The Paper Pistol Contract, page 4
He nodded. “Two-thirty in the morning, then, approximately?”
“Close to it.”
“Was it raining when she let you out, m’sieu?” Waksand asked, and I had to go for broke.
“Yes, I remember I sprinted up the terrace stairs.”
Waksand scratched his cheek and stood silent, as if listening. The rain was still falling, but its force had abated and it was now a steady patter. Outside, somewhere, a coconut fell and smashed into the muddy ground. All three of us turned at the sound.
“Is that really why they have eyes?” I asked.
Waksand’s regard swept back to me. “Pardon?”
“A man on the plane told me that the coconuts have eyes so that they can see, be sure not to fall on anybody’s head.”
He was unsmiling. “No, m’sieu, not true. They sometimes hit people, hurt and kill them. It is according to the height.” Then he reached for his rain cape and stood brushing moisture off it. His next remark, when it came, was hesitant. “Monsieur, the French Government, of which I am a minor servant, is very interested in your business here. We hope that your company will build a resort hotel on Tahiti, and that is why my explanation is painful.”
“Painful?”
“Oui, m’sieur.” The precise English was fracturing; he was under pressure and falling back into his natural language. “Long before you arrived, I was advised from Paris to extend you every courtesy and convenience. I tried to do so, without letting you know it, but how was I to know you would meet Madame Gebhardt?” His face was tight with anger, locked up.
“You had no way of knowing, Monsieur Waksand, and neither did I. If it would help, I will be glad to make such a representation through the Quai d’Orsai, as coming from my company.”
I was puzzled. The little Sûrété chief seemed not to know about the Chinese with the smashed throat, lying dead in the underbrush by the high bungalow. Then what was he so angry about? While I waited, he draped the transparent rain cape over his shoulders and squared them.
“Most kind,” he said. “Madame Gebhardt is what you call … a swinger, I believe. Her husband, in Cleveland, has been trying to divorce her, and has caused my office considerable trouble. An hour ago her car was found abandoned in the center of Papeete, and there are numerous bloodstains in the front seat. That is why we make this inquiry. Her son and her servants have not seen her since she left yesterday for the party at Les Tropiques.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, watching raindrops bounce on the terrace, “but I can’t help you, other than the drive I took with her. I didn’t know about her domestic difficulty.”
“Of course. Thank you very much, m’sieur; we are sorry to have intruded …”
“Nothing, no bother,” I said.
Waksand nodded, turned, and walked quickly across the slick terrace and down the stairs. The alert policeman touched the brim of his flat visor with two fingers and followed his chief. I heard their car start and watched its beetlelike top as it turned onto the highway toward Papeete.
When I walked back across the living room, the rented boy was standing in the doorway of his bedroom. He was knuckling sleepy eyes.
“Top o’ the mornin’, daddio,” he said with the Irish lilt they had taught him in the New York School for Professional Children. “What were the cops tarryhootin’ around here for?” I nodded to him without answering and walked on to the phone.
The Chinese store answered on the second ring, even that early in the morning. Li Tong murmured “yes, yes”, and I said I wanted to see Dr. Toy on the double.
The old Chinese merchant was distressed. “Yes, pliss,” he whispered. “I will get the message to him. But pliss do not call this number again.”
He clicked off the line and I cradled the phone. Richard was back in his bedroom reading, with copies of Mad Magazine strewn all around him. I went down the hall to the kitchen and was putting coffee on when another car turned into the drive. I turned irritably, thinking I ought to install a turnstile next to the highway.
The rain had stopped and I stood on the terrace staring down through the misting dawn. Down at a little white Fiat coupe. Odile Gebhardt swung her long legs out of it gracefully and waved at me.
“Hi!” she called, and I stood staring at her. Her superb figure was draped in a tailored yellow pareu and framed by the slanting palms and the spray plumes blowing off the reefs.
“Don’t come down,” she called, turning toward the car. “You forgot your thermos box.” Lifting the box from the back seat, she set it on the bottom step. Feeling that somebody must be slipping me hallucinogenic mushroom sauce, I spoke to her hesitantly.
“Waksand, the Sûrété guy, was here a little while ago. Looking for you.”
“Oh, pouf! Checking up on me again.” Blowing me a kiss, she got back in the little Fiat, backed it with the furious intensity that seemed to mark everything she did, and went speeding away through the dawn toward Papeete. I went inside and had a cup of coffee because I was feeling odd.
I sat beside the butcher’s block that Maeva used for a kitchen table and reviewed the strange night. After smoking it all over for the twenty-first time, I went to the phone and called Inspector Waksand. He was not at the station, and I called the other number and apologized for disturbing him at home. He said it was nothing, and I could almost see that deprecatory shrug of the shoulder.
“Madame Gebhardt was here a few minutes ago,” I said. “She was kind enough to return something I had left in her car.”
“So?” asked Waksand politely.
“Yes. She was driving another car, a white Fiat, and seemed in good spirits. I thought the news might save you some trouble.”
“It does,” he said briskly. “It does, indeed. Merci, m’sieur.”
“Welcome,” I answered. I was hanging up when Richard came in and said that Dr. Toy was waiting for me on the terrace.
Chapter 5
Dr. Toy was a plump, short Chinese, immaculate in gleaming white sharkskin. He had studied at Antioch, the University of Southern California, and Johns Hopkins, and his speech was larded with hipster phrases. We went into my bedroom, and I explained what had happened. Or at least most of it. He examined my wound carefully, and dressed it again, remarking that I smelled of rum. I told him that Odile and I had been drinking it.
“The wine of warriors,” he commented. “You made out with the lady, of course?”
“Coitus and fellatio. We were rushed.”
“Ah, yes.” He went into the bathroom to wash his hands. I noticed that he took a small bottle of alcohol with him, and when the hands were dry, he laved them in the alcohol.
When he had finished his ablutions, he handed me a small, round pillbox. “Take these according to the directions.”
“Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your promptness.”
The plump Chinese snapped his medical bag shut. “You are an important man, Mr. Durden, a guest of the French Government. Au revoir, m’sieur.”
“Thanks again,” I said. I watched him bustle back across the living room, down the steps, and to his car. Sunlight was slanting through the palms, and it gilded the silky whiteness of his suit as he ducked into the little black Deux Chevaux Citroen. While I was dressing, Richard came to lounge in the doorway of my bedroom.
“Got a bug?” he inquired.
“Touch of the Aztec Trot, nothing serious. How about taking me around the point in your outrigger around six this afternoon?”
“Natch,” he said. “I’ll go bail it out and sweeten it up for Your Honor.” He turned and went flying barefoot out of the house. Maeva shouted something after him, a question, but he only shouted back, “Later, Marvelous!” and ran on toward the beach.
Shortly before three o’clock that afternoon, I parked my Rover in downtown Papeete and picked my way through the usual rank of bicycles and scooters to the swinging doors of Quinn’s.
Quinn’s Bar is a famous South Pacific watering hole, a huge, dilapidated and sun-weathered bamboo hut. Inside, it is packed with tiny tables and redolent of spilled drinks and vintage vomit. The toilet in Quinn’s has a certain uniqueness; there are no thrones, stalls, or urinals, only the empty room with water cascading down the walls and through an iron mesh grate. This remarkable toilet is a joint facility; it must serve both sexes, and a vahine can often be observed chatting with her tane as they dispatch their business in different postures.
I had just thrust the swinging doors open when someone began shouting “no! no!,” and I was hit in the face with a pig. True, it was not a large pig, but it nearly floored me. I fell toward the wall, aiming a vicious kick at the squealer, but unfortunately it did not connect. Someone came up on my blind side, laughing like crazy and saying “now wait, dad,” soothingly, and I turned to see a tall boy with a snow-white head.
“Wait for what, dad?” I asked morosely, checking my face with one hand. “I think that sonovabitch broke my nose.”
This possibility sent my new friend into a fresh paroxysm of mirth, and I saw that he was not really wearing a snowy head, but had it heavily bandaged. The bar was only about a third filled, but those who were there were also whooping with delight. I managed a smile that didn’t have my whole heart in it, and walked over to a bar stool. Boris Karloff’s idiot son came pattering after me and sat down on the next stool.
“Let me buy you a drink, dear heart,” he said in a cajoling tone. “Little pig didn’t mean no never-mind. I mean, he can’t help it if somebody fling him, can he?”
I looked at him and tried to absorb his leaden platitude. I had the impression that he was beaming at me from behind his bandages, but all I could see were his eyes and a mouth. The white wrapping around this latter opening was beer-stained.
“What you having?” he asked.
“Bacardi neat, water on the side.”
He turned and shouted the order. His pedal pushers were dirty, tight over good legs, and he wore a red bandanna sport shirt with the tails of it knotted over his flat belly. When my rum came, I put it down whole and cased the room as I sipped at the chaser. Nobody in the place seemed to qualify as my local connection, and I wondered if Blanchard had been able to get word to him.
“You see,” said my horror-headed chatterbox, “me and this Tahitian deb was squabbling, like, over said pig, and without any warning she puts him in orbit …”
“Frig the pig!” I said, turning on him. “Forget it. No strain, nobody hurt.”
I was emphatic about it; the clown was getting on my nerves. His bandaged head was stilled; all the antic quality was gone. The eyeholes regarded me at some length, and then the beer-stained mouth opening said quietly, “What’s the matter, dear heart? You wearing a Confederate flag for a jockey strap? Maybe it ain’t the pig you upset about.”
I lighted a small cigar and regarded him carefully. “Man,” I said slowly, “it’s hot outside, and I just came in to get a drink. What the hell are you, anyway? A Freedom Rider missed a turn on the road to Birmingham?”
The quiet voice came again, past the beer stains. “No, dear heart,” it said. “That’s not my kick. I’m just wood-sheddin’ in Paradise, because the dark is light enough, out here.”
That tore it right down the middle. Because this fugitive from an emergency ward was my man; he had dropped in the code phrase for the day, the dark is light enough. I ordered another drink, and a beer for him. When I introduced myself as Millard Durden, the millionaire builder from Memphis, he said he was T. C. Dingle from New York. But I could call him “T-Bird.” Most people did.
When the drinks came, I suggested we move to a table in an empty corner and he followed me over, swinging his dark quart bottle. We talked tourist-type for a few minutes, and when nobody seemed to be noticing us, I asked what had happened to his head. The T-Bird started laughing again.
“I been here nearly a month, Matsoned down from San Francisco, and found the place as advertised,” he said. “You know, buccoo push-push, the big hello with a lei and a heynonny lay. Well, man, I did get caught up, because with these chicks it ain’t so much snatch-and-tickle as just plain friction. You know?”
I nodded, because I had gotten the same impression. The sex act on Tahiti seemed to be more lubricity than passion.
The T-Bird went on earnestly. “So what the hell do you do for an encore? Well, I’m making the scene with a big sailor from the Hebrides, and he slips me the moe-totolo, the night creepers. These creepers are cats who for one reason or another can’t make out, even in Paradise. So they radar around until they hear a late meet being set up at the chick’s house, and half an hour before said rendezvous, here come the creeper, tippy-toeing through the dark palms to satisfy the lady. And he’s greasy as owl shit, daddio, because he’s larded himself with coconut oil lest something go awry and violent hands seek him out. You with me?”
“Yes,” I said, laughing involuntarily.
“Well bless your Stars and Garters,” said the T-Bird, “I saw in a flash I had to try a little of that action. Puts romance back in the sordid act, you know? Because a man could change his exterior oil like that, and latch onto somebody’s grandmother in the dark. So my friend from the Hebrides set me up a meet, and I anointed myself in the juice of several coconuts and went slithering away toward Orgasm City.”
The T-Bird broke off and touched his cranial bandages tenderly with the fingertips of both hands.
“It was a real entertainment,” he resumed sorrowfully. “I mean, dad, it was an electric-type date. That dirty bastard of a sailor had not only set me up for it, but he had also alerted not only the girl, but her whole family down to third cousins. Them cats was waiting in the dark, about forty strong, and when the new moe-totolo came gliding in, they massacreed him. War clubs, knives, rocks, and I think one of ’em was flailin’ away with a big conch shell. Anyway, I put on my best early foot and got away, but the Ben Casey over at that Catholic Hospital had to hemstitch on my noggin for an hour, and I think he dropped a few stitches.”
I turned and motioned to the bartender for another round. T-Bird was hoisting the big beer bottle, and it looked very odd, stuck into the bandages. I told him about my evening out, and the visit of Inspector Waksand. When I was through, the tall boy raised one hand slightly and waited until the new round was put on the table. When the waiter was out of earshot, he drummed on the table lightly.
“She’s wild,” he said. “That Odile, I mean. An upper-crust nympho, share her pareu with anybody, but as far as I can find out, nothing political about her.” He had another pull at his beer bottle. “And watch that Waks-and because he’s smart and mean. If you slip, he’d be glad to wire your gonads for a garden party.”
I got up. “Thanks. The contact is still through Blanchard, with you?”
“That’s right.” The bandaged head nodded, and as I was turning to go, he said, “Hey!” and I turned back.
“You know something?” he asked thoughtfully. “Them night-creeping cats are right at that. If I hadn’t had that oil change, them people would have caught me and eat me, like they used to do.”
I grinned, said, “Play it light and cool, T-Bird,” and walked out of the bar. Driving back to the Punaauia bungalow, I tried to strike a balance on my new friend, T. C. Dingle, the T-Bird. Because he was central to the whole operation, and his beatnik cover seemed a trifle flamboyant. The tall boy was a gifted mimic; his voice changes from roistering tourist to ordinary conversation had been deft, and when he wasn’t turned on, he sounded businesslike and educated. But literacy might not be enough before we got through the assignment, and I had no desire to have my gonads wired for a garden party.
Late in the afternoon I followed Richard to his canoe. Both of us wore shorts and sneakers, and had swimming fins slung over our shoulders. When we were above the reef, Richard told me about the rockfish that had poisonous spines and could sting and even kill a person. When we were clear of the reef and in deeper water, he asked if he could show me how to right an outrigger if it capsized and got full of water.
Such a demonstration seemed a waste of time to me because it is difficult to capsize an outrigger in the first place, unless you are trying to, or are caught in a typhoon. But he pleaded that Billy Gebhardt had taught him how, so I vaulted into the blue-green water. He first water-logged the canoe, then emptied and righted it expertly, and when I climbed back in it, there was almost no water aboard.
When I praised the effort, the boy beamed, and I noticed that he had tanned to a true Polynesian ivory-gold. I pointed at the cove around the point, and he nodded and began pulling on the oars briskly. The modern beachhouse in the cove, screened from the highway by palms and thick shrubbery, belonged to an American industrialist; but he was not in residence. When I had climbed to the pier and told Richard to go back and fish in front of our bungalow, to come back and wait for me at five o’clock sharp, his face clouded.
“When are you going to be able to fish with me?” he asked. I told him that I hoped to before long, as soon as I got caught up on business. He nodded, pushed off, and went sculling away smoothly, a deeply-tanned, thin boy with narrow shoulders and hair bleached cotton-white by the sun. I sat down and watched the canoe dwindle toward the point. In about twenty minutes, a launch came humming around the other point from the south and veered toward the pier where I was sitting. The driver had her on the front peg; she wasn’t exactly rooster-tailing, but she came roaring toward me ahead of a churning wake. The power was cut; and she coasted in.
A crewman in ragged shorts was standing on her gleaming teak bow, and he fended her off and held her steady as the driver reversed to a stop. I nodded to them, stepped down into the aft cockpit; her nose went up on the step as she powered toward the open sea. We skirted the Tahitian coastline for over an hour, spanking southerly and keeping several miles offshore. Then we closed in and I picked up a ship anchored ahead; I glimpsed it through blowing spray.
The crewman who was sitting next to the driver turned and shouted, “Warlock! Nice, isn’t she?”
