The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian)

by Robert Sheckley

  SCREAM OF THE BUTTERFLY

  53

  You could really do a lot worse than be unconscious. You could be dead. That wouldn’t be much fun, would it? So I reasoned with myself. Or rather, one part of my mind reasoned while another part floated in a luminous sea of light. I thought I could hear waves lapping against a shore, and that was strange, Paris being inland. Just as I was thinking this, I saw some figures taking shape out of the mist, and I was just getting ready to work myself into a really nice vision or hallucination or whatever you want to call it when I felt somebody shaking me. Rudely. Vehemently.

  “Wake up, Hob.”

  It’s one hell of a situation because I don’t even know yet who it is who is telling me to wake up, and I know that someone’s out to get me. I’m still in one of those states I get into when somebody cracks me sharply on the skull. I was sort of floaty and semi-weirded out, and my hearing was playing tricks on me. It was as though I were in a tunnel hearing scary voices which changed and distort as they bounced off the walls.

  One thing was clear to me. I had misjudged this situation. Not that I held myself too much to blame for that. It’s not my fault if people lie. Still, I was in trouble. On the whole, since I had no plan in mind, I thought it best to continue to feign unconsciousness. In fact, if I had only known how, I would have chosen that moment to go into hibernation. Things always look better in the spring, don’t you think?

  Then a familiar voice said, “Well, old boy, how are you feeling?”

  I knew that voice. I opened my eyes. Alex was sitting on a low chair in front of me. He was armed with a small pistol. He wasn’t exactly pointing it at me, but he wasn’t exactly pointing it away from me, either.

  I tried to think of something to say. The best I could come up with was, “Hi, Alex.”

  “Hi, old buddy,” Alex said. His voice was devoid of irony. His expression was thoughtful. He was wearing chinos, and he had on a black leather flight jacket that looked really butch. He had on those reflecting sunglasses, too. That worried me. In the movies, the guys you see wearing glasses like that are about to kill somebody.

  We were in a small office. I assumed it was somewhere within the airport building. Fluorescent lighting was overhead. There was light brown imitation wood panelling halfway up the walls. The ceilings were cream. There was grayish-green linoleum underfoot. There were several desks. One of them was bare, the other with a copy of Le Monde, a filled ashtray, a telephone. These details are of no importance, but I was hanging on to them because I was a little worried that they’d be the last things I was going to see, and when the devil asks me, “The room you were killed in, what did it look like?” I want to be able to give him a decent answer.

  “You know, pal,” Alex said, “you’ve put me into a difficult situation. Why did you have to go on investigating?”

  “I guess it was because of Rachel,” I said. “I couldn’t let you just kill her, could I?”

  “Of course you could have,” Alex said. “I suppose I should have explained it to you. But I assumed you understood.”

  “Understood what?”

  Alex rubbed his hand across his eyes and looked sadly at the ceiling. “The woman’s impossible, you could see that for yourself. She’s in this life to make things miserable for as many people as possible, including herself.”

  “Maybe so. But that’s no excuse for killing her.”

  “But Hob, of course it is.”

  “Alex, don’t start up with me.”

  “Hob, we discussed this sort of thing many times in Ibiza. But you were a more independent thinker then. Life in America seems to have softened your head. Hob, wake up; you’ve been converted to television drama morality.”

  “Alex, I don’t care what we said back then. A man talks a lot of crap in his lifetime. But you can’t go around killing people because they’re difficult.”

  “Oh, I know you can’t make a habit of it,” Alex said. “But an occasional one doesn’t matter much, does it?”

  “It’s not right,” I said.

  “Well, of course not. But let’s take it out of the abstract. A man has just one life to lead. Can you imagine leading any kind of life at all with Rachel after you?”

  “Where’s Rachel now?”

  “She’s on her way here.”

  “And you’re going to kill her?”

  Alex shook his head and shoved the gun back in his pocket. “Stop being so silly. I only kill people theoretically. I was going to buy her off.”

  “You think she’d let herself be bought? She loves you, Alex!”

  “That’s all quite true,” Alex said, “and she’ll be damned angry when she learns the way things really are. But I think she’s a practical person. A million dollars in small bills will go a long way toward making her feel better.”

  “Didn’t she figure to split with you?” I asked.

  “Yes, but that’s in the past. The real situation is, a real million in her hands in bills ought to outweigh five million in dream currency.”

  “Well, you know her better than I do.”

  “She’ll come around. Don’t worry about it.”

  Nieves came in. “I saw lights from town. Coming this way. Do you think it’s her?”

  “Probably,” Alex said.

  Nieves looked splendid. A sort of a Latin Diana Rigg. Digging the scene.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Nieves said. “Maybe I’ve been too softheaded about this. Do you really think she’ll be trouble, Alex? Maybe you should kill her.”

  “Nieves!” I said.

  She ignored me. “I mean only if you think that’s best. You know more about these matters than I do.”

  “Hey, take it easy,” Alex said. “I never planned to kill her. That was all in your mind.”

  “Still, it’s not such a bad idea,” Nieves said thoughtfully.

  Clovis, Nigel, and Jean-Claude came into the room.

  Clovis said, “Alex, there’s something I want to ask you. All that stuff you told me about doing missionary work in Africa—you were lying to me, weren’t you?”

  “Not at all,” Alex said. “I really believe in that. It’s a part of my nature. Altruism. Ask anyone who knows me. Ask Hob; he knew me in Ibiza. But another part of my nature won’t let me do that. That’s the greedy part of me that’s sick of being a schmuck watching other guys grab the goodies and saying, ‘Teh, tch,’ when the television commentators talk their usual moralistic nonsense.” He turned to me. “It’s the national morality play, Hob; we the people of the great t.v. audience going, ‘Tch, tch,’ when the commentators expose year in and year out the drama of men in authority stealing We the People blind. I figure the commentators are shrilling for the politicians because the scandal rights alone on a thing like Irangate must be worth a fortune. Well, this time I don’t want to be one of the viewers; I want to be one of the takers. Get it any which way; that’s the American way. I want to take the money and the girl and go to South America and live like a Mafia prince.”

  “But the hospital,” Clovis said. “What about the hospital?”

  “All in good time, old buddy, all in good time.”

  “But for the present, no?”

  “That’s right, no Africa just yet. I hear it’s the hot season.”

  “You’re going to Paraguay with this woman and live a life of luxurious capitalistic effeteness?”

  “That’s it, Clovis. I guess that sums it up. I guess I lied to you. But it was in a good cause.”

  “Self-service!” Clovis sneered.

  “What better?” Alex asked.

  “No,” Clovis said. “I cannot permit it to end like this.”

  “How do you want it to end?” Alex said.

  “I think you should give me a million of those dollars you stole, and I will endow a charity for African orphans.”

  “Actually,” Nigel said, “while you’re handing it out, a million for me and Jean-Claude here wouldn’t go amiss.”

  Alex turned to me. “Wha
t do you want, Hob?”

  “I’d just like to have a few of my dreams back,” I said.

  Alex turned to Nieves. “What do you think, darling?”

  Nieves was decisive. “Give all of them half of it and let them split it up themselves. That way we all part friends and you and I still have five million left. But whatever you do, be quick about it, darling. That Paraguayan 707 with Cuch and Armadillo piloting it will be landing at any moment now.”

  “A 707?” Alex said. “But you knew I wanted a fighter plane.”

  “I wanted to accommodate you, love, but they just don’t have the range. We can’t refuel before Tenerife.”

  “You did very well,” Alex said. “How did you handle the French airspace question?”

  “It was not too difficult,” Nieves said. “This flight is listed as a return home by an official Paraguayan observer of the recent N.A.T.O. air exercises.”

  We heard the sound of the plane in the distance.

  Then the door burst open and Rachel rushed in.

  “Hi, Rachel,” Alex said. “Glad you made your connections all right. You and I have some business to attend to.”

  Rachel was looking at Nieves. “Who’s this bimbo?”

  “This is Nieves,” Alex said.

  “Oh, it is, is it?” She looked Nieves up and down. “Alex, are you trying to tell me what I think you’re trying to tell me?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Alex said. “Sorry, but it just wouldn’t have worked. Look, Rachel, I’ve got one million dollars for you.” He reached into his inner jacket pocket.

  “And I’ve got something for you, too,” Rachel said, and reached into her purse and shot Alex with what sounded to me like a .38. Then she turned and put a bullet into Wheaton.

  THE MEXICANS

  54

  i managed to knock the gun out of Rachel’s hand and she turned and ran out the door. Clovis, looking shaken, followed her. Alex was standing there holding his shoulder and bleeding genteelly, nicked but not knackered. And Nigel had pulled up his shirt and found a crease along his side. The lady was not too accurate with small arms.

  Just then these guys came in. There were two of them, little dark guys with bandit moustaches and big chests and guns, who looked like Mexicans and turned out to be Mexicans. It was sort of funny how they came in, drifting like an inevitable pall of smoke that has picked this place to obfuscate. I remember saying to myself, hell, another country heard from, and I noticed that Alex and Nigel and Jean-Claude were sort of drifting back toward the side door as these guys came in the front, and somehow I was in between, the only one without a gun, and it didn’t look like a good place to be in.

  “What I want,” one of the Mexicans said, “is the sailboards. They’re my property and jus’ tell us where they are and there’s no trouble, understood?”

  “Hob has them,” Alex answered immediately.

  “Hey!” I said.

  “Jus’ a minute,” the Mexican said. But Alex and the others, guns at the ready, were backing out the side door.

  “Hey, jus’ a minute!” the Mexican said.

  “Sorry, we’re late,” Alex said. It was what you’d call a real Mexican showdown, but nobody opened fire and Alex, Nigel and Jean-Claude completed their exit and were gone. That left just me and the Mexicans, who didn’t like the turn of events but couldn’t do much about it.

  To break the rather heavy silence that followed, I said, “Who are you guys?”

  “I’m Paco,” said the one who had done all the talking so far. “This is Eduardo. You mus’ be Hob Draconian.”

  I guess I had to be, though I didn’t much like it at that moment.

  Paco said, “We’re partners of your frien’ Frankie Falcone.”

  “I didn’t know Frankie had partners.”

  “Silent partners,” Paco said. “We put up the money for his business. It’s a lot of money, man.”

  “So you’re partners,” I said. “What are you doin’ here?”

  “Lookin’ after our investment.”

  “You flew to France and are now threatening me with guns because of five sailboards?”

  Paco looked annoyed. “Who gives a damn about sailboards? It’s what’s inside we’re concerned with.”

  “They’re made of polyurethane, aren’t they?” I asked.

  “Man, do I have to spell it out? We got our dope inside those boards.”

  I gaped at him. “Dope? You mean marijuana?”

  Paco looked at Eduardo and laughed. “He thinks we’re talking reefer! Are you for real? We’re discussing black tar heroin, my man. The real Mexican product. The finest heroin in the world.”

  Suddenly it all came together for me—the black tar heroin coming into Oregon, pouring across the beaches like petroleum from a sinking ship. The savage desire of the Mexican gangs to expand their product into the lucrative café society of Europe. I later learned that it had become an obsession with them, a matter of status—to sell their heroin under the very noses of the Marseilles drug barons and win out, because French heroin is all right in its old-fashioned way but the Mexican product is new and better and above all, Mexican. It was strange, this thing of national pride. But it seemed right and natural somehow that dope dealers too, not just thieves in military uniforms, could be patriots.

  “And so you see, señor,” Paco went on, “it is important to us that this shipment get through. The money is of concern, of course. But we did want to enter our product in the international heroin competition being held this year at San Sebastián.”

  From outside I could hear the sound of an aircraft coming in for a landing. That would be Alex’s ride to Paraguay. It was interesting, but it didn’t matter. Right now I was faced with these guys and this was my problem.

  I goggled at him. “I haven’t heard about this international competition.”

  Paco smiled. “It is not, of course, published in the newspapers. If you didn’t hear of it, señor, perhaps it is because you are not on the circuit.”

  As neat a snub as I’ve been handed in a long time. Yet I liked this man with his big automatic pistol and his guayabera shirt. I like a man who stands behind his product.

  “But now, señor,” he said, waving his gun with negligent purposefulness so that glints of steel danced across my eyes, and I saw, neither wisely nor too well, that I was in a world of trouble. “Now what we need most urgently from you is the location of the sailboards.”

  “My friend,” I said, “if there were one thing I fervently wish, it would be to tell you the location of the sailboards. But alas, someone has stolen them and we are both the poorer for it.”

  “You won’t tell?” Paco said, his voice a burlesque of menace more menacing than menace itself.

  “Hombre!” I cried, ingratiating to the end, “I can’t tell you because I don’t know!”

  Paco shook his head slowly. “Too bad,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s got to be the Mexican pain thing for you.”

  “Not the Mexican pain thing!” I cried.

  “Jes, the Mexican pain thing. Eduardo! Bring the pinking scissors and the air compressor out of the trunk of the car.”

  “You want the edging tool, too?” Eduardo asked.

  “Jes, bring the edging tool, too!”

  They both smirked. It seemed that the Mexican pain thing was going to be a most comical thing to watch if you weren’t the one undergoing it. So strong was my desire to be a spectator at what I was being forced to be a participant in. … I was in a state of confusion, and so I heard myself say, “All right, you win. We can skip the Mexican pain thing. I’ll take you to the sailboards.”

  “You would do that, and betray your own friends?”

  “Sure, as long as it’s for a good cause. Like saving my own skin. That’s what I’m doing, I trust?”

  “Jes, you take us to the sailboards, we let you leev.” His sneer belied the apparent sincerity of his words, and the twist of his lip presaged the treachery to come if we were lucky enough to even ge
t that far.

  “You have five seconds to tell us where to go,” Paco said.

  Great. It wasn’t enough they’d given me an insolvable problem, they had to add a time limit, yet.

  WHEATON

  55

  i don’t know how I would have stood up under torture. Luckily I didn’t have to find out. Suddenly the doorway was filled with the impressive tweeded bulk of Nigel Wheaton.

  “Oh, let him go,” Nigel said testily. “He doesn’t know anything about the sailboards.”

  “How do you know he doesn’t know where the sailboards are?” Paco asked.

  “Because I took them myself.”

  The Mexicans looked for a chance to do something terrible to Nigel, but he had stepped behind a filing cabinet. Besides, they had noticed that he was armed with a lightweight rapid-fire Cobra Bee Sting, the new Indonesian gun that the Israelis introduced last year at the Beirut atrocities exhibit. In his other hand he was holding a stun grenade designed to capture your attention at no greater loss than your eyesight if you happened to be caught in the wrong blink cycle when it went off.

  “Sergeant,” Wheaton said over his shoulder to the uniformed man whose French police cap could be dimly seen, “take these men away.”

  In came a sergeant followed by four uniformed French cops carrying Uzis. Another two cops broke a window and entered holding machine pistols. The Mexicans were outgunned. It was time to give up the guns and rely on the lawyers. They allowed themselves to be handcuffed and led away.

  Then Fauchon entered the room, shaking raindrops out of his light blue raincoat.

  “Hi, boss,” Nigel said.

  “Nice work, Nigel,” Fauchon said.

  That was my first intimation that my old buddy Nigel Wheaton was working for the police. I gave him a suitably outraged look and said, “Police informer!”

  “Yes, old boy,” Nigel said. “I’ve been working at it for some years. Ever since Inspector Fauchon helped get me out of the mess you landed me in Turkey.”