They had seemed startled to see me, but reasonably hospitable considering the hour. Their hospitality, I judged, was due more to their concern for Danielle Payton than to my melting brown eyes. I told them about finding the car at the airport, and the possibility that Danielle had impulsively flown off to a distant isle, with or without companionship.
Susan’s face lit up. “Oh, Rocky, that’s wonderful! That really could be! That’s just the sort of thing Danielle would do. She can be so impulsive, so thoughtless sometimes.”
Bob was more somber. “Let’s hope so. I wonder.…” He began to gnaw a knuckle.
“…if you could start calling every hotel in the outer islands?” I finished for him. “There can’t be more than twenty or thirty of them?”
“If that. But a lot of them are pretty remote, where you have to have the operator make a radio-telephone connection, and they only do that certain times of day. Tell you what, let me work on it, and by ten tomorrow I’ll have been in touch with everyone.”
I stood up. “You’re a pal. By the way, have you seen Hiro lately?”
“Hiro?” They looked at each other blankly, then at me. “Who’s Hiro?”
“The guy Danielle used to bring to your swings.”
“Not Hiro. She…oh.” Bob blinked rapidly. Susan pursed her lips thoughtfully.
“Just asking.” I shook my head ruefully. Neither of them met my eyes. I started toward the stairs, then turned back.
“Look,” I said, “let me give you some free advice. You people are going to have to get used to the idea that if Danielle Payton really turns up kidnapped, the first thing the local cops are going to do is to start looking for anyone who’s connected with her that’s a little bit different from your typical average Frenchman with his little black beret, his loaf of bread, and his glass of red wine. That means people like you and the people you run with. From the cops’ point of view, you’re weirdos.” I held up a hand. “I’m not calling you that: I’m just telling you what cop-think is like. Believe me, I know. You’re weirdos; kidnappers are also weirdos; one equals the other; therefore, roust out all the local weirdos. So you two had better be prepared. For instance: you told me that Danielle didn’t come to your swings. Fine. Good. It took me two hours—me, an outsider—to learn the contrary. How long will it take the local cops?”
“There’s nothing illegal—” began Bob indignantly.
“That’s not the point,” I said harshly. “It’s probably not even relevant. But it’s different. And it’s the sort of thing people tend to lie about. Cops expect lies. They like them. Without lies they’d never solve anything. But when they do discover someone lying to them, that makes them twice as interested in those people. Dig?”
Susan nodded glumly. “Why are you saying all this, Rocky? Do you hate us?” She looked frail and vulnerable.
I stared at her in wonderment: hadn’t she been listening? “Hate you? I’m trying to warn you. The best chance that you and your friends have of coming out of this 100 percent squeaky clean is to put all your heads together and come up with some ideas about who Danielle Payton could have been involved with that might be crazy enough to try a little kidnapping. If you do think of someone, or of anything that might be useful, and I do end up going to the local cops, maybe I can turn that information over to them in such a way that you two wouldn’t be…burned.” I shrugged. “But it’s up to you. You can lie to me as much as you want—I can’t put you in jail.”
“We…we’ll think about what you said,” murmured Susan.
I grinned at them skeptically and clumped up the stairs.
CHAPTER 13
Most of the boat crowd seemed asleep by now, but there were still lights burning on an occasional yacht and after ten minutes of discreet tapping and hoo-haaing I’d dug out enough yachties to be directed to a small, dirty-looking tub called The Book of Dreams. It was from San Diego. I grimaced. Were there any card-carrying non-crazies left in the world?
If there were, they weren’t to be found aboard The Book of Dreams. At my hail, the boat rocked with movement within and a man’s head popped out through the hatch. A moment later he edged his way onto the deck. In the light from the street lamps I could make him out clearly enough. He was worth looking at.
He was about my height, six feet, but twice as wide and seven times as bald. He had arms like a fullback’s thighs, pectorals you could have cracked bricks on, and a washboard stomach that would be handy for doing your laundry at sea. The sodium-vapor light gleamed from his oiled skull. The only clothing he wore on his hairless body was a tiny bikini bathing suit. Whatever his age—and he appeared to be at least fifty—he was as imposing a hunk as I’d come across in a long while.
“Evening,” I said, stepping on board uninvited. He frowned, and there was an involuntary ripple of muscle around his shoulders. “My name’s LaRoche. I’m looking for someone named Billy.”
He scowled, and twisted a corner of the handlebar moustache that was the only hair on his head or body. He seemed to have no eyebrows. “Me,” he stated simply. It was not an encouragement to continue the conversation. He stared at me unblinkingly, his face as unyielding as granite. There was a gold ring in his earlobe, I could see.
“I’m also trying to locate a man named Hiro. He’s Tahitian, I believe. It’s really quite important that I speak to him.”
Billy turned this over in his mind. “Why?”
“I’d be happy to explain it to both of you,” I said untruthfully. I certainly didn’t want this fruity beefcake around while I talked to Hiro about his relationship with a member of what we used to call the fair sex. I didn’t have to be a mind reader to guess that it would not be a conversation Billy would approve of. But it looked if I wanted to talk to Hiro tonight I was going to have to put up with his over-sized chaperon. I smiled winningly.
“You look like a cop,” said Billy at last. He had good instincts, whatever his other faults. “I got hassled by a cop once,” he said thoughtfully.
“Me?” I protested. “A cop? I’m just a private citizen. For chrissake, man, this is Tahiti. Do I look like a French cop?”
“I broke his arm,” he said dreamily. “In three places. I liked that.” He moved aside. “Come on below. Remember that cop’s arm.” He shook his head. “Funny, he never could straighten that arm out afterwards.”
“Hilarious.” I ducked into the murk below and began to wish I’d brought a blackjack with me. I’d left a couple in San Francisco, but they’d be easy enough to make with an old sock and the right amount of sand. If there’s one thing Tahiti’s got, I muttered to myself, it’s sand.
I shook my head. Stop being so crazy, LaRoche. But it probably wasn’t entirely my fault. The inside of the boat was so permeated with the residual fumes of years of pot and hash that I doubt if anyone could have taken a couple of breaths without fueling himself up for blastoff. I blinked twice and cleared my throat. It was already raspy.
At least they didn’t have anything going at the moment, so I could see reasonably clearly in the feeble light of a kerosene lantern. It was about what I’d expected to find on a boat of this size: a cabin area large enough for two moderately-sized cockroaches, with bunks along the sides, a tiny galley, a fold-up table, navigational equipment, dirty clothes, pieces of rope and sail, and all the other flotsam you’d expect to find on a tub as decrepit as this one.
Sitting in the corner of a bunk, staring vacantly into space, was another hunk, Tahitian-style this time, and in his early twenties. Like Billy, he was wearing only a bathing suit, and he was nearly as large. His muscles bulged, but lacked the clear definition of the body-beautiful fanatics. He looked strong without being tough. He had dark curly ringlets of hair that spilled down over a forehead that hardly existed. To call his expression bovine would be to insult the intelligence of cows.
Something about him though, hunkered placidly there in this gently rocking wreck of a ship, stirred a vague image at the back of my mind. I tried to grab it and hold i
t up to the light, but it slithered away.
“Good evening, Hiro,” I said in French, ducking low and sitting down on the end of the same bunk. “My name’s LaRoche.” He nodded distantly, without interest. Billy stood guard at the foot of the ladder, his arms folded across his chest, his mouth half open.
“If you gonna speak French,” he said, “speak slowly. So I understand, see. Hiro…he gets a little confused sometimes.”
I could believe that without any trouble. “Sure. I’m trying to find Danielle,” I went on, scrutinizing his face. There was a flicker in his eyes, and his head swung slowly around.
“Danielle?” he said softly.
“Danielle?” repeated Billy from behind me, not so softly “Who the hell’s Danielle? Hey,” he added suspiciously, “is that a boy or a girl?”
I hesitated, and his bulk loomed over me. “You’re asking me about a girl named Danielle?” he demanded. There was an eerie edge of hysteria to his voice that sent shivers up and down my spine. I saw now that in the confines of a tiny cabin without room to swing it even a blackjack would be useless against someone of Billy’s size and probable thickness of skull. A howitzer might have been useful.
“No,” I said as equably as I could. “Someone named Danielle that maybe Hiro knows.”
“Danielle,” Hiro repeated, and nodded gravely. Whether or not he’d understood what I’d just said, his response enraged Billy. His hand clamped itself around my shoulder like a vise. “I told you, cop,” he hissed, “we don’t know anyone named Danielle.”
“Hiro,” I said in rapid French. “If you don’t tell me where Danielle is, I’ll come back with the gendarmes. They won’t talk to you here, they’ll take you up to the Gendarmerie and talk to you in one of their little iron cells.”
The grip on my shoulder tightened. I hadn’t thought it possible for a man’s fingers to be so painful. I tried to ignore it. “Danielle,” I whispered. “Where is she?” I was trying to keep one eye on Hiro and one on Billy. It wasn’t possible.
“I…I don’t know,” Hiro said. “I—”
“He doesn’t know anyone named Danielle,” roared Billy, mangling my muscles. I grabbed his fingers with my left hand and began to pry them loose. He took no notice. In broken French he spoke over my head to Hiro. “You…not…know…Danielle. No Danielle. No Danielle!” His voice rose to a high-pitched scream. Hiro gaped at him open-mouthed. I gathered myself to spring but it was too late.
He sucker-punched me on the side of the neck with a fist like a boulder. The agony was blinding. Strange lights flew around in my brain. I felt myself crash into something warm and soft. It must have been Hiro. He giggled and slugged me on the cheek. For a moment I tasted the salty sweetness of blood in my mouth, and then I was lying on my back while enormous black shapes hovered above me. The shapes moved, and there was pain throughout my body. They were kicking me, I realized dimly through the thickening haze.
I moaned and grabbed for a foot, a leg, anything. There was a blow to my elbow and my arm went numb. There was a howl of pain, not mine this time, and the kicking stopped. They were barefoot, and hurting themselves as much as me, otherwise I suppose they would have kicked me to death, giggling all the while. I fell back and tried to suck in air. My breath came in agonizing short gasps. I’m strangling, I said to myself hysterically, and began to thrash.
Enormous hooks caught me under the armpits and raised me from where I lay. My head lolled as I tried to make sense of what was happening. My feet were lifted and I felt myself suspended in midair. I focused my eyes enough to see that a blurry shape had materialized around the ends of my legs. My arms dangled uselessly. There were grunts and thuds, and my back was pummeled painfully against sharp edges. Then the air was cool and fresh against my face and with a desperate gasp I pulled it down into my lungs.
I closed my eyes and breathed. Thankfully. Ecstatically.
The pressure around my ankles tightened. I felt myself swinging back and forth and then all the pressure was gone. I floated blissfully, my eyes closed.
I hit the oily harbor like a sack of concrete hitting a sidewalk. The shock drove the breath from my lungs.
The waters closed over my head.
* * * *
There was a loud rattling of my screen door, and an insistent voice calling my name. I moaned and covered my head with a pillow. The voice was muffled but implacable. “Go away,” I groaned weakly, but I knew it was too late. I opened my eyes and hauled my collection of aches and pains from the bed. I stumbled over a damp towel and dim instinct made me wrap it haphazardly around my waist. I peered painfully into the sunlight. I could make out the silhouette of Tamara Payton. Wordlessly I let her in. I could feel my eyes closing.
She pushed me into a chair and thrust something into my hands. I fumbled with it hopelessly with fingers that felt like sausages. “Minute,” I croaked and staggered off to the bathroom and cold running water. Five minutes later, with most of the gunk removed from my eyes, and some of it from my brain, I looked down again at what she had handed me.
There were three items:
An airmail envelope with a colored picture of a Tahitian lagoon printed on one end of it and a local stamp on the other. It was addressed in block letters to Tamara Payton, B.P. 451, Papeete.
A black and white Polaroid photograph of a bedraggled-looked woman sitting against a white backdrop such as a poorly draped sheet, and holding against her body a copy of a Tahitian newspaper.
And a brief note, also in block letters, demanding the payment of five million dollars.
CHAPTER 14
“Your father’s a fool!” Commissaire Tama threw the ransom note disgustedly to his desk. Not the most tactful thing to say to a bereaved daughter perhaps, but I agreed with him. Tamara Payton and I were sitting in the office on the Avenue Bruat from which Commissaire Alexandre Tama ran the Police Judiciaire, waiting for the head of the gendarmes, Colonel Schneider, to make his appearance.
Tamara sat with downcast eyes. The Commissaire turned the photograph, the ransom note, and the envelope over and over in his gigantic hands. He was an enormous Tahitian of about my own age and height but four times fatter. His shoulders could have earned him a spot on the defensive line of the Forty-Niners and his girth could have gained him entry to a championship sumo match. Compared to him, Billy the hunk was strictly a welterweight. He was dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt the size of a tent, dark blue pants, and expensive leather sandals. His jet black hair was thick and glossy and combed straight back and equally black eyes that were disconcertingly intelligent stared at me from his mahogany-colored face. I tried to remember if I had ever met anyone else who radiated such massive self-confidence.
“Fingerprints?” I suggested, with an edge to my voice, not particularly hiding my scorn. “And in the Mercedes at the airport?”
Commissaire Tama scowled from the depths of a gleaming hardwood chair that had obviously been custom-made for his oversize dimensions. “We seldom use them in Tahiti,” he said in English that held only a barely perceptible trace of an accent. “There is no need, I have been informed by my superiors. And no budget for the equipment.”
My neck throbbed where Billy had clobbered it, and I was more than willing to share my discomfort. “I wouldn’t want to be the one who has to tell that to a billionaire United States Senator whose wife is missing,” I said pointedly.
“Ah, but is she missing?” said Tama, deftly deflecting my attack. “When the person who would be in a position to know her best, her own husband, denies she has been kidnapped?”
“I’ve told you,” shouted Tamara, “my father hates my mother! He doesn’t want to believe anything good of her. He’s always trying to run her down. This is just his way of getting even with her.”
“For what?” asked Tama astutely. “What has Mrs. Payton done to your father which would cause him to refuse to believe she has been kidnapped?”
“I don’t know,” wailed Tamara desperately. “I’ve never understood
. She’s a good person and I love her and she’s a wonderful mother! My father is…hateful! I hate him!” She buried her face in her hands. Tama and I looked at each other uncomfortably.
“You say that after Miss Payton showed you the letter…?”
“She called her father,” I said. “He’s somewhere in the state of New Mexico, campaigning for the Senate. I listened to her talking to him. He wouldn’t budge. Just a crazy joke on Mrs. Payton’s part, maybe carried a little further than usual. He even ordered her not to go to the police.”
“Indeed,” said Tama softly. “How interesting. And how peculiar. Particularly if he has no intention of paying the ransom. The man must be demented. I don’t know much about American politics, but it seems to me that it would be extremely difficult for a man to be elected Senator if the voters learned he was refusing to ransom his own wife!”
I nodded. Tama was no fool.
“For someone who doesn’t know much about American politics,” I said into the lengthening silence, “that’s pretty much an American accent you’re talking with. Where did you learn such good English.”
“Hawaii,” he said shortly. “I went to boarding school there for high school.”
I nodded, then reached over to retrieve the ransom note. It had been mailed yesterday at the main post office in Papeete, which was where Tamara had gotten it from her P.O. box earlier this morning. The letters had been traced with a soft pencil using a child’s stenciling kit. It would be impossible to analyze the handwriting. It read, in English:
WE HAVE THE PAYTON LADY. IF YOU CAN SEE, SHE STILL’S ALIVE THIS MORNING. IF YOU WANT TO HAVE HER IN GOOD SHAPE YOU MUST PAY US 5 MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. TELL OUR FATHER THE DIRTY CAPITALIST TO PREPARE THE MONEY. IF WE DON’T HAVE THE MONY WE ARE GOING TO KILL HER, IF YOU GO TO THE POLICE WE ARE GOING TO KILL HER. WE ARE GOING TO CONTACT YOU SOON WITH INSTRUCTIONS HOW TO DELIVERED THE MONY. IF YOU THINCK WE ARE NOT SERIOUS, WE SEND YOU ONE FINGER EACH DAY!
Trouble in Tahiti Page 8
