The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian)

by Robert Sheckley

  The boat nudged the pier with a creak. I took out the .45 and set it on full cock. I still wasn’t planning to use it, but no sense in being careless.

  Two men climbed up onto the pier. I could see them in silhouette, short men who contrasted sharply with Alex’s tall figure. Then I heard a noise behind me.

  I turned, the Browning in my hand, but I couldn’t see a thing. When I turned back, I saw that there were three men on the dock now, all of them shorter than Alex. They had started to argue. I couldn’t make out what was being said, but it was getting louder, and one of the men was swearing.

  Then there was a scuffle. Alex pulled free, and I heard the sound of a revolver going off. One of the men staggered back, clutching his arm and cursing. After that things happened very quickly. Alex whirled around, and I heard shots fired. I had the impression that Alex was firing his handgun. Then I heard the sound of an automatic weapon, an ugly sound in the night. Alex’s hat flew into the air and I saw his head explode as a tracer went into it.

  Alex’s body tumbled down onto the pier. The men on the pier gathered it up and lowered it into the boat. The boat took off.

  I stood there for what felt like a very long time, the loaded gun in my hand, looking out to sea.

  FAUCHON

  47

  I can’t remember how I got back to Paris. Presumably I drove Alex’s car. I just couldn’t remember doing it. A lot of me was on automatic, just doing what had to be done. I couldn’t even remember where I parked the car. There was a blank of some hours. Then I found myself in a café on the Champs-Élysées having a cognac. Whenever I tried to think what happened, my mind winced away from it. If I pursued it, it showed me images: the dark pier, the lighter gray of the water, the people in silhouette, the flash of the handguns, and then the brilliant tracer fingers of the automatic weapon. Then Alex falling back, his head blown open. …

  I don’t remember how I got from the bar in the Champs-Élysées to Fauchon’s office. I was preoccupied with fatigue and guilt, the feeling that somehow I was responsible.

  I told Fauchon what I had seen. He heard me out without a change of expression. Not a raised eyebrow, not even a little quirk to the mouth. He was a solid man, Fauchon, and he hunched there in his straightbacked wooden chair and jotted down notes in his little black pocket notebook.

  When I was finished he asked me if I had anything more to add. I said that I didn’t. He excused himself and went to a desk in the back of the room. He made a phone call, talked with someone for a while, then came back to me.

  “I spoke to the gendarmerie in St-Nazaire,” he told me. “They have no report of disturbances last night in La Baule. They’ll check out the area and call me back. Are you sure you haven’t left out anything?”

  “That’s it,” I told him. “You don’t seem too impressed. I suppose it wasn’t a very interesting murder.”

  “So far,” he told me, “we have only your word that a murder was committed at all.”

  I stared at him. I found his attitude difficult to believe. “You mean you won’t take my word for it?”

  “I do not think you are trying to lie to me,” Fauchon said. “But I have noted that you are an emotional man, and probably given to hallucinations from time to time. You are the visionary type so aptly described by Jung. And you have been under considerable strain recently.”

  “Psychoanalysis is just what I need,” I said, my voice heavy with sarcasm and self-pity. “Do you have any other insights for me?”

  “Just that you get into some ridiculous situations for the sake of friendship.”

  “Maybe I do,” I said. “Meanwhile, what do I do now?”

  “I would like you to remain in Paris for the next few days. If we find any evidence pointing to a crime, we will want to interview you further.”

  ROMAGNA

  48

  What I needed was an American sort of place where I could tie on an American-style drunk, starting with margaritas and nachos and ending with vomiting in the bathroom. I knew just the place. A taxi took me to Le Cowboy, a Tex-Mex restaurant on a second floor in the Place du 18 Juin 1940 right across from the Montparnasse railroad station. Le Cowboy was your basic southwestern transplant. It had a map of the Republic of Texas on one wall, a Mexican poncho on another. There were Spanish tiles on the floor and the waitresses wore short cheerleader skirts and cowboy boots.

  I sat down at the bar but before I could get decently started on Project Blotto, Romagna found me. I told him about Alex. Like Fauchon, he seemed neither surprised, regretful, nor entirely believing.

  “So he’s finally gone, is he?” That was Romagna’s epitaph for Alex.

  I nodded.

  “But Fauchon hasn’t found any evidence?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then perhaps we shouldn’t count him out yet.”

  He sat there at the bar beside me, a large clumsy man hunched over a stein of beer. “Are you by any chance with the Special Prosecutor’s office?” I asked him.

  He smiled. “That’s right.”

  “And you’re here to take Alex back?”

  Romagna shook his head. “It’s U.S. Marshalls who do that. I’m here on other business. But it was convenient to keep an eye on Alex, too.”

  “Why don’t you go after the big boys and leave Alex alone?”

  “Innocent little Alex,” Romagna sneered.

  I don’t like it when other people are sarcastic. I’m the one who does that. Romagna’s expression seemed to betray smug knowledge that I was not privy to.

  Romagna took a pull at his beer and said, “Alex told you his account was being used by Selwyn?”

  I nodded.

  “Care to hear a different version?”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Let’s get a table and order a pitcher of margaritas,” Romagna said. “Do you mind if I smoke a cigar?”

  It was the last day of the operation. Alex and Selwyn had been cooking the books all day. The bank accounts were a mess. Little wonder, since Selwyn had been cutting into the accounts heavily, juggling millions into accounts he controlled abroad.

  By four in the afternoon they had done what they could. It wasn’t good enough. Selwyn knew it.

  “I’m in a poor position,” he told Alex. “The Feds are going to try to tag me for any money that’s unaccounted for. But the fact is, I actually kept very little of it. The funds were disbursed into other accounts that I have no access to.”

  “If it comes to it,” Alex said, “you can probably make a deal.”

  “It really wouldn’t be wise,” Selwyn said. “At the worst I’m going to have to do a few years. Time off for good behavior. But when I get out I’ll be all right. I’ve kept faith with my people and they’ll keep faith with me.”

  “Amen to that, brother,” Alex said. “As for me, I’m leaving the country for a while. Settle down in Paris and write my memoirs.”

  “I’ve got a family; I can’t do that,” Selwyn said, a little wistfully. “Well, this is the last of it.” He took out a large blue check and handed it to Alex.

  “From our Persian Gulf friends. Put it in the Arabco Account.”

  The check was for ten million dollars, the largest single contribution received. Alex put it in his briefcase and took a last look through his desk. He had emptied it out the previous day. He picked up his briefcase and started for the door.

  Alice Mills at the front reception desk smiled at him sardonically. “Off to the fleshpots of Europe, eh?”

  Alex smiled. He had had Alice book the flight for him. She’d been mentioning it ever since, hinting not so subtly that she might be induced into going along.

  Alex didn’t figure she was what he needed at all. He waved goodbye to her and went out the door.

  He took a taxi down to the First National on State and Pine. Alex, as Selwyn’s boy of all legal and semilegal chores, had been authorized as a signatory to contribution checks. It was easier for Selwyn, who spent most of his time with client
s and contributors, to let Alex do the shifting and moving of the funds from one account to another.

  Alex stood in front of the bank. He’d never thought of it as money before. Not while the excitement of the Iran arms dealings was on, not while they were diverting funds to the Contras. It had been cops and robbers on the highest level, and he’d had a lot of fun. He also had to admit that he hadn’t thought the position through to its conclusion. This sudden breakup of the Selwyn Corporation, the congressional investigation, the whole thing should have been predictable somewhere along the line. Yes, it had bothered him, but he’d thought the guys he worked for knew what they were doing. The stakes were so big, the operation so well protected, it was difficult to conceive that the whole thing had come unstuck.

  Well, that’s what had happened, and here he was with the last check. One more to funnel into the network. …

  But what if he didn’t do that? What if he kept it for himself?

  He’d never been a big grifter, just small time. But here he was with a check for ten million bucks. He knew just how to whip that in and out of his Swiss account to the safety of a supplementary numbered account he had set up in Liechtenstein.

  The big boys had been caught with their hands in the till. Now was the time for the employees to rip off what was left.

  He had his passport in the briefcase with him. He didn’t bother to return to his apartment for his clothing. When you get someone else’s ten million in your pocket, it’s time to move. He flew out of Dulles that evening, first class on Air France.

  “That’s your theory,” I told him.

  “It doesn’t matter a rat’s ass to me any more,” Romagna said. “I’ve been pulled off the case. I’m going home tonight. But not because I believe Alex is dead. I think he staged the whole thing.”

  “But why?”

  “So you could be witness to his death. His supposed death. Once that was accepted by the authorities, he was of the hook, really safe in his new identity, and able to spend his ten million anywhere he pleased.”

  “What ten million? You must be talking about one of the principals in this Iran-Contra thing.”

  “No, I’m talking about Alex. Him and that secretary of his, that Rachel Starr. I’m pretty sure she put Alex up to it. And now she’s over here to collect her share of the money. This little death or whatever it is of Alex’s is going to put a crimp in her plans, I imagine. But I can understand it from Alex’s point of view: arrange a death and keep a few extra millions.”

  “Alex wouldn’t do that,” I said, almost automatically.

  “He wouldn’t?” Romagna said, suddenly turning vicious. “What do you know about him? All you know is he’s your old buddy from the hippie days in Ibiza. We have a file on you, too. You’re negligible. You’re living in a dreamworld, and if you think Alex stayed the same barefoot boy you knew in Ibiza, you’re really crazy.”

  “Can you prove it, about the ten million dollars?”

  “No, we can’t. Not yet, anyhow. But we’re pretty sure.”

  I put down a bill for the drinks. “Have a nice journey home,” I said, standing up.

  “I guess this’ll change things for Nieves, too,” Romagna remarked.

  I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. “Who is Nieves?”

  “You think you know your old buddy so well. And you don’t even know Nieves.” He chuckled. “Go check it out, Mr. Private Investigator.”

  11

  NIEVIS

  49

  The lady was waiting for me in the lobby.

  She rose when I came in, and I suppose Alex must have shown her a photograph of me because she had no trouble recognizing me. She was a slim and beautiful young woman with that look of class that comes from being born with a lot of money. Yes, and from something innate, too, to be fair about it. Black silk skirt, raw silk blouse, needle-pointed high heels. Anyhow, I would have bet everything I had that her first name was Nieves. And of course I won, though I didn’t really get anything out of it.

  “Mr. Draconian? I am Nieves Teresa Maria Sanchez y Issássaga. I need to talk to you badly.”

  “I guess we both need to talk,” I said. “Shall we go to a café?”

  “Your room would be better,” she said. “My Air France flight was full, and I am tired and would like to take off my shoes.”

  So we went to my hotel room.

  Nieves took the seat in the bay window and I sat on the padded wing chair. She sat very erect, one of those things they must teach them in Latin Princess Finishing School. Her hair was as shiny as a freshly groomed raven’s wing. She wore a little gold cross around her neck. A braided gold bracelet. No lipstick, but her large, pouty, well-shaped lips had natural color. She also had on a little green eye shadow.

  “Alex talked about you,” she said. “You were his friend in the old days, in Spain.”

  “In Ibiza,” I corrected her.

  “Yes. It’s like a club, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Where did you know Alex from?”

  “Washington,” she said. “I don’t think you knew that we were to be married.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  We sat quietly for a while. I didn’t know what in hell to say. Her fiancé had just been killed; what was there to say? I hoped she didn’t want to hear the details again. I was getting sick of it, sick of Alex and his life and his death, sick of this stupid case which was beginning to depress me unutterably.

  “Well,” she said at last, “I want to tell you about it. I need some advice.”

  She’d picked a fine one to ask. Still, what can you say?

  “Go ahead, I’m all ears,” I said. And a small voice inside my head said, donkey ears, old boy, donkey ears.

  ALEX, NIEVES

  50

  Alex met Nieves two years previously at an embassy ball, a reception at the Paraguayan Embassy. Alex loved to put on his silk tuxedo, slick back his hair, go to those affairs. It didn’t matter that they were invariably dull. What Alex liked was the pomp and circumstance, the exquisitely decorated surroundings, the self-confident and strong-featured people who attended these events. Maybe it was fantasy, but Alex had had enough of realism. You get to see a lot of realism growing up in the Bronx. Alex liked pageantry much more than he liked real life, assuming that dirt and pain and shoddiness are real life.

  He was having his usual good time at a party when he ran into Nieves. She was twenty-two years old and this was her first year in Washington. Her father was the new Assistant Cultural Attaché from Paraguay. She spoke almost perfect English, as well as French and German. She’d been trained to it from earliest years. She was cultured but provincial, awestruck by the world of Washington, so different from, yet so similar to, the closed little diplomatic world of Asunción.

  Alex asked her to dance. They looked well together: Alex, tall, broad shouldered, blond; Nieves, small, with sleek black hair and a madonna’s face.

  Alex was about thirty-two at this time. Their affair began soon after. They were crazy about each other. But there were difficulties.

  The big problem was social. Alex was a junior lawyer in Selwyn, Inc., a fund-raising firm in Washington, D.C. He didn’t look like he was going anywhere important. He had no prospects. He could always make twenty or thirty thousand a year, maybe even get up to fifty grand. But he still was a long way from the money he’d need to live like Nieves’ friends and relatives.

  Nieves didn’t like these problems. She played with the idea of marrying Alex anyhow. In time, her family would come around.

  But Alex didn’t want to do it that way. He agreed with Nieves’ family that he was unworthy of her. Alex sincerely believed that wealth meant special privilege, special cachet. He was not cynical about wealth. He felt that as a poor boy—relatively—he had no right to marry into the monied class.

  Of course, there was a good chance that Nieves’ family would come around, and Nieves had quite a lot of money of her own. But this didn’t suit Alex. He didn’t want
to live on his wife’s money. He didn’t see himself as a ponce. What was a dream for Jean-Claude—marrying a wealthy woman—was a nightmare for Alex.

  He didn’t want to live on his wife’s money. He wanted money of his own. Alex was used to taking, not to being given.

  This might have all stayed theoretical if Alex hadn’t found himself in a position to make a coup. As one of the signatories to the bank accounts at Selwyn, Inc., he moved the contributions from one account to another, into still other accounts. It was difficult to tell who was getting what. That was the idea. But it seemed that the Contras weren’t getting a whole lot of it.

  A lot of the money was rubbing off, into accounts run by Selwyn and others. It was a scam. Alex began to look into how he could take some off himself—just as a theoretical exercise, at least at first.

  It seemed easy enough. He could endorse a check into one of the Swiss accounts to which he was a signatory, then transfer the money into Alex’s own Swiss account. Then transfer it from there into another account. It wouldn’t even have his name on it. Just his number.

  The idea began to intrigue him. Drop out and start all over again, but with a lot of money. Start a new life as a rich man with a beautiful wife in complaisant, corrupt Asunción.

  He figured he could siphon off at least a hundred thousand dollars. Maybe more. In the general confusion and covering up, they’d probably be a long time getting around to him. By the time they did, he’d be long gone, and the money would simply have to be marked down as “unaccounted for,” as happens so often in affairs of these sorts.

  Rachel was a part of all this. Maybe the final ignition that set the idea in motion came from her. They had lived together for just over six months. There had never been any talk of love. Alex didn’t love her, but he suspected, or feared, that she loved him.