“Cut it out. You saw what happened on deck. Hell, if it wasn’t for you I’d be fifty miles back taking one long last swim. Somebody’s trying to kill me. I don’t know why. I think you do. I said let’s have it.”
The ship pitched. My drink began to slide across the table. I made a grab for it. I said nothing.
“Aside from being a white slaver,” Shiraz asked, “what else do you do?”
Answering that one would have had about as many advantages as disadvantages. Shiraz already knew his life was in danger. If he knew I’d been hired to protect him it might make my job easier. Even the President of the United States takes orders from the Secret Service. But he’d want to know who had hired me, and that was a question I couldn’t answer.
“I’m a member of the jet-set,” I said.
“Cut it out.”
“I’m an international playboy.”
“I said cut it out. Where you heading after we hit Rotterdam?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said.
Shiraz banged his hand on the table. “All right, play it cagey. But I’m warning you. Cross my path after we land and I’ll—There he is!”
Shiraz was up and running with the change in his tone of voice. He crossed the dance floor in half a dozen quick, lunging strides. A tall man with a vaguely familiar face had just entered the cafe. He wasn’t anybody I knew, but I had seen him once or twice before. After a few days aboard ship every passenger’s face is slightly familiar.
The ship pitched and Shiraz swung with the motion, knocking the tall man down. I got up and ran in their direction. A kid wearing the single gold stripe and loop of a fourth officer was quicker. The tall man got to his feet, wiping blood off his chin, and took a step toward Shiraz. The fourth officer moved between them.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Gentlemen, please.”
The gentleman on his left, who was Shiraz, tried to brush him aside. The gentleman on his right shoved him in the opposite direction.
I got in front of Shiraz and pushed him away. “Calm down,” I said.
“He’s the guy. He’s the bastard tried to push me overboard an hour ago.”
“You are drunk,” the tall man said coolly, “or else you are crazy. On deck? Who in his right mind would have been on deck an hour ago?”
The few patrons of the cafe were watching us. From behind the bar Jack gave me a confused look and then a shrug and a small fleeting smile, as though commiserating with me for my line of work.
Shiraz turned to the fourth officer. “I want to see the captain.”
“You just saw the captain, sir.”
“It’s different now. This is the guy. I’ve got him now. He tried to kill me.”
The tall man, who was not much older than the fourth officer, sighed. “Very well. An accusation has been made. Of course I will see the captain. But this man is mad.”
“You deny it?” Shiraz shouted.
“I deny that I was on deck—an hour ago did you say? I deny that I tried to kill you, or tried to kill anyone. The only thing I do not deny is a certain familiarity with your, shall we say, vapidly handsome face. I have seen it in enough bad cinema.”
Shiraz tried to swing again. I caught his arm.
The fourth officer said: “Perhaps, after all, the captain is a good idea.”
The tall man’s name was Willi Claeys. He had a round almost beardless face, rosy cheeks and hair as blond as Erica Nordstrom’s. His eyebrows were either invisible or non-existent. They gave his eyes a naked and vulnerable look. He came from Groningen, according to his passport. He was a student.
After identifying Claeys as his assailant in the captain’s presence, Shiraz said: “This changes everything. I demand an official investigation. I demand—”
“Please try to remain calm, Mr. Shiraz,” Captain Van Voorhees said, sucking at his pipe. “Does Mynheer Claeys wish to say something?”
Mynheer Claeys wished to say, “Around 16:30 hours was it? Is that when Mr. Shiraz claims I made an attempt on his life?”
“That’s close enough,” Shiraz said.
“On deck?”
“Prom Deck forward. Not that I have to tell you.”
“But you do have to tell me, as I was nowhere near Prom Deck at 16:30 or 15:30 or 17:30 or any time at all this afternoon.”
“Can you prove that?” Van Voorhees asked.
Like most fair-skinned men Claeys blushed easily. He was blushing now. “I—I’d rather not.”
Shiraz made a raucous sound.
“I fear I don’t understand,” Van Voorhees said. “Either you can, in the terms of Mr. Drum’s profession, establish an alibi, or else you can’t.”
Shiraz did a slow double take. “Did you say Drum’s profession, captain? You wouldn’t be a private cop by any chance, would you, Drum? What a disappointment Here I thought you were a white slaver all along.”
Van Voorhees gave me an apologetic look. Then he turned to Wilii Claeys.
“I have an alibi, captain. I would rather discuss it in private.”
Van Voorhees shook his head slowly. “Mr. Shiraz is entitled to hear it.”
Claeys blushed again. “I was—in my cabin all afternoon. A—lady was with me.”
“When would that have been?” Van Voorhees asked.
“From a few minutes after lunch until about twenty minutes ago.”
“And the lady’s name?”
“Please, captain, I—”
“‘The lady’s name.”
Claeys turned to the wall and stared at a big color photograph of the Rotterdam sailing down the Maas on her maiden voyage. He jammed his hands in his pockets.
“Nordstrom,” he said finally. “Miss Erica Nordstrom.”
Miss Erica Nordstrom, cool and statuesque in a white floor-length gown, arrived forty-five minutes later. She didn’t look as though she had been bedded down recently by Willi Claeys or anyone.
“Sit down, won’t you, Miss Nordstrom?” Captain Van Voorhees said. Erica sat down and looked up at him. I wondered if she knew what was coming. The expression on her face was grave, but a smile lurked in the depths of those green eyes.
“This is somewhat embarrassing,” Van Voorhees said. “A rather important matter has come up, a matter which we are attempting to settle here and now, and whether it can be settled or not depends on your whereabouts this afternoon.”
“My whereabouts this afternoon,” Erica said. “How very interesting. Where was I supposed to have been this afternoon?”
“Suppose you tell us, Miss Nordstrom.”
She took a while looking at each one of us. “Mr. Shiraz,” she said slowly, “is angry but doesn’t look like a man in search of an alibi. It is an alibi you’re after, captain?”
“It is an answer I am after.”
“Mr. Drum, as usual, looks—in that colorful British phrase—unflappable. That would seem to leave young Mr. Claeys. Do you need an alibi for some reason, young Mr. Claeys?”
Young Mr. Claeys blushed again.
I got the idea, possibly erroneous, that Erica was taunting me. She seemed to be saying, for my benefit, I’m going to give Claeys here the alibi he wants, and I can make it stick, but it’s up to you to decide if it’s true or not.
“This is a serious matter, Miss Nordstrom,” Van Voorhees said. “We wish to know your whereabouts at four-thirty this afternoon.”
Claeys started to blush again.
Erica said calmly, “I was in a tourist class cabin on B deck. I forget the number.”
Shiraz nodded smugly. “She forgets the number.”
“It was,” Erica told us, “the cabin occupied by Mr. Claeys.”
“You were there alone,” Van Voorhees said, “or in someone’s company?”
“Goodness,” Erica said blandly, “what on earth would I have been doing there alone? Of course I was in someone’s company.”
“In whose?”
“Why, Mynheer Claeys’, of course.”
“And he was with you all the
time you were—visiting his cabin?”
Erica stared Van Voorhees straight in the eye. “Look at me, captain. Do you thihk he would leave? We were there together—all afternoon.”
10
THE PHONE in my cabin started to ring just as I turned the shower off.
“Hello?”
“This is Jan Fontein, Mr. Drum. I’m afraid I have been engaging in an activity closer to your profession than to mine.”
I asked what that activity might be.
“Snooping. A certain cabin on B deck. Mr. Shiraz’s assailant, as I recall, was said to be wearing a trenchcoat. Is that correct?”
“Right, he was.”
“There was a trenchcoat hanging in the closet of the cabin.”
“Wet?” I asked.
“Drenched,” Fontein said.
“Then Claeys was lying.”
“Not to mention Miss Nordstrom.”
“Okay,” I said. “Where do we go from here?”
“Nowhere for the moment, I’m afraid. Mr. Claeys, after all, has an alibi that is part of the official record of this crossing.”
“Some alibi,” I said.
“We land in Rotterdam the day after tomorrow, Mr. Drum. Quite early in the morning. I suspect we’ll be seeing more of each other.”
I said that suited me fine. As soon as I hung up, the phone started ringing again. “Yeah?”
“You don’t really want to go to the captain’s cocktail party, do you?”
“They’re usually good for a few laughs, Erica,” I said.
“I thought you might like to visit me here instead.”
“Where? In Claeys’ cabin?”
“Very funny. I have a chilled bottle of champagne in my cabin.”
“I never refuse champagne,” I said.
She had an inside cabin right next door to the dentist’s surgery. I got there twenty minutes later, shaved and wearing a dinner jacket. The champagne was waiting in a chiller filled with ice.
I popped the cork and poured both goblets half full. Another pair of goblets nestled in the ice, assuring a second round of drinks as cold as the first. I decided the wine steward knew his stuff.
We clinked glasses and Erica turned around for her cigarettes and the long ivory holder. Her gown covered her primly to the neck in front but plunged wide open to her waist in back. There was a suggestion of delicate golden down on her spine. She was a gorgeous hunk of woman and she turned quickly to catch the tail end of my somewhat lecherous stare.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
“What did I do?”
“The eyes. They can convey a compliment better than any words.”
Our glasses clinked together again. “I’m rather disappointed,” she said. “That first day. It looked like—”
“Like we were going to spend a lot of time together?”
“Something like that.”
“You never know what’s going to happen on an ocean crossing, do you? Anyway,” I added, “for as long as it lasts I like my women exclusive. I’m funny that way.”
“Meaning young Mr. Claeys?”
“That was a pretty airtight alibi you gave him.”
“He’s a nice boy, a little wet behind the ears but—”
“His trenchcoat,” I said. “It was all wet too.”
She passed that one. We finished our champagne and I poured more in the second set of goblets. There was a knock at the door.
A steward came in bearing a tray of caviar, minced onions, capers and toast wrapped in a towel. “Compliments of the captain,” he said, and left.
“Well,” I said, “you told me it would beat the captain’s party.” I dug into the caviar, heaping it on a slice of hot toast. I downed most of it in one huge bite. It was delicious.
Erica made a face. “No,” she said. “That’s caviar. You’re supposed to savor every tiny crumb.”
I polished off what was left of my open-faced sandwich while Erica made one for herself. She nibbled delicately, then took a large bite as I had done. We both began to laugh.
“We ought to be on the same side,” she said.
“Same side of what?”
“Just in general. But then of course the advantage is mine. I heard of you long before we met. How would you like to work for me?”
“I never take two cases at once.”
“I thought you were on holiday.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Same as you.”
She shrugged that off. “Chester Drum,” she recited. “Veteran of the Korean War, holder of the Silver Star for gallantry in action. Graduate of the College of William and Mary, former Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Once married, once divorced, no children, no close relatives. Currently a private detective licensed in the District of Columbia and the State of Virginia, with an office on F Street in Washington and another on Rue du Rhône in Geneva. That one goes under the name of Financial Consultant, because no foreigner can be licensed as a detective in Switzerland, and should the Swiss authorities wonder precisely what sort of consulting you do there is some tenuous tie with a Mr. Axel Spade, who is indeed a financial consultant and from what I hear almost a wizard. But of course you don’t work for Spade, you work for yourself. Do I have my facts straight?”
I was impressed. Some of it she could have got from the View magazine article, but none of View’s researchers had dug up the relationship with Spade.
“Almost sounds like a dossier,” I said.
“Precisely, It took considerable time to collect that information and obviously it was collected long before either one of us boarded the Rotterdam.”
“What for?”
“Perhaps only to satisfy my curiosity. It all depends on you. When you finish your current—uh, holiday, will you be at liberty?”
“I’m always at liberty between cases.”
“Then you admit you’re on a case now?”
I said, “Why’d you alibi Claeys?”
“I merely told the truth.”
“Bullshit. Begging your pardon, ma’am.”
“No offense, my friend.” She asked suddenly, “Do you enjoy your work?” Without waiting for an answer she went on. “The point I’m trying to make is I enjoy mine very much indeed. Most people are time-servers. All they can say about their work is that it keeps them busy. What an awful thing. Don’t you agree?”
“Sure I agree. So what?”
“A sad commentary on the state of twentieth century civilization. The stultifying world of the computer with every man reduced to the status of information punched on a data card. Only the mavericks can escape, and there are so few left—the artists, the criminals, the independently wealthy if they don’t become jaded.”
“I guess that lets me out,” I said. “I’m no artist, I’m no criminal and any similarity between me and the independently wealthy is purely ridiculous.”
“There’s another way to escape from the packaged-in-plastic, data-processed world, my friend.”
I thought I knew what she was driving at, and it gave me a feeling of vague disappointment. “No sermons on the virtues of LSD, thanks,” I said.
That took her by surprise. “LSD? Oh, of course, our conversation at the table. Believe me, I wasn’t referring to that at all.”
“What then?”
“Regard life as a game. Better yet, a sport. Train yourself mentally and physically as well as you can and then choose a profession that will challenge your training to the fullest. Extend yourself, court danger, walk with eyes wide open into trouble and then claw your way out smiling. It’s the kind of life you’ve led, whether you know it or not. It’s the only real life there is. My congratulations.”
“It’s nothing,” I said with a smile.
She didn’t return the smile. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Only a little. If life’s a game, you take it too seriously.”
“But that’s the whole point. No game is worth anything unless you take it seriously. I w
arn you, I’m a very bad loser.”
“Why warn me?”
“Are you a skier?” she asked unexpectedly. “Or a skin diver?”
“Both, when I have the time.”
“You can have your choice, two weeks in Chamonix or two on the Cote d’Azur, all expenses paid, provided you leave the moment we land in Rotterdam. How does that sound?”
“It sounds swell. Do I get to go alone or is your fair white body part of the deal?”
She chuckled. “Maybe that could be part of another deal—later.”
“Then I guess I’ll say no to the first and keep an open mind about the second.”
“You bastard,” she said, and set her empty goblet down and kissed me. We browsed on each other’s faces for a while. “You have an uncanny way of saying exactly the right thing,” she whispered against my mouth.
“Meaning you wanted me to turn your deal down?”
“The first one, of course. As you say, we’ll both keep an open mind about the second. I think, Mr. Drum, you are one challenge I’m really going to enjoy.”
She broke the clinch and this time refilled both champagne glasses herself.
“A toast,” she said. “To the violent demise of one Ahmed Shiraz.”
I raised my goblet. “To the long life of one Ahmed Shiraz.”
She laughed. I didn’t laugh. “Now you know,” she said. “I wanted you to know.”
“That’s a nice little game you picked out for yourself,” I said. “Killing people. It was your ad in the Paris Trib that Amos Littlejohn answered, of course.”
Instead of denying that or feigning ignorance of it, she said: “Just for the record, I have done many things in my time but until now murder hasn’t been one of them. We’ve been too busy with other games.”
“Yeah, I know, and learning new games keeps you on your toes.”
“How well do you know Shiraz?” she asked.
“He’s just a body I have to protect.”
“Well enough to know you don’t like him?”
“Does anybody?”
“Then you admit his death would be no great loss?”
“I have a special set of values reserved for coldblooded murder,” I said. “I’m against it. And a pretty nice guy got himself killed in New York the night before we sailed.”
Drumbeat Erica Page 7