Soma Blues (9 page)

She greeted Hob in her flowering muumuu and led him into the apartment. It was large and airy, filled with a complication of couches, cane-backed chairs, Ibicenco chests, breakfronts, tables, and a couple of large cracked-and-mended pointed-bottomed Roman amphorae in iron stands. She led him to her breezy terrace. The light was golden on the dark earth-red tiles. Below, the city of Ibiza fell away in a series of swaybacked cubistic white squares and rectangles, all the way to the harbor with its several cruise ships and countless cafés.

“So,” she said after a few minutes of desultory chat, “what brings you to my aerie?”

“I’m looking for Annabelle,” Hob said. “I was hoping you could tell me where she lives these days.”

“I could probably find out,” Bertha said. “Give me a couple of days, I’ll ask some people. What else is happening with you? Are you here on a case, or just hanging out like the rest of us?”

“I’m looking into Stanley Bower’s murder. You heard of that?”

Bertha nodded. “Laurent telephoned from Paris. He read about it in the
Herald Trib.
He was utterly prostrated.”

“I heard that Annabelle was seeing a lot of Stanley.”

“She went to some parties with him, but you know Stanley wasn’t interested in girls.”

“So I heard. But they were friends anyway.”

“No crime in that, is there?”

Hob decided to try a different tack. “Bertha, how’d you like to work for me?”

“Me, work as a private investigator?”

“An assistant to a private investigator. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

Big Bertha smiled and shook her head in amazement but she didn’t say no. She got up, went to the sideboard and fixed two gin and sodas. Hob knew she didn’t need the money. She was doing all right with her bar, her restaurant. She even had a few investments, owned some property. But Bertha was a busybody, she was nosy, she liked to find out things, she loved to gossip. This could give her a reason that made it okay for her to gossip.

She returned with the drinks, handed one to Hob. “What’ll I have to do?”

“Just what you’re doing now. Seeing people. Giving parties. Going to art gallery openings. Eating in good restaurants. I can’t pay for that, of course. But it’s what you do anyhow. And then you talk to me.”

“Sure. No problem there.”

Hob had learned that people, even great gossips, were more motivated when they’re being paid to talk, even if that pay was only a pittance. The act of payment seemed to put a stamp of approval on what otherwise might have seemed a light-minded activity. And to give it a stamp of usefulness, of social use, of propriety. And even the most outrageous were not about to turn away from a little propriety when it came attached to some money.

“Sounds like fun.” Even Big Bertha liked the idea of being a useful citizen if it could be made amusing and if it paid. But it didn’t have to pay much. And that was good because Hob didn’t have much. Everyone knew his agency was more an idée fixe than a going proposition. But what could be more attractive than an idée fixe, even if you weren’t a French decadent, as long as it didn’t involve too much work and paid enough to make it respectable?

“What do you want me to do, Hob? I’m not so mobile these days, you know.”

“The great thing about this, Bertha, is that you don’t have to change what you’re doing one bit.”

“What do you want, specifically?”

“There’s a man I need to get a line on. Learn who he is and whatever you can find out about him.” Hob told her the story of the man who was last seen with Stanley Bower in Paris and gave what he had of a description.

“Not much to go on,” Bertha said.

“If anyone can put a name and identity to this man, it’s you.”

“You flatter me, Hob. But you’re right. If I or some of the people I know don’t know this guy, he doesn’t exist.”

She thought a moment, then said, “You want information? I love to give information. Why should you pay me for it?”

“Useful services deserve to be paid for,” Hob said. “And I like to employ my friends. That’s the ideal of the Alternative Detective Agency.”

“It’s a noble ideal.”

“I think so.”

“And a little foolish, as noble ideals so often are.”

Hob shrugged. “Do you want the job or not?”

“Hell, yes,” Bertha said. “I’d be delighted to work as one of your operatives. What else do you want to know right now?”

Hob looked baffled. He wasn’t used to this much directness. He had to think for a minute. After a moment or two he said, “Well, aside from Annabelle’s whereabouts and the identity of the mysterious Spanish speaker, what’s new in Ibiza? I mean, is there anything new?”

“There’s always new stuff going on here,” Bertha said. “You mean like gallery openings or new boutiques?”

“I don’t think so,” Hob said. “Something else.”

“You aren’t very specific. … What about the new hotel?”

“Is there a new hotel?”

“I’m amazed you haven’t heard about it.”

“I’ve been in Paris.”

“That must account for it. Well, there’s this new luxury hotel near San Mateo. It’s going to open soon. In about two weeks, as a matter of fact. Japanese backers, so I hear. There’s going to be a big reception next Wednesday.”

“Are you going?”

“Of course. I’m on the B list.”

“Is there more than one guest list?”

“My dear, of course! Don’t you know how these things work? There’s a general reception first for a lot of people. That’ll be in the late afternoon on the hotel grounds. Half the island will be there. Anyone can get in, even without an invitation. That’s the C list. Then, in the evening, after the hoi polloi have cleared out, there’s an exclusive reception, dinner, and dancing for about a hundred or so people.”

“And that’s the A list?”

“No, my dear, that’s the B list. But it’s still very grand.”

“So what’s the A list?”

“After the B list people have cleared out, probably sometime after midnight, about eight or ten people remain. They’re the owners and investors, and their ladies, of course—or their lads, as the case may be. Then there’s drinking and drugging until dawn. The A list isn’t as much fun as the B list, except for the snob appeal. If you’re not an investor or a boyfriend or girlfriend of an investor, there’s no way to get into that one.”

“Who are the investors?” Hob asked. “Who’s putting up this place?”

“I only know the rumors. The investors are supposed to be a few wealthy Japanese and a few rich South Americans. Rumor hath it that the main financing is coming from the Yakuza—the Japanese criminal element, you know—but of course you’d know that—as one of their overseas investments. Interested?”

“Quite interested,” Hob said. “Can you get me and Harry Hamm onto the B list?”

“I can arrange it,” Bertha said. “I work for you now; my contacts are your contacts. By the way, not that it’s important, but how much do I get?”

“I can’t know that until I see how many operatives work on it. You’ll get a percentage of the take based on how much time you put in on the case and how much bodily danger you run, if any.”

“Well, whatever,” Bertha said. “No bodily danger, though, if you don’t mind. I’ll get on to that South American who knew Stanley. By the way, you’ll find Annabelle in the Beehive in Figueretas.”

“I thought you said you’d have to check around and see.”

“That was before you hired me, dear heart. I was going to check first to see if she wanted to see you. Now it doesn’t matter.”

5

Hob walked downhill to Ibiza and out of the city to his car. He got in and drove past the dreary new construction and around to the far side of the city, where Figueretas lay.

He followed the unpaved road out of the city and went down a long bumpy road with the sea on one side and pastel-colored hotels lining the other side. This was the new Ibiza. Unlike the Dalt Villa, no ancient Roman wall surrounded Figueretas. It stood by itself just before Salinas, the ancient Roman salt flats, still being worked.

Figueretas had been overlooked in the general wave of prosperity that had come to Ibiza. It was a neighborhood of rundown little bars and tiny food stores and seedy restaurants, catering to a variegated crowd of middle-class losers, dopers, drinkers, and remittance men, burned-out musicians, decrepit card sharks, absconding businessmen, and the like.

The Beehive was three rickety four-story structures with outside staircases, the buildings laced together with walkways and laundry lines. The view of the sea on the other side of the breakwater was splendid but distant.

Annabelle lived on the
tercero piso
of building
dos.
Hob went up the steps past back doors crowded with garbage and old baby carriages. Children were screaming at cats, guys were shouting at their old ladies, old ladies were screeching at phantoms of the past, and drunken poets were putting it all down in incomprehensible verses high on strained imagery. It was one of those European-style
Porgy and Bess
scenes.

Annabelle said, “Come in and take a load off your feet, Hob. Want a beer?”

“Sure,” Hob said.

The apartment was small and unkempt. The best thing about it was its view of low buildings along Ibiza’s shoreline and the deep turquoise of the sea itself. The large casement window was open. A light breeze came through, fluttering the laundry that Annabelle had strung out on a line on the open veranda. The apartment itself smelled of cat. Annabelle’s old tortoiseshell cat, Santana, sat on the back of one of the sagging overstuffed chairs and glared at Hob. Smell of cat mingled with the smells of olive oil and garlic and laundry soap. Annabelle herself was wearing a silk kimono, or maybe it was nylon—Hob wasn’t up on these distinctions. Whatever it was, it was brightly colored in reds and oranges. The front sagged open revealing plenty of Annabelle’s full, pointed, slightly sagging breasts. When she crossed her legs the kimono fell away revealing a long streak of tan thigh. She was far and away the best looking junkie on the island, a Londoner from somewhere near Swiss Cottage, in her late twenties, with features that vaguely reminded Hob of a young Joan Collins. She’d first come to Ibiza in her teens and taken up with Black Roger, a heroin dealer from Detroit. They’d had some good times together until Roger got busted in the first big police cleanup of dealers, out-of-control junkies, and other undesirables. Annabelle had always been able to take junk or leave it. But that ability was beginning to leave her. Her arms were still free of tracks—she was vain about her small, well-shaped body and injected between her toes.

“What’re you up to these days?” Hob asked.

Annabelle shrugged. “Waitressing at Dirty Domingo’s. It’s a bitch of a job, but it’ll do until I can sell some paintings.”

Among other things, Annabelle was a painter. Her childish daubs, which she called primitives, of old Ibicenco ladies working in the fields with sheep in the background, painted without perspective, had enjoyed a brief vogue in the island’s art galleries until even more primitive painters crowded her out with even more striking lack of perspective. There was always a lot of competition among primitive artists on Ibiza.

“What about you?” Annabelle said. She rose and went to the refrigerator, opened it, and took out two bottles of San Miguel beer. Hob regretted accepting when the refrigerator let out a fetid odor of last week’s lamb-and-garbanzo stew. “You still doing the detective agency?”

Hob nodded. Businesses among the expatriates of Ibiza were so rare that everyone stayed informed on how it was going for the enterprising few, the better to get a loan during their brief periods of prosperity.

“Are you working on something now?”

Hob nodded. “I am helping the French police in their investigations.”

“So this is a business trip?”

“It has to do with Stanley Bower. Can you tell me anything about Stanley’s recent business dealings?”

“Oh, Hob, you are a bit of a dope. Lovable, but silly. Why on earth should I tell you anything about Stanley, if I knew anything, which I don’t?”

“Is there any reason you shouldn’t tell me?”

“I suppose not. But I don’t want to get into any trouble.”

“Annabelle, I’m an old friend. Tell me everything. I won’t pass anything on. I’ll protect you.”

“I know you will, Hob. As well as you’re able. But why don’t you ask Stanley?”

“I can’t. He’s dead, Annabelle.”

She looked at him wide-eyed. “Dead? Really?”

Hob nodded.

“How?”

Hob told her how Bower was killed in Paris.

Annabelle thought for a while, then shook her head. “Hob, I’d be glad to tell you whatever I remember. But not here. Take me to dinner at El Olivo’s, and I’ll sing like a canary. Wait just a moment while I change.”

* * *

“Have you ever tried their caviar blinis?” Annabelle said, an hour later, as they sat on the terrace of El Olivo, on one of the intermediate levels of the steep Old City. “It’s real caviar, Hob, not that dreadful Danish lumpfish.” Hob noted that she had made a quick recovery from the news of Stanley’s death.