Darkest Hour (10 page)

The shower was still running. An opened fifth of Ancient Age stood on the dresser with two glasses. One glass was smeared with orange lipstick and the other was still wrapped up in the sanitary container. The bottle was almost half empty but there was no ice and the whisky didn’t look tempting. An opened pack of True menthols stood beside an ashtray full of butts with orange smears on the mouthpiece. Double bed, single occupancy. So far the picture was clear.

But the shower was still running.

“Anybody home?” Simon called. “You’ve got company.”

There was no response. Simon walked to the bathroom door and pushed it with one foot. The door swung slowly open against a wall of steam rising from behind the curtained shower stall. “Eve!” he shouted. “How the hell can you breathe in this mess?” It was no time for modesty or protocol because the water rushing from the shower head was hot enough to scald, and anyone on the receiving end was getting parboiled. He grabbed the curtain and yanked it back against the wall. Through the wall of steam he could see the faucets and a quick twist of the wrist stopped the flow. As the steam cleared he saw Eve propped against the tile splash wall opposite the faucets. She was in a sitting position with her arms hanging limply at her sides, one leg thrust out before her and the other bent at the knee and leaned grotesquely against the wall. She wasn’t naked. She wore the familiar wet chiffon mini-nightgown that clung to her body and had been rolled up over her hips, and a bedraggled wisp of a bed jacket. One gold bed slipper was still on her left foot, but the mate had slid down over the shower drain and she now sat in at least an inch of steaming hot water. She didn’t move. Her head was bowed prayerfully on her chest, and when Simon grasped a handful of dripping hair and raised her face toward his the reason for her condition was obvious. Eve’s neck had been broken. She was dead.

Moments later Simon’s brain began to function. No woman was likely to enter a shower unassisted wearing a nightgown and bed slippers. Even if Eve had consumed most of the whisky since their telephone conversation and staggered into the shower by mistake, the first blast of hot water would have prompted a fast exit. Simon began to feel conspicuous. He snatched up a handful of toilet tissue and mopped his fingerprints from the faucets and the edge of the shower curtain. He was no pathologist, but it seemed about as likely that Eve had broken her neck after entering the shower as it did that Kwan had beaten himself and then leaped up on the wrought-iron skewer on his balcony railing.

Eve Necchi. She couldn’t have been much over twenty-five. She wasn’t bad-looking and had been very pretty when the snapshots in her wallet were taken. It was a dirty way for anyone to die—even a blackmailer—and there was something disgusting and obscene in the way she was sprawled on the shower floor. Much as he hated to, he turned the faucet back on, yanked the curtain back in place, dropped the tissue-paper sponge into the wastebasket and returned to the bedroom. He whipped out a pocket handkerchief and carefully scrubbed the plastic purse and its contents. He hadn’t touched the bottle or the glasses on the dresser. The doors were all right. He had kicked open the bathroom door and rapped the front door with his knuckles. As panic subsided, the more rational aspects of self-preservation returned. He looked for the telephone, but Motel Six didn’t provide room phones, only the public booth outside the manager’s office. A telephone was important. Eve’s death might have been an accident, but the odds were on the long side and every hour her death remained unreported lessened the chances of the police nabbing the killer. And nabbing this killer, Simon reasoned, could save him a lot of footwork and rental on Hannah’s guard dog.

He opened the door and peered out. There was no sign of life in the courtyard and the shoot-out on the late movie made a good cover for footsteps. Nobody with the show turned on was likely to move an eyelash from the screen until the final fade-out. He left the door of 118 open as he had found it and hurried back to the XK-E. Minutes later he was driving south on Coast Highway, and about two miles later he stopped at the telephone booth in a darkened service station long enough to place a call to Detective Lieutenant Franzen at the Marina Beach City Hall.

Simon stretched his handkerchief over the mouthpiece.

“There’s a dame passed out in room one-eighteen at Motel Six,” he announced. “I don’t mean passed out like drunk, man. I mean passed out like dead.”

Simon returned to the XK-E and barreled south, and he didn’t slacken speed until the turn-off in Enchanto-by-the-Sea that took him to Sam’s place. The hour was late, but he wasn’t surprised to see light at the windows. It would be some time before Vera Raymond began sleeping regular hours again. He gunned the motor twice before parking in the driveway, and she must have heard him because she was opening the door as he mounted the stairs. She was courting sleep. She wore a Scotch plaid flannel robe over blue nylon pajamas, and her feet were lost in a pair of deerskin scuffs that must have belonged to Sam. Informality didn’t upset her—not when something living, breathing and English-speaking was on her doorstep.

“I received your flowers,” she said. “They’re lovely. I’m holding the telephone number in reserve for the night I start screaming at the shadows on the walls.”

Inside, the television was turned on. Vera lowered the volume. “I don’t really watch or listen to these late movies,” she said, “but it seems nice to have somebody around even if they are only pictures.”

“I could use a drink,” Simon said.

She laughed. “Of course you could! And here I stand gabbing! Take off your coat, Simon, and sit down anywhere. Is bourbon all right?”

“Perfect,” Simon said.

“I’ll take your coat. Why, it’s damp! Is it raining out?”

Simon almost explained that the night air at water’s edge is always damp, but he didn’t want to commit himself as having been anywhere near the ocean until after Lieutenant Franzen made public what he found at Motel Six.

“It’s misty in spots,” Simon said.

Vera tossed his coat over a side chair and got busy with the bottles at a small portable bar.

“Over ice?” she asked.

“Right.”

“With—?”

“With loving hands and a warm heart. Come on, have a drink with me. It will do you good.”

She was a strong woman. She must have been sitting there alone for hours, but she was too canny to start drinking alone. People acquired crutches that way, and Vera Raymond had two very good legs that she intended to land on when the shock of Sam’s death wore away. After they were seated at the divan facing the fireplace, and after the drinks had been sipped, Simon asked Vera to think back again to the night Sam received the call that sparked his drive to San Diego. Not wanting to frighten her, he kept the inquiry low-key as if merely continuing their previous discussion of Sam’s unfinished story. He wanted her to conjure up a name, a phrase, anything that might definitely tie the call to Monterey. She tried but it was useless. He mentioned the name Kwan for reaction value, and she shook her head.

“Sam never referred to such a person in my presence. Who is Kwan?”

“I’m not clear about that myself,” Simon admitted. “All I know for certain is that he was killed Sunday night at the Balboa Hotel in San Diego, and those pictures that Sam took were of Kwan. That’s what Sam was doing in San Diego all night, Vera. He wasn’t trying to rehabilitate a juvenile delinquent.”

She absorbed the information quietly. She had a quick mind and powers of imagination.

“So that was Sam’s big story,” she mused.

“It looks that way.”

“What do the police say about Kwan?”

“They don’t. At least, I’m not asking questions directly and nothing’s been volunteered. Kwan’s dead—cremated and, presumably, returned to his ancestors. He never made the front page and he’s already forgotten.”

“But the police never close a case, do they? I mean, not until it’s really closed. I wish I could finish Sam’s story for him.”

“Maybe you can—indirectly. What do you know about Monte Monterey’s activities since he stopped making pictures? How long since you’ve seen him, for instance?”

Vera held her glass in both hands, rolling it gently in her palms. She watched the wordless picture on the television screen for a few moments and said: “You think it was Monte who called Sam Sunday night, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?”

“I’ve tried not to think about it, but I suppose you’re right. Sam would have known Monte’s voice and gone to San Diego if Monte asked him to. After all, Sam was Monte’s brother-in-law for many years. Yes, if Monte was in trouble he would have called Sam. But I can’t tell you anything about his activities for the last—oh, twelve or so years. The last time I saw Monte was at Lola’s funeral. That was in April of 1953. His career was all but over then. It was the next year, I believe, that he moved to Mexico City, and after that he traveled a lot. We received a Christmas card from him one year that was posted in Mexico City, and a year later there was one from Buenos Aires. They stopped coming for a few years, and then we received one from Paris, so, you see, Monte was mobile. There were no letters or gossip. Just cards. After Paris they stopped coming.”

“Do you remember any more of Monte’s family?”

Surprisingly, Vera laughed. More surprisingly, the laugh was vibrant and alive.

“The Moraleses? Oh, they were something! Monte was the eldest and that made him the head of the clan. Lola came next. She was the raving beauty Monte guarded like an overzealous
duena
until Sam married her and rescued her from the dark castle. There were two other sisters, but I don’t remember much about them. By that time I was more interested in Sam. I suppose they married and each raised a brood of children.”

“Wasn’t there a brother, too?”

“Of course—Joseph, the baby. Oh, he was darling, Simon! He was beautiful! He would have made Monte look like Dracula on horseback if he’d ever gone before the cameras, but Joe went into the army just before Pearl Harbor and was killed in action in the South Pacific early in the war.”

“But he did marry, right?”

“Yes, indeed. It was a beautiful wedding. Monte paid for everything. Joe didn’t have a dime outside his PFC pay, but the ceremony was held at the Seville Inn chapel, and the bride and groom spent their honeymoon in a bridal suite—” Vera broke off abruptly. “That’s scary,” she reflected. “It’s the same hotel where Monte fell to his death. Whitey told me about it yesterday, and I remembered that winding stair well, but I didn’t make the association. Lola had some photos taken—Sam probably has them put away someplace— of Joe and Juanita standing against the guard rail. They were so very young and so much in love.”

“JO to JM,” Simon reflected, “ten-twenty-four-forty-one.”

“What?”

“An inscription in the wedding ring found on Monte’s body.”

“Joe’s ring? That’s odd. I always thought that his body was never recovered from the sea. Maybe Monte knew something that he never told Lola or Sam. He was never very close to anyone after Joe’s death. It did something cruel to him; he became hard and distant. He was someone who had been so deeply hurt that he didn’t want to ever be put in a vulnerable position again.”

Vera shuddered involuntarily. The fire was warm and there was still half an inch of liquor in her glass, but the chill she reacted to was something deep inside that would never entirely leave her now.

“I can use a refill,” Simon said quickly. “How about you?”

It gave her something to do, and she seemed grateful. She left the divan and returned to the portable bar, and while she poured two more drinks Simon put another log on the fire. It was eucalyptus wood and burned easily, releasing a spicy scent into the room. Vera returned with the drinks, but now she was frowning apprehensively. “You puzzle me, Simon Drake,” she said. “You’re a busy, successful man. Why are you so interested in Sam’s death?”

She was sharp. She didn’t ask why he was interested in Monte’s death, or even in the mysterious Mr. Kwan’s death. It was Sam’s funeral that he had attended. It was Sam’s trail he was trying to trace. Simon accepted his drink and shrugged, trying to act casual and not disturb her.

“Sam Goddard was a colorful character. I’m interested in contemporary history.”

Vera wasn’t impressed. “Let me put it another way,” she said. “You’re an expensive lawyer. Your time must be valuable.”

“It is,” Simon said. “That’s why I’m here. I could be wasting precious hours preparing some corporation case for trial, but I got lucky early in life. Ten years ago I won a patent suit for a friend who had a great idea and little capital. I took out my fee in stock. What do you think happened?”

“Nutty putty?” Vera asked.

“Not quite that good but you’re warm. I’ve made enough on that stock to buy the old Victorian mansion in Marina Beach and with it the one and only Hannah Lee, and I have enough left over to play it cool from here to the finish line. In other words, Vera, I work when I have a feel for a case, or when somebody I like is involved. If I want to sit here with you and drink your booze and talk all night, I can do just that.”

Vera came back and sat down beside him. She seemed satisfied with his answer and sipped her drink slowly while he told her about the pictures that were stolen at the Balboa Hotel in San Diego. He didn’t dwell on Eve, or mention where he had found her about three quarters of a late, late show ago, but Vera was quick on the uptake.

“The girl’s got the pictures,” she said. “She knew damned well they were incriminating.”

“She occupied the room next to Kwan’s the night he was killed.”

“Why?”

The question was unexpected, but it was a good sign. Vera was thinking and that would take her mind off the void that was Sam. She was too well disciplined a woman to get bogged down in the irreparable past.

“That would be an interesting thing to know,” Simon admitted.

“That’s what Sam would be working on if he were alive—that and the background on Kwan.”

“Have you ever heard of a man named Max Berlin?” Simon asked.

Vera’s eyebrows arched upward. “Max Berlin?” she echoed. “What made you think of that faggot?”

“Is that what he is?”

Vera smiled. “Oh, that’s just what Sam called him. Sam called anyone he didn’t like a faggot. He didn’t really know Berlin—maybe that’s what burned him. Sam heard about his operation less than a year ago and got the idea of doing a feature story. I told you that he free-lanced some. It was shortly after Berlin opened a spa just over the border. It’s for females, mostly, but they have certain weeks for men and Sam went down with camera and typewriter. He was to have been away for two weeks, but he came back in three days. Never told me what happened, so I suppose he got a big no on the story. All he did say was that he wanted to do a masculine slant and the place was full of faggots. He dropped the story. Sam knew his limitations. Is Berlin mixed up in this mess, too?”

“He paid for Kwan’s funeral,” Simon said.

“Oh, God. Maybe Sam wasn’t kidding. No wonder he dropped the story. Sam was a man, whatever else he was or wasn’t. And I know what you’re thinking. I can tell by the way your nose wrinkles. You’ve heard how Sam made a fortune buying cheap land from the Japanese. Well, he did make money on that land. A lot of people did. A lot of people made much more money—millions, in fact, on the war. But not many of them felt guilty the way Sam did. He was an idealist. That land grab was when he lost his virginity, so to speak. When he began to compromise. A few years later when Sam’s back was against the wall some of the people who criticized him the most took advantage of his need and bought him out cheap. They called it good business. Just nice, friendly horse-thieving among us Wasps. But did anyone ever tell you about the radio transmitters and signal stations the army and navy found on some of those Japanese fishing vessels? There were two sides to that story, too.”

Simon smiled gently. “You never stopped being in love with Sam, did you?” he said.

Vera’s hand tightened about her glass. Simon saw her knuckles turn white and that was when he took the glass from her and set it down on the coffee table. He was afraid her grip might be strong enough to break the glass and cut her hand. She didn’t protest. She buried her face in both hands and leaned back on the divan. Her upper body and face were out of the range of firelight, but he could sense the quiet shaking of her body as she wept. He took her glass and returned to the bar for the second refill. She was quietly cracking apart over there in the shadows, and he gave her exactly two minutes to get rid of the excess emotion. When the time was up he came back across the room and sat down beside her.

“All right, that’s enough,” he said. “Drink this.”

She obeyed like a child taking a glass of water. He wanted her to get drunk enough to relax because nobody could go on walking about with that load of grief indefinitely. She finished the drink and he took the glass from her, and then he pulled her gently back against his shoulder and stroked her hair while the firelight made dancing patterns on the walls.

The mercy of the liquor and the firelight worked. Vera slept peacefully—probably for the first time since Sam’s death. Simon arranged a divan pillow under her head and found a woolen car robe on the fireplace bench that covered her legs and torso. She would sleep now until dawn, at least. He got up and took his coat from the chair and started to leave the house, but the door stood open into the lanai and Simon’s curiosity had a higher motivation than morbidity. He switched on the lights and entered the room. Nothing had been touched since his last visit. It was out of bounds to Vera’s mood. Now, unhurriedly, he examined the desk with greater care. Aside from the working clutter, Sam Goddard had been a tidy craftsman. The desk was neat and orderly: pens, pencils, paper clips all in place. The file drawer was locked, but the keys were in the lock. Simon opened the drawer and took out an oblong blue cardboard box marked: Smith and Wesson, Inc., Springfield, Massachusetts. On the end of the box was a description of contents: Model number 36, Fin. B, Barrel 2, Stock R, followed by a serial number. The box was too light to contain a pistol but it did rattle. He removed the lid and found eight .38 Special center fire shells and a metal brush for cleaning a gun barrel. That was all. He replaced the lid and returned the box to the drawer, but not before copying the description of the gun it had contained and the serial number on a scrap of Sam’s memo paper. Later he would have to ask Vera if Sam was in the habit of carrying a gun and if the authorities had found it.