Draconian New York (Hob Draconian Book 1)

by Robert Sheckley

  Still, hunger gives its own advice. After phoning around to see if he could dredge up the odd franc from Jean-Claude—and finding him equally stony—and ascertaining that the other people he knew were out of Paris—probably playing the tables at Deauville and stuffing their faces at the lavish buffet—Nigel sat back on the sofa, lit a cigarette—he had seven Disque Bleus left—and eyed Quiffy the chow. Quiffy, not very bright even for a dog, waddled over to be petted.

  “Quiffy, my dear,” Nigel remarked, “you’re putting on a bit of weight.”

  Quiffy, thinking she was being complimented, made a kvelling sound.

  “Therefore,” Nigel said, “you are going on a diet effective today.”

  Quiffy barked twice, sharply, signifying nothing.

  “But so’s you won’t feel lonely,” Nigel said, “I am going on the same diet with you. Half a can for you, half a can for me, of the best tinned dog food Paris has to offer.”

  And Nigel was as good as his word. He had long suspected that humans could survive in Paris indefinitely on the better brands of dog food. And if he was still hungry, he could steal a little kibble from the cats.

  To make himself feel better, he reminded himself that he had eaten worse during that silly adventure in Ethiopia, and worse still in New Guinea, when he had accompanied Eric Lofton on his quest for the elusive bird of paradise, and ended up not even finding the guinea fowl of hell.

  It was like Nigel not to complain of his lot, and not to do anything much about it. Stoical. Fatalistic. Except on points of honor. If it had been Jean-Claude, he would have flogged off the whole apartment, furniture and all, figuring that anyone who gave him this opportunity when he was hungry deserved what he got.

  Nigel was reclining on the couch, naked in Emily’s overheated Paris apartment, contemplating an ancient Times of London. A flash of red and gold—the goldfish turning in his tank. A squawk of yellow—the canary in his cage. Street sounds of Paris, but no accordion. Smell of burned coffee. Then the telephone on the polished mahogany end table rang in the lavish apartment on the rue Andre Breton just below the Sacre Coeur in Paris. Nigel made a long arm from the couch and picked it up.

  He said in French, “Schumacher apartment, Nigel speaking.”

  “Nigel? It’s Hob.”

  Nigel switched to English. “My dear fellow, how good to hear your voice. You’re in New York, I presume?”

  “Yes, but I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow morning. Flight three forty-two, Air France. Nigel, something very good has come up. I think I can pay off the traspaso.”

  “That is very good news indeed,” Nigel said. “I’ve been racking my tiny brain trying to think of some way to help out. But at present I’m reduced to eating the kitten’s kibble in Emily Schumacher’s apartment whilst she leads la vie bohemienne in Juan-les-Pines.”

  “With a little luck, I’ll be able to pay you something on account when I get back. Who knows? The Alternative Detective Agency may even show a profit this year. Listen, Nigel, have you got telephone privileges where you are?”

  “Within reason, old boy, I can do what I please here short of selling the furniture.”

  “I want you to call Harry Hamm in Ibiza. I’ve been trying him but I can’t get him in. Tell him I’m coming back to Ibiza with money for the traspaso, probably well before July fifteenth when it’s due, God willing.”

  “I’ll tell him. What is this sudden fortune you’ve come into?”

  “Remember Max Rosen? The model agent?”

  “Yes, I remember him.”

  “Well, he got hold of me here in New York. He needs a certain model in Paris tomorrow. Something to do with an important job for her. Model of the year stuff. He’s paying me ten thousand dollars to bring her in. Plus a free ticket to Paris.”

  Nigel whistled softly under his breath. “Do you have to break her out of jail or something?”

  “He wants her in Paris and he’s willing to pay me to make sure she gets there. Ours is not to reason why. I’ll see you day after tomorrow, Nigel. I’ll be on Air France leaving New York tomorrow. You’ll get right on this traspaso thing?”

  “Count on me, old boy. See you soon.”

  Nigel dressed thoughtfully. He wondered if Jean-Claude had come up with something. He’d give him a call, then get right on the traspaso thing.

  He called Jean-Claude’s number. Jean-Claude picked it up on the first ring. They arranged a place to meet in half an hour. Then Nigel dialed Harry Hamm in Ibiza, hoping to find him at El Caballo Negro bar in Santa Eulalia. And while he waited for the phone to engage, he was pursing his lips and sucking at the ends of his mustache and fiddling with his beard and thinking about Max Rosen and the way he was paying Hob, whom he barely knew, twenty or more times what a service was worth. It was something to think about.

  19

  Aurora packed quickly, choosing the pigskin Samsonite as her main traveling case. She had already canceled her dentist’s appointment. Her rent wasn’t due for another two and a half weeks. By then she’d have a better idea of how long she would be staying in Paris. Then she’d do what had to be done. Meanwhile, she just had to get there.

  She was standing in her beautifully decorated little apartment on East Sixty-sixth Street near East River Drive, wearing a half slip and bra and pink mules and sipping a fortified peach nectar that was said to supply necessary vitamins lost while indulging in illicit narcotics.

  The sun was slanting in through the Venetian blinds. Outside, Manhattan pulsed, throbbed, and writhed in its customary and inimitable way. Aurora stood in front of the window, tall and slender even in flat mules, long, reddish gold hair that had been likened to that of Rita Hayworth as seen in The Lady from Shanghai flung back carelessly over her light brown shoulders. Her full mouth fell naturally into an attractive pout as she said to herself, Okay, baby, now there comes the delicate question of how to handle Emilio.

  Emilio was the undercover DEA agent she was dating. They had a date that evening at eight o’clock at the Carnival Bar on West Seventy-second. And Emilio had asked her to come out to Montauk with him this weekend for some fishing. He had the use of some Mafia guy’s luxurious cottage. She had more or less agreed to accompany him, but had been having second thoughts ever since. Now, with the Paris trip coming up in the morning, she knew she would have to cancel Montauk and break tonight’s date with him. She had things to do. And besides, he was part of her old life and she was about to put all that behind her. But how should she go about breaking the date?

  Call him? But she had no idea where to find him before their date this evening. She couldn’t call him at DEA headquarters because he didn’t know she knew he was undercover DEA. He had introduced himself to her as a well-connected wiseguy with plenty of money and no visible means of support. Should she show up at the Five Points Sporting Club and tell him then? She really didn’t want to do that. Emilio had been getting very possessive of late. He was acting like he had some sort of rights over her. She didn’t like that. She had been thinking for a while now that it was time to end this thing with Emilio. He had been fun, in his crude, boisterous, faintly sinister way, but it was enough already, as her Jewish girlfriend Sarah Deiter would say.

  The more she thought about it, the more uncomfortable she became at the idea of having to tell Emilio in person that she was going out of town. He was too inquisitive. Too pushy. But what the hell, she had to do it.

  She went to her closet and started to select an outfit for the meeting, decisive at last.

  20

  Le Lapin Agile was a small, not very interesting Paris bar with typical Parisian smells of sawdust and black tobacco, stale wine and beer. There were half a dozen people inside, working people from the quartier. A soccer game was showing on the black-and-white TV but no one was getting very excited about it. The arrival of the new Beaujolais gave people an excuse to tipple, not that they needed any, life being what it is and alcohol what it is.

  Nigel sat outside on the terrace, his overcoat colla
r turned up against the brisk and unexpected wind. He was beautifully dressed in the sort of Saville Row tweed suit that only gets better as it grows older, and thus is a boon to impecunious gentlemen who can’t afford a new wardrobe every year or even every ten years. Nigel was smoking a long cigarette butt he had found in the ashtray when he sat down. When the waiter came, Nigel ordered a demitasse and a carafe of plain water. It was chilly on the terrace, but this was the first time he’d been outside Schumacher’s apartment in three days.

  Jean-Claude showed up before he finished the cigarette, wearing a baggy blue-and-red sweater over his skinny frame, his dark hair sleeked back in Latin gigolo style, a habitual sneer on his face even while blowing on his hands.

  Keeping both hands in his pockets, Jean-Claude dropped into a white ironwork chair. When the waiter came over he ordered a Negroni, and a brandy and coffee for Nigel.

  Jean-Claude was broke at this time, too, but not as broke as Nigel. Jean-Claude was eating, at least, though Le Chat Verte served arguably the worst food in Paris. It was a nightclub on one of those sinister little side streets off the rue Blanche in Pigalle. Jean-Claude got one meal a day there in return for keeping the clientele in line and acting as bodyguard for the Iraqi owner, who had a problem with some people sent by the Baathist party back home to teach him some respect. What they were annoyed about had happened long ago. What al-Targi had done to earn their displeasure escaped everyone’s recollection. All anyone knew was there was still a score to be settled. But not while Jean-Claude was on shift.

  Jean-Claude was not one of your big bruisers. He was about five foot eight, 120 pounds, with stringy muscles and quick reflexes. “What need do I have for muscles?” Jean-Claude used to say. “It takes no great strength to beat up a woman. As for men—a pistol, a knife …” He shrugged, the expressive Apache shrug with downturned mouth.

  Jean-Claude was a type. Maybe his long-range prospects weren’t so good, but so far his mad dog image had stood him in good stead. Like Nigel, he was waiting for something to turn up.

  “Good of you, old boy,” Nigel said when the drinks came. “Come into an inheritance, have you?”

  Jean-Claude shrugged. “Fifi insisted on making me a little loan. But I fear it is the last. She is—how you Britishers say it?— tapped out.”

  “It’s the Americans who say that,” Nigel said. “But the meaning is universal. Hob thinks there may be a little dividend soon.”

  Jean-Claude curled his lower lip in a gesture that meant, I’ll believe it when I see it, then winked to show he didn’t really mean it.

  “About time the agency paid us something for our work. Has he found a wealthy investor?”

  “Something like that,” Nigel said. “He’s escorting a woman from New York to Paris and getting ten thousand dollars for it and a free ticket to De Gaulle.”

  Jean-Claude made a typically Gallic gesture and said, “Peste! I’d like a job like that! Who is he working for?”

  “I don’t think you met him,” Nigel said. “His name is Max Rosen and he spent one summer in Ibiza. But I think you were in Norway that summer with the countess.”

  “Ah yes, the duchess,” Jean-Claude said, kissing his fingertips and rolling his eyes as one who remembers past bounties. “But I came back to Ibiza in time to meet Rosen. I was staying with Allan Darby and Sue, don’t you remember?”

  “Of course, old boy. I was staying with poor old Elmyr.”

  “And of course I know about Rosen’s agency.”

  “What do you mean, ‘of course’?”

  “Is it not obvious,” said Jean-Claude, “that when one has an interest in the ladies, it pays to befriend one who employs beautiful young models? I called upon Max Rosen upon the occasion of my visit to New York. He—how do you say it?—fixed me up?”

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s the word you’re looking for,” said Nigel.

  “Fixed me up with a stunning young black woman who showed me the sights of Harlem.”

  “Well, this Rosen has hired Hob to locate and escort a young lady back to Paris. And I understand the young lady will not prove hard to find.”

  “And he is paying ten thousand dollars for this,” Jean-Claude said.

  “And a one-way ticket to Paris worth another five hundred, over a thousand if it’s first-class, as I suspect.”

  Jean-Claude thought for a while. “It is a lot of money.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking.”

  “Too much for an escort. Not enough for a mule.”

  “I beg your pardon, old boy?”

  “A mule,” Jean-Claude said, “is a person who carries narcotics through customs on behalf of another person.”

  “I know what a mule is,” Nigel said. “I taught you the term myself. Are you implying that Hob would smuggle narcotics for ten thousand dollars?”

  “Certainly not. I believe Hob would not smuggle narcotics again for any price. Not after Turkey. But I think someone might use him. Put something into his suitcase before it goes through customs. It’s been done plenty of times.”

  “Hob would never fall for an old one like that,” Nigel said, but he didn’t sound entirely certain.

  “Hob needs ten thousand for the traspaso,” Jean-Claude said. “He’s apt to not think too far beyond that, n’cest pas?”

  “Certainement,” Nigel said slowly. “But is there any reason to suspect that this Max, this model agent, is a dope smuggler?”

  Jean-Claude shrugged again, a how-should-I-know shrug. “But we could make a few phone calls and see what we could find out.”

  Nigel threw back his brandy, and then the coffee. He stood up. “I think we should do just that.”

  21

  Aurora and Emilio met at the Carnival Bar. Emilio was there when Aurora arrived. She came into the bar, wearing one of the prettiest traveling suits Emilio had ever seen her in. It had a short jacket that flounced at the hips, and a short skirt revealing her great long skinny model’s legs. She wore a little hat with a veil. She looked good enough to eat, but in that cold heartless model way that Emilio found so exciting.

  He was a big, strong-looking man in his thirties, this Emilio, and he had blond Irish looks that belied his Hispanic name. He was not very well dressed in a brown gabardine suit that came from Macy’s rather than a designer’s boutique.

  Aurora wasted no time. She could be very straightforward.

  “Emilio,” she said, “I’m sorry but something has come up. I’m going to be out of town for a while.”

  Oddly enough, Emilio had been expecting something like that. Still, he feigned an appropriate degree of surprise.

  “Oh, really? What’s up?”

  “I’m going to model in Paris. I’ve just been sent for.”

  “Paris, France?”

  “That’s the one. I leave in the morning.”

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes. It’s crazy, isn’t it. But you know how Max is.”

  “All pretty sudden,” he commented. “Anyone seeing you to the airport?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is. A private detective Max hired to escort me over.”

  Emilio whistled softly. “A private detective? Sounds like Max really wants you.”

  Aurora smiled. “He’s such a silly man.”

  “Well, what can I say? I hate to see ya go. But congratulations, babe. How did Max swing this deal?”

  “I really don’t know. I think he’s been working on it for a long time.”

  Looking as innocent as possible, Emilio said, “Anything to the rumor that Max is joining up with Dartois?”

  Aurora looked at him. “How did you hear about that?”

  Emilio shrugged. “You know, word gets out on the street.”

  “I don’t know nothing about Max’s business,” Aurora said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Well, whatever,” Emilio said. “Got time for dinner? Or at least a drink?”

  “You know I’d love to,” Aurora said, “but I’ve really got a
lot of things to do. I’ll call you when I get back. And in the meantime, you can expect a postcard from Paris!”

  She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, made a gallant little wave, and was off. The doorman called a taxi and put her and her suitcase into it. Emilio watched as the taxi drove off. He was smiling, but he wasn’t amused.

  Emilio finished his drink and paid. He went to the telephone at the end of the bar and made a call. He spoke for a few minutes, then left the bar and took a taxi to the DEA office downtown. On the way he shed his florid tie and rearranged his hair. By the time he reached the office on Worth Street he looked like a normal citizen rather than a street hood with vulgar dress tastes he’d picked up from Mickey Rourke movies.

  Lanky, hollow-chested Superintendent Allan Woodrow was in his office when Emilio arrived. Woodrow was drowsing at his desk among the most-wanted bulletins. He looked up when Emilio arrived. “So what’s happening, Emilio?”

  “The Max Rosen case. It’s finally opening up. His girlfriend is going to Paris.”

  “So?”

  “Well, I figure something big is happening.”

  “Like what?”

  “Max is a key dope guy. I figure he’s setting up a coke connection in France.”

  “Maybe. So?”

  “This lady of his. She’s bound to be bringing in some product for him.”

  “Well, easy enough to have her searched at French customs.”

  “She won’t be carrying it herself. There’s a guy who’s going with her. A private detective. He’ll be carrying it. It’s obvious that’s why he’s along. To be the mule. And to guard it once the stuff is in Paris.”