A Touch of Danger

by James Jones

  “We went yesterday. You weren’t even interested. I don’t know,” I said. “In a couple of days.” At the moment I didn’t care if I ever went spearfishing again.

  “I didn’t know you were supposed to be so good. Listen, I suppose it’s useless, as well as an imposition, to ask,” he began.

  “Nothing special,” I said. “I just want to see him in his natural habitat. He interests me.”

  “Sure,” derisively. “If you want to know what I—”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “Pete says he thinks you’re a U.S. Government man, posing as a private eye.”

  I looked at him. “Pete Gruner said that?” I was mad. If Pete Gruner was going around bad mouthing me as a Government man, it was a sure sign he was one himself. Or was it? And it was about as low as you could get.

  “Pete’s a guy who’s been around. Although there are things about him I don’t like. But I’m beginning to think he’s right, about you.” He grinned, “Jane thinks so.”

  “Let me tell you something about Jane,” I said brusquely. “What Jane doesn’t know about everything would fill many large volumes at Bennington. Jane is a spoiled brat.”

  “You just don’t want to understand Jane. None of you do. She’s a threat to all you male supremacists.”

  I stared at him in a kind of amazement. I had to snort. “Male supremacist? That’s me, all right.” I thought about Marie. If this was bait for an argument, I wasn’t going to bite. But wait till I got hold of damned Pete Gruner.

  “Listen, the U. S. Government wouldn’t be sending an agent down here because of a bunch of dropouts living in an abandoned Greek construction site and smoking hash,” I said. “Agents are expensive.”

  “There might be other things,” Sonny said with a secretive leer.

  “Yes? We must talk about that,” I said. But when he opened his mouth, I put my hand up and added quickly, “Some other day.”

  The horsecab was just passing the good old Hotel Xenia, scene of so much excitement in the life of Lobo Davies. In another minute he let us off at the foot of the same draw I had stood at the foot of that morning, with Pekouris.

  I paid him off. We started to climb the same little path I had climbed in the morning.

  It was dusk now, and falling dark fast. We climbed past cook fires, and hippie people moving around them. A smell of stew meat carried to us. We were climbing along the outside edge of the construction site. Sonny stopped.

  “It’s right up there,” Sonny said, pointing. “Fourth row from here, the second door in. You’ll have to go around to the back to find the stairs.

  “I’d stay away from those fires and getting recognized by any of these kids, if I were you,” he added.

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll go ahead alone from here.”

  “You might get into a fight, you know.”

  “If I do, I’ll run.”

  He scuffed his foot in the raw dirt. “I suppose there’s no use in asking to go with you?” He looked at me and saw there wasn’t. “Do you want me to wait for you down below?”

  “There’s no reason. I can find my own way back. Assuming I get back.” I grinned.

  He stood a moment reluctantly.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll pay for your horsecab back,” I said.

  As if that clinched it, he turned and started down off the hill.

  I looked after him, then started to climb on. Around me the hippies were moving about their fires. At one fire I saw Georgina Taylor’s sun-dried prune face and pop eyes, laughing and drinking something from a tin cup. At another a whole row of young American faces shone at me in the flickery light. Someone chorded a guitar and sang folk music. I didn’t know how I could tell they were American, but I could tell. Perhaps because of their inordinate naïveté. Maybe they weren’t so innocent, American kids. But they were sure as hell naïve.

  Nobody was paying the slightest attention to me. I stopped and stepped in under one of the units on stilts, to watch a moment. It all seemed innocent enough. It certainly wasn’t any orgy. Not even of folk music. It was hard to believe that they might all jump on me and start beating the hell out of me, if they knew I was there. But I believed it to be at least a strong possibility.

  Then I heard a voice nearby that I recognized. It was coming from one of the housing units over my head, and it was the voice of Chuck, Steve’s myopic sidekick.

  No one was noticing me, so I sneaked around until I could see into the unit through one of the window holes that nobody had ever put a frame on.

  Inside, Chuck and his glasses were sitting on a pile of cushions made from rags and old blankets. They were smoking a hookah and had a homemade turban on their head.

  The hookah obviously contained hash. And Chuck was high. Four chubby, wholesome-faced, little American college girls were rushing around ministering to his every demand. And his demands were many. The little girls looked pathetic, as well as unattractive, in their loose-flowing, dirty Mother Hubbard dresses. They all undoubtedly had fat thighs.

  The scene was so bizarre that I stood a few moments transfixed, looking at it. One of those aluminum pack frames with sack attached leaned against the wall near Chuck, and leaning by it was a big South American type machete in a wood scabbard. The famous machete. Under the circumstances, it stood out.

  I stood looking another minute, mainly at the machete. The police hadn’t picked it up this afternoon? Then I slipped away, and headed up along the outside of the debris-strewn construction site, to the row of units Sonny had pointed out to me.

  A light flickered from the apartment unit I was seeking, and I could hear voices and the low strumming of a guitar. Further up and around to the back I found the stairs Sonny had mentioned, and followed them up to the outside terrace along the front of the 4-unit building.

  Standing on the porch-terrace I was now 30 feet above the sloping ground. There was no railing.

  I made no attempt to hide myself when I came to the right door.

  I had no idea what I was going to say. I hadn’t come up here with anything in particular to say. I had just decided to come and play it by ear.

  The light was coming from two short candles stuck onto saucers. By them, young Steve was reading some kind of gibberish hippie poetry about the hard life of a longshoreman, from a mimeograph-printed poetry magazine.

  There were six people in the room. Three young men and another girl, in addition to Steve and Diane. It was the new girl who was strumming the guitar, in a sort of accompaniment to Steve’s reading. Steve, bare to the waist, was truly beautiful physically, with his fine build and blond mane, until he looked up with those dead-seeming, non-seeing eyes.

  “Hello! Is this a private party?” I said in a chirpy way. I stepped inside. “Or can any old square sit in on it?”

  Chapter 29

  THEY ALL LOOKED UP at me. There was a sort of silence, and a belligerence blew at me like bad breath from all six of them.

  “Why don’t you just go away, Mr. Davies?” Diane said, in a kind of cold angry wail. It was about the first word I had ever heard her speak.

  “I’d love to, sweetheart,” I said. “I don’t like you any better than you like me. But I can’t. Unfortunately, I have to speak to your old man here.”

  “Listen, the police have been here all afternoon,” Steve said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “What do you want?”

  “I can talk about it here,” I said. “But you might prefer to talk about it in private.”

  “Anything you got to say to me, you can say in front of my friends.”

  “Okay. I want to talk about what you said to me in the square the other day.”

  “Wait a minute,” he stopped me. “I’ll come outside.” He looked around apologetically at the others, and got to his feet. The other three men hadn’t gotten to their feet, but they looked ready to. I followed Steve out.

  Outside, Steve led the way down to the ground.

  “Okay,” he said in
a hate-filled voice. “Talk.”

  “You hollered something after me this morning that stuck in my head,” I said. “You hollered, ‘You know I didn’t mean it, don’t you?’ I think those were the exact words.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “So?” he said sullenly.

  “I want to know what you meant. It seemed a peculiar thing to say. Under the circumstances.”

  “I don’t know what I meant. What difference does it make?”

  I gave him a mock sigh of disgust. “Well, let’s analyze it. I assume you meant you didn’t mean what you said when you threatened Girgis. But how would I know you didn’t mean what you said? You threatened Girgis pretty good there. And me, too. And then a couple of days later he’s dead.”

  “I didn’t threaten to kill him. Do I look like a killer?” He was still evasive, wouldn’t look at me. I had a hunch he was hiding something. But what?

  “You don’t look not like a killer,” I said. “Neither does that crazy sidekick of yours. Killers look like anybody.”

  “Chuck? Chuck wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “I wouldn’t bet a dollar on it.”

  “Anh. You’re another pig. You’re one of them. You were talking me some high-toned guff about a grand jury. Did you ever hear of a grand jury in this country? In Greece?” He barked a short laugh. “The police were up here all afternoon. Asking questions, checking passports, nosing around. They went through our personal stuff. No warrants, no nothing.”

  I wondered how Chuck and his machete were still loose? Was Pekouris not picking him up? On purpose?

  “Look,” Steve said, “I don’t have to talk to you. You don’t have any legal authority.”

  “That’s right, you don’t have to talk to me.”

  “If you have any authority, show me. Show me a badge. Or an official paper. Otherwise, why don’t you just bug off, you son of a bitch?”

  Without a word, crisply, I stepped in and hit him. It wasn’t a full punch. It was a short right hand, thrown off the right foot, with the right foot in front. But it was enough to knock Steve off his feet, and down.

  It was a calculated risk. I didn’t like the way the conversation was developing and I thought a punch on the jaw, if it didn’t make him holler for help to try and ruin me, might make him think. Might change the tone and the direction.

  “I’m partial about who calls me a son of a bitch,” I said. “Say I’m old-fashioned. Get up, you.”

  He did, rubbing his jaw. He looked surprised and rueful. Although he was built like a muscle boy, he made no move to fight. “You’re a brave guy, man,” he said sullenly, still not looking at me. “All I got to do is holler, and you would wind up looking like a played-over football field. All I have to do is holler. And not just upstairs. All over this place.”

  “Why don’t you holler?”

  “And have you bring a regiment of cops down on us?”

  “Look, I don’t like you any better than you like me, bud. If you’re an example of the new age, I feel sorry for it. But you’re in trouble. I’m trying to give you a break. You better be damn well able to prove you’re not a killer. Where is this sidekick of yours? You said this morning he was around. I want to talk to him.” I didn’t know why I said it. It was a shot in the dark. But a lucky one.

  “He’s gone,” Steve said sullenly. “I sent him away.”

  That stopped me. I was dead quiet for a moment. “You mean you sent him off the island?” I asked, easily.

  “No. Are you kidding? He wouldn’t make it to Athens. Let alone out of the country. No, I sent him off to St. Friday’s.”

  “What the hell is St. Friday’s?”

  “It’s a chapel, in a little cove, around on the other side of the island. It’s called Ayia Paraskevi, in Greek. Paraskevi was some woman saint, but Paraskevi means Friday. We call it St. Friday’s.”

  “When did you send him?”

  “This morning. As soon as I learned the police were coming.”

  “Do the police know you did that?”

  “Sure. Of course. I told them as soon as they asked where he was.”

  “But you don’t know whether they went around there and got him?”

  “Not so far as I know. I’ve still got his passport.”

  “You keep his passport for him?” I asked.

  “Well, sure. He wants me to.” He avoided my gaze.

  That made me think. If Steve kept his passport for him, he was probably crazier then even I thought. “Tell me,” I said, “did it ever occur to you that he might come back here from over there, without telling you?”

  Steve shot me a sharp look. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay.” I stepped back away from him. “What did you tell the police as to why you sent him over to St. Friday’s?”

  “I told them the truth. I sent him there for a three-day fast. Because he’s been nervous since the murder.”

  “A three-day fast!”

  “Yeah. What’s so funny? That’s what we do, now and then, from time to time. All of us. Now, if you’ve not got anything further to rap about, may I go?”

  “No,” I said. “One more thing. Where was he the night of the murder?”

  “He was with me.”

  “Oh, great,” I said. “And of course you were with him. What a super alibi.”

  “There were fifty kids as witnesses who saw us both at the Cloud 79 club until closing,” Steve said.

  I just looked at him, and shook my head. “Girgis was killed at 3:30 A.M.”

  “Well, we didn’t close at the club until after that, that night.”

  “Have you got a lot to learn about Greek justice,” I said.

  He didn’t answer me.

  “I hear your pal swings a mean machete,” I said.

  He grinned at me mirthlessly. “You heard that, did you? I figured somebody would get around to bringing that up eventually. Did you tell the police?” It was curious how they always capitalized the word police with their voices, when they said it.

  “They already knew all about it,” I said. “It was them who told me.”

  “They did? I bet they did. Now may I go, Mister Pig?”

  I felt my lips tighten. I let a long breath out through my nostrils. But all I said was, “Yes.” Then, just for fun, I added, “You’ll find Chuck down the way, in the third building below here. With four little girls.”

  He gave me a look, but didn’t say anything. He turned and walked away.

  I watched him for a moment, then turned and started on back down the hill.

  Down at the other apartment unit, when I stopped and sneaked up again to check, myopic Chuck with his Coca-Cola-bottle glasses was still sitting with his hookah and his turban. The little girls were now sitting in an adoring circle at his feet.

  I backed away and walked on down the hill along the outside of the place.

  I needed time to think about it. It looked to me like Steve thought his pal had killed Girgis, and was trying to cover up for him. And it was entirely possible Chuck had killed him. Chuck was obviously a crazy, and who knew what a crazy would do? I had seen him break that boy’s nose with a karate chop about the first night I was here. It was entirely possible the two of them were in it together.

  But what if they were guilty? It bothered me why Pekouris had done nothing? Why hadn’t he picked them and that machete up? He hadn’t even picked up their passports. What was to stop them from taking off some dark night in a small boat for Turkey, with or without passports? That was a cute trick, sending Chuck off to this St. Friday’s. But that wouldn’t have stopped Pekouris if Pekouris had wanted to pick them up.

  Down at the bottom on the road, I stopped and turned around and looked back up at the weird place. What a comment it was on the state of our fouled-up civilization. You wouldn’t see any places like this in Russia or China, by God. Goofy or not, I was glad we still had them here.

  Off on my right as I
stood looking up, the loud speakers from Steve’s Cloud 79 had begun to batter the air. I could see the colored lights through the trees, and the amplifiers would certainly tell me where it was even if I was blind. I was tempted to walk over and look it over.

  But I knew I wouldn’t go. What was in store for me tonight was not some night club but dead-weight, unexciting, ulcer-making work. That was what was in store for me.

  I thought of the money Kronitis had given me. Now I would have to begin to earn it.

  I walked over to the Xenia and caught a horsecab back to the house. At the taverna I picked up some sandwiches for my dinner and to keep me going later. At Georgina’s another hippie party was in progress in the garden. I avoided it. The old gal had hurried home with a whole mob. In the house I called Chantal to tell her that I would not be up to see her tonight. She had already heard about my skindiving trip with Sweet Marie. I told her I had work to do and if she didn’t believe it she should stop by later and see me. Then I got out my locked briefcase and took out some pads of yellow legal cap. I placed them neatly on the desk and after looking around on the ceiling for an excuse I couldn’t find, finally sat down with them.

  I had made up my mind about one thing. If Sweet Marie made me any more offers, of her carnal form, I was sure as hell going to take her up on them. And to hell with the moral tone.

  Chapter 30

  I COULDN’T WORK IT OUT. I couldn’t formulate a working hypothesis.

  There were two big humps I simply could not get over. First, that every suspect stood to lose, and none of them stood to gain, by Girgis’s murder. And, the motive did not equal in value such a drastic act.

  There was only one motive available. The hashish trade. And as a motive that just simply wouldn’t hold water. Even if it paid ten times the amount I calculated it was paying, it wouldn’t be worth the chances you took in killing somebody over it. Killing Girgis amounted to the almost certain ruin of the hashish trade itself.

  There were only two real suspects. The two hippie boys, and Jim Kirk. There were some peripheral suspicions. Chantal’s involvement with Girgis. The fact that Kronitis owned both boats. But they were negligible. Chantal’s deep shock when she learned of the murder was completely genuine, if I was any judge. And I would bet my bottom dollar that Kronitis did not know about the hashish smuggling until I told him.