Cities of the Red Night

  I switched on an electric heater and took my recorder out of its case. This is a very special recorder designed and assembled by my assistant, Jim, and what it won’t pick up isn’t there. It is also specially designed for cut-ins and overlays, and you can switch from Record to Playback without stopping the machine.

  I recorded a few minutes in all three rooms. I recorded the toilet flushing and the shower running. I recorded the water running in the kitchen sink, the rattle of dishes, and the opening and closing and hum of the refrigerator. I recorded on the balcony. Now I lay down on the bed and read some selections from The Magus into the recorder.

  I will explain exactly how these recordings are made. I want an hour of Spetsai: an hour of places where my M.P. has been and the sounds he has heard. But not in sequence. I don’t start at the beginning of the tape and record to the end. I spin the tape back and forth, cutting in at random so that The Magus may be cut off in the middle of a word by a flushing toilet, or The Magus may cut into sea sounds. It’s a sort of I Ching or table-tapping procedure. How random is it actually? Don Juan says that nothing is random to a man of knowledge: everything he sees or hears is there just at that time waiting to be seen and heard.

  I get out my camera and take pictures of the three rooms, the bathroom, and the kitchen. I take pictures from the balcony. I put the machine back in the case and go outside, recording around the villa and taking pictures at the same time: pictures of the villa; a picture of the black cat that belongs to the caretaker; pictures of the beach, which is empty now except for a party of hardy Swedes.

  I have lunch in a little restaurant on the beach where Jerry and his friends used to eat. Mineral water and a salad. The proprietor remembers me and we shake hands. Coffee at the waterfront café where Jerry and his friends took coffee. Record. Take pictures. I cover the post office, the two kiosks that sell imported cigarettes and newspapers. The one place I don’t record is in Skouras’s office. He wouldn’t like that. I can hear him loud and clear: “I’m a landlord and not a detective. I don’t want your M.P. in my office. He’s bad news.”

  I go back to the villa by a different route, covering the bicycle rental agency. It is now three o’clock. A time when Jerry would most likely be in his room reading. I read some more of The Magus into the recorder with flushing toilets, running water, my footsteps in the hall, blinds being raised and lowered. I listen to what I have on tape, with special attention to the cut-ins. I take a walk along the sea wall and play the tape back to the sea and the wind.

  Dinner in a restaurant where Jerry and his friends ate the night they arrived. This restaurant is recommended by Skouras. I take my time with several ouzos before a dinner of red snapper and Greek salad, washed down with retsina. After dinner I go out to the discotheque to record some of the music Jerry danced to. The scene is really dead. A German countess is dancing with some local youths.

  * * *

  Next day there was a wind and the hovercraft was grounded. I took the noon boat and after six hours was back in my room at the Hilton.

  I took out a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label duty-free scotch and ordered a soda siphon and ice from Hilton room service. I put Jerry’s graduation picture in a silver frame on the desk, assembled the questionnaire, and put the tape recorder with an hour of Spetsai beside it. The waiter came in with the ice and soda siphon.

  “Is that your son, sir?”

  I said yes because it was the easy thing to say. I poured myself a small drink and lit a Senior Service. I started thinking out loud, cutting into the tape.…

  “Suspected to be involved in some capacity: Marty Blum, a small-time operator with big-time connections. Was in Athens at or about the time young Jerry disappeared.

  “Helen and Van—also in Athens at the time. Van was trying to get a permit to run a disintoxication clinic on one of the islands. He didn’t get it. Left Athens for Tangier. Left Tangier for New York. Trouble at immigration. Thought to be in Toronto.” What did I know about these two birds? Plenty. “Doctor Van: age, fifty-seven; nationality, Canadian. Dope-pushing and abortions sidelines and front for his real specialty, which is transplant operations. Helen, his assistant: age, sixty; nationality, Australian. Masseuse, abortionist, suspected jewel thief and murderess.”

  The Countess Minsky Stahlinhof de Gulpa, known as Minny to her friends and sycophants: a heavy woman like a cold fish under tons of gray shale. “White Russian and Italian descent. Stratospherically wealthy, near the billion mark. The source of her wealth: manipulation of commodity prices. She moves into a poor country like Morocco and buys up basic commodities like sugar, kerosene, and cooking oil, holds them off the market in her warehouses, then puts them back on the market at a higher price. The Countess has squeezed her vast wealth out of the poorest people. She has other interests than money. She is a very big operator indeed. She owns immense estates in Chile and Peru and has some secret laboratories there. She has employed biochemists and virologists. Indication: genetic experiments and biologic weapons.”

  And what of the Countess de Vile? “De Vile: very wealthy but not Gulpa’s strata. A depraved, passionate and capricious woman, evil as Circe. Extensive underworld and police contacts. On close terms with Mafia dons and police chiefs in Italy, New York, Morocco, and South America. A frequent visitor at the Countess de Gulpa’s South American retreat. Several unsolved missing-person cases, involving boys of Jerry’s age, point to the South American laboratories as terminal.”

  I glanced through the questionnaire. “Medical history: scarlet fever at the age of four.” Now, scarlet fever is a rarity since the introduction of antibiotics. “Could there have been a misdiagnosis?”

  All this I was feeding into the recorder in pieces, and a lot more. An article I had just finished reading when Mr. Green came into my office. This was an article on head transplants performed on monkeys, the Sunday Times, December 9, 1973. I now took it out of a file and read parts of it into the recorder. “Monkey heads transplanted onto monkey bodies can now survive for about a week. The drawing above portrays controversial operation. ‘Technically a human head transplant is possible,’ Dr. White says, ‘but scientifically there would be no point.’”

  My first meeting with Mr. Green: the smell of death, and something shifty about him. From talking to Jerry’s friends, I found out that this was a family trait. They all described him as hard to figure or hard to pin down. Finally I turned on the TV. I played the tape back at low volume while I watched an Italian western with Greek subtitles, keeping my attention on the screen so I was subconsciously hearing the tape. They were hanging a rustler from horseback when the phone rang.

  It was Dimitri. “Well, Snide, I think we have found your missing person … unfortunately.”

  “You mean dead?”

  “Yes. Embalmed, in fact.” He paused. “And without his head.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. Head severed at the shoulders.”

  “Fingerprints check?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited for the rest of it.

  “Cause of death is uncertain. Some congestion in the lungs. May have been strangulation. The body was found in a trunk.”

  “Who found it?”

  “I did. I happened to be down at the port double-checking the possibility that the boy may have left by freighter, and I saw a trunk being carried aboard a ship with Panamanian registry. Well, something about the way they were carrying it … the disposition of the weight, you understand. I had the trunk returned to customs and opened. The uh the method of embalming … unusual to say the least. The body was perfectly preserved but no embalming fluid had been used. It was also completely nude.”

  “Can I have a look?”

  “Of course.…”

  * * *

  The Greek doctor had studied at Harvard and he spoke perfect English. Various internal organs were laid out on a white shelf. The body, or what was left of it, was in a fetal position.

  “Considering that this boy has been de
ad at least a month, the internal organs are in a remarkable state of preservation,” said the doctor.

  I looked at the body. Pubic, rectal and leg hairs were bright red. However, he was redder than he should have been. I pointed to some red blotches around the nipples, crotch, thighs and buttocks. “What’s that? Looks like some kind of rash.”

  “I was wondering about that.… Of course it could have been an allergy. Redheads are particularly liable to allergic reactions, but—” He paused. “It looks like scarlet fever.”

  “We are checking all hospitals and private clinics for scarlet fever admissions,” Dimitri put in, “… or any other condition that could produce such a rash.”

  I turned to the doctor. “Doctor, would you say that the amputation was a professional job?”

  “Definitely.”

  “All questionable doctors and clinics will be checked,” said Dimitri.

  The preservative seemed to be wearing off, and the body gave off a sweet musky smell that turned me quite sick. I could see Dimitri was feeling it too, and so was the doctor.

  “Can I see the trunk?”

  The trunk was built like an icebox: a layer of cork, and the inside lined with thin steel.

  “The steel is magnetized,” Dimitri told me. “Look.” He took out his car keys and they stuck to the side of the trunk.

  “Could this have had any preservative effect?”

  “The doctor says no.”

  Dimitri drove me back to the Hilton. “Well, it looks like your case is closed, Mr. Snide.”

  “I guess so … any chance of keeping this out of the papers?”

  “Yes. This is not America. Besides, a thing like this, you understand…”

  “Bad for the tourist business.”

  “Well, yes.”

  I had a call to make to the next of kin. “Afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr. Green.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, the boy has been found.”

  “Dead, you mean?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Green.…”

  “Was he murdered?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s my wife. She’s sort of, well, psychic. She had a dream.”

  “I see. Well, yes, it looks like murder. We’re keeping it out of the papers, because publicity would impede the investigation at this point.”

  “I want to retain you again, Mr. Snide. To find the murderer of my son.”

  “Everything is being done, Mr. Green. The Greek police are quite efficient.”

  “We have more confidence in you.”

  “I’m returning to New York in a few days. I’ll contact you as soon as I arrive.”

  The trail was a month old at least. I was fairly sure the murderer or murderers were no longer in Greece. No point in staying on. But there was something else to check out on the way back.

  FEVER SPOOR

  I stop over in London. There is somebody I want to see there, if I can find him without too much trouble. Could save me a side trip to Tangier.

  I find him in a gay bar called the Amigo. He is nattily dressed, with a well-kept beard and shifty eyes. The Arabs say he has the eyes of a thief. But he has a rich wife and doesn’t need to steal.

  “Well,” he says. “The private eye.… Business or pleasure?”

  I look around. “Only business would bring me here.” I show him Jerry’s picture. “He was in Tangier last summer, I believe.”

  He looks at the picture. “Sure, I remember him. A cock-teaser.”

  “Missing-person case. Remember who he was with?”

  “Some hippie kids.”

  The description sounds like the kids Jerry was with in Spetsai. Props. “Did he go anywhere else?”

  “Marrakesh, I think.”

  I am about to finish my drink and leave.

  “Oh, you remember Peter Winkler who used to run the English Pub? Did you know he was dead?”

  I haven’t heard, but I am not much interested. “So? Who or what killed him?”

  “Scarlet fever.”

  I nearly spill my drink. “Look, people don’t die of scarlet fever now. In fact, they rarely get it.”

  “He was living out on the mountain … the Hamilton summer house. It’s quite isolated, you know. Seems he was alone and the phone was out of order. He tried to walk to the next house down the road and collapsed. They took him to the English hospital.”

  “That would finish anyone off. And I suppose Doc Peterson was in attendance? Made the diagnosis and signed the death certificate?”

  “Who else? He’s the only doctor there. But what are you so stirred up about? I never thought you and Winkler were very close.”

  I cool it. “We weren’t. It’s just that I started out to be a doctor and I don’t like to see a case botched.”

  “I wouldn’t say he botched it. Shot him full of pen strep. Seems he was too far gone to respond.”

  “Yeah. Pen strep is right for scarlet fever. He must have been practically dead on arrival.”

  “Oh, not quite. He was in the hospital about twenty-four hours.”

  I don’t say any more. I’ve said too much already. Looks like I’ll have to make that side trip to Tangier.

  * * *

  I checked into the Rembrandt and took a taxi to the Marshan. It was 3:00 P.M. when I rang the doctor’s bell. He was a long time coming to the door, and was not pleased to see me.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you during the siesta hour, Doctor, but I’m only in town for a short stay and it’s rather important.…”

  He was not altogether mollified but he led me into his office.

  “Doctor Peterson, I have been retained by the heirs of Peter Winkler to investigate the circumstances of his death. The fact that he was found unconscious by the side of a road has led them to speculate that there might be some question of accidental death. That would mean double indemnity on the insurance.”

  “No question whatsoever. There wasn’t a mark on him—except for the rash, that is. Well, his pockets were turned inside out, but what do you expect in a place like this?”

  “You’re quite sure that he died of scarlet fever?”

  “Quite sure. A classical case. I think that the fever may have caused brain damage and that is why he didn’t respond to antibiotics. Cerebral hemorrhage may have been a contributory cause.…”

  “There was bleeding?”

  “Yes … from the nose and mouth.”

  “And this couldn’t have been a concussion?”

  “Absolutely no sign of concussion.”

  “Was he delirious at any time?”

  “Yes. For some hours.”

  “Did he say anything? Anything that might indicate he had been attacked?”

  “It was gibberish in some foreign language. I administered morphine to quiet him.”

  “I’m sure you did the right thing, Doctor, and I will report to his heirs that there is nothing to support a claim of accidental death. That is your considered opinion?”

  “It is. He died of scarlet fever and/or complications attendant on scarlet fever.”

  I thanked him and left. I had some more questions, but I was sure he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer them. I went back to the hotel and did some work with the recorder.

  At seven o’clock I walked over to the English Pub. There was a young Arab behind the bar whom I recognized as one of Peter’s boyfriends. Evidently he had inherited the business. I showed him Jerry’s picture.

  “Oh yes. Mister Jerry. Peter like him very much. Give him free drinks. He never make out though. Boy just lead him on.”

  I asked about Peter’s death.

  “Very sad. Peter alone in house. Tell me he want to rest few days.”

  “Did he seem sick?”

  “Not sick. He just look tired. Mister Jerry gone to Marrakesh and I think Peter a little sad.”

  I could have checked hospitals in Marrakesh for scarlet fever cases, but I knew already what I needed to know. I knew why Peter hadn??
?t responded to antibiotics. He didn’t have scarlet fever. He had a virus infection.

  THE STRANGER

  The next day the five boys signed on with The Great White and moved into the forecastle. Three youths were already there. They introduced themselves as Bill, Guy, and Adam. Noah noticed that they all had the same pale faces and fish-eyes as Captain Jones. The forecastle was clean and newly painted, with a faint hospital smell of carbolic.

  An impish red-haired boy of about fifteen brings mugs of tea on a tray. “I’m Jerry, the cabin boy. Anything you want, just let me know. It’s a pleasure to serve you, gentlemen.”

  Bill, Guy, and Adam wash down black pellets with the tea.

  “What’s that?” Brady asks.

  “Oh, just something to keep out the cold.”

  The boys are kept busy loading cargo and supplies. Mr. Thomas gives instructions in a quiet voice. He seems easygoing and good-natured. But his eyes make Noah uneasy—they are cold as winter ice.

  * * *

  Pages from Noah Blake’s diary:

  Tuesday, Feb. 5, 1702: Today we sailed. Despite Captain Jones’s slighting remarks about freshwater sailing, our experience on the lakes stands us in good stead. I notice that Guy, Bill, and Adam, though they are very thin and pale and sick-looking, are good seamen and seem immune to cold and fatigue.

  An hour before sailing, a carriage pulled up at the wharf and two people got out and came on board. I could not see them clearly, for they were wearing furs with hoods, but I could tell that they were young and looked much alike. When the ship was clear of the harbor and on course, the cabin boy brought tea.

  “Two passengers on board,” he told us.

  “Have you seen them?”

  “Aye, I carried their luggage to the cabin.”

  “And what are they like?”

  “More like leprechauns than humans. Green they are, green as shamrock.”

  “Green?”

  “Aye, with smooth greenish faces. Twins, one a boy and one a girl. And rich too. You can smell the money off them.…”