© 1996 by Hayford Peirce
A twenty-three-year former resident of Tahiti, Hayford Peirce is trimming with island tales. He is the author of two separate series of Tahitian crime stories, one of which features Commissaire de Police Alexandre Tama. Tama has the stage to himself this time, hut later this year, readers will get a chance to see him in a story featuring Mr. Peirce’s other Tahitian detective, P.I. Joe Canelli.
“Why would you steal a dog, Opuu?” asked Commissaire de Police Alexandre Tama from behind his desk.
“To eat him?” suggested Inspector Opuu, who was as thin and wiry as if he subsisted solely on a diet of lean dog meat. He had dark brown skin like old shoe leather and had been born on one of the many atolls of the Tuamotu Islands, where roast dog has been a standard dinner item since the first Polynesian settlers arrived in their ocean-spanning outrigger canoes far in the unrecorded past.
“Please, Opuu,” groaned the Commissaire as he clutched his hands to the enormous expanse of his belly, “the very idea gives me a pain in the opu.” His vast girth began to quiver with laughter, for in Tahitian opu means stomach. Inspector Opuu’s lips twitched sourly: It was a pleasantry he had long ago grown weary of hearing, particularly from his superior officer, who had pretensions of being a gourmet. Inspector Opuu uncharitably considered the Chief of Police an outright glutton, for even on an island of notably stout trenchermen, Alexandre Tama’s appetite was legendary.
“I can’t believe that Monsieur le Commissaire intends to spend the day investigating a stolen dog,” said Opuu drily.
“You are almost correct,” said Tama, pushing back his massive custom-built chair of tau wood and rising to his feet with surprising grace. “We are going to spend the day investigating a stolen dog.”
The long black Citroen with Inspector Opuu at the wheel nosed slowly out of the commissariat’s courtyard and turned into the deep shade of the flame trees that arched over Avenue Bruat. To the left the road ran two short blocks down to the Cross of Lorraine monument standing at the edge of Papeete’s harbor. To the right it ran a few hundred yards past a mixture of ancient colonial and modern administration buildings, then split left and right around the concrete block of the Gendarmerie Nationale and climbed into the steep green hills behind town.
As the car moved out of the inky shadows and the road began to climb, Inspector Opuu indicated the gendarmerie with a nod of his head. “Why don’t you let them look for your missing dog? They never seem particularly busy to me.” As a member of the police judiciaire of the city of Papeete, Inspector Opuu was not overly fond of the national police, who came mostly from France and whose jurisdiction began outside the city limits.
“Too busy climbing through the mountains looking for plantations of pot,” grunted the chief of police. “Besides — this one is in town, so it’s our jurisdiction.”
“Who does this dog belong to, anyway, the President of the French Republic?” The Citroen was moving carefully along the narrow twisting road cut into the dark red earth of the hillside. Below they could catch occasional glimpses of Papeete through the thick green blanket of trees that swept down from the mountains. A few taller buildings ringed the edge of the U-shaped harbor, while out against the Pacific a small plane could be seen lifting off the runway of Faaa International Airport and climbing up across the jagged backdrop of the neighboring island of Mooréa. “Either that, or it’s Lassie.”
Alexandre Tama snorted, then pulled an enormous red bandanna from his pants and ran it across the drops of sweat that were already beading his forehead. He reached out to turn up the air-conditioning. “This dog’s even more valuable than Lassie. Can’t you guess? It’s the sniffer.”
“The sniffer? What—”
“The dog our dear colleagues in the customs service use to sniff out dope at the airport.”
“Ah,” murmured Inspector Opuu, “that dog. Now it begins to make sense.”
“I’m so glad you agree with me. Just keep going until we come to the top of the crest. There should be a sign by the road where the handler lives. Blanchard is the name.”
The road had narrowed still further and the pavement was badly broken. Most of the houses were behind them; ahead loomed the towering volcanic mountains of the interior, their peaks shrouded in dark clouds. Mango and ironwood trees clustered along the road, and an occasional house could be glimpsed behind thick hedges of hibiscus and false-coffee.
“This is where the dog was stolen from?” asked Inspector Opuu. “Not out at the airport?”
“Here. Didn’t you see that article about him in the papers? Or on TV?”
“I didn’t pay much attention. I don’t like German shepherds — I was bitten by one once.”
The Commissaire snorted. “The canine’s revenge! Just deserts for all his poor cousins you used to eat up there in the Tuamotus. Anyway, if you bothered to keep up with the news instead of wasting your time playing pétanque with all of your lazy cronies, you’d know all about this particularly noble specimen of man’s best friend. Although I must say,” admitted Tama, “that I myself always thought the only really useful purpose dogs served was to sniff out truffles—”
“I thought that was pigs.”
“— dogs, too. But that show on television convinced me otherwise. They really can find heroin and cocaine wrapped up in all sorts of containers or plastic foam and hidden in the middle of boxes and suitcases. At least they can in France and New Zealand, which is where this particular dog comes from. I don’t know if this one has found anything at Faaa yet.”
“God knows there’s enough of it coming through,” muttered Inspector Opuu as he came to a halt to scrutinize a faded sign mostly hidden by a tangle of hibiscus bushes bursting with white and pink blossoms. “Does that look like it might say Blanchard?”
“Close enough. Drive on in.” Inspector Opuu got out of the car to push open a sliding gate, then maneuvered the Citroen into the neatly tended garden beyond. The driveway ended in a carport attached to a small concrete-block house of recent construction painted a bright pink. Violet and scarlet bougainvillea climbed up one wall and across a covered porch that ran the length of the house and offered a fine view of Mooréa and of the mountains on the west side of Tahiti.
At the sound of the car a slim young man dressed in the khaki-colored uniform of the customs service moved out of the shadows of the porch and strode briskly into the harsh glare of the late-morning sunlight.
“You’re Monsieur Blanchard?” asked Tama as he pulled himself from the Citroen with the aid of a six-inch length of steel tubing welded to the fender just in front of the passenger’s door.
“Oui, Monsieur le Commissaire.” Blanchard was a demi-Tahitien in his late twenties, with wavy black hair and a complexion of pale ivory. His Adam’s apple was nearly as long and bony as his hawklike nose.
“My adjunct, Inspector Opuu.” The three men shook hands, then climbed into the dark shade of the porch. Sliding glass doors opened onto the living room and, further along the porch, onto what Tama supposed were bedrooms. He scowled at the open doors and the cheerful disorder of the living room. “Did you keep this dog here in the house with you?”
Blanchard’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Oh no, sir. He’s a very nice dog, but he has his own quarters out back. It was supposed to be safer that way.”