Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

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?”