Free Soma Blues by Robert Sheckley Page B

tiles. Below, the city of Ibiza fell away in a series of swaybacked cubistic white squares and rectangles, all the way to the harbor with its several cruise ships and countless cafés.
    “So,” she said after a few minutes of desultory chat, “what brings you to my aerie?”
    “I’m looking for Annabelle,” Hob said. “I was hoping you could tell me where she lives these days.”
    “I could probably find out,” Bertha said. “Give me a couple of days, I’ll ask some people. What else is happening with you? Are you here on a case, or just hanging out like the rest of us?”
    “I’m looking into Stanley Bower’s murder. You heard of that?”
    Bertha nodded. “Laurent telephoned from Paris. He read about it in the Herald Trib. He was utterly prostrated.”
    “I heard that Annabelle was seeing a lot of Stanley.”
    “She went to some parties with him, but you know Stanley wasn’t interested in girls.”
    “So I heard. But they were friends anyway.”
    “No crime in that, is there?”
    Hob decided to try a different tack. “Bertha, how’d you like to work for me?”
    “Me, work as a private investigator?”
    “An assistant to a private investigator. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
    Big Bertha smiled and shook her head in amazement but she didn’t say no. She got up, went to the sideboard and fixed two gin and sodas. Hob knew she didn’t need the money. She was doing all right with her bar, her restaurant. She even had a few investments, owned some property. But Bertha was a busybody, she was nosy, she liked to find out things, she loved to gossip. This could give her a reason that made it okay for her to gossip.
    She returned with the drinks, handed one to Hob. “What’ll I have to do?”
    “Just what you’re doing now. Seeing people. Giving parties. Going to art gallery openings. Eating in good restaurants. I can’t pay for that, of course. But it’s what you do anyhow. And then you talk to me.”
    “Sure. No problem there.”
    Hob had learned that people, even great gossips, were more motivated when they’re being paid to talk, even if that pay was only a pittance. The act of payment seemed to put a stamp of approval on what otherwise might have seemed a light-minded activity. And to give it a stamp of usefulness, of social use, of propriety. And even the most outrageous were not about to turn away from a little propriety when it came attached to some money.
    “Sounds like fun.” Even Big Bertha liked the idea of being a useful citizen if it could be made amusing and if it paid. But it didn’t have to pay much. And that was good because Hob didn’t have much. Everyone knew his agency was more an idée fixe than a going proposition. But what could be more attractive than an idée fixe, even if you weren’t a French decadent, as long as it didn’t involve too much work and paid enough to make it respectable?
    “What do you want me to do, Hob? I’m not so mobile these days, you know.”
    “The great thing about this, Bertha, is that you don’t have to change what you’re doing one bit.”
    “What do you want, specifically?”
    “There’s a man I need to get a line on. Learn who he is and whatever you can find out about him.” Hob told her the story of the man who was last seen with Stanley Bower in Paris and gave what he had of a description.
    “Not much to go on,” Bertha said.
    “If anyone can put a name and identity to this man, it’s you.”
    “You flatter me, Hob. But you’re right. If I or some of the people I know don’t know this guy, he doesn’t exist.”
    She thought a moment, then said, “You want information? I love to give information. Why should you pay me for it?”
    “Useful services deserve to be paid for,” Hob said. “And I like to employ my friends. That’s the ideal of the Alternative Detective Agency.”
    “It’s a noble ideal.”
    “I think so.”
    “And a little foolish, as noble ideals so often are.”
    Hob shrugged. “Do you want the