“The son of a bitch can’t do that to my daughter,” Amos Littlejohn shouted. His gaunt face turned red.
“Take it easy,” I suggested. You didn’t have to be a doctor to know Littlejohn was a very sick man.
“Ever do anything on impulse and regret it later?” he asked me.
I smiled. “Practically the story of my life.”
“After I answered that ad in the Paris Trib—” Littlejohn began, and then shook his head and ran a hand through his mane of white hair. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. You know Ahmed Shiraz?”
“Know of him. Egyptian or Syrian actor, making Grade Z thrillers in the Near East until Hollywood found him a few years back. Then he went big time. He got an Oscar last year.”
“If he’s Egyptian or Syrian I’m an Auca Indian headhunter. He was born in Brooklyn, son of a Lebanese immigrant. He drifted a while, wound up broke in Egypt, got a part in the movies, picked up a phony identity and was ‘found’ by Littlejohn Films, Inc. He’s a—what’s the word for a male nympho?”
“Satyr,” I said, my erudition showing.
“That’s it, satyr. Got a reputation for jumping casting girls and would-be starlets on every cutting room floor from Cinecittà to Hollywood. Married to Suzanne Chardon for five years, and apparently she’ll take anything from him.”
“Even a divorce?”
“Even a temporary marriage to Carol. The marriage won’t last. Shiraz doesn’t intend it to.” Littlejohn’s face started getting red again. “Just long enough to give my grandchild a name, and then back he goes to Suzanne.”
I did the polite thing. I said nothing.
“Carol’s been pregnant three months,” Littlejohn said in a choked voice. “She may have been a fool, but she wasn’t one of his would-be ingenues. Shiraz couldn’t just offer her twenty thousand bucks and an apologetic smile, and Carol wouldn’t hear of an abortion. He finished a picture in Rome and they came back to the States together. They were already married secretly on the Continent.”
He shook his head, as if doubting his own veracity. “She’s actually in love with that no good son of a bitch, and she’s hoping the few months they’ll have together will be enough to make him decide their marriage isn’t such a bad idea. She’s wrong. He never will.”
Littlejohn went on in a choked voice: “That phony Ay-rab pretty boy’s making a fool of my daughter and he’s making a fool of me. No one can get away with that. No one. I’m going to ruin him. I can do it—provided he lives.”
“Why shouldn’t he live?”
“That classified ad. I lost my head. I wrote them, not specifying the, uh, nature of the problem. I was contacted by a man in Paris. We talked. Next thing was that letter you saw. By then I was back in the States. I paid no attention to the letter. This thing of mine had begun giving me a rough time. I returned home, to this room. I’m going to die here. Two months, three, something like that. I got to feeling sorry for myself. There is no emotion, Mr. Drum, more corrosive than self-pity. Last week I paid the twenty-five thousand dollars to that numbered account in Geneva.
“Now I’ve—come to my senses. I want them called off. But I can’t put it in writing, naturally, and I’m chained to this goddam bed. The only way I can reach them is through that Paris box number, and then an appointment will have to be made, and by then it may be too late.”
“You paid them to kill Shiraz.”
“I paid them to kill Shiraz. I’m paying you to see they don’t.”
“Why not drop them a note telling them to keep the dough but otherwise forget the whole thing? You can afford to.”
Littlejohn smiled weakly. “Don’t you credit me with any intelligence at all? I already did just that, but it won’t help at all. In Paris their agent told me that any change in our arrangements would have to be made by personal contact. That’s understandable and even commendable, with the sort of work they undertake.” Littlejohn’s eyes narrowed. “This thing is driving me nuts. Ruining a man is one thing. I’m going to enjoy that, and no matter how long it takes I’ll live that long. When I’m finished with him, they wouldn’t hire Ahmed Shiraz for a walk-on part on a low budget TV show. But murder’s something else, especially murder by proxy. There’s no enjoyment in it.”
We discussed Shiraz’s schedule for the next few days and settled on my fee. I left and called Harry Kretschmer. Shiraz and Carol were sailing back to Europe on Friday and I thought that with Kretschmer’s help I could keep a round-the-clock watch on Shiraz until he embarked. Littlejohn was booking passage for me on the same ship.
What I had believed, taking the job, was that I’d just be going through the motions until Shiraz hit Europe. The ad, after all, had appeared in a continental paper and the first rule of advertising, whether you’re selling Alsatian goose liver or assassination, is to reach an audience of interested buyers. The organization Littlejohn had hired probably operated in Europe, despite the ambitious wording of the ad—if it was a real organization that did any work at all.
There was also the distinct possibility that the only kind of work they did came under the heading of extortion rather than assassination. Maybe Littlejohn’s Paris contact had come to their meeting with a miniature tape recorder in his pocket. Or maybe it was even simpler: maybe their work ended with the payment of Littlejohn’s first installment. It would be pretty hard suing anybody for failure to live up to the terms of a murder contract.
But now I was back in Littlejohn’s sick room a few hours after what had seemed an attempt on Shiraz’s life, and my original notions had gone out the window.
“Look at it this way,” I said, running through the possibilities out loud. “Shiraz gets picked up by this acid-head—”
“By acid-head you mean a user of LSD?” Littlejohn interrupted. “In this case the girl?”
“Right. That’s what they call themselves. She picks him up in a joint on MacDougal and they drift to a few other joints and wind up at the Emu. A guy the girl knows bumps into them there and has a fight with Shiraz. It could be coincidence so far. After all the girl lives just a few blocks from West Houston and the sailor already had a load on when he walked in. Anyway, the sailor invites him outside and Shiraz shows off by making mincemeat out of him. Then, having been called by me, Kretschmer comes along. A car drives slowly by, Kretschmer gets a look at it and yells watch out and takes a shotgun blast in the back.”
“I don’t understand what you’re driving at,” Littlejohn said. I had already given him an objective account of what had happened inside and outside the Emu, and now I seemed to be going through it again.
“The first possibility,” I said, “is that the organization you hired made an attempt on Shiraz’s life last night and killed Harry Kretschmer because he threw himself in the way.”
The electric bed purred a little and Littlejohn settled back a few inches. “You mean there are other possibilities?”
“Figure you really got in touch with an outfit that, among other things, would hire itself out to commit murder. Do you really think a beatnik Village type who’s hopped on LSD would be on their payroll? Or somebody named Uncle Gerald, who used to be a teacher and now apparently peddles LSD? They’d make a fine pair of hired goons, wouldn’t they?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say that your son-in-law is one unsavory specimen and maybe you’re not the only one who wants him dead. Linda and her Uncle Gerald could have been an independent action having nothing to do with your classified ad. That’s the second possibility. The third one is Harry Kretschmer himself. He was a private eye, same as me, and probably went around making as many enemies. The shotgun blast could have been meant for him all along. If West Houston Street at two in the morning was a good place and a good time to bump off Ahmed Shiraz, it was the same for Harry Kretschmer. I don’t know. I have no time to check it out. Shiraz and your daughter are sailing today.”
Littlejohn gave me an alarmed look. “And you?”
�
�I’ll be aboard,” I said. “But I’ve already contacted Kretschmer’s boss, who’s an old friend of mine, and he’ll do some digging on Linda and her Uncle Gerald and cable me at sea.”
“I fail to see what difference it makes,” Littlejohn said.
“What difference what makes?”
“Whether the girl had anything to do with the people I hired or not. I find myself in the ridiculous position, Mr. Drum, of trying to save the life of a man I hate in order to make him suffer. I don’t care who is trying to kill Shiraz, I want you to stop them. You’re his bodyguard. That’s what I hired you for. Why concern yourself with extraneous details?”
“Motive is never extraneous,” I said. “What if somebody else is gunning for Shiraz? What if I find your people and call them off and a week later, or three weeks, or three months, somebody else bumps Shiraz off?”
Littlejohn shook his head and hunched his frail and bony shoulders. “That must not happen. Just see that he lives. I’m a dying man, Mr. Drum, and that’s all I ask of life now. I found Ahmed Shiraz. I made him. Now I want to destroy him. Piece by piece, a little at a time. Keep him alive for me. Just keep him alive.”
Janice came in quickly, her crisp white uniform rustling. “There, Mr. Littlejohn, there now, you keep calm, hear? This detective fellow, he bothering you?” She looked at me reproachfully.
“Mr. Drum was just leaving.”
Wondering what he had let himself in for, Mr. Drum left.
* See Drum Beat—Madrid by Stephen Marlowe
5
AND, a few hours later, found himself standing at the bar of the Café de la Paix aboard the S.S. Rotterdam.
The Café was tourist class, but Amos Littlejohn had bought me a first class passage to keep a close eye on Shiraz, who’d be eating at the captain’s table. The captain, who was commodore of the Holland-America fleet, would probably be permitted to sit down for a meal or two if Shiraz decided he liked the guy.
The bar wasn’t open for business yet but the barman was fussing with bottles behind it. A few compulsive drinkers were hanging around looking at their watches, not that their watches would tell them anything. You’ve got to be outside the three-mile limit, technically, before the bar opens. But most ships’ barmen wait until the pilot gets off near the Ambrose Lightship, figuring nobody’s going to pull a tape measure on them.
A steward in black came into the Café, nodding a high sign at the barman. By then all the bar stools were filled. It doesn’t take long on the first day of a crossing. For some reason I’ve never been able to figure out, teetotalers become moderate drinkers on the Atlantic, moderate drinkers feel no pain all day and all night, and heavy drinkers really punish their livers.
The barman stood in front of me. “Glad to see you aboard again, Mr. Drum,” he said, smiling. It would be Chet in a couple of days. It had been before. Usually when I’m going transatlantic on a case I’ll fly, but when my time is my own I sail and when I sail I catch the Rotterdam if I can.
“Glad to be aboard again, Jack,” I said, and meant it. The Rotterdam, all thirty-eight thousand deadweight tons of her, is a beauty.
Jack waited expectantly. He is a stocky Dutchman with a V-shaped scar on his forehead, memento of an accident in Calcutta that almost cost him his life. He is also that rare kind of barman who likes his work, and it is a pleasure to watch him build a drink.
“Campari and soda,” I said, and he poured the brilliantly red Campari over ice, ran a twist of lemon peel around the rim of the glass and filled it with soda. “Here you are, Mr. Drum,” he said, setting the glass on a little nautical coaster.
I drank up and then became aware that nobody else was ordering anything and even Jack, who had seen more passengers come and go than most, half of them female and a fair percentage of them good-looking, was staring past my shoulder with that special sort of intensity, avid but somehow polite, that is reserved for a really beautiful woman.
There is no back-bar mirror in the Café de la Paix. I sat where I was, studying the bottles in their shallow wells on the back-bar, waiting. A couple of guys almost fell off their barstools to make room for the newcomer. I lit a cigarette, still waiting. Jack gave me a small wink that said the girl was worth the attention she was getting.
One of the hastily-vacated barstools was to my immediate right. Jack stationed himself in front of it and beamed and said: “Here we are, miss.”
When she sat down I gave her the sort of brief, mildly interested look you give a newcomer at a bar, no more, no less. More would have been a pleasure. Less would have been impossible.
She was a white-blond Nordic type who wore her hair halfway down the back of the nubby tweed jacket of her suit. I had a quick glimpse of a high cheekbone and a big green eye that was smiling even though the rest of her face was in repose. She produced a cigarette and inserted it in a holder while the balding guy to her right fumbled with a Zippo and flipped it open and on right under her nose. She didn’t see him or it. He had to pull it back quickly when she leaned forward to get a light from Jack’s waiting match.
“Thank you,” she said in a husky voice, the kind of voice that they banally call a bedroom voice. “What a perfectly delightful bar.”
Jack nodded his thanks. “First crossing, miss?”
“On the Rotterdam, yes.” She had a very slight accent that wasn’t Dutch.
“Welcome aboard,” Jack said.
“Welcome aboard,” said the balding man. “Welcome aboard, little lady.” He chuckled moistly, and that terminated her interest in him, not that she’d had much. Calling her little lady was like calling the Rotterdam a rowboat. She’d be six feet tall in her stocking feet and even seated at thebar she had the long and rangy look of a Viking’s consort.
“What will it be?” Jack asked.
A small silence. Shoulders straightened at the bar. Nobody who had been there before her minded waiting while she debated that important question. She was gorgeous.
“Why, I think I’ll have exactly what this gentleman is drinking. It’s a lovely color.”
“Campari and soda,” I said.
“Coming up,” Jack said.
“Norway or Sweden?” I asked.
For a moment the big girl hesitated. I thought she was going to relegate me to the status of the balding lecher. That would have disappointed Jack. I have something of a reputation as an operator aboard the Rotterdam. It can be self-perpetuating, like that business of Jack seeing to it that the big girl sat next to me.
“Why not Denmark?” she asked finally.
“Too small, too crowded and too civilized.”
It was the word civilized that got her. “Too civilized?”
“Would be like framing a Goya bullfight etching in heavy gold with curlicues and like that.”
“I wasn’t sure, but now I am,” she said, and laughed. “Too civilized. I’ll take that as a compliment.” We looked each other over, casually. Nobody got bored. Jack deposited the Campari and soda in front of her.
“Actually it’s Norway as much as anywhere. I’m Erica Nordstrom.”
We touched glasses, still casually. Eight days on the. ocean is a long time, and you don’t want to make a mistake at the beginning that could have you hiding out in the back of the smoking room with a magazine in front of your face the rest of the voyage.
“Chet Drum, Miss Nordstrom.”
She tasted her drink and the name. “It’s delicious,” she said. “With the color it had to be.”
The balding man chuckled moistly again. “It looks like red mouthwash to me,” he said.
Erica Nordstrom swiveled her barstool toward me, giving the balding man a fine view of her right shoulder.
“First trip across, Chet?”
“Uh-uh. I bounce back and forth like a ping-pong ball. Sometimes I get to thinking the Atlantic’s my real home.”
She laughed in appreciation. It was nice, husky laughter, to go with her nice, husky voice. The moment of tension that is produced by a beautiful
woman approaching a bar unescorted was over. Jack was serving drinks with brisk efficiency. Erica Nordstrom said a few things about a few places she had visited. I said a few things about a few places I had visited. She finished her drink and declined my offer of another.
“Then I get to pay for this one.”
She smiled and nodded. “Tak so molka,” she said.
“Hey, that’s whatchacallit—Norwegian,” the balding man informed us. “I have a friend of mine, he comes from Oslo.”
“How perfectly fascinating,” said Erica Nordstrom in a voice like ice cubes. She slipped gracefully off the bar-stool. The balding man jumped to attention. His pate barely reached her chin. His little brown eyes were shining.
“He’s in the hair business, same as me. You’d be surprised how many Swedes and those guys, they need hair pieces.”
“Are you tourist or first class?,” Erica Nordstrom asked me.
“First. On an expense account.”
“Have you made a table reservation yet?”
I shook my head.
“Would you do me a favor? I’m at table D, second sitting. I’m almost sure it’s not full yet. Would you sit with us? It’s so pleasant to have someone you can talk to.”
“If I said wild Arabian stallions couldn’t keep me away?”
“It would be out of character.”
“Table D, second sitting. I’ll try.”
She left the bar. Everybody watched her except casual, sophisticated, lady-slaying Chet Drum.
Jack moved his head from side to side. “I don’t know how you do it,” he said.
“It was easy,” I said.
It was too easy.
6
I RAN into Ahmed Shiraz in front of the wireless office on Sun Deck. Shiraz was just coming out. He was wearing, top to bottom, a blazer with an obscure escutcheon on the breast pocket, gray flannels and a pair of rope-soled shoes. His handsome face gave me a look of quick, stylized suspicion.
Drumbeat Erica Page 3