Draconian New York (Hob Draconian Book 1)

by Robert Sheckley

  “You could be right, Emilio. But we don’t really know. It’s all conjecture, isn’t it?”

  “I think there’s enough cause to alert Paris.”

  “No problem there. We’ve been working with them.”

  “But I don’t want them to bust these people at customs. I want them to let them through and put a trace on them. We don’t want to arrest some mule. Not after all the time we’ve put in on this case. We don’t even want a girlfriend of a dope dealer. We want Max himself, and some of his associates, higher up if we can get them. We want to see these people handing the dope over to Max.”

  “You’re sure there’s going to be dope?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve got my contacts. What about it?”

  “What about what? We can ask Paris for cooperation. Maybe they’ll do the tail, too, if we ask them nice. What else do you want?”

  “I want to go there myself. I’ve been working on Max Rosen for almost two years. I want to be in at the kill.”

  “Emilio, you don’t even speak French!”

  “But I know what I’m doing. I don’t trust these French not to screw it up. They do that a lot, you know?”

  “We screw up some ourselves, Emilio.”

  “I don’t. I’ll make sure it goes right. And I want to be in there at the kill.”

  “Sorry, I can’t authorize it.”

  “Then you can give me some leave time.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve been undercover on this thing for a long time. I have leave time coming up. I’ll go to Paris at my own expense.”

  “Emilio, this is not a good idea.”

  “Just sign my papers, okay? I’m calling Air France.”

  22

  Nigel and Jean-Claude met again at Le Lapin Agile in the early afternoon.

  “Before anything else,” Nigel said, “there are a few things we need to do. We need to get our hands on some money. I don’t even have a metro ticket. Also, I have an idea.”

  Jean-Claude: “What is it?”

  “Hob flies in tomorrow. He’ll be carrying this stuff on him. It’s obvious he’s being set up. We have to do something about it.”

  “Telephone him,” Jean-Claude suggested. “You can still use the phone in this place where you’re staying, n’cest pas? Call him and warn him.”

  “That won’t do,” Nigel said. “You know Hob. He’s a hothead. He’ll have it out with whoever he’s dealing with on the New York end. They’ll scrub the deal, assuming they don’t scrub him. Take him out of it. Do it later with someone else.”

  “Well, what of that? Hob will be safe.”

  “That’s not quite good enough, old boy. The reason Max is paying him so much money to accompany the woman to Paris is so that Hob, wittingly or not, will act as courier. Getting Hob to carry this package to France is the whole point of the operation. If Hob doesn’t do it, there’ll be no payoff.”

  “And no money for us,” Jean-Claude said thoughtfully.

  “It’s worse than that, you silly twit. He won’t be able to pay off on his finca. He’ll lose it.”

  “Ah,” said Jean-Claude. “That would be a pity, of course.”

  “You bet your boots it would be a pity. Not just for Hob. That finca is ours, too.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “You’ve heard him say it often enough. The finca is for all of Hob’s friends. It belongs to all of us. He means that literally. He sees himself as responsible for providing the place, but he doesn’t consider it exclusively his.”

  “Well then, the finca is ours, too. What of it?”

  “That finca is our insurance policy, Jean-Claude, the place we can go when we bust out everywhere else, when we’re too feeble to hire out for anything and too old and ugly to attract a woman. It’s the place where we can live free the rest of our lives. It’s our retirement home, the old soldiers’ home, sailors’ snug harbor, the only one we’ll ever have. Our place in the sun. Ours! Get that into your head. Not just Hob’s. Ours, too.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “You know Hob. You’ve heard him talk about the agency and the finca enough. What do you think?”

  Jean-Claude bent his narrow head with the dark brillian-tined hair combed straight back. He made thinking movements with his mouth. His thin knife of a nose twitched. You could almost see the thoughts pouring onto the slate gray computer screens of his eyes. His hand reached out blindly and Nigel slipped one of his last Disque Bleus into it. It was that crucial a moment.

  Jean-Claude lit up and blew a thin double plume of smoke through his nostrils. He said, “Peste!”

  “Exactly,” Nigel said.

  “I think you are correct in your assessment of Hob’s character,” Jean-Claude said. “It is our place, bought at least in part out of our unpaid wages. And we will lose it if Hob doesn’t pay off this traspaso. Nigel, we must not lose our place in the sun!”

  “Agreed,” Nigel said.

  “So it is simple. We say nothing, Hob goes through with it, and all is well.”

  “Not quite so simple,” Nigel said. “This Max. I don’t know him, but from what I’ve heard, I distrust him in the extreme.”

  “What do you think he will do?”

  “I don’t give a damn what he does. But what I fear is that he stiffs Hob.”

  “Comment?”

  “Doesn’t pay him.”

  Jean-Claude considered. His face settled into even more sinister lines than usual. He said, “That would not be wise of him.”

  “As matters stand, we have no control over the situation. But I think there’s something we can do to gain some leverage.”

  “And what is that?”

  “We’ll need the assistance of one of your underworld friends.”

  “Ah,” Jean-Claude said.

  The Paris underworld is not on the usual tourist beat save for the traditional haunts in Montmartre and Montparnasse. Like the famous monuments and the less well known insane asylums, there are regional centers for organized crime all over the city. The rue Rambuteau has been a favorite ever since the Centre Pompidou was put up. Before that, Les Halles was a traditional area for those battening off the meat and produce industries. The Café Valentine in the place d’ltalie is a favorite of Algerian gangsters. Their Vietnamese counterparts hang out at the Café Ho Ha on a street with no name off the avenue d’Ivry close to metro Tolbiac. The Chinese have several cafés of their own not far from there, off the boulevard Massena where it joins Kellerman. Corsican heavies stay away from the Thirteenth, preferring to congregate at the Polo Bar in the place des Vosges. These are the main areas at present writing. In addition there are several international cafés where gangsters of all nationalities are welcome. The best known of these is the Lac d’Or restaurant in Belleville. Here, amid the steaming smells of dim sum, latter-day Apaches and toughs from all over can be sure of a warm welcome. Even the South Americans sometimes come here, forsaking their usual roost in the back room of the restaurant Brazil near the Bourse. It was to the Lac d’Or that Nigel and Jean-Claude repaired.

  Their waiter recognized them, but, in his inscrutable way, pretended not to. They were served tea, and ordered a plate of barbecued pork to nibble on while they sized up their surroundings. The Lac d’Or was a place where most of the criminal element put in an appearance at least once a day. It was a cross between a lowlife casting studio and a goniff’s hiring hall. Nigel had never been here before, but Jean-Claude was quite familiar with the place. Although he wasn’t exactly a criminal himself, Jean-Claude liked criminals and tended to spend a lot of time in their company. He was one of those people who thrive on the appearance of the sinister.

  “Remember,” Nigel told him, “we need someone we can rely on. No freelancing on this job. He must do exactly what he is told. And above all, no violence. I could never forgive myself if anything happened to Hob.”

  “Don’t worry so much,” Jean-Claude said crossly. “I’m looking for one
particular person. He’ll do exactly as I say.”

  “What makes you so sure of that?”

  “Because he’s married to my cousin Sabine.… There he is!”

  The person Jean-Claude was referring to was a medium-sized man of Arab features with a small, well-trimmed dark beard. Olive skin. Dark, expressive eyes. Dark suit and dark tie. He couldn’t have advertised any better with a neon sign. When he saw Jean-Claude, his face lit up. He came over, they shook hands and ca-va’ed each other, Nigel was introduced, and the new man, whose name was Habib, sat down and ordered a tea and a plate of egg rolls. Habib and Jean-Claude exchanged family information. Then Jean-Claude got down to it.

  “You working these days?”

  Habib gave an expressive shrug and a mouth gesture indicating he had seen better days.

  “I’ve got a little job for you.”

  Raised eyebrows indicating cautious interest.

  “You don’t get anything out of it but what I pay you.”

  A nod.

  “It’s a stickup job.”

  “Those are more expensive,” Habib said automatically.

  “Be tranquil, wait until I tell you about it before you try to jack up the price.”

  Half-closed eyes indicating that he was listening.

  “A certain person is arriving at De Gaulle tomorrow evening. Late. We’ll need the services also of your cousin the taxi driver.”

  “Ali will cost extra.”

  “Will you have the decency to wait and listen to the entire proposition? You’ll pick up this fare at De Gaulle. You’ll carry a sign with his name. I will also describe him to you. There’ll be a woman with him.”

  Habib made as if to speak. Nigel put in for him, “That’ll cost more.”

  Jean-Claude said, “Your cousin will take them to whatever backstreet in Belleville or Port-Royal that you prefer. You know the district better than I do. You will rob the man of his luggage, but not what is on his person. You will take from his luggage only a certain package which I will describe to you. You will bring it to me, unopened. For this I will pay you five thousand francs.”

  Habib thought it over, turned it around in his mind, and said, “Ten thousand. And an extra five thousand for Ali.”

  23

  For the next half hour, Hob and Dorrie took turns trying to call Aurora at her apartment. They got her answering machine, but not Aurora herself. A call to the photo studio where she was working that week didn’t find her, either. No one knew where she was.

  Finally Dorrie had an idea. “There’s this place she mentioned downtown, where she works out sometimes.”

  “Downtown where?”

  “It’s in Chinatown.”

  “Where she works out? What do you mean, works out?”

  “Exercises. Hatha yoga, I think it is called.”

  It seemed to Hob that Dorrie’s expression made it plain that she wouldn’t be interested in putting her own body through anything that sweaty and strenuous. Not in public, anyhow.

  “Can we call them?” Hob asked.

  “I’m not sure of the name. But I know it’s on Mott just in from Canal.”

  They left Kelly in Max’s apartment, sitting in the kitchenette and drinking beer, ready to answer the phones in case Aurora should call in. They caught a taxi within half a block of the apartment.

  The Five Points Gaming Club was located above a big Chinese grocery on Canal near the corner of Mott and Pell Streets. Hob and Dorrie walked through the grocery, past the piles of bok choy and winter melon, past Chinese housewives in black silk pants and flowering tops and stiff Mandarin collars embroidered with crimson thread, arguing the price of mandrake root with wiry old men with faces like wrinkled oranges; and all the while children played in the aisles and chewed on strips of barbecued beef. A fat Chinese man pushed a broom over the sawdust-scattered floor as the big fans turned slowly overhead. The warm moist summer air was heavy with the odors of salted shrimp and bêche-de-mer.

  “You sure this is the right place?” Hob asked.

  Dorrie shrugged. “The entrance to the club is right behind here.”

  Hob and Dorrie went to the back of the grocery, past the barrels of shark fins and the bins of white-veined green cabbages, past the jars of hoisin sauce and the tall tapering bottles of imported soy sauce from Hong Kong, to a door marked Private and Privileged that led to a flight of stairs. At the end of a dusty corridor was a door with a sign reading Five Points Athletic and Gaming Club.

  Inside, Hob saw a boxing ring in the center of a large room, with two Oriental boys sparring with big red gloves. Hob tried to remember if there had ever been any great Chinese boxers, but couldn’t think of one. The place smelled of sweat and tangerine peel. In another part of the room, several tables had been set up with fan-tan and mah-jongg layouts. There were people seated around these tables. As Hob had suspected, the Five Points Gaming Club was a cover for an old-style gambling place. At a third table four players, two of them Caucasian, or perhaps Semitic, or a mixture, were playing bridge.

  Dorrie and Hob drifted over to the bridge table. The players continued playing with elaborate unconcern. After about five minutes, one of the players, a Chinese, said, “Kin we help you, bub?” He had the longest fingernails Hob had ever seen outside of a Fu Manchu movie.

  “Is there a Mr. Horner here?” Dorrie asked. To Hob, she said, “That’s who Aurora told me to ask for.”

  The Chinese fellow jerked his thumb toward the far corner of the room. Hob saw a white man in black shorts and a pocket-less white T-shirt slapping away at a speed bag. He looked like a middleweight, though Hob was no expert on these matters. He was about five foot nine, with heavy sloping shoulders and a thickening waist. He had a tough New York face of the snubnosed variety. Hob sensed immediately that he and the boxer would never be really close friends.

  As they approached him, Dorrie and Hob exchanged glances. In one of those psychic moments that sometimes occur in even the worst of relationships, they decided silently that it would be better if Dorrie handled this one.

  Dorrie walked up to the boxer, Hob trailing, and said, “Mr. Horner? I’m Dorrie Tyler of Max Rosen Associates. This is Mr. Draconian, my associate.”

  “Pleased ta meetcha,” Horner said, not looking pleased at all.

  “We are trying to locate Miss Aurora Sanchez,” Dorrie continued. “A very important modeling job has come up for her. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this job could make her rich and famous. But we need to know if she wants the job, and we need an answer rather quickly, otherwise someone else will be chosen. Can you help us find her?”

  Jack Horner looked hard at Dorrie, then at Hob. His frown drew his eyebrows together like a Do Not Trespass sign written in hairy cuneiform.

  “I gotta shower and dress,” he said. “Then, okay, yeah, I think I can help ya.”

  “You see?” Dorrie said, after he had gone away to shower. “When you talk nice to people, you get results.”

  Hob liked a woman who was not afraid to say “I told you so.” As it turned out, Dorrie was wrong. But that was only to be expected.

  Jack Horner did not impress Hob any more dressed than he had wearing boxing trunks. He had one of those flat little hats like Gene Hackman wore in The French Connection—a hat that would make you look like an idiot even if you were Socrates and Einstein rolled into one. Add to this that Horner was wearing a sort of knit jacket in white and black and orange, the sort of thing that only a color-blind pug suffering from an extreme case of vulgaritis could have picked. But of course, on Canal Street it didn’t seem too weird an outfit.

  “Where are we going?” Dorrie asked, once they were on the street.

  “You want Aurora?” Horner said. “I got to show you something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Hey, I’m showing it to you, ain’t I?”

  On a person like Horner, “ain’t” didn’t sound illiterate; it sounded like a word from the undecipherable language of a tribe that h
ated you.

  Horner hurried them down Canal to White Street. They turned left past the little park, with the East River beyond it opening into New York Bay. It was another country entirely, that bay, and the other bays like it, that made up the misty fen-haunted world of aquatic New York. They came to 125 White Street. It was a restaurant named Grocetti’s, and Horner stopped. “Here, here’s the place.” Without another word he turned on his heel and left.

  Andrew, a waiter at Grocetti’s, remembered that Aurora had been in about half an hour ago.

  “Sure, of course I remember her,” he said. He was a tall, delicate-looking young man with an elaborate hairdo and a prominent Adam’s apple. “She comes in here once, twice a week for a tequila sunrise, meets some friends.”

  “Do you have any idea where she’s gone?” Hob asked.

  Andrew thought long and hard. His brow creased with concentration. Hob finally helped him along with one of Max’s twenties.

  “She’s probably gone to Doris Castillo’s party,” he said at last. “It’s the sort of event she wouldn’t miss.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “One-oh-one Duane Street.”

  “What apartment number?”

  He shrugged. “You get there, you’ll see for yourself which apartment.”

  The waiter was correct: there was no trouble finding Doris Castillo’s party. It was in a part of Tribeca normally deserted except for meat-packers and their friends. But now, cars and limos were parked all up and down the block. Hand-lettered signs on the front of the building pointed the direction. A press car from one of the cable networks was present.

  They rode up to Doris Castillo’s apartment in a freight elevator with two men in tuxedos. The elevator opened onto a room about the size of a football field. There were about a thousand people present, give or take a few hundred. Scattered around the room were workbenches filled with sculptures in various stages of completion, running the gamut from bare armatures to completed busts. There were flashing and winking exhibits of neon art. There were six-foot cardboard crayons and gigantic cardboard packs of Lucky Strikes. There was a buffet table loaded with good things. Hob helped himself to an open-faced turkey-and-avocado sandwich on black seed rye. He was pretty sure the rye came from Zabar’s. He found a Negro Modelo and poured half of it into a paper cup. While he was doing that, Dorrie was circulating. She came back after a short while with a tall, very attractive girl with a great head of reddish gold hair and a neat, engaging smile. “Hob,” Dorrie said, “I want you to meet Aurora Sanchez. Aurora, this is Hob Draconian.” And so the search was over.