Cities of the Red Night

him had been neatly filled out on a typewriter. He also brought a folio of sketches and a green knitted scarf. The scarf reeked of death.

I glanced at the questionnaire. Born April 18, 1951, in Little America, Wyoming. 'Admiral Byrd welcomes you aboard the Deep Freeze Special.' I looked through the photos: Jerry as a baby ... Jerry on a horse ... Jerry with a wide sunlit grin holding up a string of trout ... graduation pictures ... Jerry as the Toff in the high school play A Night at the Inn. They all looked exactly as they should look. Like he was playing the part expected of him. There were about fifty recent photos, all looking like Jerry.

Take fifty photos of anyone. There will be some photos where the face is so different you can hardly recognize the subject. I mean most people have many faces. Jerry had one. Don Juan says anyone who always looks like the same person isn't a person. He is a person impersonator.

I looked at Jerry's sketches. Good drawing, no talent. Empty and banal as sunlight. There were also a few poems, so bad I couldn't read them. Needless to say, I didn't tell Mr. Green what I had found out about Jerry's sex and drug habits. I just told him that no one I had talked to had heard from Jerry since his disappearance, and that I was ready to leave for Athens at once if he still wanted to retain me. Money changed hands.

At the Athens Hilton I got Dimitri on the phone and told him I was looking for the Green boy.

'Ah yes ... we have so many of these cases ... our time and resources are limited.'

'I understand. But I've got a bad feeling about this one. He had some kinky habits.'

'S-M?'

'Sort of ... and underworld connections....' I didn't want to mention C over the phone.

'If I find anything out I'll let you know.'

'Thanks. I'm going out to Spetsai tomorrow to have a look around. Be back on Thursday....'

I called Skouras in Spetsai. He's the tourist agent there. He owns or leases villas and rents out apartments during the season. He organizes tours. He owns the discotheque. He is the first man any traveler to Spetsai sees, and the last, since he is also the agent for transport.

'Yes, I know about it. Had a call from Dimitri. Glad to help ay way I can. You need a room?'

'If possible I'd like the room he had.'

'You can have any room you want ... the season is over.'

For once the hovercraft was working. I was in luck. The hovercraft takes an hour and the boat takes six.

Yes, Skouras remembered Jerry. Jerry arrived with some young people he'd met on the boat—two Germans with rucksacks and a Swedish girl with English boyfriend. They stayed at one of Skouras's villas on the beach—the end villa, where the road curves out along the sea wall. I knew the place. I'd stayed there once three years earlier in 1970.

'Anything special about the others?'

'Nothing. Looked like thousands of other young people who swarm over the islands every summer. They stayed for a week. The others went on to Lesbos. Jerry went back to Athens alone.'

Where did they eat? Where did they take coffee? Skouras knew. He knows everything that goes on in Spetsai.

'Go to the discotheque?'

'Every night. The boy Jerry was a good dancer.'

'Anybody in the villa now?'

'Just the caretaker and his wife.'