Read Cities of the Red Night for Free Online Page B

others. Only thing I can’t figure is why he’s paying double wages for his deckhands.”
    â€œMaybe he’d rather have five good hands than ten waterfront drunks.”
    â€œMaybe.… Well, go if you like. But keep your eyes open.”

THE PRIVATE ASSHOLE
    The name is Clem Williamson Snide. I am a private asshole.
    As a private investigator I run into more death than the law allows. I mean the law of averages. There I am outside the hotel room waiting for the corespondent to reach a crescendo of amorous noises. I always find that if you walk in just as he goes off he won’t have time to disengage himself and take a swing at you. When me and the house dick open the door with a passkey, the smell of shit and bitter almonds blows us back into the hall. Seems they both took a cyanide capsule and fucked until the capsules dissolved. A real messy love death.
    Another time I am working on a routine case of industrial sabotage when the factory burns down killing twenty-three people. These things happen. I am a man of the world. Going to and fro and walking up and down in it.
    Death smells. I mean it has a special smell, over and above the smell of cyanide, carrion, blood, cordite or burnt flesh. It’s like opium. Once you smell it you never forget. I can walk down a street and get a whiff of opium smoke and I know someone is kicking the gong around.
    I got a whiff of death as soon as Mr. Green walked into my office. You can’t always tell whose death it is. Could be Green, his wife, or the missing son he wants me to find. Last letter from the island of Spetsai two months ago. After a month with no word the family made inquiries by long-distance phone.
    â€œThe embassy wasn’t at all helpful,” said Mr. Green.
    I nodded. I knew just how unhelpful they could be.
    â€œThey referred us to the Greek police. Fortunately, we found a man there who speaks English.”
    â€œThat would be Colonel Dimitri.”
    â€œYes. You know him?”
    I nodded, waiting for him to continue.
    â€œHe checked and could find no record that Jerry had left the country, and no hotel records after Spetsai.”
    â€œHe could be visiting someone.”
    â€œI’m sure he would write.”
    â€œYou feel then that this is not just an instance of neglect on his part, or perhaps a lost letter?… That happens in the Greek islands.…”
    â€œBoth Mrs. Green and I are convinced that something is wrong.”
    â€œVery well, Mr. Green, there is the question of my fee: a hundred dollars a day plus expenses and a thousand-dollar retainer. If I work on a case two days and spend two hundred dollars, I refund six hundred to the client. If I have to leave the country, the retainer is two thousand. Are these terms satisfactory?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œVery good. I’ll start right here in New York. Sometimes I have been able to provide the client with the missing person’s address after a few hours’ work. He may have written to a friend.”
    â€œThat’s easy. He left his address book. Asked me to mail it to him care of American Express in Athens.” He passed me the book.
    â€œExcellent.”
    Now, on a missing-person case I want to know everything the client can tell me about the missing person, no matter how seemingly unimportant and irrelevant. I want to know preferences in food, clothes, colors, reading, entertainment, use of drugs and alcohol, what cigarette brand he smokes, medical history. I have a questionnaire printed with five pages of questions. I got it out of the filing cabinet and passed it to him.
    â€œWill you please fill out this questionnaire and bring it back here day after tomorrow. That will give me time to check out the local addresses.”
    â€œI’ve called most of them,” he said curtly, expecting me to take the next plane for Athens.
    â€œOf course. But friends of an M.P.—missing person—are not always honest with