BECAUSE I DIDN’T GO OVER to see Pekouris with the machete, I had an hour to wait before Pete Gruner would show up at Dmitri’s.
I locked the machete in the lockup closet with my locked briefcase. I had carried it up unobtrusively from the taverna deck, and nobody had even noticed it. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. But I wasn’t going to turn it over to Pekouris.
With all the rest that had happened to me, now I was guilty of secreting evidence. In America that would make me an accessory after the fact. In Greece I didn’t know what it would get me, probably decapitated.
After the machete was taken care of, I went through my first-aid inspection routine. It was getting to be a daily thing, just about. Like having to shave, or change my underwear.
I went in the bathroom and locked the door and inspected my testicles. They weren’t swollen up, thank God. But they were sore as hell. I could hardly stand to touch them. The nausea was gone, and the sharp pain. But there was a constant ache in them, especially when I strained or tensed my thighs or walked. I wouldn’t be of use to Chantal tonight.
My side seemed to have gotten worse, and felt inflamed. But there wasn’t much I could do for it. The bandage was still in good shape, and still tight. I couldn’t do much for my balls, either. I could hardly bandage them. I didn’t know any bandages for testicles.
The rest of me was unmarked. The right-hand chop to the cheekbone had caused no swelling. The left side of my neck was a little sore from the chop to the neck.
I felt I was certainly earning Mr. Kronitis’s retainer and my hundred and fifty dollars a day. I ought to up it to two-fifty.
The worst thing of all was that I didn’t have a murder suspect any more. Chuck was out. So I had to start over. What was left? Jim Kirk. I had Jim Kirk, and this clandestine heroin business that was going on, or seemed to be going on, but never seemed to be more than vaguely alluded to.
I was hoping Pete Gruner could clarify some of that for me. I sat on my porch and rested my poor balls, and waited for him.
He saw me up on the porch when he came by, and waved. But he didn’t come in. He went on to Dmitri’s and took a table, back in the arched, open room. If that was a signal, I respected it. I walked down, gingerly, and took a table in the open-sided room myself. It was empty except for the two of us. Everybody else was outside in the sun. After a minute he slipped over to my table.
“What’s the matter with your balls?” he asked.
“I picked up a dose in Glauros,” I snarled. “Now, let’s cut the funny stuff. What I’m here about is serious. At least, to me.”
“I know it is,” Pete said, and gave me a look.
“You mean you know what’s bugging me?”
“Well, I’ve got a pretty strong suspicion.”
“You figured it out about the girl?”
He moved his head and neck in a way that was not quite a shrug, but was more of a gesture of sympathy. “Well, I didn’t exactly figure it out. I’m not a homicide man. But I made a pretty strong guess.”
“Well, your guess would hit pretty close,” I said, and made a snarly smile. “I won’t go into the details about it. It’s too complicated. And it’d only bore you. But for reasons of my own, I’ve run into a wall. I thought I had a suspect, a good one, but it petered out.
“Well. What I’m interested in right now, is heroin. And what is going on around here about it. I’m pretty sure that something is.”
He looked down at his drink, and turned the glass on the table a while. Finally he looked up and said, “I don’t know anything about any heroin.”
“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t keep a certain bitterness out of my voice. “If that’s how you want to play it.” I started to get up.
“Hold on. Hold on,” Pete said. “Wait a minute. My God, you’re short-tempered. You fly off the handle before they can turn the crank. Just sit down, now.”
“I don’t want to play games,” I said. But I sat back down. “If you don’t want to admit you’re a nark, and tell me what you’re jackassing around after down here, I might as well be on about my business. I know you’re a nark. You know you’re a nark. What the hell? To hell with it.”
“I’ve never said I was a nark,” Pete said. “It’s you who keeps saying it. I deny it.”
“Okay, okay,” I said wearily.
“It’s the truth.”
“Okay.”
“What do you know about heroin around here?” he said.
“I know that Jim Kirk of the Agoraphobe has been toting some H around here, for special clients. Like the old American Ambassador, and a few people at the Construction. It’s supposed to come from Athens. He charges double Athens prices. But he doesn’t seem a pusher. I know that Girgis was not involved, and wouldn’t touch heroin. I know that Kronitis, who owns both their boats, is not involved.” Gruner looked at me sharply. “Or I think I know that,” I added.
He turned his glass some more and pursed his mouth as if in a whistle and thought a little while. “That’s all you know?”
“That’s all I know.”
“That’s all you suspect?”
“I have no reason to suspect anything else.”
“All right,” he said, and tossed off the rest of his drink. “Now, if you’ll shut up and not go off half-cocked and let me just say something—” He motioned the waiter.
“Okay,” I said and scowled. I set my shoulders and jiggled my butt, in a parody of concentrating, and both my side and my testicles hollered at me. “All right. I’m ready. Shoot it.”
“It’s a good thing for you that I’m leaving, or I couldn’t talk to you at all,” he said, and grinned. “Now don’t interrupt. I’m leaving here, probably on the evening flight tonight. That was why I wanted to talk to you.”
“You’ll have Pekouris as a fellow passenger,” I said.
“Fine. I’ve never met him. Now don’t interrupt any more. I’m leaving here and going back to the States. I’m leaving because my mother died. Don’t interrupt. So I wanted to see you. As an old islands hand, not as a nark, I can tell you maybe a little bit that might help you out in what it is you want to do. Which is, presumably, to catch whoever it was who killed Girgis. And probably the girl.” He paused to take a breath. “Okay?”
“Why did you say you were leaving?” I said.
“Because my mother died. I’m going back for the funeral. I may be back here, and I may not.”
“Where did your mother live, in Washington?” I said.
“No.”
“How about Marseille, or Paris?”
“No. She lived in New Hampshire. And that’s where I’m going.”
“Why do they do this to you?” I asked.
He shrugged, and deliberately misread me. “Mothers die. It can’t be avoided. And it’s something that can’t be controlled.”
“So you’re going to just pull out, and just leave me here, with the whole thing in my lap?”
“When your mother dies, you go home. Period.”
“Don’t you even care?”
He grinned. “Sure, I care. When my mother dies. Everybody cares when his mother dies. As for my new boat I told you about, well, I’ll just have to wait. I’ll get a chance at another boat, some other day somewhere else, on some other island.”
“All right,” I said. “All right. What were you going to tell me?”
“Nothing much,” Pete said. “I don’t really know anything to tell you. All I really know, is that I had a nice cushy job lined up on the Polaris, and that I was going into business with Kirk. And then my mother went and died.”
“Sure, sure,” I said. “So?”
“All I really know to tell you, is one little thing. Listen to it. Remember it. Record it. Use it. I won’t tell it again. One piece of information. Keep your eye on that Polaris boat. Keep a close eye on it.” He stopped, and picked up his one of the two fresh drinks the waiter had left us.
“That’s all?” I said irritably.
“That’s all. But it’s important. Or maybe it isn’t important. But that’s all I know. What I suspect is another thing, and I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”
“Because your mother died,” I said.
He ignored me. “My leaving is going to put a moderate-sized hole in the machinery. I was already hired, and I think they were already counting on me. With me gone, somebody else’ll have to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Work on the Polaris.”
“Does Kirk know you’re leaving yet?”
“No. Not yet. I was going to tell him while I was down here. But he’s gone off.”
“And you really don’t care? At all?” I said.
“There’s always another island.”
“Where is Kirk now?”
“If you want to know, I can tell you exactly. He’s gone off up the mountain road on that tiny cycle of his, about two miles up in the hills and off to the right in the woods. And he’s got Sonny Duval’s wife with him. Okay? Enough? I’m waiting around for him.”
I looked around for Sonny. He had gone back on board his big caique, when I left him earlier. I supposed he was still there. I didn’t care where he was.
“And that’s all you’ve got to tell me? Watch the Polaris?”
“That’s all I’ve got,” Pete said, and nodded.
“Okay.” I got up. “Give my best to your dad when you see him, will you?” I said. “I just hope he doesn’t have to die on your next job.”
“Actually, my father passed away last year.”
“I hope you’ve got enough aunts and uncles for the future,” I said. “Okay. Good luck. I’m sorry you’re running out on me. I’ll be seeing you. In Washington. I’m going into Indian Affairs myself, when I get back.” I started to stick out my hand, but then didn’t. It seemed too much. “So long.”
“Oh, Lobo,” he called after me.
I stopped and turned around.
“I know from experience that if you will buy a jockstrap, smallest size they have, it will help a lot for the first couple of days. But get it small.”
I just looked at him, then gave a small snarl and went on.
“Good luck,” he called. “Keep after it.”