When the girl I was dancing with rubbed her erection against my leg I began to suspect she might not be entirely a girl. When she rubbed her beard against my cheek I became certain. I manhandled her to arm’s length and cast a second look down the front of her dress: her bare breasts were feminine all right, so I hadn’t entirely lost my mind.
Yet.
Assailed by an insanely amplified thump-thump-thump of mind-numbing disco beat, I didn’t think I had far to go. But just as Chantal grabbed my waist with a muscular arm and dragged me to her embrace the music came to a sudden stop and in the eerie silence I recovered myself enough to push my way back to my handkerchief-sized table. I downed my beer in two gulps and handed the bottle and some money to Chantal, who wiggled her way to the bar with the finesse of a bulldozer.
“The things a man will do for $10,000,” I muttered to myself disgustedly. Actually the Clarinet Club was pretty tame stuff compared to some of the chains and leather meat-racks south of Market around Folsom Street, but for the tourists from Waterloo, Iowa, the Clarinet Club was as pleasantly decadent as you could hope for. Six-foot Tahitian transvestites and transsexuals in rouge, lipstick, and revealing evening gowns, reeking of old sweat and ten-cent perfume, served drinks and danced with the customers. Pale French soldiers and sailors in T-shirts and bluejeans danced zombie-like by themselves, twitching in rhythm to the overpowering music as they gaped narcissistically at their own images in the floor-to-ceiling mirror along one wall. A few tourists sat bemused at the bar or clustered together for safety in one of the booths and watched an occasional gay waltz in from the street, solicit himself a lonely crewcut soldier, and disappear with him into the night. Aside from the head-splitting noise, the thick pall of smoke, and the price of drinks, it was all pretty harmless.
Since it was actually possible to edge your way through the humanity that thronged the tiny dance floor it was a slow night, said Chantal as she sat down beside me. She plunked a bottle of Hinano on the table for me and a flourescent-colored gin-tonic for herself.
She edged closed and tried to rub her breast against my arm. I moved out of range. “Very nice,” I said, “maybe tomorrow night when I’m not so tired. In the meantime.…” I removed a 1,000-franc note from my pocket, about $9, and pushed it over to her. “For you,” I said. She didn’t seem overwhelmed by the amount. It disappeared quickly enough though.
“You want me,” she said breathily.
“Later maybe. Right now I’m looking for a guy named Hiro. A big dumb Tahitian guy who screws old ladies—” I leered at her conspiratorially “—but who likes to hang around guys.”
“You want Hiro?” She seemed outraged at my lack of fidelity.
“I don’t want Hiro, I want to talk to him. He knows where a friend of mine is.”
“Oh.” Chantal considered. She turned to wave at a fellow transsexual, this one with silver spangles in her foot-high bouffant hair. She minced over to the table. Her breasts hung precariously from her dress as she leaned over to whisper with Chantal.
“This is Christine,” said Chantal. Christine simpered and kissed me wetly on both cheeks. She smelled of spoiled fish. I smiled faintly, though it wasn’t easy. “She says there’s someone named Hiro who works at Punk’s. But he isn’t at all beautiful like us.”
“I can certainly believe that,” I said sincerely. “Thank you, ladies, I’ll be back tomorrow for some serious dancing.” I tucked 500 francs down the front of Christine’s décolletage. “Buy yourself a drink, sweetie.”
Punk’s was a few yards down the street from the Clarinet Club. Its name was not enticing. Half a dozen young Tahitian males slouched around the outside, listening to the blast of music that emanated from within. But they appeared to be neither gay, nor punks, nor male prostitutes, just impoverished teenagers with nothing else to do at 10:30 of a Tuesday evening. Things were looking up. I paid 200 francs to the doorkeeper and shoved my way into the noise.
I bought a beer at the counter and turned around to see what I could through the blue haze of cigarette smoke. There seemed to be a tranny or two washed in from the overflow at the Clarinet Club, and a lot of the same sad little sailors and soldiers, but there were also what looked to be genuine Tahitian girls and women, blowzy and toothless as some of them were, and some straight males dancing with them. None of the waiters fit the description of Hiro: big, dumb, and physical, a mere sexual object. In fact, all of them were women, or at least reason facsimiles thereof.
A transsexual waitress, slim, girlish, and almost good-looking, pushed her way to the bar and slapped her tray down beside me. I let 1,000 francs drop onto it lightly. She looked up in surprise.
“Hiro,” I said, “a big Tahitian.” I spread my hands to indicate just how big. “He works here.”
She shook her head. “He used to work here. Now he has a rich lover, so he doesn’t work any more.”
“A rich male lover, you said?”
“An American named Billy.” She loaded her tray with beer bottles and started to turn away.
“Hold it a second. Do you know where I can find these two?”
“Sure. They live on a yacht on the waterfront. Just ask for Billy.”
As easy as that. I thanked her and turned away. “Hey,” she called after me, “you left your thousand francs!”
For a place named Punk’s, it was a high-class joint.
* * * *
I walked the short block to the waterfront and turned left toward the center of town, where the yachts were tied up a couple of hundred yards down the road, just past the fleet of small wooden fishing boats. I walked slowly, savoring the fresh, cool air, mulling over the conversation I’d had with the Wests an hour or so before, when I’d stopped by their house in the hills on my way into town.
They had seemed startled to see me, but reasonably hospitable considering the hour. Their hospitality, I judged, was due more to their concern for Danielle Payton than to my melting brown eyes. I told them about finding the car at the airport, and the possibility that Danielle had impulsively flown off to a distant isle, with or without companionship.
Susan’s face lit up. “Oh, Rocky, that’s wonderful! That really could be! That’s just the sort of thing Danielle would do. She can be so impulsive, so thoughtless sometimes.”
Bob was more somber. “Let’s hope so. I wonder.…” He began to gnaw a knuckle.
“…if you could start calling every hotel in the outer islands?” I finished for him. “There can’t be more than twenty or thirty of them?”
“If that. But a lot of them are pretty remote, where you have to have the operator make a radio-telephone connection, and they only do that certain times of day. Tell you what, let me work on it, and by ten tomorrow I’ll have been in touch with everyone.”
I stood up. “You’re a pal. By the way, have you seen Hiro lately?”
“Hiro?” They looked at each other blankly, then at me. “Who’s Hiro?”
“The guy Danielle used to bring to your swings.”
“Not Hiro. She…oh.” Bob blinked rapidly. Susan pursed her lips thoughtfully.
“Just asking.” I shook my head ruefully. Neither of them met my eyes. I started toward the stairs, then turned back.
“Look,” I said, “let me give you some free advice. You people are going to have to get used to the idea that if Danielle Payton really turns up kidnapped, the first thing the local cops are going to do is to start looking for anyone who’s connected with her that’s a little bit different from your typical average Frenchman with his little black beret, his loaf of bread, and his glass of red wine. That means people like you and the people you run with. From the cops’ point of view, you’re weirdos.” I held up a hand. “I’m not calling you that: I’m just telling you what cop-think is like. Believe me, I know. You’re weirdos; kidnappers are also weirdos; one equals the other; therefore, roust out all the local weirdos. So you two had better be prepared. For instance: you told me that Danielle didn’t come to your swings. Fine. Good. It took me two hours—me, an outsider—to learn the contrary. How long will it take the local cops?”
“There’s nothing illegal—” began Bob indignantly.
“That’s not the point,” I said harshly. “It’s probably not even relevant. But it’s different. And it’s the sort of thing people tend to lie about. Cops expect lies. They like them. Without lies they’d never solve anything. But when they do discover someone lying to them, that makes them twice as interested in those people. Dig?”
Susan nodded glumly. “Why are you saying all this, Rocky? Do you hate us?” She looked frail and vulnerable.
I stared at her in wonderment: hadn’t she been listening? “Hate you? I’m trying to warn you. The best chance that you and your friends have of coming out of this 100 percent squeaky clean is to put all your heads together and come up with some ideas about who Danielle Payton could have been involved with that might be crazy enough to try a little kidnapping. If you do think of someone, or of anything that might be useful, and I do end up going to the local cops, maybe I can turn that information over to them in such a way that you two wouldn’t be…burned.” I shrugged. “But it’s up to you. You can lie to me as much as you want—I can’t put you in jail.”
“We…we’ll think about what you said,” murmured Susan.
I grinned at them skeptically and clumped up the stairs.