Soma Blues (3 page)

“Haven’t seen you for a while, Hob,” Fauchon said. “How is the detective agency going?”

Hob knew, and Fauchon knew that he knew, more about the workings or lack of them of the Alternative Detective Agency than any of its employees, including its owner and chief operative, Hob Draconian.

“The agency is fine, I’m fine, everyone is fine,” Hob said. “Now, can we get to it?”

“Get to what?” Fauchon asked, his face all innocence.

“Damn it,” Hob said, “stop playing with me, Emile. You brought me out to Sainte-Gabrielle, and you asked me to return here with you. Now, please tell me what in hell you want and let me get home.”

“Belligerent, aren’t we?” Fauchon said. “Are you that eager to return to Marielle?”

“Not really,” Hob said. “Tonight I was supposed to cook my famous chili for an assortment of publishing people.”

“Then Marielle is expecting you? Tell her you were detained on police business. That should save you from a row.”

“You show little insight into Marielle’s character,” Hob said, “if you think a legitimate excuse will suffice.”

“I could have warned you about that woman,” Fauchon said.

“Well, why in hell didn’t you?”

“Stop being childish,” Fauchon said. “What I dislike about you, Hob, is that you have no small talk. Don’t you ever read detective novels? The cop and the private detective talk about all sorts of things. Insinuations are always made by the policeman before he gets down to cases.”

“I have no time to read detective novels,” Hob said. “I’m too busy detecting.”

“And in your spare time?”

“I read Proust.”

“Who was that fellow under the tarpaulin?”

“Stanley Bower.”

Fauchon looked annoyed. “You really are poor at this, Hob. You are supposed to say that you never saw him before, and I point out that your eyes widened when you looked at him, and then you admit that you might possibly have seen him once or twice, but couldn’t claim to actually
know
him, and so on and so on until I get you to admit that he was in fact your long-missing brother.”

“Inspector Fauchon, please be serious. Or if you can’t, at least take me out and buy me a decent dinner.”

“Marielle does not provide?”

“Our arrangement is that we split all costs. Unfortunately, I have no money.”

“What about the famous check from America?”

“It still has not arrived.”

Fauchon clucked in mock sympathy. “So Marielle pays for you both?”

“That would be against her principles. It would mean that she was keeping a younger man. No, Marielle buys food for one and assumes that I eat out on my own.”

“What do you do?”

“I wait until she’s gone to sleep. Then I eat what’s left over. Fourth-day lamb or veal roast with the fat nicely congealed around it is always a treat. Stale cheese with green mold for dessert.”

“My dear fellow, you have my sympathy. Women’s ability to deal out humiliation is only succeeded by man’s ability to take it.”

“Who said that, La Rochefoucauld?”

“My father, as a matter of fact. He had some great stories about the Ouled-Naïl dancing girls who used to come to his command post at Sidi bel Abbès.”

“I’d love to hear it,” Hob said. “Preferably over a glass of white wine at Au Pied du Cochon.”

“Stanley Bower, I believe you said?”

“Yes, his name popped into my head as soon as I saw him. Pity I can’t remember anything else about him.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“Blank,” Hob said, tapping his head. “They say that hunger makes a man forgetful.”

“Hob,” Fauchon said, his voice making the transition nicely from jesting to menacing, “do not toy with me.”

“Is that a line from one of your detective novels?” Hob asked. “Of course I’m going to toy with you. I’m hungry, and I don’t want to go back to Montparnasse and make chili. How the hell can you French think chili is a gourmet dish?”

“It is our special gift,” Fauchon said, “to equate the exotic with the desirable.”

“Oh, God,” Hob said, lowering his head into his hands.

“You’re so pathetic,” Fauchon said, “I find it difficult to be cross with you. Come along then. Perhaps a plate of pâté will refresh your memory.”

“Follow it up with maigret of duck,” Hob said, “and I’ll tell you what they did with Judge Crater.”

“
Comment?
” Fauchon said, choosing that moment to become French again.

They didn’t go to Au Pied du Cochon. Instead they went to the Brasserie Lipp, because Fauchon was in a mood for
choucroute garnie.
The Lipp was one of the famous old restaurants on the boulevard Saint-Germain, across the street from Deux Magots. It was a palace of tinted mirrors and amber lights, chandeliers, tuxedoed waiters, and stylish people, who were becoming more and more difficult to tell from the people merely trying to be stylish. There were the inevitable German tourists, of course, and the inevitable British tourists, and the many other tourists who were also becoming inevitable, notably the Japanese. Hob also ordered the
choucroute.
It was large, spicy and filling, and the best the Lipp had to offer. Where the French ever got their passion for sauerkraut and knockwurst was beyond him. These were things the guide books never told you.

Fauchon ordered a white Bordeaux. Hob thanked God for France, where even police interrogations are conducted over a glass of wine.

“Now,” Fauchon said, “about this fellow Stanley Bower.”

“Who?” asked Hob.

“The person you identified.”

“Did I? You know, Emile, I just might have made all that up. In order to get to the Lipp, you know.”

“Hob, that is not funny.”

“I thought you wanted me to be more evasive and conversational, like your private detectives in books. Aside from those circus people, did anyone else see what went on?”

“We have no eyewitnesses. Of course we interrogated the people at the Café Argent, where this Stanley Bower was just before his murder. We talked to the proprieter, who served them.”

“Them?”

“Bower was talking with some fellow shortly before his murder.”

“What fellow? What did he look like?”

“He was sitting in the shadow. The proprietor did not get a good look at him. Just a man. He left. Bower left shortly after him, and that’s when the cars arrived.”

“Nothing else about the other man? Color of hair? Height?”

“He was sitting. He wore a hat. The proprietor couldn’t even give us a description of the hat.”

“That’s great,” Hob said. “And for this I’m missing my party.”

“What time are your guests due?” Fauchon said.

“Beg pardon?”

“The guests of Marielle for whom you are to cook the chili.”

“They’re probably arriving just now,” Hob said, expertly wrapping a soggy mass of wine-flavored sauerkraut around a bit of rosy knockwurst and popping it into his mouth, following it up with a piece of crusty baguette and a sip of wine.

“Start telling me something,” Fauchon said, “or I will summon a gendarme to escort you home. There is still time for you to play host.”

“You’d actually do that, wouldn’t you?”

“The cruelties of the French police are beyond the comprehension of the Anglo Saxons,” Fauchon said with a little smile of satisfaction. He put his napkin on the table and started to get up.

Hob reached out and touched his arm. Fauchon sat down again.

“You’re pretty good at making jokes, but you don’t take one worth a damn.”

“Tell me about Bower.”

“English. About forty years old. A nodding acquaintance. Met him in Ibiza a couple of years ago. He knew somebody. House guest. Let me think a moment. Yes, he was staying with Elliot Turner, the actor.”

“You know Turner?” Fauchon said.

“Yes. Why?”

“I recently attended an Elliot Turner film retrospective at the Ciné Montparnasse Study Center. Is he as nasty as the parts he portrayed?”

“Oh, much worse.”

“They say he is quite a ladies’ man.”

“They lie. He is a flaming homosexual.”

“Indeed? In his movies he is always lusting after somebody else’s woman.”

“In real life, he was always lusting after somebody else’s boy.”

“And Stanley Bower was a friend of his?”

“I suppose so. As I said, Bower was staying at Turner’s finca in San Jose. His house guest. I never saw them together much, but I imagine either they were friends or Bower was blackmailing Turner.”

“Did you learn what Bower did for a living?”

“He didn’t seem to do much of anything. I believe there was family money. That’s what Bower hinted at, anyhow.”

“Hinted?”

“I call it that. Bower liked to buy a round a drinks at El Caballo Negro and brag about his family connections and how his grandfather had been the best friend of Edward the Seventh. Or maybe it was another Edward. That’s how he talked to the Americans. But when any English were present, he didn’t have much to say about all that. It was impossible to tell whether he was trying to put one over on us or indulging in that British sense of humor that becomes so sly that even it’s possessor can’t tell who he’s sending up.”

“Did you know Stanley Bower was a drug dealer?” Fauchon asked.

Hob shook his head. “Explains why you’re so interested in this case, though. Are you sure of your information?”

“A small bottle of the drug he was selling was found on his body. It’s a new drug. It turned up in New York recently. Have you ever heard of soma?”

“That’s a new one on me,” Hob said.

“On a lot of people. It’s something we might start seeing around, however. Which is why I’d like to get on it before it gets started. Did you see Bower again after his stay in Ibiza?”

“Nope.”

“Not even during your visits to London?”

“I told you, no. I didn’t like the man. He was one of those haughty types with a loud braying laugh. Pure Wodehouse. I didn’t take to him at all.”

“But no doubt others found him an amusing fellow?”

“No accounting for some tastes.”

“What did Nigel Wheaton think of him, for example?”

“Why don’t you ask him? And anyhow, what does it matter? You’re not accusing Nigel of supplying Stanley with a new drug and then killing him, are you?”

Fauchon acted as if he hadn’t heard Hob’s questions. His gaze was vague, far away, taking in the brilliantly lit interior of the Lipp. It was one of his most annoying mannerisms, as far as Hob was concerned, this sudden switch of attention when a point of some importance had finally been reached. Hob felt that he did it by careful design, one of the many faces of Emile Fauchon, all of them carefully devised, none of them the real man, the man within. Who was the real Fauchon? Was there one?

“What has Nigel been up to lately?” Fauchon asked. “I haven’t seen him around.”

Hob stared at Fauchon bitterly. “This, I believe, is my chance to betray one of my best friends in return for the sumptuous feast you have given me here at this palace of German sauerkraut and French pretension. To act
le stool pigeon
, as your detective novels doubtless call it. And of course I’m happy to oblige. Nigel’s been up to the usual thing: a dope deal in Hong Kong, a bank heist in Valparaiso. I believe he also was responsible for last month’s political assassination in Montpelier. You know Nigel—he’s enterprising, always likes to keep busy.”

“Your sarcasm is broadhanded,” Fauchon said, “but appreciated nonetheless.”

“Thank you. Anything to keep the conversation going.”

“Would you care for a drink before we get any deeper into this? And an espresso. Perhaps a double espresso.”

“Now you’re sounding like Marley’s ghost,” Hob said.

Fauchon considered it. “Yes, that’s apt. I’ve shown you Christmas Past in the cadaver of your late friend Stanley Bower.”

“And who will I meet as Christmas Future?”

“Waiter!” Fauchon called out, halting the balding stoop-shouldered little man in his tracks. “Two cognacs, and two double espressos. And the bill.”

“No bill, Inspector. Courtesy of the management.”

“Thank the management for me,” Fauchon said, “and tell them I’ll be arranging for an especially tough health inspector to call on them soon in repayment for their clumsy attempt to bribe me.”

“Inspector! It was meant only as a courtesy! I assure you. … Inspector, if I tell them that, they’ll fire me!”

“Then just bring me the order,” Fauchon said. “And the bill.”

Relieved, the little waiter scurried away.

Hob said, “Portrait of the incorruptible Emile Fauchon sternly turning down a free meal. Wonderful. I applaud. Now tell me about Christmas Future.”

“Very soon,” Fauchon said, “I will show it to you. Hob, I expect your help on this matter. In fact, I insist on it. Find out about this Stanley Bower for me. Who might have wanted him dead. The thing appears to have been set up with some care. Find out about this soma.”