THE BAD THING ABOUT INJURIES and bruises is they’re still there when you wake up the next morning. They don’t go away. I was barely able to crawl off the bed in the morning. Shaving loosened me up a little. But my side made it almost impossible for me to move. I hobbled downstairs and downed some strong coffee and went down to the basement apartment to Georgina.
“Do you think you could help me tape up my side,” I said, “if I showed you how?”
“Why, of course.” She was delighted, in fact. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Just a bad sprain,” I said. “But it’s uncomfortable.”
Con Taylor had all sorts and sizes of adhesive tape lying around. I chose a roll of two and a half inch Johnson & Johnson’s. I tore the strips off the roll for her, stuck them by their ends to the edge of the table, had her put the scissors beside them.
“My God, you’re beat up,” Georgina said when I took off my shirt. She touched my shoulders. “You have a very manly torso, sir,” she said. “I’ve never been up this close.”
She loved every second of it. I stood in the middle of the room with my arms up like some grotesque flower stalk, while Georgina buzzed and darted around me like a hummingbird on a flight mission in a stand of hollyhocks. She tried to pump me about the fight, but I clammed up.
Women always seem to love to help you when you’ve been hurt much more than when you’re unhurt. I think it gives them some kind of weird, secret sadistic sexual gratification of some sort.
I kept up a running comment of instruction.
“That’s it. No, start around further to the back. That’s it. A little lower. Now, pull it tight. Pull it as tight as you can. That’s it. Never mind about hurting me. Now, smooth it down. Never mind the loose end. We’ll cut them later. That’s it. Now, put the next one two-thirds up the first one, overlapping it. That’s it. Pull it tight.” I didn’t know if she knew this particular bandage was the bandage for busted ribs. She didn’t ask. And I didn’t tell her.
When we finished, I was trussed up my left side like some mummy. But I felt almost immediate relief. In the mirror I looked like some right-handed gladiator putting on his suit to go out in the ring. I put my shirt back on.
I figured, with a little rest, I could get by like that and do almost anything I had to do. I certainly wasn’t about to give Kronitis back his retainer.
I kissed Georgina on the forehead, thanked her and went back upstairs.
About ten minutes later Pekouris roared up down below in the police jeep. He was alone this time. He wasted no time on preliminary ceremonies.
“Is this what you call keeping your investigations quiet? Getting in a public brawl with that gang of hippies?”
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “There wasn’t anything I could do. They jumped me.”
I had already decided I wouldn’t mention my set-to with Kirk, nor the shooting either.
“My informants inform me you provoked it so strongly no one but a saint could have avoided fighting you,” Pekouris said coldly.
“I guess there’s some truth in that,” I said after a moment.
My unwillingness to leap in with irrefutable explanations seemed to set him back. He was too used to the European style, I guessed, which considered vehement counteraccusation the best defense for everything.
“Do you want to prefer charges?”
“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t remember any of their faces.”
“Against the hippie Steve? Or the place?”
“It happened outside his place. No,” I said. “Unless, of course, you want me to prefer charges.”
“I confess I do not understand you, Davies,” he said. “You are certainly not the Greek idea of what a police officer should be.”
I felt like saying thank you.
“I found out what I wanted,” I said. “Which was that this Chuck is crazy. I think homicidally crazy.”
“I told you all that,” Pekouris said. “Before. I did it by deduction. You did not have to prove it.
“Well, I have some news for you in this department, Davies,” he said. “Some good, and some of it bad.”
“Let me have the bad news first,” I said. “What did the laboratory say?”
“That is the good news. Our laboratory in Athens thinks it is highly probable that they can find and distinguish any human blood that might be on the machete mingled with goat’s blood. They are not sure they can determine the human blood type, though, under those circumstances.”
“That’s good news. Are you going to pick him up?”
“I would not have done that in any case,” Pekouris said disdainfully. “If they could not determine the blood type. But all this is an academic question now.”
“What do you mean, academic?”
“I have been on the telephone twice with Athens this morning,” Pekouris said. “In addition to the laboratory. They are dropping the case. They have ordered me to close it out as unsolved and to send in the dossier.” He looked dismal suddenly, Pekouris. Not in any moral or idealistic way. But like a bloodhound who has suddenly been pulled away off a hot scent and put back on the leash. Like the bloodhound, his jaws appeared to ache.
“Closing it out!” I said. “But it’s only been three days! What the hell?”
“There is no mystery about it,” Pekouris said. “Our main tourist season for the summer begins in ten days. They do not want to risk the bad publicity and the resulting cancellations. Our tourist season is very important to us.”
I turned to stare at him. My belly began to tickle with wanting to laugh. I couldn’t help it, I began to laugh out loud. “Poor Pekouris,” I said.
“Not at all,” he said stiffly. “I am the same thing as a soldier. I obey my orders. Theirs is not to reason why. Theirs is but to do, and die.”
“I didn’t see the movie,” I said. “But I read the book.”
He only frowned. “In fact, I quite agree with them. Our national tourist season is much more important than the murder of some petty hashish smuggler. Right at this moment, a rumor is going out that it was not a person who was killed in the Xenia gardens at all, but a white hairless monkey from South America which was somebody’s pet. And that the boy who found the headless body was confused.”
“It’s you who is putting this out?” I said.
He simply blinked at me, and pressed his thick lips together tightly. “It will confuse. It will inject an element of doubt. Right now, it is being spread around all day. By tonight two-thirds of the people on Tsatsos will believe there was no murder. The other third wouldn’t care anyway.”
“Too bad Girgis’s so well known,” I said dryly.
“Yes. But that can’t be helped.”
“I’m being paid to find the killer,” I said.
Pekouris leaned against the wall with folded arms. “I’ve been ordered to tell you to stop your investigations.”
I gave him a look. “You know I’m not going to do that.”
He nodded at me, “You have no choice. I already have been given the authority to put you on a plane and throw you right out of Greece, if you do not. To make sure, I am placing a telephone call to Mr. Kronitis this morning.
“Officially; officially, you are ordered to cease any action of yours having to do with this murder.”
“Go ahead and call him.”
“I mean to.”
“Well, this is a gas,” I said, and grinned at him. “You and me enemies, Pekouris.” I pouched out my lips. The whole thing sounded like something out of Dick Tracy. That rumor, about a hairless South American monkey, that knocked me out.
“Unofficially,” Pekouris said. He looked around for the housekeeper. “Unofficially, there is still one thing that might be done. Just between us two chickens.”
“And what’s that?” I thought I could guess.
“If I can get hold of that machete,” he smiled. “Some way or other. If I can have it tested, and the tests come out right, there is a good chance I can cause the thing still to work. I think Athens would back me up, with evidence like that. But, naturally, I cannot confiscate it, myself.” He suddenly looked like some Lebanese banker.
“You’re asking me to steal it for you?”
“I am asking you nothing. I am not even offering a suggestion. And if you say I did, I—”
“I know. You’ll deny it,” I said. “Hell, Pekouris, I can’t do that. I’m liable to get myself killed, if I go up in there again. The younger generation takes a very dim view of me. You saw what they did to me last night.”
“I don’t mind admitting it would be a large feather in my cap in Athens,” he smiled.
“I’ll bet.”
“You would not get credit. But you would have the satisfaction of a job well done.”
Before I could even jeer, he put his hands up and tilted his head on one side, like some character out of The Merchant of Venice. “But I’m asking nothing.”
“You’re appealing to my conscience? You’re a bad judge of character. I’m famous for not having any.”
“No, but you want to keep on getting paid by Kronitis.”
“Of all the Machiavellian, Levantine, middle-European,” I had to pause, “shenanigans.” I was forced to grin. “I’m promising nothing, Pekouris,” I said.
“No one is asking.” He pushed away from the wall and straightened his blue suit coat. “Just remember, any bit of notoriety attached to you, any word about you investigating those boys again or anybody else, just one bit, and—” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the sparkling horizon we could see through the open doors, out beyond the shaded porch, and the sun-faded little harbor.
“I’m expecting to go to Athens in a couple of days. On business. For quite some time.”
“I see,” I said.
“Anything that happens must happen before then.”
I walked out on the porch to watch him drive away another time. Portly, heavy-shouldered, an excellent eater, Pekouris. He sat his jeep like it was some old-time charger, and herded it down the road the same way.
I went back inside.
He wore with enormous vanity his certain measure of power, did Pekouris. And he would use it without scruple when he could. He was willing to swallow it down humbly when he couldn’t. He was the personification and spit and image of my picture acquired over fifty years of what the whole human race stood for and was worth.
It was a pretty dismal image to put up against fifty years. If you couldn’t laugh at it, you would want to go away and shoot yourself.
I sat down and called Chantal. My mind was a complete blank. I had no plans toward any scheme. And I wasn’t going to work up any for Pekouris.
Morning was the only time to be sure of getting Chantal, and she was in. But she had a lunch date, a date to play bridge in the afternoon, and a dinner for the evening.
“I didn’t get up there last night,” I said.
“I know all about it. You got yourself into another fight. The great tough private detective. Fighting with a bunch of children.”
I was a little stung. “They didn’t hit and kick like children,” I said mildly. “Anyway, I didn’t come.”
“You were too bruised and wounded. I know. Nobody’s talking about anything else. I’ve had five phone calls. They’re all delighted to call me. My new boyfriend. And out fighting with children.”
“Lay off it about children,” I said sharply. There was a slightly startled pause; I can make my voice quite sharp. “I wanted to come. And while we’re on it, I’m getting tired of seeing you only late at night, after your social evenings, like some hired stud. Lobo Davies Stud Service. Available At All Hours. Satisfaction Guaranteed.”
That slowed her down a little. “That’s a nasty thing to say. But then you never were noted for your manners.”
I wouldn’t answer that.
“Well, do you have another fight scheduled for tonight?” she said in a less bitchy tone.
“No,” I said. “But I’m not coming up to your house for just a little late sex after the servants are sent off. You want to see me, you can have a date with me.”
“I can arrange it for you to come to this dinner party. Very easily. But you don’t like my dinner parties.”
“No. I don’t. That’s not good enough.”
“Well, do you want me to meet you somewhere after?”
“I’ll meet you at Georgio’s,” I said. “The one you call the dancing taverna. That’s near where you’ll be.”
There was a pause. “All right,” she said. Another pause. “But you had better be there when I get there. I’m not going to go in and sit at a table alone, there, and wait for you.”
“Whatever you say, Countess,” I said.
We arranged the times, and hung up. I went across and lay down on one of the couches in front of the fireplace. I didn’t know if I was up to meeting anybody anywhere. The constant hot scream in my side was gone. But it was replaced by a vast monstrous toothache down there, with roots all the way down to my crotch.
I had not been down long enough to doze, when the phone rang. I got up stiffly and went over to answer it. It was Kronitis.
Pekouris had called him, all right.
But first I had to go through the long and dismal formalities the old man seemed to dote on. First, I had the male secretary, who meticulously checked if I was me. Then the old man himself, with all his how-are-yous.
“What do you think you ought to do?” he asked me finally. It sounded very cautious.
“Well,” I said irritably, “it would seem to me that when the police are dropping it is when you ought to want to go ahead. Assuming you want the murder solved. But I’ll do whatever you instruct me. I can return your retainer tomorrow.”
“No, no. No, no. That retainer is yours. That was the way I made the arrangement.” A pause. “As for the rest, I guess I had better just leave it up to you.
“But Pekouris said he would throw you out of Greece if you didn’t stop your investigations. I wouldn’t like that to happen. Nor would Freddy Tarkoff.”
“I’d like to keep on nosing around,” I said. “For a few days. If that’s all right with you.”
“You don’t think it would be better to just give up the whole thing?” Again, it sounded excessively cautious.
“Only if you say so.”
“Very well. I’ll authorize that,” he said. “What you said. It’s whatever you think, Mr. Davies.”
“You know, I got myself shot at last night,” I said.
There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end. “You mean, with a gun?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “With a real gun.”
“Isn’t that awfully, uh, professional?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They missed me. You wouldn’t have any ideas on that, would you, Mr. Kronitis?”
“No.” A pause. “No, I certainly wouldn’t.”
We went through a long and excessively courteous formality of saying goodbye which could have been done in two words.
I lay back down on the couch. Finally I was able to doze, after a couple of stiff Scotches.
I ate the old woman’s lousy cooking for lunch again, and hobbled around the house most of the afternoon. My side hurt too much to read with any pleasure. I slept a little. For dinner I ate the same greasy lambstew at the taverna. The Greeks never seemed to have any other kind of meat. My teeth and jaws were beginning to hunger after a good thick sirloin. American-style.
At eleven I caught a horsecab in front of the taverna to take me up the hill and across the point to Georgio’s.