“Three,” said Tama decisively. “If that doesn’t do it, we’ll just have to put our thinking caps back on.”
“Do you really think these Kennel Club nuts brush their dogs’ teeth?” blurted Inspector Opuu, who had maintained a brooding silence ever since leaving the office of the Club’s secretary.
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” muttered Tama, his eyes fixed on the elegantly printed list of names in his hand. “There are hundreds of names here. How are we going to—”
“Look at this,” interrupted Inàs Chin Foo, a birdlike Chinese woman from the records office with a sticklike figure, an ethereally beautiful face the color of burnished gold, and the most prodigious memory short of a mainframe computer. “I’ll have to check it in the records to make certain, of course, but here’s a name we’ve had dealings with, and here’s another, and here’s another.”
The three members of the police judiciaire were gathered around a small table in the commissariat’s shabby conference room, a cup of coffee and a list before each of them.
“Hmmm,” rumbled Alexandre Tama. “Daniel Arapari, commission salesman. Doesn’t ring a bell. Jacqui Tai Chong Woa, dit Jack. Homme de commerce. Isn’t he the one who was running the gambling hall in the back of his curios shop by the marketplace? A suspended sentence and a big fine?”
“That’s the one. He’s running it now in his son-in-law’s shop next-door. There were a couple of old, old Chinese smoking opium when we raided it. And Daniel Arapari was caught with twenty-seven marijuana plants growing behind his house in Titioro: a suspended sentence and a small fine.”
“Hrmph,” growled the Commissaire. “If everyone on this blasted island who’d ever been let off with a suspended sentence was thrown in jail this afternoon, the three of us in this room would be the only ones walking around free.” He eyed the third name Inàs Chin Foo had pointed to. “Didier von Sache de Gaumont. That’s the Yacht Club beefcake who runs that scuba-diving outfit from the houseboat on the waterfront. And—” his voice grew noticeably more enthusiastic “—who was mixed up in that coke bust a couple of years ago.”
The Chinese girl nodded. “We almost got him, but there wasn’t quite enough direct evidence. The Procureur finally gave up and didn’t bring charges.”
“I remember: He simply denied everything and wouldn’t say a word otherwise. Very smart — a good thing for us that most of our other customers just talk and talk and talk.” He turned to Inspector Opuu. “Remember de Gaumont?”
“I remember — and if there’s anyone on this island who has the nerve to steal the sniffer and use it for his own little treasure hunt, it’s de Gaumont. I think he’s half crazy.”
Tama nodded. Didier von Sache de Gaumont was a handsome young Frenchman of supposed aristocratic origin who had appeared in Polynesia four or five years earlier with a somewhat older but still strikingly beautiful German wife of undisputed noble background and apparently limitless funds. Not long after their arrival, the muscular de Gaumont had generated a certain amount of local interest by being the first — and still the only — person to windsurf the entire one hundred and forty miles of open ocean between Tahiti and Bora-Bora. He had been escorted by two ships and a helicopter, but it was still an impressive athletic accomplishment. After another nine months of nonstop partying, the German countess had suddenly stepped on a plane for Sydney and out of de Gaumont’s life forever. Penniless, he opened a modest scuba-diving business with the financial aid of one of the many local girlfriends who had been the cause of his wife’s departure.
Two years later, a cousin of de Gaumont’s named Bertrand de Roseville had arrived in Tahiti in his tiny one-man yacht from the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. He was, it seemed, the champion surfer of that French possession and brought with him three enormous custom-built surfboards that were nearly as large as the boat itself. He immediately set up housekeeping with his cousin and de Gaumont’s current girlfriend, along with two comely feminine discards of de Gaumont’s. A month later, a jealous fight between the three female members of the household led one of them to the commissariat; here she denounced Bertrand de Roseville as having brought with him three surfboards stuffed with coke.
One of the surfboards was indeed found to contain nearly two kilograms of cocaine carefully hidden within its fiberglass body. Another revealed a recess in which traces of cocaine were identified. The third surfboard was never found; de Roseville maintained until the day he was led away for a four-year sentence in the local prison that the surfboard had been stolen soon after his arrival.
“And he refused to implicate his beefcake cousin, de Gaumont,” marveled Commissaire Tama, “even though two of the three wretched sluts swore they were hand-in-glove in dealing it.” He snorted angrily. “Honor among thieves!”
“Well, the fact is,” said Opuu, “it was his word against the two girls’, with de Gaumont’s own girl swearing it was all a setup by the two other jealous sluts. And with him being a French citizen, of course, we couldn’t even get him kicked off the island.”
“Not one of our triumphs,” agreed Tama. “De Roseville is still in prison, but de Gaumont is still walking around, charming the pants off every female tourist with a yen for scuba diving, and the surfboard with the problematic cache of coke has never turned up either.”
“Either it’s been long since used up,” said Opuu, “or the dumb Tahitian kid who stole the board and repainted it is still riding the waves on a couple million francs of dope without knowing it, or—”
“—or we’ve got Didier von Sache de Gaumont with at least an approximate idea of where the coke might be — and a sniffer dog to root it out for him.”
“Do you really think this de Gaumont—” began Inàs Chin Foo.
“Of course I don’t!” thundered Tama. “Do I look like an idiot? And neither do I think that this pot-growing Daniel Arapari or this Chinese opium den operator have got the damned dog either. But we’ve wasted this much time already, we might as well waste a little more.”
Inspector Opuu frowned sceptically. “So we’re just going to follow these three Kennel Club types around until they lead us to Bismarck — or we all die of old age?”
“Essentially, yes. But I think I’ve got an idea how we might significantly speed things up.”
“How?”
Tama heaved himself to his feet with his usual unexpected agility. “We’ll use a little misdirection of our own. But we’ve got to hurry.”
Chez les Trois Petites Tantes was celebrated throughout Lyons for serving the best bourguignon in all of Burgundy. After its three awestruck proprietors had watched a youthful Alexandre Tama — then a mere inspector-in-training — consume four enormous portions all by himself, they had been prevailed upon to reveal the secrets of their spécialité.
Now, two decades later, the Commissaire’s diminutive Tahitian wife, Angelina, as slim and dainty as he was stout, still prepared the dish according to the sacred formula — along with a few subtle improvements of her own that she was too wise ever to mention.
On Tuesday night, the day after Bismarck was discovered missing, Alexandre Tama reluctantly pushed himself away from the table on which an enormous casserole of boeuf bourguignon still sat. “Time for the news,” he said, glancing at his watch. “They promised me it’d be the first thing they showed.”
Two minutes later, a solemn-faced announcer wearing a garish red sport coat and a hideous green necktie led off the evening news by announcing in dirgelike tones that Bismarck, the celebrated sniffer dog of the Service des Douanes, had been basely and cravenly murdered. The broadcaster’s face was replaced by a shadowy picture of three men in the blue uniforms of the police judiciaire standing grimly around an unmoving object — a German shepherd lying in the midst of a profusion of rubbish and filth.