The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian), Page 2

  “I know that you and Alex shared a house near there one summer.”

  “Alex? You mean Alex Sinclair?”

  She nodded.

  I’d lost track of Alex years ago. He and I had been pretty tight for a while.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Alex said if anything ever happened to him, I should look you up.”

  “So what’s happened?”

  “He’s missing.”

  I nodded. It would have to be something like that. That’s why they come to me.

  “Where was he last seen?” I asked her.

  “Paris.”

  I straightened up in my chair. “What was he doing?”

  “He was playing in a rock band. Five-string electric banjo, I believe. He left Amsterdam to rejoin his group.”

  “Just a minute.” I swung my feet off the desk and found a pad and a Bic. “What was the name of his group?”

  “Les Monstres Sacrés.”

  “That sounds like Alex’s sort of group all right. Please continue.”

  “I know he arrived in Paris. He sent me a telegram from De Gaulle Airport. He was going to telephone me when he had a hotel room.”

  “Obviously he didn’t.”

  “No, he did not. I didn’t hear anything from him. That was three weeks ago.”

  “I don’t mean to be harsh,” I said, “but is it possible maybe he was ducking you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Rachel said. “He’d given me his power of attorney to clear out his bank accounts and sell some property. I’m holding nearly eighty thousand dollars in Alex’s money. That, my friend, is not chicken liver.”

  “I agree he probably wasn’t trying to duck you,” I said. “Did you have anyone to call and ask about him? A mutual friend?”

  She shook her head. “Alex was very specific about that. If anything happened, I wasn’t to try anyone but you.”

  “You’ve come to the right place,” I told her. “The right man, I mean. This is definitely my kind of case.”

  Rachel didn’t look convinced. She looked at me, doubt clouding over her large gray eyes.

  “What kind of a gun do you carry?” she asked.

  “I don’t carry a gun. I believe in an American citizen’s inalienable right to not bear arms. As a matter of fact, I’m a member of the Anti-Rifle Association of America.”

  She looked me over, sizing me up. “But you’re tough, right? Karate, stuff like that?”

  I shook my head. “Violent movements put my back out. And my doctor has warned me to avoid getting hit on the head.”

  “But what do you do in a dangerous situation?”

  “I perform the instantaneous intuitive leap that tells me how to handle the situation.”

  “You mean that you fake it?”

  I nodded. “Faking it. A term used by Paul Simon, one of my favorite philosophers. Yes, that’s what I do.”

  “I’m not really convinced,” Rachel said. “Can you give me one reason why anyone would hire you rather than the first name she comes across in the Yellow Pages?”

  I shrugged and gave her my half smile. “Because I can cut it, lady.” A line from Hud, one of my favorite movies. “But there are several more compelling reasons. You have noticed no doubt that I don’t wear a suit. Private detectives who wear suits charge at least twenty-five percent more than private detectives who wear Levis.”

  She still looked doubtful. “Are you at least tough? A bodybuilder, maybe, beneath your apparent scrawniness? A knife thrower?”

  I had to smile. She had been taken in by appearances, as so many are. Spiritually I am a tall, lean, cool dude with long hair in a headband. But in physical aspect you might not know that, since I am shorter than average and inclined toward a very slight dumpiness.

  “I try to avoid violence,” I told her. “Look, Rachel, I’m the right person to find Alex. Do you think you can hire a man with short hair and a three-piece suit to hang out in the Barrio Chino in Barcelona and come up with leads? Or rap with the Senegalese dope dealers in Les Halles? Or trade hits with the jokers in the Milky Way in Amsterdam?”

  “And you can get into those places?”

  “Lady, those places are my home,” I told her.

  “I don’t have a great deal of money,” she told me.

  “It doesn’t take much to get me going. My air fares, meagre expenses, and a hundred dollars a day pin money. That means I don’t earn a thing and have to sleep in youth hostels. But what the hell, it’s for Alex.”

  “All right,” she said, “you’re a little weird, but Alex said to trust you. Maybe we can afford a better class of hotel than youth hostels.”

  “We?”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Why?”

  “To make sure you don’t run away with my money. And to find Alex. And because I’ve never been to Europe before.”

  Well, what the hell. She was a foxy lady. And I was going back to Europe.

  HARRY HAMM

  4

  I sent Frankie Falcone’s information on to our man in Ibiza, Harry Hamm. Harry is an ex-cop who spent twenty-eight years on the Jersey City force. That was back when Madge was still alive and the twins, Dorrie and Florence, were living at home in the two-story frame house on Kearney Street. Harry’s retired now and living on the island of Ibiza. He owns a small finca, where he raises two varieties of almond trees and can talk in dialect with his Ibicenco neighbors.

  Although he’s officially retired and has a small income from his pension, he’s not opposed to taking on a job from time to time. People have a way of bringing him work. Unofficially, of course: the Spanish police don’t license foreign detectives to operate in their territory.

  But there are some things the police on Ibiza can’t or don’t want to handle: rip-offs between rival narcotics gangs; the theft by one thief of a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Renaissance paintings belonging to another thief and never registered with the Spanish authorities; the recovery of a million dollar ransom paid in a rescue attempt that failed.

  Harry didn’t know any of this until I pointed it out that day in the Peña in Ibiza when the Alternative Detective Agency really came into existence.

  Harry had retired last year and moved to Ibiza. The first time he came to Ibiza was to help his son, who’d been put into the Ibiza lockup during the infamous hippie riots of 1969. Harry had gone there to bail him out. It had taken a little longer than usual, because Harry didn’t know which people to give bribes to, and because, in Spain, even the bribes must be laid out with proper form and due gravity. By the time he got it all squared away and got his boy out, Harry had worked up a love for the island. Something about the spine of pine-clad mountains, the warm, tideless sea, the people. That Ibiza magic.

  Harry started returning every year. First he came over in summer, during crazy season, but that really wasn’t to his taste; he didn’t like mixing with hot weather weirdos. He’d started taking his vacations in winter, when Ibiza is at its best. He picked up a little finca there, and, after Madge died and the twins moved to Cleveland, Harry took his retirement and moved to Ibiza.

  I’d met him there. It wasn’t long before Kate and I were breaking up, and Harry and I used to meet in Manolo’s bar in Figueretas to push back the little shot glasses of brandy that were so cheap you could hardly afford not to become an alcoholic. When Harry heard I was starting a detective agency, he thought I was crazy.

  “You?” he asked. “A detective agency?”

  “Me,” I said, rubbing the stringy biceps on my left arm.

  “But you don’t know a damn thing about it!” Harry said.

  “I’ll tell you something,” I said. “I think there’s entirely too much emphasis put on expertise. I read a while ago about this guy who used to get into hospitals posing as a brain surgeon. He did great cases, operations, everything. Then the authorities would catch up with him and he’d go on and find another hospital.”

  “What the hell has
that to do with anything?” Harry said.

  “It’s obvious what a private detective does. It’s even easier than brain surgery. There are books. And there are books which correct the mistakes of the first books. So what’s the problem?”

  “Licensing, for one.”

  “I’m not going to set up as a private investigator,” I told him. “I’m going to set up as a research establishment. That’s what a detective does, really. Researches people, or situations, in order to uncover evidence to bring certain things to light. There’s no license needed to be a freelance researcher.”

  “Then how’ll people know you’re really a private detective?”

  “Word of mouth,” I said.

  “It’s cockamamie,” Harry said.

  “If you think that’s strange, listen to this: I want you to come into the business with me.”

  “Me? Get out of here!” Harry said gruffly. But I could see he was pleased. There’s nothing like a couple of months of retirement on a fun island, with fun people on all sides of you, to bring on a desire to do almost any damn thing as long as it isn’t fun. This is especially true if you’re a short, thickset, balding guy with a heavy jaw like Harry, whom you would never mistake for a fun person. Although he was, of course, in his own way, just like all of us.

  We went to my apartment in the Peña. Harry came in, took off his hat, tossed it into the wicker chair, draped himself across the couch like a slug wearing madras shorts, lit a cigarette. He looked me up and down like he was appraising me.

  “Are you really serious about this?”

  “Look at it this way, Harry,” I told him. “There’s need of a people’s detective agency. Not the usual sort of place that caters only to the wealthy, or at least the affluent middle class. No, what about the poor; what about the hippies; haven’t they any rights? What about the American exiles living abroad, not really protected by local law, and with nobody they can turn to if something goes wrong?”

  “What’s wrong with the cops?” Harry asked. “They can’t go to them?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with the cops,” I said, “but you know as well as I do, some guy comes to your stationhouse in Jersey City speaking broken English, how much attention is he going to get? He’s not even a voter, for chrissakes.”

  “I guess you got a point there,” Harry said.

  “This thing can work,” I told him.

  “All right, let’s suppose it can work,” Harry said. “I’m the one who knows all about detectives and criminals and cops. What do I need you for? Why don’t I set up by myself?”

  “Simple, Harry,” I said. “If you did that, you’d be lonely. What does the money matter to you? You’re retired; you just want something to keep your hand in. Let me be your associate. Your manager. Your boss. Try it, you’ll like it.”

  “You know, Hob,” Harry said, “you’re like those hippie kids my son was always hanging out with when he lived here.”

  “What’s your son doing now? Still with the longhairs?”

  “No. Scott’s running a massage parlor in Weehawken.”

  “At least he’s not a hippie,” I said.

  Harry shook his head impatiently. He had talked enough about his son.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s crazy, but I’ll think about it.”

  That’s how I got my man in Ibiza. It was almost as good as being there myself. Almost, but not quite.

  IΒIZA

  5

  Ibiza is like you attached Coney Island to Big Sur and put the whole thing under Mexican rule.

  Ibiza and its adjacent island of Formentera lie south of Majorca and Minorca, roughly on a line drawn between Valencia and Marseilles.

  The island has a reputation as an international spot for jetsetters. It was one of the world centers of the counterculture back in the sixties and seventies. Many people went to Ibiza to live that dream. A lot of them, and their children, are there still. I had been one of those people.

  There are a lot of reasons for Ibiza’s peculiar charm: the dense interpenetration of different layers of society; the constant arrival and departure of the uncountable thousands who make the island a part-time home. There’s prosperity, due in part to Ibiza being one of the favored places to take your ill-gotten gains and live a pleasant life. For a certain type of person, having a good income and living in Ibiza would be two definitions of paradise.

  The people come and go. They flow in and out, get into the busses and U-drive-it cars and taxis and fan out over the island. Some have chauffeured cars waiting for them. The ships come in every day from Barcelona and Palma with more tourists, and their cars, Jags and Porsches, that get a lot of wear on their suspensions on the rocky Ibiza roads.

  The island is about thirty-five miles long by eight or so wide. Its year-round Spanish population is under fifty thousand. During the summer, over a million people pour in and out.

  Ibiza is also one of the important transshipment points on the international heroin and cocaine networks. Not to even bother mentioning marijuana and hashish; let’s stick with the big ones. Ibiza is a convenient spot to off-load goods by sea from laboratories in the south of France, Corsica, Italy, and get them aboard other carriers going to northern Europe or North America.

  Some of the finest houses in town are owned by dope dealers. They’re the elite of the Old City, the crowded, twisting, little, cobblestoned streets of the Peña that runs down to the waterfront. On the ten or so blocks of waterfront there are perhaps a hundred or more bars, restaurants and boutiques crowded together.

  Ibiza has a big fashion business. There’s a lot of money here. There’s a lot of rivalry here if you’re into crime. Crime is probably the only interesting occupation on the island. It’s the only one people really work at. And kill over.

  Ibiza is a great hideaway for all sorts of illegal or semi-illegal people, ranging from ex-concentration camp commandants to topflight art forgers. People tend to congregate here with wealth acquired elsewhere. Other people tend to move in around them, and sometimes succeed in ripping them off. This is a separate layer of crime, distinct from the dope wars.

  There are a lot of separate worlds here: ex-Nazis; kept women; homosexuals; almond farmers; police; restaurateurs; dropouts.

  There are lots of pretty islands in the Med. What makes Ibiza so special? It’s the lifestyle. What is this lifestyle? A mixture of traditional Ibicenco manners and dropout hippie laid-backedness and peace. On Ibiza, not only are there things to enjoy, there’s the possibility of learning how to enjoy them. That’s important for all sorts of people, including gangsters who want to retire and better themselves.

  Ibiza is not one of those places where the natives are invisible. Ibicencos still own most of the property on Ibiza. Some of them are rich. They are a tight society, shrewd, good-humored, passionate, and, above all, tolerant. They are one of history’s great generous-minded people. They are peasants. But whoever heard of peasants being interested in outsiders, willing to talk to them, to make friends with them, to marry them, to do anything for them? Go to a village in the Auvergne or the Marche and see how quickly you’re accepted. Or go elsewhere in Spain, even to Majorca, the next island. Ibicencos aren’t like anyone else. They have handled the tourist invasion well. Ibiza remains Ibiza, not an outpost of England or Canada.

  A distinction must be made between Ibicencos and Spaniards. Ibicencos are Spaniards, of course, but they’re not like other Spaniards. In fact, it’s difficult to isolate a single Spanish type, since Spain is intensely regional and can be divided into at least five distinct regions, with many subdivisions possible. Spaniards are not a homogeneous race; they’re a bunch of tribes with a few shared characteristics, living side by side and never quite getting the hang of getting along with each other. Political instability is endemic to Spain, as is violence.

  The Ibicencos are part of the Catalan people. But their primary allegiance is not to Catalonia. They are Ibicencos before being Catalans. Ibiza is a distinct and separate civilization
. One of the finest the world has produced.

  I knew it would be a good idea for me never to go there again.

  KATE

  6

  i called my ex-wife Kate to tell her the news. My daughter Sonya answered. Sonya is fourteen and does real well in school. She lives in Woodstock, New York, and I don’t see her or her younger brother, Todd, anywhere near as often as I should. That’s because it’s difficult for me to see Kate even though we’re long divorced and I’ve married Mylar.

  “Hi, kid,” I said, “how are you?”

  “I’m fine, Daddy,” Sonya said. “I got straight A’s again on my report card.”

  We chatted for a few minutes. Then I knew that I had to say it.

  “Listen, darling, I don’t think I’ll be able to come to your graduation week after next.”

  “Oh, Daddy! What’s come up this time?”

  “It’s a job, honey. Necessary to keep us all eating. I’ll be leaving in a day or two.”

  “And when will you be back?”

  “Probably three weeks, a month. I am sorry.”

  “I know, Daddy. Good luck. Just a moment. Mommy wants to speak to you.”

  And then Katie’s voice, a little anxious. “Hob? What’s this about a job?”

  “It’s a case for the agency. I can’t tell you much about it. It’ll take a few weeks.”

  “Will it pay anything?”

  “There’s a bonus arrangement. It could pay pretty well.”

  “It would be nice if you could help out with Sonya’s orthodontia. I know it’s not in the agreement, but I just don’t have the money, and she’s a pretty kid, Hob; it would be a shame not to straighten out her teeth now, when it’s relatively easy.”

  “Sure, I’ll be able to help.”

  “Thanks. Where are you going?”

  “Paris.”

  “Not Ibiza?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Even going to Paris. Is that such a great idea?”

  “All that trouble is in the past,” I said, hoping it was true. “I’ll call you when I get back. How’s that drunken Irish husband of yours?”