Trouble in Tahiti

by Hayford Peirce

  “The guy who built this hotel was a half-Tahitian who didn’t have the money to buy the land. The man who owned the land was a Frenchman living back in France, so he leased the land to this local on a thirty-year renewable lease. When we bought it, we were actually buying the remainder of the lease and whatever improvements were on it. Every month we pay rent to the guy in France.”

  “But when the lease is up, you don’t have to give him the hotel?”

  “No, because we have the right to renew for another thirty years. It’s a standard sort of deal in Tahiti. What’s happening is that there’s twenty-one years to go on the lease, but now the guy in France has sold the land to these three Frenchmen.”

  “So you just pay your rent to them, right? What’s the difference?”

  Bob stared into his liqueur. “They want to break the lease and take over the land and put up their own high-rise hotel. They said they’d buy us out, but their offers are ridiculous, and anyway, it’s the principle of the thing. What the hell, we don’t need the money. But this our baby.”

  Susan moved closer, and now the length of her thigh came to rest against mine. “None of that would be a problem, Rocky, we’ve seen our lawyers, there’s nothing they can do to break the lease.”

  “What we’re afraid of,” said Bob softly, with downcast eyes, as if he were admitting some unmanly act, “is that they’re going to try to break us—literally.”

  I stared at him. “How do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Threats, menaces, little hints of what could happen if we don’t come to an agreement. How a bungalow might burn down some night, or the restaurant. Or there might be a bad case of food poisoning. Or someone might have an accident out swimming. Like Susan or me.”

  I could feel Susan’s hand begin to tremble, and her leg quivered against my thigh. “One…one night I was alone at the desk and one of them came in and…and put his hands on…me. I started to scream, but he covered my mouth with his hand. He’s very quick and strong. He whispered in my ear…vile things. Then he laughed and pushed me away. He said it was just a sample. Maybe the next time there’d be the three of them. And maybe the gardener would find a body in the bushes the next morning.…”

  I squeezed her hand involuntarily. “Jesus,” I said. “And these characters have the guff to stay here?” I turned to stare at the three Frenchmen wonderingly. They were puffing smoke from long cigars and rolling large cognac snifters in their hands.

  Bob let out his breath. “Almost. They have a rented house somewhere, and they spend a lot of time on their yacht. But they come by for dinner every now and then, just to laugh at us. After that…episode with Susan I went to town the next day and grabbed the son of a bitch who did it and started to pound on him. I got a couple of good shots in, but his two pals jumped in and held me off. They really are a tough bunch of bastards, that’s what makes them so scary. There wasn’t much point in going to the cops—whatever one of them does, the other two can always swear they were all sitting around on their yacht. I think they were all three of them paratroopers when the French were fighting in Algeria. And those paratroopers were tough customers. At least they were good at torturing people.”

  Susan leaned closer. “They…they hinted, just to scare us, maybe, that they’d been in the OAS, you know, the Organization de l’Armée Secrète that revolted when de Gaulle gave Algeria its independence and tried to kill de Gaulle and take over France.”

  “I’ve heard of them,” I said. “My parents used to talk about them. They’re the ones that hired that assassin in that Day of the Jackal movie. A really nasty bunch of guys.”

  “It was a nasty war stamping them out,” said Bob somberly. “Lots of killing and torturing on both sides. It’s left a scar on France. That’s what scares us about these three. Killing and torture and extortion are right up their alley. Hell, before they joined the OAS and learned how to rob banks and blow up cafés, they were probably taught by the regular army how to burn down places, and poison people, and strangle them so it looks like drowning.…”

  Susan leaned closer still, until her lips were inches from mine and I could feel her warm breath on my face. “Will you help us, Rocky?” she breathed. “Will you help us?”

  “Jesus.” I pulled my hand away from hers and pushed my chair back. I took a deep breath and looked up at the stars. They didn’t make my thinking any clearer. My gaze came back to Bob, then Susan. They were staring at me in rapt expectation. “What exactly do you think I could do? What do you want me to do?”

  Bob’s Adam’s apple worked, and Susan lowered her eyes to study the backs of her hands. There was a long silence. Inside the restaurant the three Frenchmen had stubbed out their cigars and were climbing leisurely to their feet. I watched them disappear into the night.

  “Well,” said Bob, licking his lips nervously, “I guess what we want is your expert opinion. What we should do. And if you think it’s something the police here couldn’t handle…well, like I said, money’s really no object. We’re not professionals like you. All…all we want is to be left in peace. I guess we’d…we’d want you…to take any steps…you thought might do…the trick.”

  He buried his face in the brandy snifter. Susan was still absorbed by the study of her hands: they were busy now fiddling with the zipper on her jumpsuit.

  “I see,” I said at last. I touched my cheek with the back of my fingers. It felt curiously hot. I drank what was left in my water glass and pushed aside the remains of the brandy. “An interesting proposition,” I said finally. “You’ve caught me by surprise. Tell you what: let me sleep on it, and we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  “Good enough,” said Bob. “We can’t ask for more than that.”

  “Oh, Rocky, thank you,” said Susan. “If only.…” Her voice trailed off.

  I gave them a brief, meaningless smile, and stumbled off into the darkness.

  * * * *

  I slept on it all right, and towards the end of the next morning I found them by the front desk. They seemed to have been doing the same. We eyed each other with wary embarrassment, as if all of us were just piecing together dim memories from the same drunken orgy, one in which we’d all participated in particularly bestial acts. There was a slight quaver to my hands.

  “I don’t think this is the sort of thing I could handle,” I said without preamble. “I’m a foreigner in a strange country. I don’t have any official standing. There’s three of them, and one of me.” I looked at them bleakly. “And I’m an ex-cop, not an ex-killer.”

  Their eyes widened, and their mouths opened to protest. I smiled fractionally, to take some of the sting from the words. After all, we’d all had a lot to drink the night before, and even sober it’s easy enough to misjudge people and their motives.

  Sometimes.

  I raised a hand to still their protests. “You wanted my advice, here it is. I think you’re badly underestimating the resources of the local police and gendarmes. You’re respectable local residents in good standing, with a business that’s important to the territory, and even more important than that, you’ve got a lot of money. I’ve always heard that French cops are pretty good at defending the rights of people with a lot of money, from gangsters or anyone else. For one thing, they don’t have to worry about the Supreme Court and the ACLU. So if I was you, I’d forget about LaRoche and go by and have a quiet chat with the Chief, and maybe drop a hint of that OAS business to some of the security people. I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble.”

  They didn’t say anything, just looked into each other’s eyes and nodded slowly. Was that relief I saw etched on their faces?

  As I said: it’s hard to judge people and their motives.

  CHAPTER 6

  The days passed. The Wests and I exchanged casual greetings when our paths crossed. The weather was hot and dry. I swam in the lagoon and snorkeled by the reef. I flew to Moorea and spent a night at the Club Med, where I became friendly with a French lady. I made day trips around
the island and into the hills. I took a Chinese girl to dinner, and a Tahitian girl dancing. An American woman of a certain age and forthright desires introduced herself to me at the hotel but I escaped her charms. I saw Hinano twice, and we made arrangements to spend the weekend together. Occasionally I drove into town on small errands.

  I was driving slowly down the Papeete waterfront past the dozens of yachts from all over the world tied up on the waterfront when I caught a glimpse of the three Frenchmen standing on the stern of a long black two-masted yacht. There was just time to read the words Aventurier, Marseille in golden script on the stern before I was swept on past by the traffic.

  Late that same afternoon I sat at a sidewalk café across the street from the boat and watched the sunset form behind Moorea. In a few brief minutes the sky passed from blue to gray to a pale lemon-yellow wash that flooded the whole western horizon. A tall slim auburn-haired woman in an ultra-short mini-skirt such as I hadn’t seen in years stepped briskly down from the stern of the Aventurier and strutted off into the dusk. She had long, exquisitely muscled calves and thighs, and I watched them until she was out of sight. I shook my head ruefully. All a man need to attract such companionship, it seemed, was the possession of a seventy-foot hunk of boat. I sipped my beer pensively, awaiting the arrival of the tiny golden-skinned Chinese girl with whom I’d been out the night before.

  Even without a seventy-foot boat, I decided, life was not without its charms.

  I sat there for another hour, as twilight turned to night, and beer to whiskey. One more whiskey, and I decided it was demeaning to wait any further. I had been in Tahiti long enough now to accept the local customs philosophically. I finished my drink and strolled down the waterfront a hundred yards or so to Acajou’s restaurant. After a solitary meal I crossed the street to the Vaima Café and purchased a cigar at the counter. I found a table in the shadows of some foliage and settled down with a brandy to watch the world roll by.

  Some time later I became aware that the three Frenchmen from the Aventurier had taken seats at the table next to mine and had produced their own cigars. I puffed a smoke ring contemplatively, and watching it drift skyward asked myself, “Why not?”

  When there was a lull in their conversation, I leaned across and said in my most refined French, “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I couldn’t help noticing your fine ship, the Aventurier. Tell me, is there any possibility she might be for sale or for charter?” I smiling winningly.

  Unhurried, they turned to examine me, their eyebrows raised. After a moment, the largest of the three, a thick-bodied, dark-complexioned man with short, curly, salt-and-pepper hair gestured amiably with his cigar in the direction of my own. “Pull up a chair, sir, and join us. It’s seldom we can find anyone willing to put up with the smell of the three of ours.”

  I laughed, and introduced myself. “Alain LaRoche, originally from Paris, but now based in Chicago.” Their handshakes were firm. The largest was Jérôme Baudchon, the smallest Jean-Paul Luria, and the oldest Yves-Louis Buisson. Jean-Paul had a thin, pale face with a neat moustache, while Yves-Louis had cropped white hair and extraordinarily large hands. All three of them were a year or so on either side of fifty and in the neighborhood of two hundred pounds, so they were far from being old and decrepit. They had watchful eyes and calm, thoughtful faces that gave nothing away. They looked exactly what you might expect three tough ex-paras who had prospered in civilian life to look like. Or three well-dressed, well-mannered French gangsters, for that matter.

  I ordered a round of drinks and told them I was visiting on a combined business and pleasure trip. “My wife and kids have been talking about taking a couple of years off and going around the world, so I’m looking into the yacht situation. I don’t know anything about boats myself, but I do know I want one that’s big enough, and I know I can always find plenty of people who do know how to sail them.”

  “Yes, very wise,” said Yves-Louis, the gray-haired one. “A yacht should first of all be large enough for one’s comfort. I don’t think we have any plans to sell our own, but the idea of chartering it had never occurred to us. I assume you’d want it for an extended period of time?”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps for a charter it would be best to try it for a month or so in these waters first. Then if that seemed satisfactory to all parties, we could discuss it further. But for a trip of two years’ duration,” I warned, “an outright purchase would make far better financial sense.”

  “What sort of business are in, if you don’t mind my asking, Monsieur LaRoche?” asked the thin-faced one, Jean-Paul, after we had discussed boats for a few more minutes. “We ourselves are retired, but we try to keep up with the business world.”

  “Not at all, Monsieur Luria. Various kinds of real estate, all of it in the Midwest, all of it commercial. Some apartments and some hotel properties.” I hoped they knew nothing about real estate, particularly in the Midwestern United States. “Which in a sense is why I’m down here. My partners and I are getting too old for these Midwestern winters—have you ever been in Chicago in January, gentlemen?” I smiled bleakly. “So we are looking into the prospects of acquiring or building a hotel here in Polynesia.”

  Jérôme, the largest of the three, summoned the waitress for refills. “That’s interesting,” he said. “So you think the future of tourism here justifies such an investment?” He pursed his lips while waggling his fingers in that French gesture indicative of doubt. “Myself, I’m not so certain about the prospects. And building costs here are exorbitant.”

  “It’s a complex situation,” I agreed. “Naturally we would study it very carefully before making even a tentative commitment.”

  “What exactly do you have in mind?” asked Jean-Paul while he relit his cigar with a heavy silver lighter. I could see an intricate design on it, any angry eagle, it looked like, with claws extended, and a number about its head. A souvenir of his paratroop regiment, I supposed.

  “Nothing predetermined,” I replied. “It might be less of a strain to purchase an existing hotel. For instance, there are two in Moorea which are on the market, both of them too small to be profitable in my opinion, and I’ve heard it rumored that the Taaone here in Tahiti is available.”

  Yves-Louis tapped the table lightly with his fingertips as if to a musical rhythm; Jean-Paul sipped his cognac; Jérôme exhaled cigar smoke languidly.

  “An agreeable spot, the Taaone,” said Yves-Louis. “We dine there from time to time. The wife of the manager is extremely attractive. But business certainly seems to be very slow whenever we go by, so I suppose it’s not surprising it’s for sale. Are you actually in touch with the owner?”

  “Heavens no! I don’t even know who he is. It was the merest rumor—you know what they’re like in Tahiti.”

  Jérôme laughed. “We do indeed. ‘Believe nothing you hear,’ is our motto.”

  “In many ways a charming fellow,” said Jean-Paul.

  “Who, that American, Monsieur West?” I asked. “Yes, very pleasant. I’m actually staying there, I guess that’s why I’ve heard vague rumors, and have talked to him two or three times, but not about buying the hotel, you understand.”

  “Very wise,” agreed Yves-Louis. “It is always best to proceed cautiously in business affairs. For instance: this Monsieur West.” He grimaced dubiously. “One has heard it said that he is not a man of sound business judgement, that he has overextended himself, that perhaps his hotel is experiencing serious financial difficulties.”

  “I see. Then you think it is for sale?”

  Jérôme smiled sardonically. “Everything is for sale if the price is right.”

  “But first,” said Jean-Paul slowly, “I should be extremely careful about finding out who is actually in a position to put it up for sale. I have heard it said that Monsieur West is the owner.” He shrugged elaborately. “I have heard it suggested that he is only a front man, that there are other parties involved. Like anything in Tahiti, Monsieur LaRoche, there are always rumors.”

/>   I would have been interested in hearing some more of them, but Jérôme asked, “Would you care to come sailing with us sometime?” and for the next half-hour we were back to boats, which among my interests runs nip and tuck with chinchilla farming.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was the day following this somewhat cryptic conversation that I ate an early sandwich at the hotel, grabbed a floral arrangement of vanda orchids I’d purchased earlier in the morning, and set off to the Hôpital de Mamao for its noon visiting hours.

  Before I got to the car, though, I ran into Bob West trudging across the parking lot, his arms full of towels.

  “Housekeeper didn’t come to work today,” he grumbled from behind his load. “The trouble with—”

  “—this country is that even the slaves want to live like tourists,” I finished. “I had a drink with your French gangsters,” I said, curious to see his reaction.

  “What!” Alarm flashed across his bronzed face.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “They think I’m a Frenchman from Chicago interested in buying their yacht. I never mentioned you at all.” Slowly the tension in his face ebbed away. “They did though.”

  He set the towels down on the trunk of the car. “Just what did they say?” he asked lightly.

  I shrugged. “Nothing really. Vague hints that maybe the actual ownership here is a little questionable. Nothing to indicate any interest of their own. Nothing you can put your finger on.”

  He nodded soberly. “I see. Playing it cagy. What did you think of them?”

  I reflected. “As you said, at one time they’ve been a tough bunch of guys. But now they’re well-spoken and pleasant enough. Not obvious gangster or extortionists. If you and Susan hadn’t told me what they were like.…” I shrugged evasively.

  He pursed his lips. “Thanks. I’ll have to think about this.” He picked up the towels and used them to gesture at the orchids in my hands. “Off to see Mareta? Give her out best.”

  She was sitting up in a crisply linened bed, a fluffy blue nightie drawn around her shoulder, and a French fashion magazine in her hands. The bloodstains were gone, her hair was straight and shiny, and even the mercurochrome was muted.