Darkest Hour

by Nielsen, Helen

  “My God, you’re right,” she said hoarsely. “Thirty years ago that handsome Nordic could have been a Hitler Youth.”

  What do beautiful, blond Hitler Youths grow up to be? The world of the Third Reich had crumbled beneath a man who called himself Max Berlin; but he had landed on his feet in fine, hand-tooled leather boots bearing no visible scars of humiliation or defeat. There was pride in his face, cruelty and a sardonic smile that seemed to suggest he had solved the enigma of life and found it a vulgar joke. Hannah was right; he was a very tough man.

  “Kwan was born in Hong Kong,” Simon remarked.

  “A lovely place,” Hannah said. “I was there on my second honeymoon.”

  “I don’t think Kwan’s section of Hong Kong was so lovely. Federal agents are investigating his death. Jack Keith thinks something was found in his clothing. Probably heroin.”

  “I told you that bomb planted in my car was a gangster tactic!”

  “But why? Are you sure Monterey didn’t tell you anything? Mention a name or a place?”

  “Simon, I swear, I told you everything I remember!”

  “Or try to give you something? Did he have anything in his hand?”

  “How do I know? All I could see was that terrible look on his face!”

  “That must be it,” Simon mused. “They’re looking for something. Kwan was in the hotel to meet somebody and accept a delivery of some sort. He was beaten and murdered. Max Berlin came down from his pedestal long enough to identify the body at the funeral parlor and pay the mortician’s bill. Monterey’s room at the Seville Inn was searched. A chair was found on the balcony with an oily footprint on the cushion. An agile man could gain access to the rain gutter that way.”

  “To hide something?” Hannah asked.

  “To search for something—No, you may be right! It could have been Monterey who put that chair on the balcony. If he did—if he put something in the rain gutter—it’s probably still there. Hannah, I think you called it. I don’t have much time to catch Eve Necchi’s murderer.”

  He scooped up Sam Goddard’s photos and put them back in the file. With two of the subjects and the photographer dead, the group was already becoming a collector’s item. He called the Palms Hotel in Santa Monica and asked if Martin Montgomery had been a registered guest during the past week. The manager was cagey. He asked if Mr. Drake was with the police. “Mr. Drake is with Continental Pacific Insurance,” Simon said. The magic words worked and he was told that Mr. Montgomery had checked in at the Palms on Sunday night and left Monday evening without checking out or paying his bill, and since he had taken his luggage with him somebody owed the Palms twelve dollars. “That’s all I wanted to know,” Simon said. “Send a bill to Continental Pacific and we’ll pay as soon as the case gets out of probate.” He cradled the telephone quickly before the hotel man realized he would probably have an eight-lane freeway running through the lobby before that day came to pass, and then picked up the telephone again and placed a call to Able Rentals in Santa Monica.

  All he had to do was mention Martin Montgomery and hold the telephone back about twenty inches from his ear.

  “Insurance!” the rental agent howled. “You should call me about insurance! I had my La Verde agent pick up the Ford this Montgomery rented. It’s wrecked! The radiator, the fender, the headlights! Even the upholstery!”

  “What happened to the upholstery?” Simon asked.

  “Murder is what happened to the upholstery! A brand-new Ford with less than ten thousand miles on it, and this kook sliced up the upholstery like salami! No wonder he jumped off that fourth floor. He was crazy!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Vandalism.

  Lieutenant Job Rickey, still wearing tweeds, sat behind his desk in the La Verde courthouse and explained the slashing of the upholstery in Monterey’s rented Ford in one flat, unimaginative word. The word would look fine on an insurance claim, but Simon wasn’t an insurance agent in La Verde; he was a hard-nosed lawyer who wanted to know how a car could be vandalized while locked in a police garage.

  “We found the rear door with a busted lock,” Rickey said. “The punks do it for kicks. They get high on goof balls and acid. Inhibitions go—then bedlam. Big fun. Big thrill humiliating the fuzz.”

  Rickey wasn’t smiling. He hooked his thumbs in his belt and leaned back in his swivel chair, and the snub-nosed off-duty gun strapped to his waist looked natural there. Rickey didn’t enjoy being made a fool of by a gang of punks.

  “The interior of the Ford wasn’t slashed the first time I visited the garage,” Simon said. “I opened the door and looked inside. The interior was clean except for a freeway map stamped by the Palms Hotel in Santa Monica.”

  “And so you took it!” Rickey screamed. “That’s withholding evidence, Mr. Drake.”

  “Evidence of what? Didn’t Monterey commit suicide?”

  Rickey seemed embarrassed. He began looking for something in the top drawer of his desk. Simon remembered Jack Keith’s suspicion that the investigation of Kwan’s death had been taken over by federals and wondered if they were aware of the group Sam Goddard had photographed together at Max Berlin’s Mexican spa. He couldn’t ask if Rickey was under pressure without blowing the show, and he wasn’t about to tell him that somebody had rigged a bomb in the Rolls. Rickey could go right on believing in vandals, Santa Claus and Mother’s Day.

  Rickey stopped fussing in the drawer and came up with a paper file. He flipped open the cover and slid it across the desk toward Simon. “Here’s the copy of the pathologist’s report you wanted,” he said, “and I didn’t appreciate the kick in the pants from Whitey Sanders. I play golf with Whitey but that doesn’t make me his lackey.”

  “You’re getting touchy,” Simon said. “What about the alcohol in the bloodstream?”

  “It’s all in the report. In laymen’s terms, the answer is negative. There was no evidence of alcohol in Monterey’s bloodstream. He died of multiple concussions incurred from the fall and had been dead for more than two hours when the ambulance picked up his body at seven A.M. I know because I was there. Rigor mortis had started to set in. His neck was stiff, his arms were stiffening. By the time we got him to the examining room his fingers were stiff. Rigor mortis sets in from two to six hours after death, Mr. Drake, with the rate depending on climatic conditions, the amount of clothing worn by the deceased, and physical conditions of the body of the deceased. We know that Monterey returned to the Seville shortly before two A.M., picked up his room key and went up to his room; therefore we know that he died sometime between two A.M. and four-thirty A.M. with the probability that the time of death was nearer to two-thirty than four-thirty.”

  “That’s as close as you can fix the time of death?” Simon asked.

  “Can’t you read, Mr. Drake?”

  Simon folded the report and stuffed it in his pocket. He might need a medical dictionary to glean the fine points of the pathologist’s report, but he needed nothing but his own good ears to know that Rickey was a troubled man.

  “Then it’s obvious that Monterey didn’t fall over the stair railing in a drunken stupor,” he said.

  “It would seem so.”

  “And he wasn’t without funds or suffering from an incurable disease.”

  “Not on the basis of the doc’s report.”

  “But he was carrying a bottle of whisky that was crushed in the fall. You must have seen the bottle, Lieutenant. Had the seal been broken?”

  Rickey was puzzled. “Yes, it had,” he admitted, “but that’s not significant. Monterey could have been carrying that bottle in his coat pocket for days.”

  “What if I told you that Monterey didn’t drink whisky?”

  “Then I would tell you that tourists often carry a bottle of whisky when traveling cross-country—especially mountainous or desert country—just in case of an emergency.”

  “That’s right,” Simon conceded, “you never know when you’re going to meet a snake.”

  • �
� •

  Simon drove the Jaguar to the Gateway Bar, which, at midday, was closed to trade but open to young Buddy Jenks and his accompaniment. Buddy, stripped to T shirt and jeans, was oblivious to spectators, among whom were a bevy of starry-eyed teen-agers who had found a new idol. While practicing he was oblivious to everything but that silver extension to his lips. The trumpet was his passion. He did more than play it; he prayed through it, and Simon, too, was mesmerized until he became aware of the small, intense eyes of a man in tuxedo pants and a black sweater who was glaring a hole in the back of his head. He turned to him and said: “Where can I find Whitey Sanders?”

  “Do you have an appointment?” the man asked.

  “I don’t need one. I’m a friend of the family,” Simon said.

  “Mr. Sanders has no family,” the man answered. “I am the maître d’ of the establishment. My name is Alex Lacey. If you wish to make an appointment—”

  “I wish to see Mr. Sanders,” Simon answered. “I don’t have forever. My name is Drake.”

  He saw a flicker of recognition in the small eyes. It couldn’t be called a friendly flicker. Lacey had all the warmth of a manikin. Behind Lacey a short hall led to an office where the open door revealed a desk and a telephone. Simon started to move past the man toward the doorway and found the passage blocked.

  “Mr. Sanders isn’t in the office,” Lacey said, and this time Simon noticed the nasal quality in his voice and he remembered Lacey’s penchant for eavesdropping.

  “Where—?” he began.

  “You might try the pool at the rear wing of the motel,” Lacey suggested. “Mr. Sanders has a private bungalow there. He usually has guests on Sunday.”

  “I’ll try,” Simon said, “and you get on that phone in the office and tell Mr. Sanders that I’m on my way.”

  Whitey Sanders, his deeply tanned body dressed only in the briefest of white latex trunks, was sprawled in one of the chairs nearest the pool with a frosted glass in his hand and an extension telephone on the table beside him. He saw Simon approach, which was flattering in that he was surrounded, both on the deck and in the pool, by a collection of lovely girls in the most tantalizing bikinis. Simon made a quick head count and reckoned that the oldest hag of the lot might have been pushing twenty-one.

  “Hi,” Whitey called. “Come on in and enjoy the scenery.”

  Simon stepped into the glass fenced area and surveyed the aquatic harem. “What have we here,” he mused, “your Sunday-school class?”

  Whitey roared with laughter. “You guessed it,” he said. “That’s what I like about living in a free country: to each his own religion. What’s your denomination?”

  “I’m old-fashioned,” Simon said. “Partial to blondes.”

  “Good. Sit down and join the prayer meeting. Or would you rather swim? There’s extra trunks in my bungalow just behind you. How’s Hannah?”

  Simon could see why Whitey Sanders had done so well for himself. He could speak on a number of subjects simultaneously, remember names, be charming and never give anything away. “Hannah is bearing up remarkably well—considering that someone planted a bomb in the Rolls the day I drove home,” he answered.

  He watched Whitey’s face. Not a muscle twitched, but he couldn’t see Whitey’s eyes behind the wrap-around sunglasses.

  “Why?” Whitey asked.

  “That’s what I’ve been wondering.”

  “What do the police think?”

  “The police don’t know about it because I discovered the bomb myself. But the police know that somebody slashed the upholstery in the car Monterey rented to drive here from Santa Monica. Rickey calls it vandalism. What would you call it?”

  Whitey Sanders reached down into a cooler sitting beside his chair and picked up an iced can of diet cola. He glanced at Simon. “Can I order you a drink from the bar?” he asked. “I stopped drinking the hard stuff several years ago, but that doesn’t mean you have to go on the wagon.”

  “Nothing, thanks,” Simon said.

  “Not even a cola?”

  “Not even.”

  Whitey peeled open the can and drank deeply for several seconds. Just when Simon had decided he wasn’t going to get any response to his lead, Whitey said: “You think Monte was pushed over that stair rail, don’t you?”

  “Who would do a thing like that?” Simon countered.

  “Whoever he rented the car to get away from. We have regular bus service through La Verde, you know. Air conditioned and scenic upper deck. We also have one flight a day on a regularly scheduled airline. Monte didn’t like to drive. He cracked up in a car about thirty years ago—one of those freak things that would have killed anyone but an actor. After that he stuck to horses and climbing balconies.”

  Simon winced. “Balconies?” he echoed.

  “He was his own stunt man.”

  There were balconies on the Balboa Hotel in San Diego, but Whitey wasn’t supposed to know about that murder because Vera hadn’t let anyone else see Sam’s darkroom after his death. Simon was getting edgy. Whitey had used the word casually. It probably had no significance.

  “Did you get that pathologist’s report?” Whitey asked.

  “I got it,” Simon said. “There was no alcohol in Monterey’s bloodstream.”

  “And so you think the whisky bottle was planted on him to make it appear that a drunk fell over the railing.”

  “Do I?” Simon parried. It was interesting to have Whitey Sanders second-guessing him. He wanted to hear more. He leaned back in his chair and watched the girls in Whitey’s private pool enjoy themselves, and then, just as he began to relax, he noticed one lovely who was no stranger. Her name was Bonnie Penny and she was at the wrong hostelry. Simon found that more interesting than Whitey’s conversation. He got up from the chair.

  “I’m going to take you up on that offer of trunks,” he said abruptly. “Where do I find them?”

  “Through the front entrance and the first door to your right,” Whitey said. “They’re in a double chest. Look for size labels on the drawer pulls.”

  Simon proceeded to the front entrance to the bungalow and through the first door to his right. Whitey’s lodgings were done in expensive adult western, garish but homey with baby calf lounges and with a fur spread on the king-size-bed. The double chest had probably been hand-carved from the decks of the Pinta, Nina and Santa Maria, and an annoying hi-fi was throbbing from the chandelier. What Whitey hadn’t explained about the size labels was that the top three drawers were for ladies’ suits. Simon lowered his sights and found a pair of trunks to fit his slightly expanding waistline. He stripped and got inside them before the chandelier switched to the next selection and hurried back to poolside where Bonnie, in a bright orange bikini, had just pulled herself up on the decking facing the bungalow. She was too busy shaking water out of her hair to see him. He dived into the water and swam the full width of the pool before surfacing. He came up eye level with her dangling legs. The impulse was too great to resist. He grasped an ankle in each hand and pulled her back into the water in front of him. She screamed a little, spat water and then laughed when she recognized him. The laugh might have been a touch falsetto, but Miss Bonnie Penny had been trained in hotel public relations and a good discipline didn’t go off duty on Sunday.

  Treading water, Simon said, “Do you remember me without my clothes?”

  “You seem to have remembered me without mine,” Bon-me answered.

  “To be ruthlessly honest that’s how I saw you the first time.”

  “Thank you,” Bonnie Penny said. “What are you doing here?”

  “That’s what I swam over to ask you.”

  “I’m always here on Sunday. Whitey holds ‘open pool’ for his friends.”

  “There’s a pool at the Seville Inn.”

  “For the guests. At the Seville I’m just an employee. Race you to the deep end.”

  Bonnie was like an eel. One moment his hands were about her waist; the next she was knifing through the w
ater a good length ahead of him all the way to the end of the pool. It was apparent that Whitey Sanders chose his female friends more for appearance in a bathing suit than aquatic talents because the deep end of the pool was remarkably free of activity, and when Bonnie climbed the ladder and stepped up on the decking she became the first person to penetrate that remote area. Simon was the second. Bonnie led him to a pair of yellow plastic deck chairs where huge, thick towels, courtesy of the Gateway Motel, were waiting. She grabbed one and began to rub Simon’s dripping chest.

  “Isn’t it grand to be alive?” she cried. “The coolness of the water, the warmth of the sun and—oh, even the towel smells good! Am I being awfully animal?”

  “You’re being awfully young and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Simon said. “Where did you meet Whitey Sanders?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “No.”

  “Then I won’t tell you that Whitey’s my boss.”

  “He owns the Seville Inn, too?”

  “Right. He must own about forty percent of La Verde, actually. But nobody cares. He’s such a groovy guy.”

  “Generous?”

  Bonnie had stopped inhaling the aroma of the towel she used to scrub his chest and sat down on one of the chairs. Leisurely, she drew the cloth across her legs. “What does this swimming party look like?”

  “Like dirty old men are coming younger than they used to come,” Simon said. “What happens with these Sunday swims when Whitey’s off someplace in his flying machine—like Tucson, for instance?”

  “Nothing happens. We come anyway.”

  “And no strings attached?”

  Bonnie stopped rubbing her legs and stared at him. There was a moment of suspicious silence between them and then she demanded: “What’s with you, Simon Drake? Do you think I’m Whitey’s girl?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No, not now anyway. I’m nobody’s anything. I free-lance.” In the silence that followed, the sound of Buddy’s trumpet was heard. Penny’s face brightened and she turned toward the sound. “That’s Buddy,” she said. “Isn’t he divine? Oh, he’s got it! He’s got it!”