A Touch of Danger

by James Jones

  “That sounds like a lot.”

  “Actually, he said 20 percent at first. But I held out for 40.”

  I looked at her in disbelief, then had to laugh. I shook my head. “I thought you didn’t need the money.”

  “I always need money.”

  “I thought you got a big alimony.”

  She made a helpless gesture. “I entertain a lot. It goes. Honestly I don’t know where it goes.”

  “And you can still afford to winter in Paris? All right, what about the affair?” I said.

  Chantal looked appealingly helpless, like a small child caught at something innocently bad. “Actually, I’d rather not talk about that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Don’t talk about it.”

  “It happened at the beginning of last summer. In the spring, really. When I came back. I had been ‘working’ for Girgis for a year. I was just getting over a thing with Freddy Tarkoff. Freddy had sort of left me. Well, I had always known he would. I expected him to. But it hurts just the same. And Girgis was there. I saw him a good bit because of the hashish. And he is good looking.” She paused.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “He came here a few times, very late at night. We met in chapels in the hills. In the woods. Sometimes on the mainland, back in from Glauros. It was all so sort of exciting, at first. For me. The selling hashish part, too. It was a lark.”

  For a woman who didn’t want to talk about it, I thought she was doing a very good job.

  “But as a lover, he was a good bit of a peasant,” Chantal said, and looked at me.

  For a second I couldn’t believe it. It was so outrageous and such a ploy. I wondered what she would say about me some day. I had to grin, then had to laugh. “Is that supposed to imply that I am not?”

  She looked at me a long moment. “Well, yes. It is,” she said defiantly. “If you insist that I spell it out for you. Anyway, why not? It’s the truth.”

  I did not react. I was still trying to sniff out the truth of the whole thing. There was something wrong with it somewhere. But I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “What happened to stop it?” I said.

  “He started to blackmail me,” Chantal said promptly. She was incredible. But then, she went on. “And I was tired of him. Oh, I’m sure he was tired of me, too. But I told him I wanted to stop working for him.” She seemed to perk up suddenly. “You see, that was what the blackmail was. He wasn’t blackmailing me only for the money. He was blackmailing me to go on working for him.”

  There was a silence. She seemed to be waiting for me to react. I pursed my lips. “Well, you’re out of it now. Stay out.”

  Another silence. “Do you think they’ll try to involve me?”

  “Honestly, I don’t think they will. But that’s what I don’t know. If they go digging deep into his hashish operations, you might become involved. Who else knows about all this?”

  “No one. No one at all.”

  “How about that Greek sidekick of his, that works on the Polaris with him?”

  She shook her head.

  “How about Kirk?”

  Suddenly she had an odd alert look about her, like that of a startled deer.

  “That was why I wanted to tell you first,” I said. “If there was any shock. It’s a good thing I did. If you reacted like you did.”

  “I’m grateful. I’ll be careful.”

  “I wanted to tell you not to say anything. To anyone. About any of it.”

  “Were you planning on staying?” Chantal said. “I mean, after you finished your business?”

  I turned my head to look at her. Actually, I hadn’t been. I thought I had made up my mind on that in the afternoon, when I had called her. But it took a lot of balls, or whatever the feminine equivalent, for her to come right out and ask me.

  I knew damn well she wasn’t doing it to pay me anything. For all my trouble. I remembered the satisfaction her back showed last night when she rolled over to go back to sleep. She just liked to have a man around.

  Chantal swung on me suddenly. “Let me tell you something about you,” she said, defiantly. “Why can’t you just screw me and stop worrying? You Americans are all so much alike. You don’t owe me anything. Any more than I owe you anything. I haven’t asked you for anything, have I? Why do you Americans all have to go through all this self-torture? You all have had the same thing beaten into your heads by somebody.”

  I had to grin. I hoped my face didn’t look haggard. “You’re absolutely right,” I said. I nodded. “You are. Absolutely.”

  “Well?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was. In actual fact. I was thinking about staying.”

  “And that’s what you’ve been standing there brooding about so lugubriously?” she demanded.

  Actually, it wasn’t. Actually, I had been thinking about that nude bathing scene I had witnessed so long ago, this evening. Sweet Marie sweetly nude, and all those other girls nude, and all of it. Youth. What was it about a young body? Why did a young body seem so much better than an old body?

  “Yes. No. Actually,” I said, “I was worrying because I was afraid of becoming too involved with you.”

  “Well, don’t. I wouldn’t have you on a platter. As a husband. And you don’t have to be afraid of me.” She came across to me, and crept herself into my arms. “I’m glad you’re staying. I’m all shaken up. I’m a little scared.”

  I looked down at her, and then, gently, wrapped her up in my big strong manly arms.

  I was pretty sure it was going to be as elegantly animal tonight as it had been last night.

  I wasn’t disappointed.

  Chapter 22

  MY GREEK HOUSEKEEPER woke me at 8:15 by knocking on the bedroom door to tell me Inspector Pekouris was waiting downstairs to see me.

  Over a scalding cup of her powerful Greek coffee while I shaved in the bathroom down the hall, I called down to him I would be with him in five minutes. As I stretched my face in the mirror I asked it what this could be about.

  He was standing on my porch, looking at the prettiness of the harbor. But he wasn’t enjoying it. His attitude stated emphatically that he personally allowed these grown-up children to be out there, to water-ski and play with their sailboats.

  “This is a professional call of courtesy,” Pekouris said in his brutal way. “We are going to have a look for the head. I thought you would enjoy to come along.”

  Down in the road he had parked the blue police jeep in the edge of the vacant lot.

  “Well, it’s nice of you to ask me,” I said. “But I don’t know what I could do.”

  “I do not expect you to do anything. I thought you would be interested. As one professional from another.” He gave me a look.

  If I was supposed to understand what it meant, I was flunking the course. “Well, if you put it that way,” I said. “I’d love to go. Just give me a minute to tell my boat guy.”

  Sonny was at the taverna. I told him I wouldn’t need him and that he could take the day off. Then I climbed into the blue jeep beside Pekouris. I didn’t feel fully awake yet. But I was awake enough to wonder what had earned me this special treatment. Pekouris stopped along the way for a cup of coffee, but did not enlighten me.

  It was another lovely day like the others. They didn’t seem to have anything else in Tsatsos. The Inspector seemed to visibly enjoy driving the jeep. We drove in the open jeep along the main road that ran behind the Port, and out the other side of the town toward the Xenia and the hilltop Construction.

  The breeze blew the short sleeves of my sport shirt. Inspector Pekouris had his same blue suit on, or another like it. But at least he had changed his tie.

  “You think there’s any chance of finding it? The head?” I said.

  “I doubt it. Still, it does no harm to look. It might tell us something. Or, we might find something else. One thing is certain. The actual killing had to take place not too far away.”

  “You mean like maybe up at the Construction?”r />
  He shrugged. “As you saw, rigor mortis was fully established. The doctor places the time of death at around 3 A.M. the previous morning. Leaving about an hour and 45 minutes till dawn. Someone had to carry the body to the Xenia garden, crossing at least one major road, and deposit it where it was found. All in the hour and a half before first light.”

  “Not an easy job,” I said.

  “No, not easy at all. Do not forget he had also to dispose of the head.”

  We had reached the Xenia. In the hotel “parking lot” where the horsecabs usually stood there was a cluster of vehicles: two autos, several horse-drawn wagons. Just beyond it, where the road curved inland to fit itself to the contour of the Construction hill, a group of men milled about.

  The Inspector pulled into the lot. “Oh, something else. Kronitis. Mr. Leonid Kronitis. Do you know him?”

  “No.” But the name certainly made me alert.

  “I received a telephone call from him early this morning, before I left Glauros,” Pekouris said. “I was asked to give you a message. He would like to see you some time today, if that is possible. He requests you to telephone him about it. Here.” He handed me a slip of paper with the number.

  I took it, and studied it, and waited. But Inspector Pekouris said nothing more. He occupied himself with parking the jeep. When he cut the motor, he turned back to me. He still didn’t say anything.

  “Who is this Kronitis?”

  “He has, shall we say, Mr. Davies, minor interests in Tsatsos. He loves the island and wants to preserve it. A very wealthy and very respected gentleman. Who has a big villa over behind Glauros.” I got one of his lippy smiles.

  “Should I go see him?”

  Pekouris’s power-tuned eyebrows went up. “You ask me?”

  “You gave me the message.”

  “I see no reason why you should not go see him. He is a very respected man. Also, he owns Polaris. Which our dead friend was master of.” He smiled again. “Maybe he wants to hire you to find his killer.”

  “Nobody seems to want to believe I’m down here on vacation,” I said. The Inspector didn’t answer that.

  Again, I had the feeling he was not saying everything he knew, the Inspector. Or maybe he was one of those who didn’t want to know what he knew. That way nothing could be held against him?

  “You recommend I go,” I said, finally.

  “I recommend nothing.”

  I gave him a look but he stared back steadily, with an open-eyed, completely expressionless face. Usually, his eyes seemed half closed. “But I see no reason why not. Shall we go over?” he said and nodded his head toward the group of men.

  We walked it. At the curve the fat chief was supervising the work. He seemed to find me more acceptable, since his boss had given him the word. I had found out since meeting them last night, from Chantal, that all the police in Greece came vaguely under the military, and that the local constabulary were in reality Army militiamen. The Inspector was an Army officer. This did not particularly endear them to me.

  I got the picture of the job in progress right away. The in-sweeping curve of the road contoured a sharp little ravine, which below dropped to a small rocky unserviceable inlet of the sea, and above rose in a steep grassy draw. Up on the grassy draw a long line of local peasants and fishermen were working their way upward halfway up the steep slope.

  The right side of this hollow formed the hill where the Construction was, and some of its units with their spindly stilt legs encroached right out onto the steep grass. The right of the peasant line came almost to them.

  In amongst the units, as if unwilling to venture beyond their line, some of the hippies had come out to watch.

  There must have been forty of them: the men with their long hair and beards and bizarre clothes; the women with their longer hair, and the characteristic part in the center, and their ugly shapeless long dresses or dirty jeans. They appeared to feel menaced by the search. They were very quiet. The men stood with their arms hanging. Occasionally a woman moved or murmured to quiet a child. They were a pretty unprepossessing-looking lot, not at all attractive, but somehow familiar. Then I remembered. They made me think of the pictures of the people in the German camps.

  Although they were here by choice, I didn’t like the feeling and the implications that gave me, and I shot a look at the impassive Inspector. He certainly wasn’t bothered.

  Up above when the peasants and fishermen of the line passed near them, they stared at the hippies and did not speak. There was a definite antagonism, on both sides.

  Standing at the bottom I looked the disposition over. Its point reached me quickly enough.

  “What if you find nothing in the ravine?” I asked. “Will you search the Construction?”

  “We will have to,” Pekouris said. “But I doubt if we will find much evidence in there.”

  “No,” I said, staring up at the hippies.

  I didn’t know what else to call them, but hippies. I knew they didn’t like the term. And I knew it had become pretty much passé. But Georgina called them that, and they even called themselves that, on occasion. They certainly weren’t all students.

  Not far away in a group of the hippies I suddenly saw the blond-maned Steve and his girl Diane, and Sonny Duval and his wife Jane. A little path led up to the tiny knoll they were on. I started up to them.

  “Hello! What are you doing here?”

  Sonny smiled. “You gave me the day off,” he said amicably enough, in the tone of a man who doesn’t really have to work for you.

  “We came to be with our people,” Jane Duval said in a clarion voice from behind him, and stepped forward. The runny nosed, not very clean three-year-old was clinging to her long skirt and she put an arm around it protectively.

  Her face was a study in self-righteous rage. Black angers roiled behind her frowning eyes like storm clouds, seeking an object. “We might as well tell each other the real truth for once. We felt our place was here with them.” She looked at me with a kind of aloof defiance. “Would you rather we cowered in town while our friends are terrorized?”

  My face became a patient mask. I didn’t answer. This was a look I had seen on the young women’s faces before, all over America. And like Jane, they never seemed to know where to direct it, either. The other girl, Diane, beside Jane, had it too. There was a profound hurt in the subtle twist of the brows, as well as the outrage. A deep unhealing wound—or so they seemed to think.

  When no one else spoke, Jane Duval said, “Are you the one who initiated this new terrorization?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to go to Inspector Pekouris, the Police Inspector, for that,” I said politely. “I just came along for the ride.” I pointed, “He’s right down there.”

  Jane’s lips writhed as she said, “Fat chance! And it’s easy to see which side of the line your feet are on, Mr. Davies, in this new infringement of the rights of our people.”

  I remained stolid. “I don’t know if you got any rights, here. Except what the Greek government is willing to donate you. They own this joint.”

  “Our rights are the rights of being alive,” Jane said.

  “In my book that gets you the right to breathe air,” I said grimly, but politely. “And nothing more.

  “If you can find the air,” I added.

  “In your book,” Jane Duval cried. “The book of the Establishment.” Beside her the grubby child began to cry.

  I said, “Is that the way they read it at Bennington? You’re scaring the kid. Maybe you didn’t hear, but there’s been a murder. They’re trying to find the murdered man’s head.”

  “We heard! And the next step—the real purpose—will be mass deportation of the hippies almost surely. But don’t think you’re fooling us, any.”

  “It might be at that,” I said with a stony humor. I’d talked to so many of them. “Unfortunately, the murder happened very close to this place.

  “Look,” I said to Sonny. “I came up here to tell you I want you
this morning. I’ll need the boat.”

  Before he could answer yes or no, Jane moved to him and wilting, buried her face searchingly—suckingly like a suckling infant—in the angle of his neck. As if it was all more than she could bear. They formed a sort of staircase of anguish: the little girl with her face in Jane’s skirt; Jane with her face in Sonny’s neck; Sonny’s half angry face at the top.

  “Look. You don’t have to take me,” I said. “I’ll find somebody else.”

  “I’ll take you, I’ll take you,” Sonny said. His voice sounded anguished, half angry. “I’ll be at the dock in an hour. Half an hour. I hired out to you. All right?” He sort of stepped backward with Jane, the child following, as if pulling them back out of the self-imposed zone of combat. Jane, without moving her face, and clinging like a leech, allowed herself to be pulled.

  Just then, at the top of the grassy draw, which a couple of men from the line had reached, there was a shout. Looking up, we could see the men waving.

  “They have found the blood,” the Inspector called up to me from below. “Do you want to come up?”

  “No. That’s too much of a climb for a middle-aged man.” I turned back to the hippies. Steve and Diane were still there, with some others, but Sonny had drawn himself and his family back out.

  “You feeling oppressed, too?” I said to Steve.

  “I don’t know.” The vague-eyed Steve looked at me, but appeared to be looking through me, as usual. “She’s probably right. It’s easier to blame it all on us. They’ll start kicking us out to make themselves look better.” He put out his arm—because the silent Diane had started to move toward him, as if for protection. She crept into it.

  “They won’t unless they find the murderer,” I said.

  “You mean they won’t give us permission to leave?”

  “I don’t know. Might not.” I looked around. “Where’s your sidekick? Old Cyclops?”