The Alternative Detective (Hob Draconian) by Robert Sheckley

wedge-shaped head, the blazing eyes never leaving his hand, and put the gun gently on the front seat. He sat back, but the dog continued to glare at him.
    Etiènne endured it as long as he could, then said, “I did what you suggested; must she continue to stare that way?”
    “Pay it no attention, m’sieu,” the taxi driver said. “She means nothing by it; it is merely her way.”
    Etiènne stared straight ahead as we drove through the night-bright streets of the city of paradox, shaking his head slightly. I heard him mutter to himself, “Faked out by a dog. How about that?”
    And then we were at the address he had indicated. Etiènne paid off the driver, retrieved his automatic, and we stood together on the pavement as the taxi drove away.
    Etiènne watched it for quite a while even after it was out of sight. I waited for a while, then said, “So what happens now?”
    Etiènne gave a start like a man awakened out of a dream, or perhaps into one, and said, “I don’t know.”
    “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
    “I mean I can’t remember ze address. Let’s get a drink. I’ve got to pull myself together.”
     
     

 
    JEAN-CLAUDE
    19
     
     
    We found a bistro near Tolbiac. There I stood Etiènne to a cognac and I had an Orangina. Etiènne hadn’t really forgotten where he was going. It was just the sort of statement that a man of his excitable though deeply repressed nature was apt to make.
    I learned a little about him in the Gauloise-laden smoke of the bistro filled with laughter and accordians. He was a Corsican, but, unlike so many of his fellows, not tough. On the basis of his looks and the island’s reputation, he was always being given jobs like this. It wasn’t what he would have chosen, but then, which of us has much choice in these matters?
    We walked a couple blocks on Masséna, then turned left onto the Avenue de Choisy for a few blocks, then stepped into the Chinatown that has sprung up around here. Sprawled beneath a group of high-rise buildings named after composers and painters—Puccini, Picasso, Rembrandt, Cézanne—were innumerable small shops and restaurants, where you can get Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian cuisine, most of it tasting like Chinese food would taste if you added fish oil to it. The little open-air markets in this vicinity were filled with oddly shaped vegetables and improbably colored fruits. The tall, modern buildings were filled with Boat People, so I’ve heard, resettled by the French for those who could claim French nationality from the old Indochina days. It’s said that the police stay out of this district; the Indo-Chinese (or whatever overall generic term they’re called by) police themselves. Occasionally a body falls out of one of the upper levels, a defaulter on gambling debts usually. Skyscraper justice, they call it.
    We cut through back streets to the Avenue d’Ivry, past a mixture of oriental eating places and Algerian couscous joints. Etiènne took me into an alley that led into a cobblestoned courtyard. Apartments opened on three sides of the courtyard. We crossed to one and Etiènne tapped on the door.
    The door swung open. A figure stood there, backlighted in the doorway. Even in silhouette, and after ten years, I could recognize Jean-Claude.
    “Have any trouble?” Jean-Claude asked Etiènne.
    “Yeah, some,” Etiènne said. “But it wasn’t his fault.”
    “Come on in, ’Ob,” Jean-Claude said. “We have some talking to do. I’m glad you didn’t try to get away.”
    “You could have saved yourself the theatricals,” I told him. “I was trying to find you, as a matter of fact.”
    “I’m sure you were, ’Ob,” Jean-Claude said. “Come in and sit down.”
     
     
    We were in a sculptor’s atelier. There were armatures of various kinds, buckets of clay, pieces of marble of various sizes. In neat racks on the wall were the tools a sculptor uses—mauls, chisels, those sorts of things. Jean-Claude gestured me to a seat. He