Soma Blues

by Robert Sheckley

  The driver wanted to chat with him in his rudimentary English. Hob didn’t want to talk, however. The first moments of the return to the island were precious. He searched the roadside for familiar landmarks. The map of Ibiza was covered with monuments to the peculiar personal history of the place. Here is the spot where Little Tony got busted by the Spanish drug cops. That pile of rocks is where Arlene had her old bar, where Elliot Paul used to come by for a drink, before the Fascists demolished it. Just down the road is where you met Alicia that first golden summer. And here is the dangerous crossroads where, one hilarious night, Sicilian Richard went off the road in his big gangster Citröen, and ploughed into an Ibicenco house, killing the brother and sister who lived there, catching them together in bed, so the story went. Richard never lived to tell of it. The Guardia came and took him to the hospital for a broken arm. He died of causes unknown on his way there.

  Hob’s first stop was in the village of Santa Eulalia. He had the taxi drop him off at Autos Carlitos where he hired a SEAT 700. He took the little car out on the road to San Carlos, in the hills just beyond the village. He got a lift of the spirits as he passed through San Carlos, noted the half dozen hippies drinking beer and playing a guitar at the wooden tables outside of Anita’s bar, went through the sharp curves with Robin Maugham’s house on the crest on the left, and turned into the rocky drive that led to his finca, Ca’n Poeta. He found room for his car near the big algarobo tree in front of the sheds. The house with its beautiful lines made him feel better at once. It was built according to the golden mean, or golden section, Rafe the Architect had told him. Whatever it was, the house looked good with its two wings separated by the second-floor drying shed that had laundry flapping from it now. He went down three steps to the flagstoned entranceway with its big grape arbor. There was no one home but a small dark-haired girl in a pink bathing suit lying in the hammock reading an Alistair MacLean paperback. Hob had never met her before. She said she was Sally, Shaul’s friend—Shaul being one of Hob’s friends from Israel—and that everybody had gone to the beach and who was he? Hob explained that he was the owner, and the girl complimented him on his house and his hospitality.

  Hob went inside, put his luggage in his second-floor bedroom, and changed into white cotton shorts, a gray three-button T-shirt, and espadrilles. He left again and drove back out to the San Carlos road, going back toward Santa Eulalia, then turned off at Ses Pines and drove inland between almond fields into the Morna valley. Soon he was climbing toward the Sedos des Sequines, the mountainous ridge that ran down the center of the island. The little car negotiated the steep road without too much difficulty. The narrow rutted road changed to a dirt track and climbed into the steep hills. Several times Hob had to negotiate around rock faces beetling into the road. In Ibiza they tended to build around things rather than blast through them. At last he crawled around a final steep hairpin and saw ahead, where the road flattened across the saddle of the hill, the drystone fence that enclosed Harry Hamm’s finca.

  Hob parked the car in the space cut for it in the prickly cactus patch, alongside Harry’s SEAT. He walked around the edge of the stone fence, and then he could see the house, built on the back slope of the hill. It was a small farmhouse, about two hundred years old, with four or five hectares of land surrounding it. The grounds were scrupulously clean, as Ibicenco farms always were, unless they were being farmed by peninsulares, as Spaniards from the mainland were called. To one side were the sheds, still half full of algorobos, the ever-present carob. Hob could catch its characteristic sickly sweet aroma. It wasn’t a smell he much liked, but he associated it with the island, and so it had become dear to him.

  The house itself was typical, built of fitted stones that were encased in mud and brush and then cemented and plastered. As was traditional on the island, the size of the largest room was determined by the length of the trunk of white oak available for the ridgepole. Once the ridgepole was in place, right-angled oak limbs were fitted to either side, then brush was piled on top of that and packed with mud. The roof was flat and slanted toward the center to catch rainwater, which was led to gutters and then down to the underground storage tank from which Harry would pump what was needed up to a holding tank on the roof.

  Not even the windows had been modernized, although Harry had decided to do that someday. But he held off, appreciating the fact that in the old days the slit windows kept out the winter’s cold and provided no easy entry for the Saracen pirates from Algeria and Morrocco who used to ravage the island until late in the 1800s. The North African coast was less than a hundred miles away. The Saracens had been raiding these islands for hundreds of years, and the Ibicencos, far from any central government, had learned to take care of themselves. Every village and every outlying structure was a fortress, or at least a strong point, designed to hold up the invaders until men could be assembled to deal with them. There were no Saracen pirates anymore, only English and German tourists—and these tended to give more than they took. Hob sometimes wondered if the change had been advantageous. Dealing with raiders had developed hardiness and self-reliance in the Ibicencos; dealing with tourists had been aesthetically disastrous, bringing fast-food restaurants and entire Scandinavian, German, and French “villages,” newly built self-enclosed tourist centers whose architecture was all the more grotesque since it was a self-conscious attempt to imitate a small village from back home. No American villages so far, but that was sure to come.

  There were a few chickens scratching around the front yard at Harry’s place. Maria’s doing, no doubt. Hob had never believed that a guy like Harry Hamm was cut out to keep chickens. But what could you tell about Harry’s Ibicenco wife except that she was beautiful and stately and obviously much too good for Harry, who was an overweight, balding, retired cop from Jersey City, New Jersey, and Hob Draconian’s mostly unpaid partner in the Alternative Detective Agency.

  Hob kept to the roadside of the stone fence and hailed the house. “Harry! Are you there?” His voice boomed across the yard, amplified by the freak acoustics of the scalloped cliffside nearby. For a moment there was no answer. Then Harry came running out of the house, in khaki work pants and white shirt, wearing the soft rope-soled espadrilles of the island, a big balding man with a paunch.

  “Hob! Come in!” Harry swung open the little gate and led Hob through. Now Hob could see Harry’s car, a Spanish-built Citröen parked just around the side of the sheds.

  “About time you showed up,” Harry said. “You talk me into going into this agency with you, and then you split for Paris and leave me here to moulder.”

  “In Maria’s arms,” Hob reminded him.

  “Well, yeah, that’s right.” Harry grinned. “As a matter of fact I like it here fine. But it’s nice to have a fellow American to talk to from time to time.”

  “What’s the matter with the Ibicencos?”

  “You know I get along with them. It’s the French and English I don’t much care for.”

  It was Harry’s fate that, without being in any way an internationalist, he fit into the native life of Ibiza easily and well. He could have been a born Ibicenco, since he shared most of their prejudices and possessed more than a few of their virtues.

  “Everything okay?” Hob asked him.

  “Yeah, fine. I’ve got to see Novarro, though. He asked me to bring you if you happened to show up.”

  Novarro was a lieutenant in the Guardia Civil, stationed in Ibiza. Hob had known him for years in a formally friendly sort of way.

  “What’s it about?”

  “I had a little trouble couple nights ago. Nothing important. Tell you about it later.”

  Harry led Hob into the kitchen, which was large and cheerful, with colorful prints by local artists on the white plaster walls. There was a refrigerator and stove, both operating on bottled gas. There was a butane lamp, too, lit, although it was broad daylight, because the kitchen had only one window, a very narrow one. Harry usually didn’t like to use the gas lamp because it
hissed and gave out a faint but unpleasant odor. He much preferred to fiddle with the Aladdin kerosene lamps because he liked the soft golden light they cast, and he had taken it upon himself to keep their mantles clean and the wicks trimmed since Maria, with her islander practicality, saw nothing romantic about kerosene lamps. Why use them when butane was so much cheaper and simpler? Why use either, for that matter, when for a couple of hundred dollars they could get an electric line put in from the transformer station on the main road? Harry wouldn’t have it. He liked to keep the finca electricity-less, since that suited his romantic streak. Maria liked that about him but found it difficult to explain to her sisters, to say nothing of the various aunts and uncles and cousins of her large extended family. “He doesn’t like electricity,” she told them. “He is a man of old-fashioned ways, even if he is an American.” Her family pointed out that Americans weren’t supposed to be that way. “Mine is,” Maria told them, thus clinching the argument since no one else in the family had one.

  Harry cleaned out the coffeepot, filled it, and put it on the stove. He opened two bottles of Damm beer to hold them while the coffee was brewing. Then he looked in the refrigerator for tapas, those delicious little appetizers that the Spanish are always nibbling at and which may account for the girth of some of the more prosperous among them.

  “Relax,” Hob said. “We’ll go out for dinner later. Is Juanito’s open?”

  “Next week. But La Estrella is open, and there’s a new place, Los Asparagatos, with Italian food. I hear it’s pretty good.”

  “I’ll try it out,” Hob said. “How’s Maria?”

  “She’s doing just great,” Harry said. He and Maria had married just six months previously, in the white-domed San Carlos church. Hob had been Harry’s best man. Maria had looked lovely in her grandmother’s handmade white satin and lace gown. Hob remembered her face, an olive oval, so much in contrast to Harry’s square, red, American face. Father Gomez, Maria’s priest, had officiated, first making sure that Harry’s seldom-practiced Catholicism had not totally lapsed. Harry had promised to do better by the church in the future. Father Gomez had known he wouldn’t, but protocol had been satisfied, and Gomez, a Catalan from Barcelona, was not one to put up barriers to the achievement of a little happiness on Earth.

  “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?” Harry asked.

  “No time,” Hob said. “I didn’t know myself until about five hours ago when I caught a flight out of Paris.”

  “So what’s up?” Harry asked, shaking a cigarette out of his blue-and-white pack of Rumbos extra largos.

  “There are a couple things I’ve got to check up on,” Hob said.

  “Like what?”

  “I need to get a line on a man named Stanley Bower.”

  “I’ve heard that name. Britisher? Lives on the island, doesn’t he?”

  “That’s right. He was murdered in Paris just three days ago.”

  Harry nodded. “What’s that to us? Was he a client?”

  “His brother hired me to find his killer. Also, Fauchon wants me to look into it. He mentioned our license to operate in Paris.”

  “Gotcha,” Harry said. “What do you need to find out about this guy?”

  “It’d be nice to learn if he was doing anything here that might have got him killed in Paris. A man named Etienne Vargas, lives on the island, had an appointment to see him. Also there’s this: Minutes before Stanley was killed, he was having a drink with a man. Not Vargas. The man walked away. Stanley got it moments later.”

  “What do you know about this guy he was having the drink with?”

  “Very little. Middle-aged guy, brown or tanned face. Wore a ring with a big stone that looked like an emerald. They were speaking in Spanish and English, consulting a Spanish road map that might have been of Ibiza. And our informant thinks the man’s name had a rolled Spanish r in it.”

  “That’s great,” Harry said. “Oughta be able to find him with no difficulty. All right, I’ll get on it. There are what? Only about a million Spanish speakers on Ibiza this summer.”

  “I know it’s not much. But we can try. And there’s another matter. I need to talk to Kate about some glass bottles.”

  Harry looked at Hob suspiciously. “You are referring to your ex-wife, Kate?”

  Hob nodded.

  “Hob, you told me you were through with the lady.”

  “I am, of course. But there’s something I need to find out from her.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It concerns Stanley’s murder. Ever hear of a drug called soma?”

  Harry thought for a while then shook his head.

  “Something new,” Hob said. “International implications. It could be very big.”

  “How does that tie in with Stanley Bower?”

  “Look, I’ll explain everything to you tonight over dinner. Where’s Maria?”

  “Over in Mallorca. Some celebration of her relatives. Hob, explain it to me now. What is this all about?”

  “A little green bottle was found on Stanley’s body.”

  “So what? What’s it got to do with you?”

  “The French police are very interested in that bottle. There may be others like it. They’re wondering who they belonged to, who Stanley got them from.”

  “Sure. But I still don’t see—”

  “Harry, the bottle was filled with this soma stuff. And I’m pretty sure it’s my glass bottle.”

  Harry Hamm squinted at him. “What in hell are you talking about? Are you sure this was yours?”

  “I think so. I had a lot of them, and they were quite distinctive. I picked up a couple gross of them with a shipment of saris from India back when I was a supplier to hippie merchants.”

  “What did you use them for?”

  “Perfume. Cheap essence of jasmine from Kashmir. A good-selling item. But they were also a perfect size for hash oil in gram amounts.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Hob …”

  “Don’t go getting funny with me, Harry. That was a long time ago. I’ve been legitimate for twenty years. I’d forgotten all about those bottles. But there was a time when they were my trademark. I need to find out who’s been using them. Before it gets pinned on me.”

  “Where did you see them last?”

  “I had them stashed away in a shed in my finca.”

  “What finca was that, Hob?”

  “Ca’n Doro, the one Kate’s got now.”

  “I guess you better discuss it with the lady,” Harry said.

  2

  Kate’s finca was in Santa Gertrudis. Hob left Harry’s finca and drove out of the mountains to the main road, then through the Morna valley to the main road. He went through Santa Eulalia and picked up the highway to Ibiza. Halfway there, he took a right-hand fork that led to San Antonio Abad. A mile down he turned off to a small finca set back off the road.

  There were two cars in the yard, one of them Kate’s old blue Citröen, the other a fairly new American Ford station wagon. Hob parked. Already he was feeling all funny in the stomach. That was how he got around Kate.

  She was running out of the house and into the yard before he got the car door closed.

  “Hob! How wonderful!”

  She still looked good. To be accurate, she looked better than ever, wearing a colorful sundress low off the shoulders, her blond hair, dark and gold and gleaming white at the ends, fluffed out and floating in the breeze.

  Hob took a deep breath. Easy, boy, he told himself. She always did have your number.

  “Hi, Kate. I was passing by, thought I’d drop in, see how you were.”

  She was a woman of medium height, in her early forties, a sweet face, a smile like a sunburst. Putting on a little weight now but still looking better than good. She exuded that strange odor that memories have, the dark musky kind that are as impossible as they are irresistible. A girl who could model sunshine—that’s what he’d called her once upon a time.

  “Well, come on in!”
<
br />   She lead him into the house, a small, modern bungalow. A man stepped out onto the little porch: tall, thin, muscular, small mustache, neat little feet in black moccasins, stylish white clothes, annoyed look on a spoiled brown face.

  “Hob, this is Antonio Moreno. I don’t know if you know each other. Señor Vargas is a painter who has come here from Madrid. He’s quite well known. I know you don’t follow art much, but perhaps you heard of his mural of the dead horses in the Gallery Montjuich? They created quite a stir. Señor Vargas has agreed to show me some of his work. I’m working as an agent now for Madras Gallery in La Peña. We’re hoping Señor Vargas will let us have some of his paintings on consignment. Señor Vargas, this is Hob Draconian, my ex-husband.”

  “Harya,” Hob snarled.

  “Encantado,” Vargas sneered.

  Kate explained to Vargas, “I really need a chance to talk to Hob, Señor Vargas. Could you go back to the hotel for those canvasses you promised to show me and return in half an hour or so?”

  “Yes, of course,” Moreno said sourly. He left in the American Ford.

  Kate led Hob to the comfortable back veranda and poured iced tea for them both. “The children are off in Switzerland with Derek. They’ll be disappointed to hear you were here and they didn’t see you. Hob, you’re looking tired.”

  “Lack of success is fatiguing,” Hob told her. He didn’t ask about Derek. Manfully, he resisted asking her whether there was anything between her and Vargas beyond dead horses. She wouldn’t tell him, anyway.

  “The agency isn’t going well?”

  “It’s going fine, just not making much money.”

  “Maybe things will pick up,” Kate said.

  Hob nodded, looking away. The sight of Moreno had soured his day, maybe his month. He didn’t like to see any man around Kate, not even Derek, whom she had lived with for almost five years. He knew he was a fool to think anything might ever be possible again between him and Kate. It was time to take care of his business and get back to Paris. And Marielle. Ugh. To quote Rilke, “You must change your life.”