Trouble in Tahiti

by Hayford Peirce

  “Pretty broken English,” I commented. “I guess it could come from someone who spoke it reasonably fluently but hadn’t studied it formally.”

  Tama shrugged. “That description fits half the Tahitians on the island. Or maybe it’s a Sorbonne graduate faking it. What about the picture?”

  I looked at it again. “Not much there. A Polaroid with a flash. A sheet behind her to prevent us from seeing any details of where she’s being held. She looks a little shopworn, but not mistreated. No bruises, and she’s obviously still eating. That’s encouraging. You can see her fingers holding up the newspaper, so I’d say she wasn’t tied up, at least when they took the picture. The paper she’s holding is the Dépêche. You can identify the date by the headline.”

  “It’s yesterday’s paper all right,” said Tama. “Where is that gendarme?” he growled irritably.

  “At your service,” said a haughty voice in de Gaulle-like French, and Colonel Schneider marched in like a German Field Marshall on parade before the Fuhrer. He was tall and thin, with a clipped moustache and austere gray eyes. He placed his stiff képi cap on a bony knee and listened while the three of us brought him up to date. He stared motionlessly at a corner of the ceiling until we’d finished. There was a long pause, with the only sound in the room the clatter of the window air-conditioner.

  At last he spoke. “Today is Wednesday, October 13th,” said Colonel Schneider with the solemnity of the Pope handing down a Bull. “Yesterday, October 12th, Miss Payton was informed by telephone that her mother had been abducted. She chose to contact this…individual.” I raised my eyebrows impudently but he pretended not to notice them. “A day was lost. Further, we are to understand that her mother had been missing unexpectedly for her home for at least a week, possibly more, without anyone being notified.” His nostrils quivered disdainfully. “Hitherto, Miss Payton’s behavior may perhaps be justifiable. Now, however, the circumstances admit of no extenuating doubt. We must act!”

  Commissaire Tama pursed his lips and turned his hard black eyes onto the Frenchman. “What action does the Colonel suggest?” he asked politely in a French that was as impeccably cultivated and accented as that of the gendarme.

  “Hrmph.” If possible, Colonel Schneider drew himself up even straighter in his chair. He turned a bleak eye in my direction. “Perhaps you would repeat your account of your activities yesterday,” he said, stalling for time.

  I repeated it, omitting only the common denominator of swinging that had held the day together. As yet there was no proof, or even any indication aside from my overworked intuition, that anybody’s sex life had anything at all to do with the case. And, in particular, there was no reason to hang out Danielle Payton’s dirty laundry in front of her daughter while two strangers listened in.

  “So they threw you overboard, did they?” said Tama with a faint smile. “I thought those were bruises on you.”

  “You should see how my neck feels.”

  Colonel Schneider stared at me coldly. We wasn’t interested in my neck. “This…Hiro denied that he knew Mrs. Payton?”

  “On the contrary. He indicated that he did know her. It’s his boyfriend Billy who did the denying.”

  “Could Mrs. Payton possibly have been on board?” asked Tama. “They seemed to have attacked you without provocation.”

  I shrugged. “Anything’s possible, I guess. She could have been tied up and gagged and stowed in the head or in the storage space under the bunks, but I wouldn’t have thought it was a very practical arrangement on a small boat moored to the Papeete waterfront with another boat on each side. As to why they went after me—I don’t know. They’re peculiar people. If I were still a cop I’d certainly give them a rousting.”

  “But you, of course, are no longer on any force at all,” pointed out Colonel Schneider coldly. “Not even the San Francisco one,” he added. He made it sound as if the SFPD were a step down from assistant dogcatcher in Pismo Beach.

  But you can’t fight City Hall. I nodded obsequiously, careful not to provoke him. My usefulness to Tamara Payton was probably already at an end in any case, but if I were slung out of the Commissariat on my ear it would certainly be over.

  Tamara Payton, however, suffered no such middle-aged compunctions. She was young; her mother was missing, threatened with death; and she had a hundred million bucks behind her. “I hear you talking,” she said frigidly. “But what are you doing?”

  Colonel Schneider stiffened, but Commissaire Tama sketched a conciliatory gesture. “You’ve only just now come to us,” he pointed out reasonably. “After all, she has been missing for possibly a week or ten days.”

  “Since October 3rd,” enunciated Colonel Schneider.

  Tama darted him a look of contempt. “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. But so far, according to the evidence of that photograph, she appears to have suffered no great harm. But now a certain urgency arises, and the trail is old and cold. Are you certain that your father has not been contacted already by these kidnappers, Mademoiselle Payton? It seems extremely peculiar to me that your mother should have been abducted so long ago and kept all this time with the attendant risks of discovery, without the kidnappers actually getting in touch with the only person who can pay the money. I mean, it is all very well for them to wait for Mrs. Payton’s daughter to return from America, but what actually is the point? After all, Miss Payton does not have $5 million to pay her mother’s ransom.”

  “Oh, I wish I did!” said Tamara. “I wish I did!”

  * * * *

  We left the Commissaire’s office an hour later. They had decided to put a tap on the Payton phone in case the kidnappers should try to call, and they were beginning to deploy their troops in the routines that police textbooks all over the world spell out for kidnappings. As a first step, a squad of gendarmes was being readied for a frontal assault on the Payton house in Punaauia in search of—anything. I stifled an impulse to shake them by their ears. If fingerprinting hadn’t yet reached Tahiti in this, the ninth decade of the 20th century, I was looking forward to learning what their investigatory techniques might be. I supposed they could always torture the servants.

  Before leaving, we’d made three promises.

  We’d promised not to spread the word any further, particularly to the newspapers.

  Tamara had promised to dig up some pictures of her mother and to call father again, this time to find out if any contact had been made with him.

  And I had promised not to play the TV private eye. Colonel Schneider had regarded me speculatively, as if he were contemplating the pleasures of slinging me into one of his little steel holding cells to remove me from circulation, but Commissaire Tama had been more tactful. “You’ve been most useful up to this point,” he said urbanely. “I’m sure that in San Francisco your…attitude toward…civilians…would be.…”

  I held up a hand. “I’m ahead of you. You won’t find me under your feet. In a sense, I’m just a family friend.” I took Tamara by the elbow before she could deny it, and helped her to her feet. “Miss Payton will be in touch.”

  “Is that true,” she said, “that they won’t find you under their feet? You’re bugging out?”

  I opened the door of her Mercedes to let her slide beneath the wheel. “Colonel Schneider couldn’t find the Grand Canyon under his feet if he walked into it at high noon,” I said. “But Tama looks like being a pretty sharp cop.” I grinned. “I didn’t tell him I wouldn’t be under his feet, I just said he wouldn’t find me there.”

  She bent over suddenly as if her head were too heavy for her and laid her forehead on the point of my shoulder. “So you…are still working for me?” she asked softly.

  “If you still want me.” I essayed a light laugh. “I earned half my salary last night being knocked around by Billy and Hiro. I still owe you about $5,000 worth.” I fingered the painful knot in my neck. “And I owe a couple of other people something too.”

  * * * *

  We drove slowly down the tree-canopied tunnel
of Avenue Bruat to turn left on the waterfront road and pick up the modest freeway that ran through the hills for a few miles and out to Punaauia. From a corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the Aventurier in the midst of a number of smaller boats. I suddenly recalled the half-formed image that had come to me when I stepped down into the cabin of Billy’s tub, The Book of Dreams. And this time I knew what my subconscious had been trying to bring to the surface.

  “It was hard to tell much about your mother from her passport picture,” I said to Tamara, who was zipping up a hill with tight-lipped determination. “Is she tall and slim, with sort of reddish hair, auburn I guess you call it?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “With really beautiful legs? That go on forever? That she likes to show off by wearing mini-skirts. Watch the road!”

  “Sorry. You…you know her? You must!”

  “I saw her getting off a yacht in town a couple of weeks ago, late one afternoon. It’s a big black yacht called the Aventurier, owned by three Frenchmen.” With a little effort I managed to come up with their names and brief descriptions. “Ring a bell?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m certain I’ve never heard of them. Do you think…?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “This opens up a whole new field.…”

  I didn’t hang around Punaauia long enough to discover how the local police operated or whether the servants got tortured or not. Tamara found a number of family photo albums, from which I removed two recent color snapshots of Danielle Payton. They showed a good-looking woman with lively eyes and a sexy mouth who could easily have passed for someone in her thirties. There was no doubt at all that it was Danielle Payton I’d seen skipping down lightly from the Aventurier.

  The question now was what to do with my knowledge. Tell the cops? The three Frenchmen, after all, were reputed to be somewhat dubious characters, and a 70-foot ship would make a fine means of spiriting away an abducted millionairess.

  On the other hand, Danielle Payton had been coming to Tahiti for over twenty years and must have been known to half the population of the island. The police wouldn’t thank me for wasting their time with the name of every person she’d ever said hello to. Especially of three French citizens who could afford to cruise leisurely on a 70-foot yacht.

  While I mulled it over, I called Hinano at the Banque de l’Indosuez and postponed our lunch date until the following day. Then I chewed a sandwich in the kitchen and listened to Tamara begin the task of tracking down her father on the electoral trail. The sight of three khaki-colored jeeps rolling up the driveway made up my mind for me. I was sick of the sight of gendarmes’ bony knees in general and of Colonel Schneider’s in particular. So I ducked out to the garage, cranked up Tamara’s Mercedes, and drove off to town.

  CHAPTER 15

  Jérôme passed the pictures to Jean-Paul, who passed them to Yves-Louis. There was muttering, head-scratching, shrugging, pursed lips, screwed-up eyes—a whole gamut of gestures and expressions. What it all came to was that none of them had ever seen or heard of Danielle Payton.

  “Curious,” I said mildly. We were sitting in canvas chairs on a glossy teak deck, protected from the noontime sun by a striped canvas awning. The three ex-paras were at their ease in bathing suits and sunglasses. Their tanned bellies, I saw, were trim and hard. I was sweating from the heat.

  “More curious than that, even,” pointed out Yves-Louis, the white-haired one with the steam-shovel hands, “is why you should come to us with these pictures. Or are you merely a pollster asking people at random?”

  “I’m a friend of the family,” I said evasively. “Danielle here has not been seen for almost two weeks now. Her daughter is most perturbed, and so are her friends. We know that she has a wide circle of acquaintances, especially in the yachting world. So.…”

  “Hmmm,” said Jérôme, running his hands through his salt-and-pepper hair. “She is more than merely attractive. I’m sure I’d remember if I’d ever met her.”

  “She has extremely beautiful legs,” I prodded. “Long and shapely. And she wears very short minis.”

  Jean-Paul leaned forward to examine the pictures again. “You make me regret not knowing her. I adore long, shapely legs.” He grinned, and tugged at his neat little moustache.

  The eyes of the Frenchmen were unreadable behind their sunglasses. I got to my feet. “Strange,” I mused. “I wonder what she was doing when I saw her on your boat? Well, no matter. If I find her before the police do, I’ll ask her.”

  I turned toward the gangplank, but found Jérôme blocking my way. He laid his hand delicately on my forearm. “A beer, perhaps, while we discuss this further?”

  I returned to my seat and waited for Jean-Paul to come up from below with cans of Heineken.

  “You alarm us,” said Yves-Louis with perfect calm. “You say you have seen this Mrs. Payton on our boat?”

  “Some time ago, and only briefly. But she appeared to be at home on it,” I said, stretching the truth only a little. “I take it you didn’t know she had paid you a visit?”

  “Exactly,” said Jérôme, tapping his bare knee thoughtfully. “Of course, our ship is easy enough to wander in and out of, we’re without deckhands at the moment. But you also mentioned—”

  “The police,” said Jean-Paul. “In rather ominous tones.”

  “Did I ? You must have a sensitive ear. Or perhaps an over-developed one.” I smiled at them blandly.

  Jérôme sighed and removed his sunglasses. He hitched himself forward in his chair until his knees were almost touching mine. His eyes were as inscrutable as any I’d ever seen. “Monsieur LaRoche. The three of us here are graduates of a hard school. I suspect the same is true of you. We have learned that there is a time for subtlety and a time for directness. I believe that this is a time for directness.”

  I inclined my head. “Perhaps.”

  “Not perhaps at all, Monsieur LaRoche. This is now the second time we have encountered you under somewhat peculiar circumstances. We are wary men, by nature and by experience. We are also men of direct action when we deem it necessary. Do you follow me?”

  “Of course. But I don’t understand your use of the word peculiar to describe our encounters. Sheer happenstance is the term I’d use.”

  “Would you now?” said Yves-Louis sardonically. “A woman is missing and the police are mentioned. There is a strong implication that we ourselves could find ourselves involved in—what?”

  Jean-Paul waggled a finger. “It sounds particularly menacing coming from a man who has previously spoken to us in rather mysterious fashion about a property of ours.”

  “And when that man is from Chicago,” said Jérôme, “our suspicions are of course heightened. In fact, we are ready to assume the worst.”

  “Chicago?” I said, baffled. “What’s Chicago got to do with anything?”

  “You are from Chicago, are you not? You told us so yourself.”

  “Oh.” Obviously, for reasons that were still obscure, this had not been one of my more inspired lies. “Yes, of course.”

  “This is the first time we’ve actually met an American gangster,” said Yves-Louis seriously, “but I doubt if you’re much different, or any more…accident-proof, shall we say, than any gangster from Marseille or Nice.”

  I suppose my mouth was hanging open. After a while I closed it. “Gangster?” I muttered. “That’s a hard word.”

  Jérôme shrugged. “It’s a hard world.”

  “So anyone from Chicago’s a gangster?”

  “What else are we to think? We’ve seen the same thing many times in France, particularly southern France. A peaceful man has a nice little business, a hotel for instance, which attracts the attention of the sharks in the water around him, and they begin to move in on him. It’s an old story.”

  “And you think I’m a shark. Al Capone himself, perhaps.”

  Jérôme studied me carefully before he replied. “Perhaps the shark’s representative. It might be that you perso
nally don’t have the requisite ruthlessness.”

  I was now beginning to get the hang of this totally unexpected conversation. “And the morsel of…bait your shark is circling, I suppose, is the Hotel Taaone?”

  Yves-Louis pulled his chair closer. By now I was fairly well hemmed in. “What else?” he said, his eyebrows raised.

  I searched my mind for something to say. Peaceful Tahitians and tourists strolled along the waterfront sidewalk a few yards away, and automobiles rushed by in an endless stream. The sky was bright and cloudless. There was a homey smell of cooking from the yacht beside us. It seemed absurd in such a setting to even consider the possibility of violence. But little more than twelve hours before I would have told myself the same thing as I climbed abroad another boat moored here in Papeete harbor, only fifty yards or so away. I rubbed the soreness in my neck thoughtfully and said, “I have talked to the owner of the Taaone since I saw you last. He’s definitely not interested in selling. In fact, he’s somewhat concerned about sharks of his own.”

  It was Jérôme’s turn to look baffled. “The owner? Of the Hotel Taaone? Oh, you must mean that West fellow.” He snorted disgustedly.

  “Who else?” I asked.

  Jérôme turned to exchange a look with the two others. “He must be telling people that he’s the owner.” Jean-Paul shrugged minutely, while Yves-Louis tapped his lips with a finger. “It is conceivable,” Jérôme went on, “that all four of us are laboring under certain misunderstandings and are actually talking at cross purposes. It is even possible, I suppose, that you are not a Chicago gangster.”

  “In which case,” I said, “you’ve gone far afield from what I’m interested in—Danielle Payton.”

  “Yes, the Payton woman.” Yves-Louis scratched the nape of his neck for a long moment. “Let us assume for the sake of discussion that you are not attempting to use the fact of her…disappearance as a weapon, or threat, however oblique, against us. In which case, the question is—”

  “What was she doing on your boat?”