Authors: Robert Sheckley
“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 that 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?”
“I’d love to talk to you some other time,” Hob said. “For now, why don’t you run like mad out of here and call the cops, and maybe have them send an ambulance, too.”
“Yeah, buddy,” the larger South American said. “Why don’t you get your ass the hell out of here?”
“I have need to talk to Mr. Draconian,” the stranger said. “My business is pressing.”
The smaller man laughed—a short ugly sound from a short ugly man. “Pressing? Listen, baby, you want pressing, we’ll give you pressing.” He started to walk toward the whitehaired stranger, who was standing in a little space between cars, illuminated now by stray beams from a vagrant three-quarter moon drifting lazily between wispy clouds.
The stranger said, in conversational tones, “Mr. Vargas is arriving tomorrow.”
The two men stopped, but only for a moment. The bigger one said, “So what’s that to us?”
“He wants everything to stay nice and quiet.”
“It’ll be nice and quiet by the time he gets here,” the bigger man said. “Now, get the hell out of here. We have business with this guy.”
“No,” the white-haired stranger said. “Forget your business and go away.”
The South Americans started to move again, approaching the white-haired stranger from different sides. Hob was getting ready to throw himself into action, as soon as he could control the violent quavering in his knees. The stranger was up on his toes, bouncing lightly, and then he was moving toward the big one, taking quick little dancing steps. The little rat-faced guy was taking something from his pocket—gun, knife, or razor, Hob couldn’t tell what it was in the darkness. But no matter, because the stranger suddenly turned, rocked back on one leg and kicked, a beautiful kick, like a soccer sweeper. The toe of his shoe caught the object and sent it spinning into the darkness, to land with a metallic clang on the roof of a distant car.
“Wha’ the fuck?” the big man said. He put down his bullet head and charged, but the white-haired man was turning, pirouetting in a weird sort of ballet movement, dancing and darting to one side, and his hands flashed out, making sharp, snapping sounds as they came into contact with the big man’s shoulder and head. The guy was stopped dead in his tracks. He took a clumsy off-balance swipe at the stranger, but the man was already out of range, dancing on his toes, coming at the smaller man, moving past him and catching him in the
kishkes
with a vicious elbow blow. The little guy bellowed and swung his fists. The stranger pirouetted again, and his foot lashed out behind him. He caught the little guy in the pit of the stomach. The little guy made an obscene sound as all the air was forcibly expelled from his body. He fell backward, making horrible retching sounds as he tried to catch his breath. The stranger tiptoed in again coming toward the other man, his arms whirring in a blur of motion, his legs kicking out. Suddenly the big guy seemed to go airborne. For a moment his body was horizontal to the ground and at right angles to the white-haired stranger, and then he came down hard on the back of his head. He lay there, groaning through bloodied teeth, looking like a gigantic beetle with a South American accent who’d been flipped over onto his back and crushed.
The white-haired stranger turned. The big guy had scrambled back to his feet, but he was not renewing the attack; he was running. The little guy hobbled after him a moment later.
“I think we are finished now,” the stranger said.
“Thank you,” Hob said, resisting the impulse to throw himself at the stranger’s feet and kiss the top of his soft-soled shoes for saving, if not his life, at least his hide and hump. “Might I inquire your name?”
“Of course. I am Juan Braga, but everyone calls me Vana.”
Braga! With a rolled Spanish
r!
No emerald ring, but he might have taken it off while showering and forgotten to put it back on. Still, Hob decided not to jump too immediately to conclusions. Lots of Spanish names had an
r
in them. It was one of the popular letters all over the world, except possibly in Japan.
“I haven’t seen you around,” Hob said.
“That is because I spend most of my time at the finca.”
“Which finca is that?”
“Ca’n Soledad. It belongs to Silverio Vargas, my patron.”
“Vargas. He got a son named Etienne?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Small world,” Hob said, superfluously, because Ibiza was a very small world, though it seemed to expand a lot once you were living in it.
7
Hob enjoyed a good night’s sleep that night, in his own bed in his own bedroom in his own finca, with the branches of the almond tree outside his window making soothing sounds at his window. In the morning he shaved and dressed in clean Lois jeans and a three-button blue Rastro T-shirt and went down to the kitchen to make himself some breakfast. The
butano
was empty, and the spare bottle hadn’t been refilled. He put both of the big orange bottles in the back of his car and drove to Anita’s for his breakfast. He ate in the outer courtyard, under the shade of the vines that had been trained to crisscross the open rafters of the low roof. After finishing he exchanged the empty
butanos
for full ones at Pablo’s general store next door, but decided not to go right back to the finca. He considered driving to Harry Hamm’s finca, but decided he’d likely see him in El Kiosko in Santa Eulalia. He drove to the town, found a parking place near Humberto’s Hamburguesas, and walked to the Kisoko. Harry was there, just finishing his ham and eggs and reading a three day old
Paris Herald Tribune.
Hob sat down and joined him for a
café con leche.
“So what’s new?” Harry asked.
Hob told him about the previous night with Annabelle and the two guys in the parking lot and his white-haired rescuer. “Said his name was Juan Braga but everyone called him Vana. Ring a bell?”
“Never heard of him,” Harry said.
“He told the two guys that Silverio Vargas was arriving on the island today. That was supposed to mean something, though it didn’t seem to impress them. Ever hear of him?”