Yves Courtet was a chubby little Frenchman with oily skin, strong glasses, and a squint. Thick black hair crawled up his neck and down his arms and onto his fingers. The thought of him naked made me shudder. I wonder what he did to get himself invited to high-grade swings—maybe he was an Arab and brought his four beautiful wives.
He was also an middle-echelon fonctionnaire in the Affaires Administratives and had not been pleased to hear from me. “Out of the question,” he had said firmly over the phone. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and no desire to learn.”
I was exasperated by the conversation. “I can be extremely discreet, Monsieur Courtet.” I paused significantly. “Or I can be equally indiscreet.” There was a silence while he mulled over this none too cryptic statement.
“Very well,” he said shortly. “Meet me for lunch at the Vaima.” He hung up abruptly.
Lunch in Tahiti is normally at 11:30 or 12. Courtet arrived at 12:35 to show me that he couldn’t be pushed around. We stared at each other over the table, neither of us liking what we saw. We looked over the menus in icy silence and gave the orders.
I decided to run a bluff past him. “I remember seeing you at the Wests’ two weeks ago,” I said with a smirk. “You may recall I didn’t stay long. Was Mrs. Payton there too? I didn’t see her.”
“No.” He scowled at me. “You say Hinano gave you my name? I’ll have to have a word with her.”
“A word is all it better be,” I advised. “Or I’ll break your arm.”
He twisted his napkin in rage. It had been a long time since anyone had talked to him like that. “Look,” I said placatingly, “I’m not here to bully you just because I want to. I’m here because your friend Mrs. Payton appears to have disappeared and may conceivably be in very serious trouble. Her daughter, Miss Payton, has asked me to see if I can locate her.”
“Why me?” he asked sullenly.
“I have to start somewhere,” I said. “According to Hinano you’re a close friend of—”
“That’s a lie!” he hissed venomously. “That Hinano slut has always hated me! This is her way of.…” His voice trailed off.
“Unless she’s just plain lying, why would she say that?”
He broke some bread and rolled the crumbs around in his fingers. “Maybe because we did arrive together a couple of times,” he admitted reluctantly. “I live a kilometer or two past Danielle’s house, and sometimes I would pick her up and drive her to the Wests’. But it was nothing more than that. I never saw her except…well, at the Wests’. I tell you, all of those people—”
“Look, friend,” I said soothingly, “your private life is your own. It’s of absolutely no interest to me. All I want to do is find Danielle Payton.” He nodded in weary resignation. “All right,” I went on, “what would your reaction be if someone told you she had dropped out of sight for two weeks? Quick!”
“A lover,” he said without hesitation.
“Anyone in particular?” He shook his head. “What sort of lovers was she partial to?”
He shrugged. “As I said, I never saw her outside our…little parties. I believe that she led another…emotional life quite separate from…from our activities.”
“How do you mean?”
He sipped his wine. He had relaxed a little and was growing expansive. “Well, I never knew her to bring anyone to any of the parties or to talk about her outside friends. And some of the people one…sees at the Wests’ enjoy…each other’s company outside of such meetings. Others are more like…myself and Danielle Payton. One might meet occasionally at such a party perhaps every six months or so, and then seen none of the other people until the next time.” He began to chew his steak with gusto.
“What would you say if I told you she’d been kidnapped?”
He set down his fork and stared at me. “In Tahiti? I’d say bof!” I nodded. Bof is a fine, all-purpose French sound indicative of disgust, incredulity, or disparagement.
I swirled water in my glass. “Suppose someone told you she was just pretending to be kidnapped, in order to play a nasty joke on her husband?”
“Ah.…” He laid a finger alongside his nose and nodded slyly. “Yes. That sounds the sort of trick she’d enjoy playing. We all knew how much she detested her husband, although not why. And she had a very peculiar sense of humor. I remember once that at one of our—”
He also remembered to whom he was talking, and choked off the flow of reminiscences.
“So you don’t know who her lover might be—if she had one?”
“No idea. She didn’t discriminate. I’ve seen her with Frenchmen, Tahitians, Chinese, Americans, even a black man once. And of course she enjoyed girls, but only at…that is, I don’t think she would take one as a full-time lover.”
“What about a girl named Chatoune? She appears to be a friend of Mrs. Payton’s.”
He nodded. “Only casually, I would have thought, at our parties. She works in a drugstore.”
“I know. I’m going to see her later on.”
He sighed. “You will be discreet, won’t you? Our—”
“Of course,” I said, dropping some money on the table. “I’ve already forgotten your name.”
A brief flicker of a sour smile crossed his face. He beckoned me closer. “I would say that Danielle’s closest friend is probably Marie-France. Her husband’s Jackie Laurent, the doctor.”
“Marie-France Laurent. Where would I find her?”
“She’s a schoolteacher, so you’ll probably have to wait till this evening. They’re in the phone book.”
I reached over to shake his hand. “Many thanks. I can count on you to keep what I’ve said confidential?”
He nodded officiously.
I waited until I was around the corner before I wiped my hand on my trousers.
* * * *
Drugstores in Tahiti, I discovered, were just what their names said: they sold drugs. No stereo sets, cigarettes, greeting cards, garden hoses, snow tires, light sockets, or school supplies. Just medicine. When I entered the pharmacie where Chatoune Tchen worked I felt as if I were stepping back into the nineteenth century. Or course, visitors from other countries may find it odd that in a West Coast drugstore you need a bloodhound to track down the man dispensing the pills.…
There were two attractive girls behind the counter, a small blonde and a larger Chinese. “Miss Tchen?” I addressed the Chinese, who I now saw was actually part Tahitian, in that she was taller and darker than the pure Chinese. She nodded. “I’m a friend of Hinano and of Danielle Payton,” I said soberly. “It’s quite urgent that I talk to you for a moment. It’s to help Danielle.”
Her eyes widened. “Danielle is in trouble?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. It could be rather important.”
She looked at me through large black unfathomable eyes. “Let me talk to the patron.” She swung around to a room in the rear. She had an erect carriage, glossy black hair that hung down to her waist, and a fine derrière that wiggled enticingly. If Danielle Payton preferred Chatoune’s company to that of Yves Courtet, she was not alone.
We walked over to the Vaima shopping center and upstairs to an ice cream place called Bananas. I ordered chocolate ice cream for her and espresso for myself.
“This is a somewhat delicate situation,” I began tentatively, and told her about Danielle Payton’s disappearance.
“Why come to me?” she asked, with genuine curiosity.
“Hinano said that you appeared to be friends. I’m—”
She laughed. “Oh, that Hinano! Now I know who you are, you’re that policeman she brought to the orgy, and who left her standing there!” She laughed some more, and I went so far as to smile. She obviously didn’t have the same reticence about her sex life as Yves Courtet.
“Were you there?” I asked.
“No, I’d like to have seen it. People told me about it.”
“You’re obviously not…distressed by this conversation?”
“Why should I be? I enjoy orgies. I don’t tell that to everyone I meet, but then I don’t hide it either. What I like is my own business.”
“Very wise,” I muttered, taken aback by her frankness. “So you’re friendly with Danielle Payton?”
“Of course. She’s a very lively woman, high-spirited, full of fun. Any party with Danielle is always amusing.”
“What about her life outside these parties, her husband, her activities, her—”
Chatoune shook her head impatiently. “You’ve got the wrong idea, Monsieur LaRoche. I don’t know her at all except at the orgies. Why would Hinano say…? Oh! She must have seen us making love together a couple of times and thought.… Oh, dear,” she said seriously, “how complicated life is.”
I passed my hand across my face to hide the blush she’d brought to my cheeks. Was she putting me on? Chatoune Tchen was completely unexpected.
“I’m glad you’re so frank,” I said, swallowing hard. “That lets me be frank with you. You certainly know that people who lead…unconventional lives in one sense often do in others. That’s why cops all over the world hassle people who are different whenever anything happens and the cops can’t think of anything else to do.”
“Are you hassling me?” she asked with a smile.
I smiled back. “Not at all. I’m explaining why I’m going around talking to you and your…friends. I don’t know anything about Tahiti and the people here. For instance, if Danielle was kidnapped by some crazy Tahitian liberation movement, I wouldn’t have a clue where to begin. Suppose she’s involved in drug smuggling: the same thing. What I’m doing, is going on a one-in-a-thousand possibility that someone like Danielle Payton who moves in unconventional circles might have met someone else in those circles, someone who was a little…more unconventional than the others.”
“And kidnapped her?” said Chatoune somberly.
“And…anything.…”
She pushed her melted ice cream around thoughtfully with her spoon. “The only thing I know is she once mentioned she had been seeing a Tahitian boyfriend occasionally, someone that she didn’t bring to the parties.”
I questioned her for another five minutes trying to elicit some further information about Danielle Payton and her Tahitian boyfriend but came up blank.
“You know a girl named Marie-France Laurent?”
“Marie-France? Of course.” She grinned mischievously. “She has a very pretty…well, let’s say Marie-France is very nice. But I don’t care much for her husband though.”
“That’s Jackie? The doctor?”
Chatoune made a moue. “He’s very AC/DC.” She flapped a limp wrist sardonically. “He’s a little too gay for my tastes.” I nodded politely: in the swinging world, it seemed, women might love women, but like the Old West, Men were supposed to be Men.
As Chatoune herself had just said: how complicated life is.