Soma Blues

by Robert Sheckley

“Not even during your visits to London?”

  “I told you, no. I didn’t like the man. He was one of those haughty types with a loud braying laugh. Pure Wodehouse. I didn’t take to him at all.”

  “But no doubt others found him an amusing fellow?”

  “No accounting for some tastes.”

  “What did Nigel Wheaton think of him, for example?”

  “Why don’t you ask him? And anyhow, what does it matter? You’re not accusing Nigel of supplying Stanley with a new drug and then killing him, are you?”

  Fauchon acted as if he hadn’t heard Hob’s questions. His gaze was vague, far away, taking in the brilliantly lit interior of the Lipp. It was one of his most annoying mannerisms, as far as Hob was concerned, this sudden switch of attention when a point of some importance had finally been reached. Hob felt that he did it by careful design, one of the many faces of Emile Fauchon, all of them carefully devised, none of them the real man, the man within. Who was the real Fauchon? Was there one?

  “What has Nigel been up to lately?” Fauchon asked. “I haven’t seen him around.”

  Hob stared at Fauchon bitterly. “This, I believe, is my chance to betray one of my best friends in return for the sumptuous feast you have given me here at this palace of German sauerkraut and French pretension. To act le stool pigeon, as your detective novels doubtless call it. And of course I’m happy to oblige. Nigel’s been up to the usual thing: a dope deal in Hong Kong, a bank heist in Valparaiso. I believe he also was responsible for last month’s political assassination in Montpelier. You know Nigel—he’s enterprising, always likes to keep busy.”

  “Your sarcasm is broadhanded,” Fauchon said, “but appreciated nonetheless.”

  “Thank you. Anything to keep the conversation going.”

  “Would you care for a drink before we get any deeper into this? And an espresso. Perhaps a double espresso.”

  “Now you’re sounding like Marley’s ghost,” Hob said.

  Fauchon considered it. “Yes, that’s apt. I’ve shown you Christmas Past in the cadaver of your late friend Stanley Bower.”

  “And who will I meet as Christmas Future?”

  “Waiter!” Fauchon called out, halting the balding stoop-shouldered little man in his tracks. “Two cognacs, and two double espressos. And the bill.”

  “No bill, Inspector. Courtesy of the management.”

  “Thank the management for me,” Fauchon said, “and tell them I’ll be arranging for an especially tough health inspector to call on them soon in repayment for their clumsy attempt to bribe me.”

  “Inspector! It was meant only as a courtesy! I assure you. … Inspector, if I tell them that, they’ll fire me!”

  “Then just bring me the order,” Fauchon said. “And the bill.”

  Relieved, the little waiter scurried away.

  Hob said, “Portrait of the incorruptible Emile Fauchon sternly turning down a free meal. Wonderful. I applaud. Now tell me about Christmas Future.”

  “Very soon,” Fauchon said, “I will show it to you. Hob, I expect your help on this matter. In fact, I insist on it. Find out about this Stanley Bower for me. Who might have wanted him dead. The thing appears to have been set up with some care. Find out about this soma.”

  “Sure. And what are you going to do for me?”

  “I will neglect to revoke your license to practice your worthess trade in Paris, as my superintendent has been hinting that I should do. I’m serious about this, Hob. You have contacts in Ibiza. You can find out what is needed to know. Meanwhile, would you like to telephone Marielle and tell her you’re being detained?”

  “To hell with that,” Hob said. “Let her sweat.”

  “You’re a hard man, Hob Draconian,” Fauchon said, but he was smiling.

  6

  The next morning, just after Fauchon had gotten through notifying Bower’s next of kin, a brother in England, there was a call for him from the New York police. It was a Lieutenant Gherig, a man Fauchon had spoken with several times. The two men were cooperating on international drug smuggling, bypassing the DEA, of which they had a none-too-good opinion, and exchanging information in an attempt to get a handle on an elusive business.

  After the usual civilities, Gherig said, “Reason I called, Fauchon, I’ve come onto a curious case, and I was wondering if you had anything similar. At first I thought it was opium. …”

  If you want opium in New York, Chinatown is still the place to go. Back in the 1800s, the Chinese fought two wars with the English to keep opium out of their country. The English were persistent: All those poppy fields in India needed markets. And the man-in-the-street Chinaman loved the drug. First Canton was the capital of the export trade, then Shanghai, then Hong Kong. But times changed by the 1970s. Why go through all that hassle with opium—lighting the pipe, taking a hit or two, then cleaning the pipe and starting all over again—when you could get the effect multifold concentrated in heroin? Heroin could be made anywhere, and its market was vastly wider than that of opium. Then cocaine had its vogue, and the days of natural substances seemed over. Chinatowns all over the world provided the main markets in the twentieth century. And for other exotic natural substances. Thus it was no surprise to Lieutenant Gherig that an unidentified man had been found dead of an overdose in one of those dens that sprang up as fast as you knock them down in the vicinity of Chatham Square

  “But this guy’s no opium user,” the sergeant in charge of the detail told Gherig as they stood on East Broadway and Clinton, their faces turning red and blue in the flashing police car lights.

  “How do you figure?” Gherig asked.

  “Take a look at him,” the sergeant said. “It ain’t pretty, but it’s instructive. He’s in fifteen A.”

  Gherig went inside the tenement, climbed up five steps flanked by two overflowing garbage cans filled with rotted oranges and Chinese newspapers. The front door, with its reinforced steel mesh over what had been a window, was unlocked. Gherig went down a long corridor with cracked linoleum beneath, peeling paint above, forty-watt lightbulbs overhead lighting his way. There were a couple of old Chinese women at the foot of the stairs, and they gabbled at him and pointed up the stairs. Gherig mounted the sagging stairs, up one hopeless floor after another, Chinese children with opaque dark eyes staring at him from doors opened on chains, his stomach protesting because it was less than a month since the hernia operation. At times like this the glamour of his profession escaped him entirely. Up another floor—the fourth? Death is no respecter of the hernias of senior lieutenants, to say nothing of their varicose veins. On the fifth floor there was only one Chinese, a man of middle age in a soiled white suit and Panama hat. “Inside there,” he said to Gherig, pointing to an open door at the end of the hall.

  “Who’re you?” Gherig asked.

  “I’m Mr. Lee, the landlord’s agent. A tenant telephoned me. I got here as fast as I could.”

  “Where’d you come from?”

  “Stuyvesant Town.”

  “You got here faster than I did from First Precinct.” Gherig walked to the door. The white-suited Chinese followed.

  “Lieutenant,” Lee said. “Could I just have a word with you before you go in?”

  Gherig turned. A big, solid man, he seemed to have about twice the bulk of Lee and stood a head taller.

  “What do you want, Lee?”

  “I just want to tell you,” Lee said, “that neither the landlord nor any of the people here have anything to do with this.”

  “You’re getting in your cop-out a little early,” Gherig said. “I don’t think nobody’s accused you of nothing yet.”

  “Not yet,” Lee said, with a sigh. “But you will.”

  Gherig walked through the doorway of number 15A into somebody’s idea of paradise. There was a red-and-blue Turkish rug on the floor. The walls were covered in brocaded wallpaper showing Oriental sages in tall hats crossing a bridge. There were low settees against two walls. A chandelier hung from a hook in the ceiling; it d
iffused its beam through a faceted crystal, throwing bright moths of light on the walls. Although the room was not large, it contrived to grow in size through the wall-length mirror on a third wall. There were two low tables, highly carved, of glossy walnut. There was a magazine stand beside one of the settees. It contained two recent issues of Playboy, thus answering the urgent question, What do you do while taking a new drug?

  “Well, this is a real cute place,” Gherig said. “How many more you got like it?”

  “This is the only one,” Mr. Lee said. “But there’s no crime to a man furnishing his place as he sees fit, is there?”

  “This place belonged to the deceased?”

  “He rented it from Mr. Ahmadi, the owner.”

  “Ahmadi? What’s that, Italian?”

  “Iranian.”

  “And he owns a building in Chinatown?”

  “Nothing unusual in that,” Mr. Lee said. “Foreigners own everything in America these days.”

  Gherig asked for the spelling and address and wrote the owner’s name in his notebook.

  “Did you look at the deceased?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Was that Mr. Ahmadi?”

  “No, sir. Definitely not. He was the leaser.”

  “You got Mr. Ahmadi’s home phone number?”

  “Of course. But you won’t find him there now. He’s off on a business trip.”

  “To Iran?”

  “To Switzerland.”

  “Give it to me anyway.” Gherig wrote it down, then said, “So that leaves you holding the bag.”

  “Come on, Lieutenant. I’m the agent for the building. No one put me in charge of having anyone killed here.”

  “The deceased, what is his name?”

  “Irito Mutinami.”

  “Iranian?”

  “Japanese.”

  “What is a Japanese doing living in Chinatown?”

  “A lot of people think it is chic to live down here.”

  Gherig was prowling around the apartment. The place had been gone over already, but there was no harm in checking it out again. In the wastepaper basket he found a square of bright blue cellophane, twisted as if it had been wrapped around something about the size of a golf ball. Was it some kind of chocolate thing? It looked like what they wrap fancy chocolate balls in. He put it in an evidence bag and went on looking.

  In one corner there was a fireplace with an artificial fire glowing in it. Gherig reached in and poked at it, felt something smooth and cool, and lifted it out. It was a bottle of a green substance that looked a lot like jade, about four inches high, uncorked and empty. Gherig lifted it to his nose and sniffed. The odor that came from the bottle was musty and sweet, utterly unfamiliar.

  “What’s this, some sort of Chinese incense?” he asked, holding out the bottle to Lee.

  Lee sniffed. His smooth face turned quizzical. “That’s a new one on me, Lieutenant. Never smelled anything like that before.”

  “Is this jade?” Gherig asked him, holding up the bottle.

  Lee shrugged. “Beats me. My hobby’s baseball. I know a guy I could ask, though.”

  “I know somebody, too,” Gherig said. “How long had”—he referred to his notebook—“Mutinami been living here?”

  “Less than a year,” Lee said. “I’ve had him on the books since early February.”

  “You happen to know what he did for a living?”

  “Student. That’s what it said on the form.”

  “What friends did he have staying?”

  “I have no idea,” Lee said. “It is my job to collect the rents and effect repairs. I do not spy on the tenants.”

  Lee turned to leave. Gherig grabbed his arm so suddenly that he spun the smaller man around and had to support him to keep him from falling.

  “Lee,” Gherig said, “I don’t want to have to get this out of you piece by piece. Suppose you tell me all about this Mutinami right now and save yourself a night in the can.”

  “There’s nothing you can hold me for,” Lee said.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll invent something.”

  “We Chinese are a law-abiding people. You have no right to do this.”

  “I’m not going to do anything because you, as a concerned citizen, are going to tell me all about Mutinami and his friends.”

  “All right, let go of my arm.” Lee brushed himself off, took off his Panama hat, reblocked it and put it on again. Gherig fished an evidence bag out of his pocket and put the jadelike bottle into it. Then he crossed his arms and waited until Lee had straightened his tie, and, presumably, his story.

  “I don’t know anything about Mutinami or his friends. You have to understand how popular Chinatown is with the Japanese. Several other Japanese businessmen have also stayed here. I presume they were Mr. Mutinami’s friends. Or maybe they were Mr. Ahmadi’s friends. No one tells me anything. Maybe they were helping out on the rent. How should I know? I don’t have their names. This isn’t a police state. Not yet, anyway.”

  “No, but we’re working on it,” Gherig said. “Lighten up, Lee! This is a murder investigation. Would you feel better if I arrested you and questioned you down at the stationhouse?”

  “I said you wouldn’t like what you saw here,” Lee said. “But I’ve told you everything I know. May I go now?”

  “Leave your name, address, and phone number with the sergeant downstairs. Don’t try to leave town without notifying us. Here’s my card. I’m Lieutenant Gherig. If you think of anything else, I’d appreciate your calling me.”

  “Yes,” Fauchon said, “we have had a similar occurrence here. Last night. I’ll have to await my pathologist’s report to be sure. But there was a green bottle similar to the one you described. I’ll telephone when I know more.”

  7

  In midafternoon there was a caller at Marielle’s apartment. Hob answered it. In the doorway stood a tall, blond Englishman.

  “Mr. Draconian?”

  Hob somewhat cautiously allowed as how he was.

  “I’m Timothy Bower. Stanley’s brother. That French policeman was good enough to give me your address. He told me you’ve been assisting him on this case.”

  Hob invited him in and gave him a place to sit on Marielle’s uncomfortable black leather and chrome couch.

  “You’re a private detective, I understand?”

  Hob nodded.

  “Did you know Stanley well?”

  “I hardly knew him at all. We said hello once or twice at parties in Ibiza. I don’t think we ever had a real conversation.”

  “Hmm, yes,” Timothy said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but if you hardly knew Stanley, why are you helping the French police in their inquiry?”

  “Stanley lived in Ibiza,” Hob said. “That’s where I live, too, most of the time. And I’m helping because Inspector Fauchon feels diffident about inquiring into the lives of foreigners who don’t even live in Paris and would much prefer I did it for him.”

  “Hmm, yes. I suppose you know that Stanley was homosexual?”

  “Yes. That is to say, it was common knowledge in Ibiza, whether it was true or not.”

  “Oh, it was true all right,” Timothy said. “He’d been a flaming little queer since Eton. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be judgmental, but it was a trial to his family.”

  “How so?” Hob asked.

  Timothy smiled condescendingly. “You know something about England, don’t you? Still quite a tight little right little island. People know each other. Especially military families. Our own family dates back to the time of Richard the Lionhearted.”

  “He was queer, too, wasn’t he?” Hob asked. “An affair with a fellow named Blondel?”

  “Yes, quite. But it’s generally not spoken of. What I’m trying to say is that homosexuality is not respectable in England as it seems to have become in the States.”

  That was the first Hob had heard of that, but he didn’t interrupt.

  “Well, this is all very interesting,” Hob said. �
�What can I do for you, Mr. Bower?”

  Timothy Bower pursed his lips and looked uncomfortable. He had a rather handsome, tanned face, was probably in his early forties, and didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He finally brought them to rest on the knees of his sharply creased gray-worsted trousers and said, “This is an extremely upsetting thing—one’s own brother being murdered.”

  “Yes,” Hob said with scant sympathy. “But better than the other way around, don’t you think?”

  Bower let that pass. “The French police seem to have no idea who did it. Do you?”

  “Not a clue. It’s not my concern, anyhow.”

  “I don’t trust the French,” Timothy said. “Especially not in a matter concerning the murder of a gay foreigner.”

  Hob shrugged. He didn’t feel very sympathetic.

  “Stanley and I were never close,” Timothy said. “I’m regular army. You know how the British army is. Among career officers it’s like a club. Gays definitely need not apply. Don’t get me wrong. I am not myself prejudiced. I wasn’t personally ashamed of Stanley, but I’ll be frank to tell you I didn’t want him around. Not with the sort of friends I’ve got. Damned good fellows, don’t get me wrong, but for them a homosexual man is a joke. And Stanley was not discreet in his behavior. No reason he should be, I suppose. In a perverse sort of way it shows the family training. The pater taught us never to be ashamed. But none of us ever thought we’d have a homosexual in the family.”

  Don’t be ashamed of yourself unless you have something to be ashamed of, was the way Hob read that one.

  “Still, there it is. I feel badly about it. I rather liked Stanley, though I detested his way of life. And Stanley was my brother. I don’t want to simply see this thing pushed under the rug. I believe it’s common knowledge the French police don’t bother much with cases like this.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Hob said. “The French police are damned good, and they don’t push any kind of murder under the rug.”

  “But what can they do? From what Fauchon told me, this doesn’t appear to be a case of local gay bashing. Stanley might have been killed by someone from Ibiza. If that’s so, whoever it was is back there by now. Don’t you agree?”