© 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.”
“For you, or the dog?” muttered Tama as they followed Blanchard along the porch and around the side of the house. Here a large kennel had been carefully constructed against the cement wall of the house using three-inch galvanized pipes and heavy cyclone fencing. The fencing was set into concrete footings; it extended as well across the top of the enclosure, just beneath a sloping wooden roof. The sole door into the kennel was made of the same sturdy pipe and fencing and was secured with a massive brass padlock.
Tama and Opuu stepped closer to peer into the shady kennel. A large wooden doghouse stood in one corner, with a water dish and a food dish just before it. The floor of the yard was of poured concrete sloping towards a drain in the center; a coiled hose was attached to a faucet against the house. Two well-gnawed leg-of-lamb bones and half a loaf of crusty French bread lay nearby.
“All the comforts of home,” observed Tama. “How many people know the combination of the padlock?”
“That’s what I thought when I first saw he was gone,” said Blanchard, “but look over here.” They moved around to the far side of the kennel, but even then, standing in the deep shade, it took Tama a moment to spot where the fencing had been neatly snipped open in two directions to form a large flap.
“And they’ve wired it together again with baling wire,” said Inspector Opuu.
“So it wouldn’t be so noticeable,” agreed Tama. “I can’t believe that many Tahitians would bother to do that. If they wanted the dog they’d just come in and get him.”
Inspector Opuu snorted sceptically. “Every Tahitian I know is like me — scared to death of dogs, especially big ones. The dogs smell the fear and bark like crazy. I don’t think any Tahitians could get near this cage without the dog going crazy.”
But as Tama discovered by walking slowly around Blanchard’s property, the house was almost totally isolated by its position against the hillside. The slope fell away so sharply that it was nearly impossible to build here; the closest neighbor was more than a hundred yards away and totally cut off from sight by the curve of the hill and a dense cluster of bourau trees.
Normally, Blanchard said, he worked Saturdays and Sundays, which were the days of heaviest traffic at the airport. This last weekend, however, his wife’s sister had gotten married at the far end of the island. Early Saturday morning he and his wife and two children had driven off for the wedding and subsequent feast. Afterwards they had spent the night at yet another sister’s home in the districts. The dog had been well supplied with food and water; when Blanchard had returned home late Sunday evening he had done nothing more than check that the door to the kennel was properly locked.
“You didn’t think it was strange not to see the dog?”
Blanchard shrugged miserably. “Bismarck’s a very quiet, very, very well-trained dog. He never barked unless a stranger came to see him. So I thought he was asleep in his house. Maybe I should have called... It was only when I came to feed him early this morning that I saw he was gone.”
They walked back to the porch, where the customs officer served icy soda pop, and they went over Blanchard’s association with the dog. He had gone to New Zealand five months before and spent three months being trained along with Bismarck in the techniques of searching for hidden contraband. “Every dog has his own particular handler,” he said. “That’s why the dog lives with me instead of out at the airport. And the kennel here is exactly the same design as the one they used in New Zealand.”
“And all this is what they showed on television the other day?” asked Tama.
“Yes. It was a twenty-minute show. There was some footage taken in New Zealand during training, with dogs actually finding heroin and cocaine. Then it showed the two of us working together at the airport, and here at home.” He grimaced unhappily. “It showed the kennel, where I lived, how isolated the house is, everything.”
“How many people knew you’d all be going to the wedding?”
“It could be anyone on the island. There were fourteen hundred of us at the dinner afterwards, most of them relatives or fetii. It was a real old-fashioned tamaraa — lots of food and wine and music. Anyone there could have known we’d be staying with my sister-in-law until Sunday night.” Blanchard sighed morosely. “This was my first weekend off in two months, you know. I guess it’ll be my last — if I’m not fired.”
Tama pursed his lips. “Aren’t there three or four flights coming in from Los Angeles practically on top of each other early Sunday morning? I’d have thought—”
“Yes, but we actually pay a lot more attention to the weekday flights coming in from Chile via Easter Island. South America is where the real dope is — no one’s bringing it in from LAX except for personal use.”
“Hrmph.” Tama finished his second bottle of orange soda. “What about identifying this dog of yours? Could you distinguish him from any other German shepherd? There seem to be a million of the damned things on the island — everyone I know has one.” Blanchard smiled wanly. “Identification’s no problem. The people in New Zealand have already thought of that — this is a very valuable dog. What they did was...”
“What I don’t understand,” said Inspector Opuu plaintively as he watched the Commissaire take a bite from the first of the two large pizzas Tama had ordered for himself, “is why you’re wasting all this time on a miserable dog.”
“That assistant minister of social affairs is in town from Paris, remember? They wanted me to bodyguard her around for the next three days. This way I’m too busy — I’m working on a case.”
“Ah.” The wiry Tuamotu islander took a careful bite of his own small pizza. La Toscana, Commissaire Tama’s favorite luncheon spot, was closed on Mondays; today they had strolled a block or so farther down to the waterfront and the shady outdoor setting of L’Api’Zzeria. “So we’re actually going to try to find this dog?”
“Yes — at least until Madame la Ministre leaves town.” Tama leaned forward, his black eyes fixed on the inspector. “I asked you before, Opuu: Why would anyone steal a dog?”
By the time they had finished their pizzas they had considered and discarded a number of possibilities:
That it was just to gain possession of a dog, albeit by sheer coincidence a very valuable one.
That it was to take revenge on either Blanchard or his wife, probably by a jealous girlfriend or boyfriend.
That it was simple mischief — or pure malicious spite.
That Bismarck had been taken in order to search for the numerous plantations of marijuana that grew throughout Tahiti’s mountainous and mostly inaccessible interior.
That he had been stolen to sniff out truffles — which in any case didn’t grow in Tahiti.
And that he really had been stolen in order to provide the main course at a Tuamotuan barbecue.
“How about this?” suggested Inspector Opuu. “There’s a particularly big shipment of dope coming through and this is just a safety precaution. One less thing for the smugglers to worry about by getting the dog out of the way.”
Tama pushed a piece of charred pizza crust about his plate with an enormous brown finger. “Yes, that’s a good enough reason, all right. But if that’s the case, why bother to steal him? Why not just kill him outright? Shoot him right there in the kennel? Or poison him? Tahitians are always poisoning their neighbors’ dogs with weed killer.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” admitted Opuu.
“It’s not a bad idea, though — we’ll keep it under consideration.” Tama scowled into the earthenware pitcher that earlier had contained half a liter of rose wine. “But it suggests another idea.” He held up a hand to summon the Tahitian waitress, a round little girl in a blue print dress and a billowing white apron. Frizzy black hair fell almost to her plump derrière.
“Look,” said Tama, who was infamous throughout town for his love of amateur magic. “I want to show my friend here a trick. Just push these two water glasses around in a circle — here, like this.”
The inspector groaned as the giggling waitress began to manipulate the glasses — le patron was being particularly tiresome today.
“That’s enough,” said Tama a minute later. “Now, I want you to put a hand on top of each of the glasses so that none of the water can get out. All right, good.” Tama passed his own gigantic hand slowly back and forth over the girl’s hands. “Perfect. Now then, I want you to reach very, very carefully into the apron pocket on your left hip. Careful, not too fast! What’s that you’ve got there?” Slack-jawed, the astonished waitress pulled forth a tumbler half filled with rose wine.
“Misdirection,” said Tama smugly when the bewildered girl had been sent to fetch tarte tatin and coffee. “The principle of all sleight of hand. You’re made to look at — or to expect — one thing, and then something else entirely different happens.”
Inspector Opuu had heard the same dictum many times before, usually accompanied by some childish trick. “What’s this got to do with the dog?” he demanded sourly.
“You suggested that maybe the dog was stolen to prevent him sniffing out a particularly important load of dope being smuggled in. Suppose this was just misdirection, what they wanted us to think. The real reason is that they’re getting ready to smuggle something out of Tahiti. They think we’ll spend all our time and efforts tearing every incoming plane to pieces — and in the meantime whatever it is they’re smuggling out goes through without a glance from us.”
“It’s possible,” agreed Inspector Opuu after a long pause, “but tell me this: Just what is there in Tahiti worth smuggling out? Black pearls? U.S. dollars? Coral-reef jewelry? Girly calendars that would be pornography in Iran? Now that they’ve lifted currency controls, there’s nothing at all it’s illegal to take out of Tahiti — except drugs. And if they’re smuggling out drugs that have already been brought in for transhipment, then the question is the same as you just asked — why not just kill the damned dog in the first place?”
“Hrmph.” Tama’s lips tightened and he ran a hand through his thick mop of jet-black hair.
“Let’s look at this logically,” said Opuu. “A dog that sniffs out coke has been stolen. Isn’t it logical to suppose that it was stolen in order to sniff out coke?”
“Sniff out coke? Nonsense! Coke isn’t produced here in Tahiti. Why would—” Tama’s voice trailed off and his face grew thoughtful. “I see what you mean,” he said at last, poking idly at his tarte tatin. “Someone, let’s say Monsieur X, has brought in some dope for transhipment, or even for distribution here. Someone else, Monsieur Y, let’s say, knows this and roughly where the dope is but not exactly where it is. And Monsieur Y wants it for himself. So Monsieur Y steals the dog to sniff it out. Brilliant, Opuu, that’s really a terrific idea.” He leaned forward. “But now what? We’ve got a whole island, plus an archipelago of another hundred and fourteen islands covering an area as big as Europe from Portugal to Moscow, with two hundred thousand people on them. And half of them seem to own German shepherds. Why couldn’t this damned sniffer be a big white French poodle? Or a three-legged Labrador?”
“Why don’t we offer a reward for the sighting of every German shepherd? It’d take a lot of work to check them all out, but sooner or later—”
“If we did that, whoever stole him would just kill the dog out of hand and bury him. No, Opuu, we’ve got to think our way to this dog.”
“Hrmph,” snorted the inspector, sounding almost like his superior. “So let’s think then. Here’s what I think: No Tahitian would come within a mile of the damned thing. So that eliminates, what? One hundred and eighty out of the two hundred thousand people you mentioned? And most Chinese are just as afraid of dogs as Tahitians are, so that eliminates another—”
“Unless, of course, they’re a member of the Kennel Club,” muttered Tama around a mouthful of pie.
“The Kennel Club?”
“Those characters you see in the newspapers every now and then showing off their dogs and all the tricks they’ve been taught. Most of the dogs seem to be German shepherds, if I remember the pictures right, and there are all sorts of members in the Club — mostly French, but some Chinese and some Tahitians too. None of them would be afraid to steal a great big dog.”
“Hmmm,” murmured Opuu, sipping his coffee. “But where does that get us?”
“Let’s just see,” said Tama, suddenly incisive. “You’ve got your phone with you?”
The inspector rummaged through the attache case he had placed beneath the table and handed over a dark green phone. “I’ve got a cousin, I think, who belongs to this dog club,” rumbled the Commissaire. “I’ll get the switchboard to track her down.”
Three phone calls later, Tama returned the phone to Opuu. “We’re in luck — the secretary of the club is the director of the Territorial Office of Statistics. If there’s anyone on this island who’s organized, it’s him.” The Commissaire pushed himself to his feet. “I don’t dare go back to the office — let’s go see this fellow Beaudenon.”
“The TOS is down in the old Donald Building. Shall I get the car?”
“For half a mile? It’d take us all day to get through the traffic — we’ll walk.”
Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office Territoriale des Statistiques was a roly-poly little Corsican with thick spectacles and a toothy grin who had once been a nationally ranked tennis player in France and was still the island’s best player. He was also, Tama discovered to his dismay, the president of the local Macintosh Club as well as being secretary to the Kennel Club.
“Look,” said Gerard Beaudenon, hunched over a bank of Macintosh computers that took up an entire wall of his corner office. “Here’s a list of all this year’s members. These are the ones who’ve paid their dues. Here’s the kind of dogs they have. Here’s how long they’ve been members. Here’s the prizes they’ve won, listed by—”
“Very impressive,” interrupted Tama. “I told Opuu you were the most organized man on the island.” He rubbed his chin as he scowled at the brightly colored computer screen. “Tell me this: Could you give us a list of everyone who’s ever been a member of the club, even if they’re no longer members?”
“I can tell you what kind of toothpaste they use to clean their dogs’ teeth! All I have to do is merge my annual membership records, sort the new list, and then eliminate the duplications. With a Macintosh you can—”
“Could you also give us their addresses and phone numbers?” asked Tama hastily before the Frenchman could expound further upon the marvels of his machine.
“Of course. The only problem is that I’ve only been secretary for four years now. Before then we don’t have any lists at all. So all I can give you is data I’ve entered myself.” As he talked, his fingers flashed across the keyboard and groups of names scrolled down the screen. “What font do you want it printed up in? What size? How many copies?”
“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.
“In the early hours of this morning,” the announcer intoned, “a macabre discovery was made behind Le Garage Herchuelz in the industrial zone of Tipaerui Valley. It was the corpse of Bismarck, the million-franc dog — with a knife plunged brutally into his heart!”
Angelina Tama gasped as a closeup on the screen showed the handle of an enormous butcher knife protruding from the brown and black pelt on the dog’s ribs. Dried brown blood matted most of the dog’s side.
The leathery face of Inspector Opuu replaced the dog. Scowling, he recounted how Bismarck had been discovered missing the day before. So far, he said, in spite of all their efforts, the police had no leads to the instigator of this cowardly crime.
The inspector was replaced by a wan Marcel-Pierre Blanchard, who was shown pointing out Bismarck’s kennel and who then told in a halting voice how he had been summoned to identify the remains of his canine companion.
Next came the director of customs at Faaa International Airport. “We feel certain,” he said, “that this horrible crime was committed in order to expedite the smuggling of a major shipment of illicit substances through our airport in the relatively near future. We have, therefore, doubled our scrutiny of all incoming flights and taken other security measures that I am not at liberty to reveal. I will tell you this, however: Nothing will enter our island via Faaa International!”
“To conclude,” murmured the announcer, “here are some pictures of the martyred Bismarck undergoing his training in New Zealand, as well as—”
Alexandre Tama clicked off the television. “Time for coffee,” he said, rising to his feet. “But first, perhaps, a little bit of cheese.”
“Oh, Alexandre, I do hope you’ll catch the killers of that poor dog!”
“We will, chérie, we will,” promised the chief of police.
The door to Alexandre Tama’s office opened and a large brown and black German shepherd padded through silently. He walked to the center of the room, where he sat on his haunches and fixed his liquid brown eyes unblinkingly on the Commissaire de Police.
“What the devil is this?” cried the nonplussed Tama at the open doorway.
Inspector Opuu’s head appeared around the side of the door. “Meet Bismarck. He wanted to come and thank you in person.”
“Opuu, get the devil in here and explain yourself!”
The normally dour Tuamotuan was grinning broadly as he entered the room, followed closely by the dog’s handler, Marcel-Pierre Blanchard.
“Hrmph! So it all worked out, did it?” Pushing aside the paperwork that littered his desk, Tama regarded the still motionless dog with curiosity.
“Like a charm,” burbled Inspector Opuu enthusiastically. “We put a discreet surveillance on all three suspects, with more on de Gaumont than the other two. Yesterday afternoon, just before dusk, de Gaumont left the house in Mamao he shares with his present girlfriend and drove off to the house of his other girlfriend.”
The Commissaire shook his head. “And the rest of the world thinks we Tahitians have nothing but sex on our minds. We’ve got nothing on these Europeans!”
The inspector nodded sardonically. “Girlfriends sometimes serve more purposes than one. De Gaumont went into her house and when he came out five minutes later, guess what he had?”
“Our friend Bismarck here?”
“Absolutely. They got in his car and drove out to Papara.”
“Papara?” muttered Tama. “Let me guess. The Surf Club? They have a whole bunch of great big surfboards locked up on their beach in some sort of burglar-proof contraption, as I recall.”
“Right again. We had a terrible time following him through the rush-hour traffic but we managed. When we finally got to the Surf Club, de Gaumont got out of the car with the dog and, bold as you please, walked the dog three or four times back and forth past all the surfboards that had been locked up for the night. These are all the professional models, three or four yards long, nothing at all like the little Styrofoam ones you see kids on the road carrying under their arms.”
Squinting quizzically at the inspector, Tama pursed his lips. “Tell me this, Opuu: Why the devil didn’t you just arrest him the moment he appeared with the dog — as you were supposed to do?”
“So he could get a one-month suspended sentence for stealing a dog?” retorted the inspector hotly. “If it even turned out to be the right dog? With a couple of kilos of coke in his hands, though, it’d be a different story — four or five years of real prison time. And anyway, where could he go with the dog on an island as small as this? We could always step in and arrest him any time we wanted to.”
“I see. So what happened at the Surf Club?”
“Nothing at all. The dog completely ignored every surfboard in sight. So they got back in the car and drove back to town — and right on through to the other side.”
“Hmmm. To the Yacht Club in Arue, perhaps?”
“Yes indeed. They have the same sort of heavy-duty cage with all sorts of boards locked up in it as the Surf Club. It was dark by the time we got there. De Gaumont got out of his car with the dog, nodded to a couple of people who were having drinks on the terrace, then walked right over to that spot by the boat slips where all the members’ boards are chained together for the night.”
“Yes. And then?”
“And then he and Bismarck just walked up and down past the surfboards two or three times until the dog started getting excited and began pawing and rubbing his nose against one of the boards. A bright red one at least four yards long with a blue and yellow tiki painted on it — not very well. Obviously an amateur job.”
“So then de Gaumont got out his chain cutters and pipe cutters and—”
“At the Yacht Club? Even de Gaumont isn’t that crazy — he’d have been mobbed. He put the dog back in the car, went to the bar, and made a few phone calls, then ordered dinner and sat back to wait. He really is a cool customer.”
“And eventually the present-day owner of the surfboard showed up?”
“Exactly. A Frenchwoman I’ve never seen before. She says, incidentally, that she bought it from a Tahitian, who bought it from a Chinese, who bought it from a—” Opuu waved his hand dismissively. “Anyway, de Gaumont bought her a beer, haggled with her for a little while, then wrote out a check — and drove off with her surfboard attached to the top of his car.”
“And with you in hot pursuit. Excellent, Opuu, really excellent. Then what?”
“Then it was back to the girlfriend’s who’d been keeping the dog for him. A little while later we heard hammering and power-saw sounds coming from the backyard. So we walked around the house and arrested them just as they were pulling the bag of coke from inside the board.”
Alexandre Tama stared at Opuu in frank admiration. “Wonderful, Opuu. You should be sitting here instead of me. And it really was coke?”
“Oh yes, the Brigade des Stupes is analyzing it right now. A little less than two kilograms.”
Tama rose to his feet and moved around the desk. He patted the top of Bismarck’s head with a massive hand. “And Bismarck here — did our friend de Gaumont admit stealing him?”
“Of course not. Said it was his girlfriend’s dog, and then completely clammed up. Hasn’t said another word since.”
“Hrmph! We’ll see how far that gets him this time.” The Commissaire turned to Blanchard. “This is your dog? You’ll swear to that in court?”
The handler grinned. “Of course. Look, just where I told you it was.” He murmured softly to the dog, then pulled away the lower lip from Bismarck’s shiny white teeth. There on the moist red and black flesh of the inner lip Tama could clearly read the tattooed letters: BISMARCK.
“That ought to do it,” agreed the Commissaire. “And this girlfriend of de Gaumont’s — who’s she?”
Blanchard grimaced unhappily. “A cousin of my wife’s brother’s girlfriend. She was at the wedding — and knew a week or so in advance that we were going to be spending the night in the districts.”
Tama ran his fingers back and forth in the short fur around Bismarck’s ears. “Who would have thought that dogs could be so intelligent? That shepherd the Kennel Club people found us for the TV show absolutely didn’t move a muscle while they were making him up to look like he had a knife sticking out of his ribs or while they were shooting their pictures with him lying there in all that trash.”
Inspector Opuu grunted dourly — he still didn’t like German shepherds.
A smile tugged at the corners of the Commissaire’s broad mouth. “I think this calls for a celebration, messieurs. Let’s walk down to La Toscana for an early lunch — and I’ll buy our friend Bismarck here the biggest steak in the house.”