Senior Service. I started thinking out loud, cutting into the tape....
'Suspected to be involved in some capacity: Marty Blum, a small-time operator with big-time connections. Was in Athens at or about the time young Jerry disappeared.
'Helen and Van—also in Athens at the time. Van was trying to get a permit to run a disintoxication clinic on one of the islands. He didn't get it. Left Athens for Tangier. Left Tangier for New York. Trouble at immigration. Thought to be in Toronto.' What did I know about these two birds? Plenty. 'Doctor Van: age, fifty-seven; nationality, Canadian. Dope-pushing and abortions sidelines and front for his real specialty, which is transplant operations. Helen, his assistant: age, sixty; nationality, Australian. Masseuse, abortionist, suspected jewel thief and murderess.'
The Countess Minsky Stalinhof de Gulpa, known as Minny to her friends and sycophants: a heavy woman like a cold fish under tons of gray shale. 'White Russian and Italian descent. Stratospherically wealthy, near the billion mark. The source of her wealth: manipulation of commodity prices. She moves into a poor country like Morocco and buys up basic commodities like sugar, kerosene, and cooking oil, holds them off the market in her warehouses, then puts them back on the market at a higher price. The Countess has squeezed her vast wealth out of the poorest people. She has other interests than money. She is a very big operator indeed. She owns immense estates in Chile and Peru and has some secret laboratories there. She has employed biochemists and virologists. Indication: genetic experiments and biologic weapons.'
And what of the Countess de Vile? 'De Vile: very wealthy but not Gulpa's strata. A depraved, passionate and capricious woman, evil as Circe. Extensive underworld and police contacts. On close terms with Mafia dons and police chiefs in Italy, New York, Morocco, and South America. A frequent visitor at the Countess de Gulpa's South American retreat. Several unsolved missing-person cases, involving boys of Jerry's age, point to the South American laboratories as terminal.'
I glanced through the questionnaire. 'Medical history: scarlet fever at the age of four.' Now, scarlet fever is a rarity since the introduction of antibiotics. 'Could there have been a misdiagnosis?'
All this I was feeding into the recorder in pieces, and a lot more. An article I had just finished reading when Mr. Green came into my office. This was an article on head transplants performed on monkeys, the Sunday
My first meeting with Mr. Green: the smell of death, and something shifty about him. From talking to Jerry's friends, I found out that this was a family trait. They all described him as hard to figure or hard to pin down. Finally I turned on the TV. I played the tape back at low volume while I watched an Italian western with Greek subtitles, keeping my attention on the screen so I was subconsciously hearing the tape. They were hanging a rustler from horseback when the phone rang.
It was Dimitri. 'Well, Snide, I think we have found your missing person ... unfortunately.'
'You mean dead?'
'Yes. Embalmed, in fact.' He paused. 'And without his head.'
'Yes. Head severed at the shoulders.'
'Fingerprints check?'
'Yes.'
I waited for the rest of it.
'Cause of death is uncertain. Some congestion in the lungs. May have been strangulation. The body was found in a trunk.'
'Who found it?'
'I did. I happened to be down at the port double-checking the possibility that the boy may have left by freighter, and I saw a trunk being carried aboard a ship with Panamanian registry. Well, something about the way they were carrying it ... the disposition of the weight, you understand. I had the trunk returned to customs and opened. The uh method of embalming ...
