“That was an accident. I had nothing to do with it. Do you believe me?”
“Why the hell should I?”
“No reason,” she said.
I said, “This game of yours. The rules have been changed.”
“Really? Who changed them?”
“The client. He decided Ahmed Shiraz can go on living after all. He hired me to find you and tell you that.”
She smiled coldly. “You don’t seriously expect me to believe that.”
“Would you believe Littlejohn?”
Doubt assailed her face, marring its beauty. “Littlejohn? What do you mean?”
I picked up the phone and asked for the radio room. “Can I place a ship-to-shore call to New York right now?”
“Yes sir. The Rotterdam is on call at the present time.”
I gave them Littlejohn’s address on Long Island. No need to make it person-to-person. Amos Littlejohn wasn’t going anywhere.
We smoked a couple of cigarettes and drank more champagne. Erica was like a big hungry cat in the close confines of the cabin, pacing back and forth restlessly.
“Take it easy. It will all be over in a few minutes.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
Twenty minutes after I had placed the call, the phone rang.
“We have your party, sir. Go ahead.”
Erica was hovering right behind me. There was a faint whistling sound in the receiver. “Hello?” I said. “This the Littlejohn house?”
“Littlejohn residence, yes sir.”
“Janice? It’s Mr. Drum. I hope you remember me.”
“I do that. You the detective fellow. You really calling from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?”
“That’s right. Can I speak to Mr. Littlejohn? It’s urgent.”
There was a crackling sound in the receiver. I heard a click, and then a voice I didn’t recognize said: “This is Dr. Moran.”
“Doctor,” I said, “my name is Drum. I work for Mr. Littlejohn. Can I speak to him? It’s urgent.”
Dr. Moran spoke at length. The connection faded. I made out one word: Impossible.
“I know your patient’s a very sick man,” I said. “I wouldn’t bother him unless it was really urgent. Can you hear me?”
“I hear you.” Dr. Moran’s voice was suddenly very clear. “I hear you but I can’t help you. Mr. Littlejohn took a drastic turn for the worse last night. He’s in coma.”
Erica had come around beside me. She was watching my face.
“Will he come out of it?”
“That’s impossible to say.”
“I know Mr. Littlejohn is dying,” I said. “I asked if he’ll come out of the coma.”
“I know what you asked,” Dr. Moran said testily. “I have no answer for you at the present time. Forty-eight hours should tell the story. He may rally briefly. Then again he may not.”
“Forty-eight hours,” I said.
“Call again on Saturday. Any sooner would be a waste of time. He won’t be in any condition to conduct business in any event.”
“Believe me, he’d conduct this business with his dying breath if he could.”
“If he rallies,” Dr. Moran said, “I’ll have to decide that.”
“I’ll call on Saturday,” I told him. “Would you put Janice back on, doctor?”
Three loud clicks in my ear, then I heard Janice’s voice. “Dr. Moran?” I said.
“He’s off the extension, Mr. Drum.”
“Listen,” I said, “I’m going to call on Saturday. If Mr. Littlejohn is conscious, no matter how weak he is, I’ve got to talk to him. I’m not sure Dr. Moran will permit it. I’m counting on you. Do you understand?”
“My orders come from Dr. Moran.”
“Are you there day and night?”
“I sleep in. I sleep on a cot in his room nights. He won’t have the nurse,” Janice said with pride. “He wants me.”
“He’d want to talk to me,” I said. “It’s very important. It’s the most important thing left in his life.”
“Ain’t much of anything left in his life, Mr. Drum.”
“Then call it his dying wish. I mean that, Janice.”
The words impressed her. “His dying wish. Yes sir. I understand.”
After I hung up, Erica said, “I gather our mutual client is dying. I didn’t know that.”
“You know it now. He hired me to call you off.”
“Give me one reason why I should believe you.”
“You can find out on Saturday.”
“If he rallies.”
“How about a new rule in this game you’re playing?” I suggested. “Declare a truce until we put the call through on Saturday.”
“I neither ask nor give quarter. I never have. I never will. But I’ll say this much: I think you can safely assume no attempt will be made on Shiraz’s life until we reach port.”
“Then extend your armistice a few hours, damn it. Until we can call.”
“Request refused,” Erica said. “But I’d like to suggest a new rule.”
I waited. “I have been hired to—do what I have been hired to do,” Erica said. “You have been hired to prevent it. Is that correct?”
I said it was correct.
“One of us is going to win. The other, to lose. What happens then?”
“You just said what happens. One of us wins. The other loses.”
“I mean, where does it go from there? Why not have penalties? Or rewards? They make a game so much more satisfying.”
“You’re playing with a stacked deck,” I said. “I can’t spend the rest of my life being Shiraz’s bodyguard.” At first I thought I’d said that just to humor her by playing her game verbally, but then I wasn’t so sure. There was something oddly, temptingly seductive about Erica’s bizarre logic. At least one small part of me wanted to play her game just for the hell of it.
“You do have a point there,” she said. “I suppose we could set a time limit. What would you suggest?”
“It’s your game.”
“A week then. One week from the moment we dock in Rotterdam. The game ends then, with one of us triumphant and the other one defeated.”
“A week’s too long,” I said, entering into the spirit of things. “How about twenty-four hours?”
“Why not compromise?” she asked sweetly. “Would three days suit you?”
“You mean if Shiraz is still alive three days after we land in Rotterdam you’ll call your dogs off?”
She said that was exactly what she meant.
“What if Littlejohn calls you off first?”
“Let’s cross that bridge when we reach it on Saturday. You’ll play the game?”
I thought for a few moments. Erica had me. It was a game I had to play. If I refused she could strike two weeks from now, or a month, or six months, or next year. If I accepted, and if I could keep Shiraz alive for those three days, I’d have done the job for Amos Littlejohn. “Okay,” I said. “It’s a deal.”
“Now,” Erica smiled, “as to the rewards and penalties. I know what I’ll want from you if I win. Do you know what you’ll want if you do?”
“I’ll think of something,” I said.
She laughed a suggestive little laugh. “I just bet you will. Aren’t you going to ask me what reward I want after I win?”
“If you win.”
“Oh, I’ll win. You can count on it. I always do. When I win I’ll want you to work for me—for one full year from the date of my victory.”
“What,” I asked mildly, “only a year?”
“After that you can make up your own mind. There’s always the possibility that it won’t work out for either one of us, though I very much doubt that. I’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time. I need a second-in-command with your capabilities. They’re hard to find. The really unscrupulous ones lack the necessary—talent, and the talented ones have too many scruples. Together I think we could stand Europe on its ear—for a starter.”
“What do we do after that,” I asked, “build a big palace somewhere and become king and queen of the world?”
Erica shook her head. “Don’t overestimate your own role, my friend. It would never be king and queen. Think in terms of queen and consort.”
I bowed. “Yes, Your Majesty,” I said.
She laughed. “You may go now,” she said.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said again, and headed for the door.
“Wait a minute. Come back here.”
I walked back to her. The gag was wearing a little thin, but I bowed my head again. She got hold of my hair, which was barely long enough to grasp, and tilted my head up. Her green eyes were very close and luminous. She came against me hard and kissed me. At first I told myself, screw her, or that is, don’t screw her, but the situation became complicated as I felt myself borne back toward the bed by the insistent weight of her big and gorgeous body. The ship pitched. I used the motion to pry us apart.
She looked at me. Surprise and disappointment played across her face like a neon sign blinking two different messages.
“I have this quirk,” I said. “I’m old fashioned. I like to do the asking.”
I left the cabin in a hurry, before I could change my mind. Just as I shut the door something crashed against the other side. I smiled. I liked that. Erica may have envisioned herself as Queen of the Amazons, but she was feminine after all. She was throwing things.
11
BY MID-AFTERNOON on Saturday I was sitting at a table in the Palm Garden of the Hotel Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam. Rain fell steadily, drumming on the glass roof overhead. I looked at my watch: three-fifteen. Jan Fontein, the Rotterdam purser, was a few minutes late. I gazed up at the ferns and potted palms hanging over my head below the skylight. I felt irritable and ordered another beer, not that it would help.
When you have been aboard a ship as luxurious as the Rotterdam for a week, dry land is a letdown. Wet land is worse, and on this bleak February day it seemed as if the ocean was ready to breach all the dikes and submerge the Netherlands under a few hundred feet of water.
I called the waiter back. “Better make it a genever instead,” I told him. He brought a chilled glass of Dutch Gin. As I raised it to my lips a voice said:
“I see you are going native already.”
It was Fontein, big and rumpled in a dark suit. He was carrying a sodden black trenchcoat over one arm. The waiter took it from him.
“Pull up a chair and have some genever,” I said.
“I never touch genever. It is the national ruin of Holland.” He ordered a glass of Amstel. We drank and stared at one another, each of us waiting for the other to say something earthshaking.
“Raining cats and dogs,” I said.
“Amsterdam in February, what did you expect?”
“Snow, and apple-cheeked boys and girls skating on frozen canals.”
“That must be some other February,” Fontein said with a sour smile.
He drank his beer. I drank my genever. I said, “Shiraz all settled in?”
“At the Hotel de l’Europe on Doelenstraat, guest of the Holland-America Line.”
“What about Miss Nordstrom?” I asked.
I had asked him to get me the poop on her earlier in the day as we were docking. It had surprised him then, and now, several hours later, after I had rented a Volkswagen in Rotterdam and driven to Amsterdam and checked into the Krasnapolsky, it still surprised him.
“Why Miss Nordstrom?” he asked. “Why not Claeys?”
“I’ll settle for both.”
“I’ll give you both. The Nordstrom woman is staying at a private house on the Herren Canal, 337 Herren-gracht. Claeys is just up the street from her at the Hotel Ambassade. As of half an hour ago, both were sitting tight. Waiting out the rain perhaps.”
“Don’t tell me Holland-America’s doing all this for me?” I said. I was impressed.
Fontein smiled, pleased with himself. “I spent ten years as a cop,” he said. “It gets to be a habit. If there actually was an attempt on Shiraz’s life, I want to get to the bottom of it.”
“The Herren Canal house,” I said. “Who owns it?”
Fontein nodded, even more pleased with himself. “I thought you would ask that. The house is rented by an expatriate American named Budd. He is part owner of a cabaret on Zeedijk called the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“Did you say Budd?”
“Budd, Jeremy. And the Brooklyn Bridge is the biggest trouble spot in Amsterdam’s seediest quarter. It’s a hangout for the Provos. Do you know Mr. Budd?”
“I met his sister in New York the night before we sailed. What’s the Provos?”
“A bellyache for the whole city,” Fontein said. “A cross between juvenile delinquents and a well-organized anarchist party. Professional students with a chip on their collective shoulders. Something like your own Vietniks, I should say.”
“What’s Shiraz’s schedule?”
“Tomorrow morning he’ll be taken on a tour of the port of Amsterdam. In the afternoon Van Moppes and Zoon, the diamond cutters, have arranged—”
“What about today?” I interrupted. Tomorrow sounded fine. A tour of the port, a visit to the diamond cutters—both probably in a big party complete with reporters to immortalize the rubbernecking of a prominent celebrity—nobody, not even Erica Nordstrom, would be foolhardy enough to make a try for Shiraz tomorrow. Besides, if Amos Littlejohn rallied long enough for me to get him on the phone with Erica today, Shiraz’s worries and mine would be over.
“Today?” Fontein said. “Today he is at liberty. I have a friend on the concierge’s staff at the de l’Europe, a souvenir of my police days, who will keep me informed of his whereabouts.”
“That include following him if he blows the hotel?”
Fontein nodded. “Not only that, but my friend knows exactly where I will be throughout the afternoon and evening. I assure you, you have nothing to worry about.”
As though to prove the efficiency of Fontein’s careful arrangements, a boy in Krasnapolsky livery came through the almost empty Palm Garden calling: “Mynheer Fontein, telephone for Mynheer Fontein.”
“You see?” Fontein said with a smug smile. He followed the boy across the Palm Garden and into the lobby. He was gone long enough for me to smoke a cigarette. He came back wearing a long face.
“Shiraz left in a taxi ten minutes ago. My friend followed him in another taxi.”
“Where’d he go?”
“My friend’s driver proved rather inept at what you call a tail job. They followed Shiraz as far as the Leidse Canal and lost him.”
Fontein sat down. I stood up. “Get the check,” I said, and headed for the lobby and a phone booth.
I called the Hotel de l’Europe and asked for Mr. Shiraz. My best bet was to try and track him down through his wife, provided she hadn’t gone with him.
“Yes?”
I began to relax. It was Carol Shiraz’s faintly apologetic voice.
“This is Chet Drum, Mrs. Shiraz. Remember me?”
“Of course I do, Mr. Drum. Are you in Amsterdam?”
“I have to get in touch with your husband. He there?”
A slight pause. “No, he’s out. May I take a message?”
“I’ve got to get hold of him as soon as possible. It’s important. You wouldn’t happen to know where he went?”
Another pause. “Important for him, Mr. Drum? Or for you?”
“Believe me, it’s very important to him.”
A longer pause. “I don’t know where he went. I’m sorry.”
“Can I come over and see you?”
“Me?” That seemed to surprise her.
“Unless you tell me where he went now.”
“I already said—”
“You’re not much in the liar department, Mrs. Shiraz.”
“How dare you—”
“I’ll apologize when I see you. Fifteen minutes? You’d be doing your husband a favor if you told me where he went.”
“Maybe,” she said with an odd laugh, “I’m fed up with doing him favors.” For the first time I realized she sounded a little drunk.
Fontein approached the phone booth as I got out.
“Where are we going?”
“You keep on the lookout for Claeys and Erica Nordstrom. I’ll see you later.”
It was a suite on the top floor of the de l’Europe, its windows overlooking the confluence of the Amstel River and the Rokin. Lights were coming on along the riverbank. The water looked black, what you could see of it through the rain streaming down the windowpanes.
“The best view in Amsterdam,” Carol Shiraz said. “Nothing but the best for Ahmed Shiraz, the very, very best wherever he goes.”
She turned away from the window, a bitter smile on her face. She was wearing a pink robe and mules with pink puffs on them. She was one of those women who looked better without makeup. She wasn’t wearing any now. She had tied her hair in a single dark glossy braid with a pink bow at the end. On most women that looks corny and affected; you almost expect them to recite Little Bo-Peep simperingly and maybe jam a thumb in their mouth. But it looked good on Carol Shiraz. She had an appealing little-girl quality that would make a perfect foil for Shiraz’s strutting and posturing masculinity, if he gave it half a chance. I had never seen him give it any kind of chance at all.
“Drink?”
“This isn’t a social call, Mrs. Shiraz.”
“Well, I’m going to have one.”
She poured two Scotches, gave me one and sat down. She crossed her legs and then uncrossed them and polished off her drink and poured another and sat down and crossed her legs and uncrossed them, all in the time it took me to get a whiff of the whisky in my glass.
“I belong at my father’s bedside,” she said. “He’s in coma. They don’t expect him to live.”
“Did you call home?”
“Right after we checked in.” She gave me an owlish stare out of her pretty baby face. “Can you tell me what I’m doing here?” It wasn’t a question I was supposed to answer. “I can tell you,” she said. “Because if I leave my husband alone, we’re all through. We’ll be going back to Gstaad soon, you know. We honeymooned in Gstaad, before anybody knew we were married.”
“I read about it,” I said.
Drumbeat Erica Page 8