisely. ‘Nevaire bettaire’ were his precise words. The French police have no reason to assume that any foul play is involved here. If a man wants to isolate himself and not answer his calls, well, they didn’t arrest Howard Hughes, did they? That was Fauchon’s example, not mine.”

  “So what do we do next?”

  “What I considered doing,” I said, “was having you and Jean-Claude kidnap Clovis and threaten him with hideous tortures until he revealed Alex’s whereabouts.”

  “We’d need a car for that,” Nigel said thoughtfully. “Also it would cost more.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “That was hyperbole, and it’s not actionable.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?”

  “I,” I said, “am going to telephone Clovis immediately and demand an explanation.”

  “Yes,” Nigel said. “I think you should.”

  “See you later,” I said, and went inside to use the telephone.

  I went to the change desk and asked for a jeton, the small French coin that activates jeton-operated telephones. It was rather difficult catching the attention of the girl behind the cash register. She was having an involved discussion with one of the waiters, a sulky-faced little fellow with long poetic hair, about regional variations in choucroute garni. It was a talk too tedious to translate. I finally obtained the requisite coin and went below, to the lower level where the toilets are, the telephone booths, and the inevitable concierge.

  This particular toilet attendant had basilisk eyes, harpy nose, iron-gray hair and bloodless lips. I sidled toward the telephone booth, intimidated instantly. “M’sieu?” she said, holding out a small hand towel. I realized at once that she thought I was going to the toilet. I could have explained to her that I merely wanted to use the telephone, but these people don’t like explanations, only money, so I accepted the towel, tipped her ten francs, and went into the phone booth.

  I could see her watching me through the tinted glass. I was beginning to feel just a little weirded out. A few hours in a cell at Santé doesn’t really do all that much for your equilibrium. And mine is just a bit wonky even at the best of times.

  “Yes, hello, who is calling?”

  The suddenness of Clovis’ voice in my ear startled me, even when it was coming to me through a telephone receiver in response to the number I had just dialed.

  “Clovis? It is Hob.”

  “Who?”

  “ ’Ob!”

  “Ah, why did you not say so at first? Where are you, why have you not contacted me; you missed a shoot yesterday, did you know that?”

  I was still going to give him hell for holding out on me about Alex. But first I thought I’d better explain my own omissions.

  “I was going to phone you this morning,” I said. “Then these cops came and dragged me out of bed—”

  “Wait,” Clovis said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I want
you to save that story. You can tell it on camera in the next filming.”

  “I’m sorry, Clovis, I don’t seem to be tracking you.”

  “We are filming a key scene tonight,” Clovis said. “During it, you will need to make a speech. It doesn’t matter what you say because we will dub in our own lines later, after we know what the scene is all about. You are following this, non?”

  “No. Sorry, I mean yes.”

  “Be there at 10:00 p.m. sharp. The entire cast will be present. This is the big one, kid. We’re counting on you.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” I said (fatuously, as I think now).

  “Good. By the way, Alex sends regards. He looks forward to seeing you. At ten, then!”

  He hung up. I sat in the booth holding the receiver and gaping at my reflection in the plate glass. For a moment I doubted myself, but then I pulled myself together, yes, he had said it. Alex! Tonight at ten!

  There was a heavy tapping at the door of my telephone booth. It was the concierge. I opened the door and stepped out. “Madame?” I said.

  “The towel,” she said, whipping it out of my hands. “One does not take a towel into the telephone booth.”

  I considered trying to explain, but it was just too difficult. Easier to tip her another ten francs and head for the stairs.

  Wait until Nigel hears this, I thought, a modest gloat arising in my chest.

  Then I stopped in mid-step and slapped my forehead with the palm of my right hand. I had neglected to get the address of the shoot from Clovis.

  TELEPHONES IN CAFÉS

  41

  Glimpses of Paris: rectangular white and blue street signs; Grill Self-Service; people carrying the long loaves of French bread known as baguettes; open-air neighborhood food markets under striped awnings and umbrellas; the haughty beauty of the produce, aware of itself as the prototype for still-life painting; long, low barges on the Seine—les bateaux; fishing on the Seine; Japanese tourists in neat business suits, much becameraed; and everywhere, love is in the air—the couples walking arm-in-arm, or arms entwined around each other’s waist, pausing here and there to exchange a long kiss; orienting glimpses of the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, the Montparnasse Tower, the Sacré-Coeur, Invalides, the Panthéon, the Luxembourg Gardens; the swirl of traffic around the Étoile, the Place de la Concorde, and the diesel trucks barrelling down the Boulevard St-Michel.