The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian)

by Robert Sheckley

  “Nigel,” I said, “you don’t happen to own a chauffeur’s uniform, do you?”

  “Certainly not, old boy,” Nigel said. “See you soon.” He walked to the door, then turned. “But I know where I could get one in a hurry, of course.” And with that he was on his way.

  I knew nothing about what Nigel was doing these days. I had just breezed into Paris and assumed that time had stayed nicely frozen, and everything and everyone had stayed the same. But it hadn’t. It couldn’t have. So what did Nigel do when he wasn’t working for me? And who could I find this out from?

  When I returned to Le Cygne, the concierge told me there had been a phone call for me. A certain Jean-Claude had asked me to contact him as soon as possible. I went to my room and telephoned.

  The phone was answered by what sounded like a large, redheaded woman speaking French with a strong Spanish accent. The Spanish are the schvartzers of France. They supply the concierges to the second- and third-rate Parisian hotels. On the social scale they are one step above the Algerians, who sweep the streets at night with brooms made of bundles of twigs. I switched to Spanish, and heard the usual Spanish complaint about the coldness of the French people and the blandness of their food. After she learned that I didn’t know anyone in Albacete, she told me that Jean-Claude had gone out, but was very eager to speak to me. I gave her the number of my hotel.

  I still had an hour and a half before meeting Juanito. So I bathed and took a nap. You may think that I do a lot of napping. It isn’t so, actually. Other detectives nap a lot, too. They just don’t tell you about it. But I have determined to write a true account of my case. So let it stand.

  I set my Casio wrist alarm for 11:45 p.m., lay down and fell asleep almost at once. All too soon the alarm went off, and my struggle to program the watch into stopping its damnable chiming woke me up nicely. I put on a dark blue cotton sports shirt and my lightweight khaki sports jacket with the many pockets, and went out into the warm and murmurous Paris night.

  SAINTE-EUSTACHE

  34

  A brief conference with the concierge at my hotel told me all I needed to know concerning the location of Sainte-Eustache. It was practically around the corner. I left Le Cygne and walked down Rue Rambuteau, past the Forum des Halles, to Sainte-Eustache near the Bourse. It was a great Gothic cathedral, built to rival Notre-Dame. Rising above the pork and fish stalls of the quartier, its flying buttresses and rose windows were visible in the light-filled Paris night. It was just going on midnight when I arrived: I could hear the horloge, the great clock four meters high and weighing over a ton, sounding the hour from the nearby passage de l’horloge.

  Within seconds of my arrival Juanito showed up. Or perhaps he had been there all along, waiting for me. He wore his Spanish musician’s costume of earlier, to which he had added a smart waist-length dark blue cape, giving him slightly the resemblance to a St-Cyr student.

  “Ah, amigo, come with me,” Juanito said, leading me into Sainte-Eustache.

  The nave was high, and the vaulting, with its hanging keystones, was little short of flamboyant. We walked toward the altar, past the Lady Chapel and Colbert’s tomb. The place was a quick survey in French history. Richelieu, Molière and Madame de Pompadour had been baptized here. Louis XIV had his first communion here, and this was where they had held the funerals of La Fontaine, Mirabeau, and the previously mentioned Molière.

  “Where are we going?” I whispered.

  “When did you last make confession?” Juanito whispered back.

  “Hey,” I told him, “I’m a Jew; we don’t do that sort of thing.”

  “Then this will be a new experience for you.” He led me around to a confessional booth. I eyed it with distaste.

  “What is this?” I asked. These South Americans sometimes have a strange sense of humor.

  “Go in,” Juanito said, indicating the booth. “You will see.”

  I didn’t like it, but what the hell, I went into the booth. The curtain closed off the view of the outside. Leaning forward, I found the little trap door that you open in order to converse with the priest. I slid it open. From the other side I could hear a rustling sound, as of a priest adjusting his gown or whatever it is he wears.

  After a while a soft voice said, “Oui, mon fils?”

  I shrugged my shoulders in impatience. This situation was definitely putting me off. The great shadowy church, the fantastical shapes, the massed candles, the stately sculptures, the odor of incense and piety, all were combining to give me a quick case of nervous indigestion. This was definitely not my Paris. I managed to restore a measure of sanity to the scene by saying, in conversational tones, “Hi, I’m Hob Draconian; to whom am I having the pleasure of confessing?”

  “They told me you were a bit of a fool,” a nonclerical voice growled from the other side of the partition.

  “I’m not fool enough to set up meetings in confession booths,” I said. “What is this, some kind of weird kick with you? And who are you, anyhow?”

  “I must not be seen talking to you,” the voice said. “This place seems as secure as any I could think up on short notice, and it has the advantage of being close to your hotel.”

  “Yes, that is handy,” I said. “Of course, you could have come to my hotel room and I would have sent up for a few bottles of wine, and we could have conducted this thing in a civilized manner. And I suppose it is secure, as long as the priest doesn’t start wondering why we’re playing in his booth.”

  “The priest is in Marrakesh, on holiday,” the voice said. “Don’t you think we know how to arrange these matters?”

  “I don’t know. Who are you?”

  “It is not necessary for you to know that.”

  “You’re right,” I said, “and it also isn’t necessary for me to be doing this.” I stood up. “If you want to continue this conversation you’ll find me at Au Pied du Cochon next door. I’ll probably be ordering a gratinée.”

  “Not so fast,” the presumably ersatz priest hissed. “How much will you pay for information about Alex?”

  I sat down again. At last we were moving into reality.

  “I’d have to hear the information first before I can judge its worth to me.”

  “My informant will require a minimum payment of five hundred American dollars if you judge the information to be of value. Is that agreeable?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but only if.”

  “Can you give me a hundred dollars now to show your good intentions?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.

  “All right. Follow me.”

  ESTEBAN

  35

  We left Sainte-Eustache, the bogus priest and I, and walked down Rue de la Truanderie and then into Rue St-Denis. Snack bars, boutiques, sex shops, cafés, all were out in full force. I took a look at my companion. He was tall, with a yellowish-green complexion, raptor eyes and a Pancho Villa moustache. What I had taken for a cassock turned out to be a poncho.

  “Have you got a name?” I asked him, “or do I just refer to you as the bogus priest?”

  “Call me Ishmael,” he said. “No, don’t call me Ishmael, that’s just a nervous reflex from the literature course I took last year at the New School in New York.”

  “Was it a good course?” I asked. I mean, you have to say something.

  “I particularly liked the buxom young Jewish girls who attended,” he said. “For the rest of it, I’ll be happy when I can stop thinking about white whales. You may call me Esteban.”

  We walked on a ways in companionable silence. At last I asked him, “Where, exactly, are you taking me?”

  By this time we had come to the shadowy stretches around the Fountain of Innocents. It is a place of bad memory, where, during the siege of Paris by Henri of Navarre in 1590, it is said that the dead rose out of the great charnel house which encircled this area and danced in the streets. Now it is a tourist attraction by day, and at night a place for clandestine arrangements and small deals in contraband.r />
  “I suppose this will do as well as any other place,” Esteban said.

  Two figures detached themselves from the strollers circling the fountain. I didn’t like the way they came directly toward me, separating so as to approach me one from each side. Nor did I like the way Esteban stepped away from me, his hand going into a pocket of his cape and coming out with something that glittered and was not a harmonica.

  “Esteban,” I said, “I misjudged you.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I took you for an honest grifter and you turn out to be a momzer of deepest hue.”

  Esteban chuckled. “Momzer! I had forgotten the exotic dialect of New York. How I wish I could speak it idiomatically.”

  “If we made a deal,” I said, “I could tutor you in Yiddish.”

  “I have taken an instant liking to you, Hob,” Esteban said, effortlessly aspirating my name. “I regret having to put you through this more than you can imagine. Politics is a cruel mistress.”

  “Stop trying to sound villainous,” I responded. “Listen, Esteban, seriously, let’s you and me sit down somewhere and talk it out. No situation is unworkable.”

  “If only it were up to me,” Esteban said, with that melancholy expression South Americans sometimes get when they are forced to hurt someone they really like. “But my hands are tied; this is an action order direct from El Grupo Blanco.”

  “Oh, it came direct from El Grupo Blanco,” I said.

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “Hell,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? In that case it’s all right for you to do whatever the hell you want with me, as long as Grupo Blanco authorized it. Now honestly, admit it, Esteban, isn’t that a silly position?”

  I suppose my words were over their heads. Without even acknowledging what I’d said, Esteban’s two henchmen or whatever-you-call-them converged on me from two sides.

  I made my play. I bolted through the widest gap between my three surrounders, in the direction of the Boulevard Sébastopol. Fear lent speed to my flashing limbs.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t make it.

  They had been ready for me. As I rushed by, one of them stuck out a leg, the other one swung his arm. Just like they’d rehearsed this before. Quasars exploded in my brain. My legs turned to soap bubbles. I heard a high, shrill singing in my head. I never felt when I hit the pavement.

  BOIS DE BOULOGNE

  36

  It is curious how the Spanish world continues to impinge on my life though I have left Ibiza far behind. There must be something about the mentality that appeals to me, makes me seek out the arid zeitgeist of Hispanicism. Countries exist as models for our minds, and they give us coloration beyond our individual mannerisms. My tie with Spain was profound, ironic, and as delusional as the adventures of the great Quixote himself, my progenitor.

  These were my thoughts as I lay slumped against one side of the interior of what seemed to be a large touring car. I decided to feign unconsciousness for a while. Through the fringe of my narrowed eyelids I could make out two large men in the back with me, facing me on jump seats. Beyond them, I saw Esteban sitting beside the driver. The driver wore a driver’s cap. You gotta hand it to the South Americans; they’ve got style. Of course, what they were doing kidnapping me was something that defied even my powers of fantastical association. And what in hell was El Grupo Blanco, anyhow, and what did they want from me?

  The two men in the jump seats were talking together in low tones. They were speaking a language I’d never heard. Occasionally, one of them made a remark to Esteban, and he responded in the same language.

  It occurred to me that maybe they weren’t Latins at all. Sounded a little like Albanian to me. Or maybe one of those Macedonian dialects that have been around since the days of Alexander the Great.

  Already we had gone from the center of Paris to the Périphérique, the ring road that surrounds the city. We turned into the Porte de la Villette and went west. The traffic thinned out here. We swept around the northern limit of the city and turned south past Porte Maillot, then continued another mile or so and exited at the Porte Dauphine. We were in the Bois de Boulogne now, the large, carefully cultivated forest on Paris’ western side.

  As we drove through its shady promenades, I could see an occasional prostitute parading the sidewalk, wearing furs with little under them. We reached the Allée de Longchamp, where the male prostitutes hang out. At last, we passed the grounds of the Racing Club of France and came to a stop just past the heights of Pré Catelan, in marshy ground close to the Lac Inférieur. This is where the Paris gangs are said to dispose of the bodies of their victims.

  “All right, Hob,” Esteban’s firm, well-aspirated voice said. “This is it—end of the line, as you Americans say.”

  No sense feigning unconsciousness any longer. It looked like the real thing might be mine soon enough: that Big Sleep that Jim Morrison sang about.

  “Please get out of the car,” Esteban said.

  I obeyed quietly, with no clever wisecrack for once. It disturbed me that Esteban hadn’t warned me not to try to escape. It was like he didn’t care what I tried, because he already had his plans for me.

  Esteban and his helpers formed up around me and led me deeper into the bosky woods. It was a clear night. Through the branches I could make out Orion overhead. Our feet made delicate crunching sounds, as we crossed the sward or whatever it was. One of the men had a nasty head cold. He kept on blowing his nose into a white handkerchief. I couldn’t think of any way to use that to my advantage, but at least I hadn’t given up yet.

  At length we came to a little clearing. We stopped here. Esteban said, “OK, let’s talk.”

  He made a gesture with his hand. His two helpers backed up a ways. That felt marginally better. Not really good enough to restore our relationship, but definitely a start.

  “My frien’,” Esteban said, “maybe it’s not such a good idea you looking for Alex.”

  “Funny you should say that,” I said. “I was just beginning to think that myself.”

  “Really?” said Esteban.

  “Yeah, I’ve given it a lot of thought,” I told him. “This Alex thing is un poquito complicado, verdad? Not really my sort of thing at all. I was just about deciding to write it off and go home to my ex-wives.”

  “That’s a very good idea,” Esteban said.

  “He’s not so dumb as he looks,” one of the henchmen remarked.

  I let that pass. “Problem is, if I give up the job, I don’t have any money to get home with.”

  Esteban stared at me. Then he gave a short, grunting laugh. “Señor Draconian, you amaze me. Are you trying to get me to pay you money to give up this case? One would think you would be grateful just to walk away with your life.”

  “I’m grateful for that, of course,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong. But frankly, I didn’t figure you were actually going to kill me.”

  “How did you come to that conclusion?”

  “For one thing, El Grupo Blanco wouldn’t approve. Not really. You know how often they change their minds. Right now, discretion is the order of the day. Don’t make waves; otherwise you’ll compromise a lot of carefully laid plans.”

  “What do you know about El Grupo?” Esteban asked.

  “What I know is my business. I’m not going to reveal what I know to you or anyone else. That’s protection for you, too, you know.”

  “You take a lot of chances,” Esteban muttered. “I don’t know; perhaps we’re safer with you dead.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” I said. “For one thing, if you kill me, you compromise Juanito. Inspector Fauchon of the Paris Police knows my every movement. He has me under constant surveillance. Don’t think that this little kidnapping has gone unnoticed. Fauchon and his men are ready to move against you at any time.”

  “No one could have followed us,” Esteban said. But he didn’t sound sure. How can you be sure?

  “They don’t have to tail you di
rect.” I told him. “If I know Fauchon, he planted a bug on your car as soon as he saw how things were going. He’s subtle, Fauchon is. But I guess that’s the sort of thing you’d expect of the French.”

  Esteban turned to his helpers and they talked in the language I didn’t understand. Listening more carefully, I decided it wasn’t Albanian. Sounded more like one of the Turkish languages to me, Azerbijaini, maybe. It wasn’t until later that I learned it was Guaraní, the main Indian language of Paraguay.

  “Are you going to stop looking for Alex?” Esteban demanded.

  “I’ll think about it. Meanwhile cross my palm with silver, or paper notes, and I’ll try to make it easy on you when this whole ball of wax comes unstuck.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Esteban said. “You are in no position to demand anything.”

  “That’s not the way I see it,” I told him. “Come on, Esteban, pay up. It’s not your money, anyhow. It belongs to El Grupo Blanco. They won’t even notice a few thousand dollars if you mark it down as petty cash.”

  “A few thousand? That is impossible. We are operating on a very tight budget. It is very expensive for us South Americans to live in Paris.”

  “Well, it’s up to you,” I said. “Hell, I never asked you to bribe me. Do what you please. But please do get on with it. Fauchon is probably sick of crouching in the bushes, and I’ve got more important things to do than hang around the Bois de Boulogne all night with you.”

  Esteban held another hurried conference. Then he took out his wallet.

  “I’ll give you ten thousand francs,” he said. “But you must promise to stop looking for Alex.”

  I took the bills and stuck them in my pocket. “Actually, Esteban, you’re better off with me looking for him instead of someone else. I have to find Alex because that’s my job. But I’m also a friend of Alex, and I’ll do the best I can for him.”