THERE WAS A LOT OF CHATTER and laughter and clinking of cutlery out in front at Dmitri’s and the jukebox blared some Greek song out over the water. Nobody paid the slightest attention to me.
The dock was beyond the taverna’s circle of light. I untied somebody’s skiff, and sculled it standing, out past the gabbling terrace toward the quiet yacht. Every stroke of the oars built a new fire under my left arm.
I didn’t head for the ship’s ladder. It was strictly illegal, what I was doing. At the stern I grabbed hold of the spring-line and stood in the skiff a while listening. Then I tied it and climbed stiffly but silently over the stern, trying not to grunt from the pain in my side.
The door to the big deck house was wide open. I looked it over, then silently descended its set of ship’s stairs into the hold. I found myself in a long corridor running forward, with four cabin doors opening off either side. At the forward end light shone through a curtained half-door. From beyond it came low voices.
It was certainly my dream yacht, all right. I’d have given just about anything to have been its master and owner. My forehead had broken out in a sweat from the pain of that climb over the stern.
I didn’t know what I expected to find. Certainly no million-dollar caches of heroin, even of hash. Not, anyway, without moving a lot of gear and floorboards and making a lot of noise.
Up forward the low voices hadn’t stopped. The galley was on my left and I looked it over with a pocket flash. Then I started forward through the cabins. The first one on the right was locked. I had looked into two of the other cabins when the overhead lights went on and a voice behind me said, “All right, hold it. Just hold it right there. Don’t reach for anything.” It was Kirk’s voice.
I put my hands up to my shoulders and turned around. Kirk stood at the foot of the stairs wearing a mean grin, a big Luger in his hand.
“Stephanos!”
Behind me my moronic blond friend from the street fight appeared at the half-door. Kirk said something in Greek and the curtain dropped, and I heard feet scrambling up the ladder and running along the deck.
“I told him to keep talking,” Kirk grinned. “Know how I cottoned to you? I felt it. The balance of the boat changed. I didn’t hear you. Yes, sir.” He looked pleased with himself.
I walked along toward him. If I could get close enough. I wondered. My side was still hurting brightly from the climb over the stern. I wasn’t in my best fighting form.
“There’s been a rumor going around Athens that there was some kind of an agent floating around Tsatsos,” Kirk said.
The moronic blond boy had appeared behind him down the ship’s stairs.
Kirk snorted. “That’s far enough. Let me just feel you up a little, Mr. Lobo Davies.”
He patted me, found the pistol in my belt, stuffed it in his own belt, seemed about to quit, then felt behind me and found the sap.
“Oho. A regular arsenal. You all ready to go to war, Mr. Lobo Davies.” He put the sap in his pocket and stepped back.
“You look like somebody else has been using you for a punching bag too,” he grinned. Suddenly he stepped in, fast as hell, and slugged me on the jaw with a left hook. I lit on my butt, my side screaming, and slid a few feet bow-ward along the corridor. I sat still, shaking my head to clear it.
“You wouldn’t be that agent, would you, Mr. Lobo Davies? Get up, Mr. Lobo Davies. What happened to your face?”
I got up, using my left arm and side and turning to the left, although it hurt like hell. I didn’t want him to know I was incapacitated there.
“A bunch of your hippie clients tried to remodel it for me,” I said. It was the first I’d spoken.
“They’re not my clients.” He looked as if he was going to hit me again. Instead, he reached behind him with a key and unlocked the locked door I had tried earlier. “Let’s just step in here. This is my country. Stephanos!”
The blond moved around behind me. Kirk backed into the cabin, the Luger steady on me. There wasn’t much I could do. The blond boy pushed me roughly. The push made my side flare with hurt.
The cabin was almost severely austere, and scrupulously clean. The only furniture in it besides a tiny desk and chair was the bunk. The only adornment was a lovely color photo of Agoraphobe under full sail and heeled over. Kirk put my gun and sap up on a little shelf behind him over the bunk, then pulled the little chair out to sit on.
But the captain didn’t sit on the chair just yet. As he straightened from pulling the chair against the outside wall, he extended the movement, turned it into a swing, and belted me on the side of the jaw again with his left hand.
“Now, what are you doing on my ship?”
The blow was half strength but it knocked me into the corner of the bunk, even though I rode with it. My side sent me several wild signals of pain. I straightened up, shaking my head. The punch carried a value ratio of about ten of the hippie blows earlier.
“I want to know whether you’re that agent I’ve been hearing about,” Kirk said. “Are you?”
“I’m a private detective,” I said. “On vacation.”
He belted me again in the same place. I sat down on the bunk. I knew if I was going to do anything at all, I was going to have to do it soon. I clamped my teeth down on the pain from my side, holding it in and not letting it swerve me, and made myself get up.
“I can hit a lot harder than that,” Kirk said with a flat mean grin. “And I can slap you around some with this,” he lifted the Luger. “That marks good. I can even shoot you, if I want. Nobody would ever know. Put a coat of chains on you and slip you over the side, they’d never find you. Water’s sixty feet deep here, and nobody ever goes down in it. Harbor’s too dirty. And nobody knows you’re here. You didn’t tell anybody you were coming. Now, say something. And say something important.”
“I don’t think you’ll shoot me,” I said, making my voice hard. “I don’t even think you’ll pistol-whip me.”
“You don’t, hunh?” Almost without lifting his hand, he hit me again, harder this time. I was knocked back into the corner, this time off my feet and onto the bunk.
I sat up, shaking my head. My head was buzzing that sleepy buzz right behind the ears. Always a warning. The bright red and white flag of pain in my side was streaming in the wind again. But this time when I got on my feet, I was standing where I wanted to be. To the left and just a hair in back of the blond boy—who now was grinning all over his moronic, vicious face.
“I can put this thing against your skin when I pull the trigger and nobody’ll ever hear it,” Kirk said. “I said, what are you doing on board my ship?”
“I came here because I recognized two of your crew,” I said. “They’re two of the three guys who tried to beat me up the other night. I’m not in the habit of letting people get away with that. I want to know why.”
“You want to know why, hunh?” Kirk snorted. This time he drew his fist back. Not much, but it was enough. In the cabin’s close quarters I slipped half a step to my right, grabbed the boy and shoved him at Kirk. The punch glanced off his shoulder. I pushed him harder, into Kirk. My side seemed to shriek out loud. But the two of them fell into a tangle onto the bunk, the Luger caught between their bodies.
As they struggled, I booted the kid hard in the tailbone with my left foot, slammed my left knee into his back and stood on the knee, and reached my gun and sap down off the shelf above the bunk. I stepped back.
“Let go of it,” I said. “Let me hear it hit the floor.”
As I spoke the boy got his feet under him and sprang back up, turning. The kick on the tailbone had hurt him bad, and there were tears of pain in his eyes. That made me feel fine. That made me feel excellent.
As he turned at me, I rapped him sharply on his right wrist with the sap. He collapsed to the floor, nursing a paralyzed hand. Behind him the Luger thudded on the deck.
I scooped it up, straightened and stuck it in my belt. From the floor the kid started at me again. This time I rapped him hard on the point of the left shoulder. He collapsed again, with a paralyzed left arm. He sat holding his two arms in his lap.
I had already sensed Kirk moving at me from the bunk. Tall or not, he loomed up like some kind of colossus. I stepped to meet him, and laid the barrel of my little .38 on him.
He was anticipating the sap, but I didn’t want to knock him out. I hit him on the left side of his neck, just where the neck meets the skull. He sat down on the bunk, his eyes glazed, his mouth open and his tongue sticking out.
“How does it feel?” I said.
“Thanks for not cutting me,” he said in a dulled voice. It would have knocked any other man unconscious.
“Go screw,” I said. “You’re entirely welcome.” I stepped back to the wall behind me, and put my back on it.
“You take a lot of chances,” Kirk said from the bunk.
“Not really,” I said. “You were handicapped. You didn’t want to shoot me. Even if you only cut me up with it, it wouldn’t do your reputation any good. I’d show it to Pekouris.”
“You think he would help you, hunh?” Kirk said dully.
I noted this little slip, if it was a slip. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was deliberate. I tried to ease my left side by pushing my back against the wall with my legs. “Now, maybe we can talk a little,” I said.
Dully, Kirk nodded slightly toward the blond boy. “I don’t like to talk too much in front of him.”
I looked at the boy. “He doesn’t understand English, does he?”
“He’s a wharf rat from Piraeus. You never know with them. He may have enough English to figure out what we’re saying.”
“I’ll fix that for you,” I said crisply. “I’ll be pleased to.” I shifted the gun and sap and stepped to the boy and rapped him with surgical precision above the left ear. Horrible to Chantal, maybe. Or to Sonny Duval. But it wasn’t horrible to me. And it wasn’t to Kirk. The boy’s head dropped like a stone, without a sound.
Kirk grinned dully. “You’re pretty good with that sap.”
“He won’t even have a headache,” I said. “At least, not any worse than the one you gave me.” I shifted the gun and sap. “Now, where were we?”
“You were just saying maybe we could talk a little,” Kirk said. He rubbed his neck. “I think that’s a good idea.”
I pushed my back against the wall again with my legs. My side was giving me real bloody hell. It was making my scalp tingle again. And Kirk’s face danced a little in front of me as I looked at him.
“You know, somebody shot at me a while ago,” I said.
He only grinned. “They did? Somebody must not like you, hunh?”
“I guess not. They seemed pretty serious about it.”
I pulled his Luger out and sniffed it. It didn’t smell strong, but it had been cleaned recently. With Hoppe’s #9.
“It wasn’t that one,” Kirk said.
“First,” I said, “I want to know who was behind your three lovable characters trying to knock me over the other night.”
“I don’t mind answering that. That was Girgis.”
“Blame the dead. Why haven’t I seen any of them in the town?”
He grinned, and hitched himself up a little on the bunk. He was coming out of it. “I thought I’d better give them a few days off.”
“Where’s the third one?”
“He didn’t come back. You gave him a pretty sore nose. They had to pull a lot of it back out of his eyes.”
“Girgis wanted to scare me off of him, was that it?”
“That was the general idea. He asked me to do it. I did it for him as a favor.”
“And he asked you to have your hard boys handle me. And you did it as a favor. But your boat left Tsatsos for Athens that same evening. Before I got jumped, Kirk.”
“I stopped at the next port ten miles up the coast, and came back and picked them up. It’s an easy run back down here in the launch.”
“And Girgis was killed the same night. It would have been easy to do both jobs on the same trip. Or even to make a second trip in the launch, alone,” I said.
“It would have at that. But I didn’t do that. Hell, I told you, Girgis and I were pals.” He grinned.
“I heard you were such good pals you might have wanted to take over that paying trade of his for him.”
Kirk shook his head. “You didn’t hear that. Who would have told you that? It wouldn’t have worked. I’m not here enough. I don’t know any of these kids here the way Girgis did. You have to be here. That was his problem. He couldn’t get away enough to get all the stuff he wanted. So I started bringing it down from Athens for him.”
I tried another tack. “Did it ever occur to you that the person or persons who knocked off Girgis may be trying to muscle in? And that you might be on the list?”
He grinned benignly. “No. It didn’t. And it still don’t. There’s nobody here that big. And there isn’t that much money in hash. Nobody gives a damn. Nobody would risk a murder for it.”
I couldn’t fault that. So I gave him the rest of it. “That’s the point. That’s a very good point. But there is also a little heroin involved, it seems.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Kirk said promptly. “If Girgis was selling H, I never heard about it. And I wouldn’t touch it. Heroin is dangerous stuff nowadays. With all these American agents running around all over Europe.” He looked at me sanctimoniously.
I didn’t answer. Marie had explicitly said he was bringing in small amounts of H for those who had to have it. And more, that Girgis himself refused to touch it.
“If Girgis was selling H, I don’t know anything about it,” Kirk said again.
“What about this boss of yours?” I said. “What’s his name? Kronitis? Is he in on this whole deal? He owns the Polaris, too.”
“Mr. Kronitis? If he found I was in anything like selling hash, he’d fire me like a shot. The same goes for Girgis.” There was a sudden fervency in his voice, that made it sound like the truth.
I probed it further. “Kronitis must know about the hash you guys have been handling.”
“For God’s sake, don’t go and tell him,” Kirk said. “You’ll have me out of a job.” He meant it.
Beside us on the floor the blond boy began to stir a little. He groaned. I looked down at him. My legs were beginning to tremble. Partly from holding my back so tight against the wall.
“I guess I might as well be going,” I said. “His anesthetic seems to be wearing off.” I grinned at Kirk. “Unless you want me to put him to sleep again and talk more.”
He didn’t answer me. He just looked down at the boy, apparently lost in thought. Then he shook his head.
“But get one thing straight,” I said. “I’m no agent. I’m a private detective. I’ve been hired by a client to find out who killed Girgis Stourkos, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I don’t give a damn about anything else.”
“It’s easy enough to guess your rich client,” Kirk said with a leer. “Chantal von Anders’s been screwing Girgis for over a year. I know all about that.”
I shook my head. “Wrong guess. Anyway, I never tell who my clients are.”
“Well, I’d like to find out who killed Girgis, too. I’d like to help you. Why do you think I’m talking to you?”
I wanted to laugh. But I was afraid of what it would do to my side. I was remembering when he had had the gun, and the drop, and the upper hand. Some help. “I ought to break your jaw with this,” I said, pulling the Luger out of my belt again. “I’ll leave it up on the wheel housing for you, instead.”
I pushed the blond boy out of the way with my foot to get the door open. The movement sent a pain shooting through my side again. It suddenly occurred to me that if Kirk had wanted to talk longer, I couldn’t have done it anyway. I opened the door and looked back at them.
“Hey, no hard feelings, hey?” Kirk said. He rubbed his neck. “You’re a tough hombre. You hurt my neck.”
“What do you think you did to my jaw?” I said. “No. No hard feelings,” I lied. I shut the door behind me.
Up on deck I ejected the magazine from the Luger, and looked at it. It was full except for one. I drew back the elbow-type receiver, and a shell popped out onto the wheel housing. He had had it loaded, all right. I left the three objects on the housing.
When I climbed down over the stern to the skiff, I thought I wasn’t going to make it. It was all I could do not to groan out loud. When I sculled the skiff back in, standing up, the lights of the taverna danced wildly in front of my eyes. I gritted my teeth and kept sculling.
After I tied the skiff, I walked quietly through the still-rioting late drinkers at the taverna and went home and went to bed. I wouldn’t be any good to Chantal or anybody else, this night.
I had been beaten unconscious, rib-kicked, shot at and missed, then beaten nearly unconscious again on the jaw until I could hardly touch it, and then threatened with killing. I had certainly earned my pay from Kronitis today, even if I hadn’t found out anything significant. What else could happen to me?
What else could happen to me was that I couldn’t sleep. Whenever I moved the pain in my side woke me. My whole side was hot with fever when I touched it.
I passed a fitful night, as they say in the newspapers about sick Presidents and other world leaders. Nobody came by and wrote it up.