Soma Blues

by Robert Sheckley

  “Sure. No problem there.”

  Hob had learned that people, even great gossips, were more motivated when they’re being paid to talk, even if that pay was only a pittance. The act of payment seemed to put a stamp of approval on what otherwise might have seemed a light-minded activity. And to give it a stamp of usefulness, of social use, of propriety. And even the most outrageous were not about to turn away from a little propriety when it came attached to some money.

  “Sounds like fun.” Even Big Bertha liked the idea of being a useful citizen if it could be made amusing and if it paid. But it didn’t have to pay much. And that was good because Hob didn’t have much. Everyone knew his agency was more an idée fixe than a going proposition. But what could be more attractive than an idée fixe, even if you weren’t a French decadent, as long as it didn’t involve too much work and paid enough to make it respectable?

  “What do you want me to do, Hob? I’m not so mobile these days, you know.”

  “The great thing about this, Bertha, is that you don’t have to change what you’re doing one bit.”

  “What do you want, specifically?”

  “There’s a man I need to get a line on. Learn who he is and whatever you can find out about him.” Hob told her the story of the man who was last seen with Stanley Bower in Paris and gave what he had of a description.

  “Not much to go on,” Bertha said.

  “If anyone can put a name and identity to this man, it’s you.”

  “You flatter me, Hob. But you’re right. If I or some of the people I know don’t know this guy, he doesn’t exist.”

  She thought a moment, then said, “You want information? I love to give information. Why should you pay me for it?”

  “Useful services deserve to be paid for,” Hob said. “And I like to employ my friends. That’s the ideal of the Alternative Detective Agency.”

  “It’s a noble ideal.”

  “I think so.”

  “And a little foolish, as noble ideals so often are.”

  Hob shrugged. “Do you want the job or not?”

  “Hell, yes,” Bertha said. “I’d be delighted to work as one of your operatives. What else do you want to know right now?”

  Hob looked baffled. He wasn’t used to this much directness. He had to think for a minute. After a moment or two he said, “Well, aside from Annabelle’s whereabouts and the identity of the mysterious Spanish speaker, what’s new in Ibiza? I mean, is there anything new?”

  “There’s always new stuff going on here,” Bertha said. “You mean like gallery openings or new boutiques?”

  “I don’t think so,” Hob said. “Something else.”

  “You aren’t very specific. … What about the new hotel?”

  “Is there a new hotel?”

  “I’m amazed you haven’t heard about it.”

  “I’ve been in Paris.”

  “That must account for it. Well, there’s this new luxury hotel near San Mateo. It’s going to open soon. In about two weeks, as a matter of fact. Japanese backers, so I hear. There’s going to be a big reception next Wednesday.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Of course. I’m on the B list.”

  “Is there more than one guest list?”

  “My dear, of course! Don’t you know how these things work? There’s a general reception first for a lot of people. That’ll be in the late afternoon on the hotel grounds. Half the island will be there. Anyone can get in, even without an invitation. That’s the C list. Then, in the evening, after the hoi polloi have cleared out, there’s an exclusive reception, dinner, and dancing for about a hundred or so people.”

  “And that’s the A list?”

  “No, my dear, that’s the B list. But it’s still very grand.”

  “So what’s the A list?”

  “After the B list people have cleared out, probably sometime after midnight, about eight or ten people remain. They’re the owners and investors, and their ladies, of course—or their lads, as the case may be. Then there’s drinking and drugging until dawn. The A list isn’t as much fun as the B list, except for the snob appeal. If you’re not an investor or a boyfriend or girlfriend of an investor, there’s no way to get into that one.”

  “Who are the investors?” Hob asked. “Who’s putting up this place?”

  “I only know the rumors. The investors are supposed to be a few wealthy Japanese and a few rich South Americans. Rumor hath it that the main financing is coming from the Yakuza—the Japanese criminal element, you know—but of course you’d know that—as one of their overseas investments. Interested?”

  “Quite interested,” Hob said. “Can you get me and Harry Hamm onto the B list?”

  “I can arrange it,” Bertha said. “I work for you now; my contacts are your contacts. By the way, not that it’s important, but how much do I get?”

  “I can’t know that until I see how many operatives work on it. You’ll get a percentage of the take based on how much time you put in on the case and how much bodily danger you run, if any.”

  “Well, whatever,” Bertha said. “No bodily danger, though, if you don’t mind. I’ll get on to that South American who knew Stanley. By the way, you’ll find Annabelle in the Beehive in Figueretas.”

  “I thought you said you’d have to check around and see.”

  “That was before you hired me, dear heart. I was going to check first to see if she wanted to see you. Now it doesn’t matter.”

  5

  Hob walked downhill to Ibiza and out of the city to his car. He got in and drove past the dreary new construction and around to the far side of the city, where Figueretas lay.

  He followed the unpaved road out of the city and went down a long bumpy road with the sea on one side and pastel-colored hotels lining the other side. This was the new Ibiza. Unlike the Dalt Villa, no ancient Roman wall surrounded Figueretas. It stood by itself just before Salinas, the ancient Roman salt flats, still being worked.

  Figueretas had been overlooked in the general wave of prosperity that had come to Ibiza. It was a neighborhood of rundown little bars and tiny food stores and seedy restaurants, catering to a variegated crowd of middle-class losers, dopers, drinkers, and remittance men, burned-out musicians, decrepit card sharks, absconding businessmen, and the like.

  The Beehive was three rickety four-story structures with outside staircases, the buildings laced together with walkways and laundry lines. The view of the sea on the other side of the breakwater was splendid but distant.

  Annabelle lived on the tercero piso of building dos. Hob went up the steps past back doors crowded with garbage and old baby carriages. Children were screaming at cats, guys were shouting at their old ladies, old ladies were screeching at phantoms of the past, and drunken poets were putting it all down in incomprehensible verses high on strained imagery. It was one of those European-style Porgy and Bess scenes.

  Annabelle said, “Come in and take a load off your feet, Hob. Want a beer?”

  “Sure,” Hob said.

  The apartment was small and unkempt. The best thing about it was its view of low buildings along Ibiza’s shoreline and the deep turquoise of the sea itself. The large casement window was open. A light breeze came through, fluttering the laundry that Annabelle had strung out on a line on the open veranda. The apartment itself smelled of cat. Annabelle’s old tortoiseshell cat, Santana, sat on the back of one of the sagging overstuffed chairs and glared at Hob. Smell of cat mingled with the smells of olive oil and garlic and laundry soap. Annabelle herself was wearing a silk kimono, or maybe it was nylon—Hob wasn’t up on these distinctions. Whatever it was, it was brightly colored in reds and oranges. The front sagged open revealing plenty of Annabelle’s full, pointed, slightly sagging breasts. When she crossed her legs the kimono fell away revealing a long streak of tan thigh. She was far and away the best looking junkie on the island, a Londoner from somewhere near Swiss Cottage, in her late twenties, with features that vaguely reminded Hob of a young Joan C
ollins. She’d first come to Ibiza in her teens and taken up with Black Roger, a heroin dealer from Detroit. They’d had some good times together until Roger got busted in the first big police cleanup of dealers, out-of-control junkies, and other undesirables. Annabelle had always been able to take junk or leave it. But that ability was beginning to leave her. Her arms were still free of tracks—she was vain about her small, well-shaped body and injected between her toes.

  “What’re you up to these days?” Hob asked.

  Annabelle shrugged. “Waitressing at Dirty Domingo’s. It’s a bitch of a job, but it’ll do until I can sell some paintings.”

  Among other things, Annabelle was a painter. Her childish daubs, which she called primitives, of old Ibicenco ladies working in the fields with sheep in the background, painted without perspective, had enjoyed a brief vogue in the island’s art galleries until even more primitive painters crowded her out with even more striking lack of perspective. There was always a lot of competition among primitive artists on Ibiza.

  “What about you?” Annabelle said. She rose and went to the refrigerator, opened it, and took out two bottles of San Miguel beer. Hob regretted accepting when the refrigerator let out a fetid odor of last week’s lamb-and-garbanzo stew. “You still doing the detective agency?”

  Hob nodded. Businesses among the expatriates of Ibiza were so rare that everyone stayed informed on how it was going for the enterprising few, the better to get a loan during their brief periods of prosperity.

  “Are you working on something now?”

  Hob nodded. “I am helping the French police in their investigations.”

  “So this is a business trip?”

  “It has to do with Stanley Bower. Can you tell me anything about Stanley’s recent business dealings?”

  “Oh, Hob, you are a bit of a dope. Lovable, but silly. Why on earth should I tell you anything about Stanley, if I knew anything, which I don’t?”

  “Is there any reason you shouldn’t tell me?”

  “I suppose not. But I don’t want to get into any trouble.”

  “Annabelle, I’m an old friend. Tell me everything. I won’t pass anything on. I’ll protect you.”

  “I know you will, Hob. As well as you’re able. But why don’t you ask Stanley?”

  “I can’t. He’s dead, Annabelle.”

  She looked at him wide-eyed. “Dead? Really?”

  Hob nodded.

  “How?”

  Hob told her how Bower was killed in Paris.

  Annabelle thought for a while, then shook her head. “Hob, I’d be glad to tell you whatever I remember. But not here. Take me to dinner at El Olivo’s, and I’ll sing like a canary. Wait just a moment while I change.”

  * * *

  “Have you ever tried their caviar blinis?” Annabelle said, an hour later, as they sat on the terrace of El Olivo, on one of the intermediate levels of the steep Old City. “It’s real caviar, Hob, not that dreadful Danish lumpfish.” Hob noted that she had made a quick recovery from the news of Stanley’s death.

  “Real caviar? Oh, good,” Hob said. “I was a little worried about that.”

  They both greeted the eight or ten friends who strolled by on the errands that take up so much of the Ibiza day and night. After a couple of shots of the house vodka, Annabelle was ready to talk.

  “I was spending some time with Stanley Bower up until last month,” she said. “We went to a few parties together. This was after I broke up with Etienne. We didn’t do anything—he was gay, you know. And now he’s dead. I don’t like to talk about him much.”

  Hob waited. Annabelle smiled and ordered a champagne cocktail from a hovering waiter.

  “That’s all?” Hob asked. “I could have found that out from anyone for the price of a cognac.”

  “Well, that’s not my fault, is it? Go on, ask something else.”

  “When did you see Stanley last?”

  Annabelle thought for a moment, biting one long red fingernail. “I guess it was the night before he left for Paris. We had dinner together at Arlene’s.”

  “Did he mention why he was going to Paris?”

  “He said he had to take care of something there, but he didn’t say what.”

  “And then?”

  “I suppose he was going to come back here. But I don’t know.”

  “Did he seem worried, anxious?”

  “Stanley? He didn’t look like he had a care in the world.”

  “Just great,” Hob said. “Do you remember seeing him with a tanned or dark-skinned man, probably a Spanish speaker, probably Spanish or South American, with a big emerald ring and a name with a rolled Spanish r in it?”

  “No, nobody like that.”

  “You answered too quickly,” Hob said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you didn’t think about it first. That leads me to think you know who I mean.”

  “I don’t. I know Stanley’s crowd. Mainly French and English. Not a Latino in the bunch.”

  “Maybe you should have another champagne cocktail.”

  “I will, never fear. Waiter!”

  “Did you know what Bower was going to do in Paris?”

  “Hob, I didn’t know the guy at all well. We just laughed a lot together. Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  Hob lit a Rumbo, coughed, and took a sip of his San Miguel beer. “I wish you hadn’t asked that. I was hoping to trap you into a damaging admission.”

  “Well, out with it, what’s this all about?”

  “The French police are interested.”

  “Are they? Is there a reward?”

  “Annabelle, if there were a reward, I’d have, told you straight out. If there is one, I’ll see you get it. But you better talk to me about Stanley. You like to go to Paris from time to time, don’t you?”

  “Sure. What are you talking about?”

  “The guy investigating this case, Inspector Fauchon, will see to it personally that you get a lot of plain French hellishness if you don’t cooperate. You’ll get picked up and questioned when you come to Paris. He could even make you some trouble here.”

  Annabelle considered it calmly. “I could just never go to Paris.”

  “So you could. But why should you want never to come to Paris if you’ve got nothing to hide?”

  Annabelle hesitated, thought it over. “Hob, I’m really not clever enough to lie to you. I don’t know a thing. Christ! Stanley dead! What lousy luck!”

  “I don’t know if it was a matter of luck,” Hob said.

  “I mean my luck, not his. Stanley never had any luck. I should have known better than to loan him three hundred pounds for this stupid trip of his.”

  “Get your wrap, Annabelle,” Hob said. “Time we were going.” The bill came to a hundred and seventy-three dollars, not including the tip that Hob forgot to leave. The champagne, of course, was extra.

  6

  There was a cab stand outside the restaurant, in the little plaza with the hippie shoemaker shop on the corner. Hob put Annabelle into a taxi and gave her a thousand peseta note for the fare. He’d had enough of her for the night. Then he walked through the narrow alley that led to the parking lot at the back of the restaurant where he’d left his rental car. The parking lot was an irregular rectangle outlined by whitewashed stones. When Hob entered it he saw there was someone sitting on the fender of his SEAT, smoking a cigarette. The cigarette glowed red in the darkness as the man puffed on it then flipped it away.

  “Hey,” the man said, “you’re Hob Draconian, aren’t you?”

  “Who are you?” Hob asked.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” the man said, getting to his feet. He started walking toward Hob. There was something about the way he moved that Hob didn’t like. Hob started backing away slowly, wishing that he was the sort of detective who carried a gun. That was not so easy in Europe, but at least he could have had a knife or blackjack. As it was he had nothing but a ballpoint pen. And even th
at was in an inside pocket where he couldn’t get at it easily. The man was still coming toward him in what could be described as a threatening manner. Hob looked around. There was nobody in sight, and even if there had been, he wouldn’t have seen them for it was pitch black. The heavy bass of the rock music coming from El Olivo was sure to drown out any hysterical screams for help he might make.

  He took two steps backward, prepared to wheel and run back to the restaurant for his life. And then he heard a sound on the left side of him. He turned. There was a man walking out from between two cars, buttoning up his fly.

  “Listen,” Hob said to the newcomer, “We have some trouble here.”

  “Yes, I am part of it,” the newcomer said.

  Hob wasn’t slow. He saw at once that the two men were working together.

  “What do you guys want?” Hob asked, hoping his voice wasn’t quavering.

  The first man, larger of the two, was dressed in dark clothing and had on a stupid little Tyrolean hat with a silver-mounted fox brush in its sweatband. He said, “We been told you been sticking your nose into matters that are none of your concern. We’re here to talk to you about that.” He had an accent, probably South American.

  His companion, small and venemous, with tiny ferret teeth gleaming above a dark shirt and white necktie and steel-capped shoes, said, “We goin’ to make our point in the heavily physical style we understand best.” Another Latino, probably uneducated, but with an ornate delivery.

  While they talked both men were herding Hob along in a businesslike way. They had him in a narrow alley between cars, behind which was a ten-foot-high stone wall, and beyond that a straight drop down the side of the city. There was nowhere for Hob to go but straight ahead, into their arms. That didn’t seem a likely route. He was definitely in trouble.

  Then Hob heard the sound of a car door opening. They all turned and watched as a man stepped out of a big, dusty old Mercedes. All Hob could make out at first was dark trousers and a dark shirt. As the man approached, Hob could see that he had curly white hair, the only light thing in the surroundings. He walked toward them, saying, “Mr. Draconian?”