Darkest Hour (9 page)

Simon left Hannah surveying her closets and crossed the hall to his own room. He went to the telephone and put in a call to a young man named Jack Keith, who operated a private detective agency in Los Angeles. He had a long-standing working agreement with Keith and this time requested some details on N. B. Kwan. Keith could check out the case without revealing the identity of his employer, which was a distinct advantage to a man who had withheld incriminating evidence long enough for it to fall into other hands.

Simon humored Hannah to a degree by wearing a brocade robe and ascot to dinner in the den. The robe was one of her gifts to him and belonged in the Valentino era in which she had matriculated. Hannah appeared in a bias-cut blue satin that made a liar of every clock in the world, and over the lobster and wine he completed the last phase of his San Diego adventure at the establishment of Griffin and Son. It was when he described Dr. Berlin that Hannah emitted an uncharacteristic shriek.

“Max Berlin!” she cried.

Apparently Simon should have been impressed.

“The clothes, the hat, the blond hair—Simon, wait until I get my latest issue of
Chic
. Chester—”

Hannah reached for her cane and rapped smartly. When Chester appeared she sent him to her room for the glossy, high-fashion magazine that was one of her minor amusements. The current issue featured a three-page spread on the new darling of the beauty and health spas: Max Berlin, Doctor of Femininity.

“Isn’t he charming?” Hannah said. “Look at those high cheekbones and those deep-set eyes. Look at that deep wave in his hair.”

“I think he bleaches,” Simon said.

“What of it? He’s elegant. Our age needs elegance. It hides the bloodshed. Read about him, Simon. His father was a leading surgeon in Germany before World War Two. Max was taken to Brazil with his father after the war. Papa died and Max carried on in a more remunerative field. Plastic surgery, beauty salons. His original spa is near Buenos Aires.”

“O Amoroso,”
Simon mused.

“What?” Hannah asked.

“That was the inscription on Monterey’s cigar case. I saw it at the La Verde police station. It’s Portuguese. Portuguese is spoken in Brazil…. Wait, let me see that photo.”

Hannah had turned the page. What Simon saw that so interested him was a dramatic study in black and white—Berlin, in a black, tight-fitting suit posed against a stark white plaster wall. He wore the stiff-brimmed hat and held a slender cigarillo in his left hand, thus exposing the huge sapphire ring on his third finger. The camera of memory clicked. This was definitely the man Simon had seen at La Verde.

“He’s magnificent!” Hannah cried. “Such humor! Such style! Rolling in loot made from working blubber off the
nouveau riche
. He has spas in Mexico, New York and Texas, and the story says that he’s selecting a location for a new one in California. Simon, this is your Dr. Berlin! Max Berlin, society’s darling!”

Hannah knew nothing of the man at the top of the stair well at the Seville Inn. She had no idea why her exciting discovery left Simon so grim. “Berlin’s not his real name, naturally,” she added. “Read the article. They say his father was an aristocrat.”

“Who hated Hitler and the Nazis,” Simon added sardonically. He was interrupted by a call to the telephone … and the voice he heard pushed Max Berlin into temporary oblivion.

It was Eve.

“Mr. Drake,” she said, “I have something from your wallet that you might want back. Are you in a more generous mood tonight?”

Hannah was right. It was blackmail.

The telephone had an extra-long cord. Simon took it into the small bathroom behind the bar where he could converse out of range of Hannah’s sharp ears.

“How did you get this number?” he demanded.

“From the registration file at the Balboa,” Eve answered.

“How cozy of them to volunteer information.”

“Who volunteered? I peeked when I picked up the key to your room last night. That night clerk is blind and deaf. Now I have a question for you. When did you take those pictures of my dead neighbor?” Her voice was husky and slurred. She obviously had been drinking heavily.

“I didn’t take them,” Simon said.

Eve’s laugh was a shriek of triumph. “But I got the subject matter right! You admit that!”

“I admit nothing. Where are you calling from? San Diego?”

“Oh, I’m much closer than that! I’m in a little motel on the highway just south of Marina Beach. It has a signpost outside: Motel Six. That’s all. Just Motel Six for the six dollars they soak you for this crummy room. I mean, this place is for business, Mr. Drake. It’s for sleeping or whatever else you have in mind.”

“And what do you have in mind?” Simon asked.

“What you’re going to pay me for these pictures.”

“How much?”

“Like, say, ten thousand dollars. Like cash, baby. Tonight.”

“Impossible! Where would I get ten thousand dollars tonight? The banks don’t open until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“I know,” Eve said. “But I’ll take you for collateral until morning. You owe me a little consideration after the brush you gave me in San Diego.”

Simon needed time. Lots of time. He was certain that the girl was at the bottle, and, with luck, she would soon go to sleep and be immobilized for hours. “I can’t get away just now,” he said. “Maybe a little later.”

“Not maybe!” she shrieked. “I got more silver coins, Mr. Simon Drake, and this phone works in two directions. I can call the cops in San Diego, too. I know who you are—big-shot lawyer. I know you can get the dough, and I know I can hurt you if you don’t!”

“All right, later,” Simon said. “What’s your last name and your cabin number?”

“Cabin one-eighteen,” Eve said. “You can still call me Eve.”

“Are you alone?”

“You know it!” Eve said, and hung up.

Simon returned to the den. Hannah had moved to a more comfortable chair facing the card table, and Chester had brought in a tea cart holding the coffee service, a bottle of Drambuie and two miniature snifters. He left the room and Hannah thoughtfully poured two cups of black coffee. She was dying to ask Simon about his call, and his refusal to volunteer information made her all the more curious. Her hand shook slightly as she offered his cup. He accepted, unsure as to whether the trembling was due to frustration or a touch of arthritis.

“Simon, I’ve been thinking about that bomb in the Rolls,” she said. “We could be overmobilized. It might have been planted there by some of those young hoodlums I saw being booked Monday night while I was waiting for you.”

“In the police garage?” Simon scoffed.

“There weren’t any guards in the garage.”

“But a bomb isn’t a prank, Hannah. It’s deadly.”

“I know that. So are some of the kids today. The young are always the imitators of their elders. Do you think boys who sit around watching actual warfare on TV every night are going to get their kicks from dipping girls’ braids in inkwells? Why don’t you send Rover back to the kennel and relax? You owe me $178,000 in unpaid poker tabs. Tonight you may start to break even.”

Hannah’s smile over the rim of her demitasse was bright and brave, but her hand was still trembling and it wasn’t from arthritis. It was from fear.

“What do you want me to do?” Simon asked. “Forget about Monterey? Forget Sam Goddard and N. B. Kwan?”

“Why not?” Hannah countered. “There’s a perfectly good police force in San Diego, and Sam’s in his grave—Monterey too, most likely. Let’s quit while we’re ahead. It was just a simple drunk charge that brought you to La Verde in the first place. You got me off on bail easily enough.”

“No bail,” Simon said. “On your own recognizance.”

“Oh, all right. You know about those legal things. I don’t think there will be any trouble about the accident either. Monte struck my car with his. I’ve got a witness.”

Hannah’s argument was sound, but it wasn’t like her to avoid trouble or to expect him to.

Simon drained his cup and put it down on the tray. He picked up the slick magazine with the story on the fabulous Max Berlin and started for the doorway. “I’m sorry, Hannah. Let Chester sit in for a few hands,” he called back over his shoulder. “I have some homework to do.” He left Hannah mentally gnashing her teeth and went upstairs to his bedroom. He tossed the open magazine down on the bed and read random paragraphs while getting out of the robe and dressing gown and into a black turtleneck sweater and a pair of leather moccasins. It was going to be damp and chilly down on the Coast Highway, and he couldn’t keep Eve waiting too long. The magazine story on Max Berlin was written in cute feminine chatterese that would probably double business at all of Berlin’s de-larding salons, but it revealed very little about the man himself and left the public image bathed in a glamorous aura of mystery. There was another story in Berlin’s eyes that told of a man who lived at the edge of a chasm and survived by means known only to himself.

Simon remembered his homework. He picked up the telephone and put in a call to the Gateway Bar in La Verde. The first voice he heard was slightly nasal and efficiently brisk.

“Gateway Bar. Alex Lacey, manager, speaking.”

“I want to talk to Whitey Sanders,” Simon said.

“I’m sorry. Mr. Sanders isn’t available.”

“This is Simon Drake calling,” Simon said. “I’m in a hurry and Mr. Sanders is expecting my call.”

It wasn’t true. Sanders was to have mailed the pathologist’s report, but the missing shots of the impaled Mr. Kwan made the information more urgent.

Lacey had a head cold. Simon could hear him breathing through his nose into the telephone. “I’m sure that Mr. Sanders isn’t in the building,” he insisted, “but I’ll switch your call to Mr. Jenks’ dressing room.”

Simon waited again until Buddy Jenks’ bright young voice announced, “Hi! Who wants Buddy Jenks?”

“I do!” murmured something soft and feminine on the other end.

“Cut it out!” Buddy protested. “Go over there and sit down, please.”

Simon grinned. “Success complicates life, doesn’t it?” he said. “Watch yourself, Buddy. Don’t sign anything but an autograph book.”

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Drake,” Buddy responded. “Don’t pay any attention to anything you hear at this end. It’s purely platonic.”

Simon heard an outraged squeal and the slamming of a door. “Sorry for the bad timing,” he said. “I wanted to reach Whitey. He promised to get the pathologist’s report on Monterey’s death. Did he say anything about it to you?”

“Pathologist’s report? No, he didn’t mention it, Mr. Drake, but the newspaper published what killed him. His neck was broken in that fall.”

That information didn’t answer Simon’s question. “Where’s Whitey?” he demanded.

“I don’t know. He should be here now, but he hasn’t come back from Monterey’s funeral. What do you want the pathologist’s report for?”

“Forget it,” Simon said.

“What?”

“I’ll call back later.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Buddy broke the connection and Simon started to put the phone back in the cradle, but the sound of nasal breathing was still audible until the telltale click told him that Alex Lacey had stopped eavesdropping. Everything was going wrong. Simon glanced at his watch. It was almost ten, but Eve would have to keep a bit longer.

He broke the La Verde connection and dialed Wanda’s apartment in Manhattan. Wanda answered on the third ring.

“Are you alone?” Simon asked.

“Simon!” she squealed. “Where have you been? Are you all right, honey?”

“Perfect,” Simon said. “I got hung up in San Francisco with the Mertons’ divorce settlement and couldn’t find time to call you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I mean about the divorce. I was hoping they would reconcile.”

“Don’t worry. By the time I got through carving up Brad’s income he was left with so little he won’t have time to chase tail any more. He’ll have to work fifteen hours a day to break even, and the wife and kiddies will look so good I’m giving odds the decree will never be finalized.”

Wanda giggled. “You’re diabolical,” she said.

“I know. I’m lonely, too. How’s the play coming?”

“Great! We’re almost ready to open. I’m scared silly at every rehearsal. The director says that’s a good omen. Simon—”

There was a sharp break in her voice that belied her words. She was exhausted and running scared. One word from him and she would chuck the whole idea and come back to Marina Beach, but that wouldn’t solve anything. They had discussed all that before she went east. She had taken too bad a psychological beating from her first marriage to bounce out of it without scars. She had to be her own woman with her own poise and confidence before she could give what she wanted to give to a second try for the brass ring of happiness.

“You’ll be fine,” Simon said. “When the curtain goes up opening night you’ll be home all the way.”

“Do you miss me?”

Simon sighed. “I’m sitting on the edge of my bed. It looks a half an acre wide and it’s the loneliest place in the world.”

“Is that all you miss?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

Wanda laughed softly. “Did I ever tell you that you’re an awfully sweet guy?” she asked.

It was nice. It was warm and friendly, and it made Simon think of what Vera Raymond and Sam Goddard had shared all those years in a little ranch house facing the sea. The world was a weird scene. There was just no way of foretelling when something lovely was going to appear above the slime.

“Can I have a raincheck?” Simon asked.

“You can”—Wanda had been studying grammar and diction—”you
may
have a lifetime pass,” she said.

They said good night and Simon put down the telephone and got inside his Aquascutum. Just a few minutes alone with Wanda had made it much easier to face the mess waiting for him at Motel Six.

• • •

In less than a decade Marina Beach had been transformed from a sleepy resort and artist’s colony into a settlement of near-city status, and all of this had come about by virtue of a freeway system which laced out from Los Angeles to bind together with carbon-monoxide-fumed arteries heterogeneous masses of people who had heretofore lived in blissful oblivion of one another. The lights of the new residential area winked brightly on the black hills as Simon eased the XK-E down the slope toward the civic center. Most business houses were closed at this hour. The new city hall, the taxpayer’s Taj Mahal on the mall, was bathed with light, and the motels and hotels along the highway still displayed their colorful signs with an occasional red “No Vacancy” announcing a bright victory over seasonal lag. Simon turned south on the highway and drove slowly to a small family-style beer bar on the near side of the Motel Six marquee. He knew the neighborhood. The bar and motel were owned by Bob and Linda Gusik, a decent pair of native Marinians who wouldn’t renew Eve’s rental in the morning if they learned what she was trying to do.

Simon was suspicious. The Eves of this world weren’t especially ingenious and rarely worked as loners. Ambush was a game he didn’t care to play. With this in mind he drove in at the bar entrance and found a shadowed corner at the rear of the parking area where he could leave the conspicuous Jaguar and proceed on foot. It was Thursday night and the Gusiks were having more trouble than usual keeping the clientele orderly; that meant that no one inside the building was likely to have heard the roar of the XK-E. Simon avoided the action area and approached the motel through the back alley. The sound of surf chopping at the rocks twenty feet below land’s end covered his footsteps en route, and the sound of unsynchronized television sets covered them inside the court.

Eve hadn’t lied. A red neon sign at the front entrance stated: “MOTEL SIX—All Rooms $6 Up to 4 Guests. TV—$1 Extra.” The “Vacancy” sign was glowing and a lighted telephone booth stood sentinel before the manager’s office where a “Ring for Service” bell was connected to the bar next door. The office was deserted and the shadows plentiful, and Simon skirted the light and conducted a one-man Nielsen poll all the way to room 118: the late movie was leading two to one with a yelping poodle and a crying child tied for second place.

Room 118 (there were no separate cabins) was located toward the rear of the farthest wing under a stairway leading to an upper level. The door stood hospitably open, but the room was dark except for about three inches of light showing through the opened bathroom door. Simon rapped sharply on the front door but he couldn’t be heard from the bathroom because the shower was turned to full power. His knock caused the door to the room to swing inward, disclosing a small room furnished with one double bed, a dresser and a cheap lounge chair. The spread was still on the bed but had been turned down enough to dislodge the pillows which were stacked double against the headboard facing the television. Simon was now practically inside the room and, since it was doubtful that Eve was entertaining guests in the shower, he felt reasonably safe in entering. He closed the door behind him and waited for his eyes to get accustomed to the change of light. The sound of the shower didn’t abate. A cheap overnight case stood open on the floor at the foot of the bed. Tossed over the lid was a green jersey knit coat dress, a brief, a bra and a half slip. On the bed was a large plastic handbag, a white vinyl raincoat and a printed headscarf. All is fair in love, war and blackmail, and so Simon made a quick but thorough examination of the bag and of the pockets of the coat. He wasn’t surprised at not finding the pictures of Kwan unguarded. Even Eve wasn’t that careless. He did find the bag in a complete state of disorganization and dumped the contents on the bed. There was a large plastic compact, a lipstick (orange sherbet), an amber comb and a small package of Kleenex, a woman’s wallet of red leather, containing a checking-account identification for Eve Necchi from a San Diego bank, a Social Security card in the same name, a sweepstakes ticket and three snapshots of herself and an aggressive-looking Marine sergeant in various poses of self-conscious affection. The printed border on the snaps all carried the date: 1959. There were two twenty-dollar bills in the currency compartment and several dollars in silver in the coin purse. That was all. Simon replaced every item, closed the bag and returned it to the bed.