Mecca for Murder

by Stephen Marlowe

  “Name it.”

  “Who told you about me?”

  He laughed his technicolor laugh. “Sucker,” he said.

  “Who told you?”

  “My client. The colonel.”

  “Congratulations,” I said, giving him the money. “You win a hundred dollars.”

  He took off his straw hat and scratched his hair, which was dark and thinner than mine. He offered me a brief smile, but it was gone before I could pick up the option. He said, “You could have done it the easy way.”

  “I could have been a divorce dick,” I said.

  Now the smile was a real one. “So could I,” Lash said. “We ought to form a partnership.”

  “Not this time, Lew.”

  “The colonel’s going wherever he wants.”

  “So long,” I said.

  “You won’t stop him.”

  The door closed behind him’ and I heard his footsteps going slowly down the hall. Lyman Lee Tyler had told him about me. I didn’t like that. I thought it meant that Lyman Tyler had stayed on all night at the Lancaster Arms.

  I went on thinking that until the mailman brought the mail at eleven o’clock. There was a letter from Fawzia Totah. I opened it and took out a pink check made out for fifty dollars to my order. The postmark on the envelop was seven fifty-five this morning, which seemed to indicate Fawzia was not entertaining a lover last night. There was a note that read: “Dear Chester, I still like you. I like you very much. I want to thank you again for yesterday. Please don’t get into any trouble on my account. Your confused, Fawzia.”

  So she was entertaining Limerock until the cock crew. So she wasn’t. I lit a cigarette and thought, What the hell do you care, Drum? Stop her from going and you won’t even get another experimental kiss. You warned her. What more can you do? But stop the boy friend and you get a thousand bucks.

  I dialed a number on the telephone and the receptionist said, “State Department, Protocol Section.” I asked for Jack Morley and said, when he, informed me of his presence, “This is the guy they’re grooming to take J. Edgar Hoover’s place.”

  “Drummer boy! How the hell are you?”

  “In need of a favor, but otherwise pretty good. How’s the wife and kid?”

  “He has two teeth already. The doc says it’s pretty early, you know?”

  “Betty as pretty as ever?”

  “Stop soft-soaping me. What kind of favor do you want?”

  “I’m not soft-soaping you. One of these days I’m going to make a play for that wife of yours.”

  “She’ll be delighted to hear it.”

  “Two passports,” I said. “An Army colonel and a girl who works for the Islamic Center. Can they be held up for a week or so?”

  “My God. That’s not legal. What for, Chet?”

  “One for a real good reason and the other to make me some real good money.”

  “You know I’d like to do it for you. I hate like the devil to say no.”

  “We’ve been friends long enough. If it’s something you don’t want to do, for ethical reasons or for no reason at all except you think I’m a pain in the ass, just forget it. But I’m still going to make a play for Betty one of these days.”

  “If it was just me, Chet. I can’t do it alone, though. A guy I know in passports would probably do it for me, but he’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t be able to look himself in the eye for a year. You understand? To speed up a passport or something like that is a different story altogether.”

  “All right. Something like that. I’ll settle for you getting my passport out of hock. I may need it.”

  “Where for?”

  “Saudi Arabia, but I’ll worry about the visa.”

  “The last time you went out of the country,” Jack groaned, “was to Venezuela last winter. Because of what happened, they lifted your passport. Remember?”

  “I’m probably not going anyplace,” I said. “This is just in case.”

  “When do you need it by?”

  “Monday or Tuesday.”

  “My God, Saudi Arabia. The only business we have for Saudi Arabia these days is pilgrim business.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I said. “Monday, Jack, and thanks a lot.”

  “I’m sorry about that other—”

  “Hell, I was nuts to ask you. Give my regards to the family.”

  I hung up and found the office bottle of gin. It wasn’t even close to noon. I got the orange-grapefruit juice from the icebox and launched a glass of it with gin. If I couldn’t stop Fawzia and Lyman Lee Tyler by stopping their passports, I would have to do it the hard way.

  I thought of Jack Morley, who had gone through the F.B.I. Academy with me and who gave the bureau up a little after I had given it up. But Jack had settled down with Betty and a good job at the State Department and I had settled down with an office that overlooked the Treasury Building but didn’t get to see much of what they made there, and a bottle of gin too early and too alone.

  The telephone rang. It was Lew Lash. He said he had just returned to his office. He said a hundred and fifty. He said it was my last chance. He said I didn’t have a chance and he said I knew I didn’t have a chance. I imitated his technicolor laugh and hung up on him.

  I called Sammy Green, who ran a three-man agency over on H Street. I had two hundred dollars for Sammy if he would give me his undivided attention from the time I said go—which would be before the weekend passed—for a period of not more than one week.

  “Is it honest?” Sammy said.

  “If we don’t get caught, it’s honest.”

  “You mean it’s morally honest but it ain’t legally honest?”

  “Something like that.”

  “All right, Drum. But I better not tell the old lady. Would you believe it, she’s got a list of every P.I. in D.C.—those I can split a fee with and those I can’t. I worked with you before, so I know you’re okay. But you’re on the old lady’s can’t list. You’re trouble.”

  “But you’ll do it, Sammy?”

  “Me or one of my ops. It depends on what’s cooking when you call. Okay?”

  “I’d rather have you.”

  “If I can get away Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. It was a ritual word with Sammy Green.

  “Okay,” Sammy said, and hung up.

  My next call was long distance to a number in Luray, Virginia. After three rings a trouble operator cut in to tell me that the number was temporarily disconnected. I had thought it would be. It was part of my plan. The next step was finding Limerock Tyler and Fawzia preferably together. It wasn’t a very good plan, but it was the best I could dream up under the circumstances.

  It was why Sammy Green’s wife put me on her can’t list. I have never met the lady, but her instincts are good.

  The police and the F.B.I. would call my plan kidnaping.

  Chapter Nine

  I drove the De Soto back to Florida Avenue, where I live, a few minutes after noon. A slight, green-smelling breeze drifted down from the campus of the college as I got out of the car, put the top up and walked to the corner of 6th Street, where I had parked the old Chevvy. Chester Drum, two-car bachelor. The refrigerator-white De Soto convertible with the blue top and blue leather interior was because I liked refrigerator-white De Soto convertibles with blue tops and blue leather interiors. The gray Chevvy was for business. Tailing someone in the convertible, I would be as conspicuous as a wrestler in a chorus line.

  The Chevvy rolled past the Uline Ice Arena on M Street and west to Thomas Circle, where I picked up Massachusetts Avenue. The early lunch-hour crowds were searching along Embassy Row, the women in sunback dresses and the men in tropical suits. Tourists pointed at the minaret of the Islamic Center as I parked the car.

  It was Friday, a little after noon. It was hard to believe I had parked right about here and entered the Islamic Center looking for Fawzia Totah only this past Tuesday. I put my wrists against the cooler steering wheel and waited.

  At 12:2
8 she came out the front door of the center and walked briskly across the lawn. She wore a dark green sleeveless dress with white lace trimming, copper earrings, and a copper pendant hanging from’ a copper chain. She came very close to the Chevvy but she did not see me.

  She walked west toward Dupont Circle. I started the Chevvy and pulled out into traffic as she neared the corner. She got into a green and ivory two-door Nash Rambler at the corner and I rolled slowly along. I wasn’t worried about losing her. She’d brake for Sheridan Circle a few blocks ahead and I’d catch her there and hold her. But I saw her taking Massachussetts straight through, the Rambler leaving its lane to pass a stream of slower traffic. Wherever Fawzia was going, she was in a hurry.

  It wasn’t far. We took the overpass across Potomac Parkway and cut left on the first cross street, within sight of the Naval Observatory. Montrose Park was invitingly green up ahead, guarded by the enormous tan fortress of the Montrose Park Hotel. I hung back because the traffic was light out here, but stepped on it when Fawzia pulled up to the hotel’s tree-lined driveway and got out of the Rambler almost before it stopped, dropping the keys in a liveried doorman’s hand. He touched two fingers to the bill of his cap, then turned and watched how an ex-belly dancer walked, in a hurry, from the curb and up three steps to the lobby entrance.

  He shook his head and smiled. Before he could climb behind the wheel of the Rambler and think whatever thoughts the vision had engendered, I pulled up alongside, stuck my head out the window of the Chevvy and said, “Know her?”

  “Not by name.”

  I leered at him. “Who cares about her name?”

  He appreciated a fellow patron of the arts. “You should see her in a bathing suit,” he said.

  “Have you?”

  “Couple of times. In the pool. She comes here once or twice a week all summer. Bro-ther.”

  “What do I do with the car?” I said.

  “Well, I can take it down the ramp or you can park it in the lot. Be a dollar either way.”

  I settled for the parking lot. The Chevvy was way out of its class, sharing the gravel with Caddys, Chryslers, Jaguars and a Citroen or two. I walked back to the hotel past a thick hemlock hedge which flanked the sundeck of the Montrose Park Hotel swimming pool. At the end of the hedge a man collected a dollar from me. I asked him about the pool.

  “You a member?” he said.

  “No.”

  “It’s two-fifty for the day, suit and towel included. You go inside and turn left and follow the sign.”

  I went inside and turned left and followed the sign. The Montrose Park Hotel was, like many another place on the outskirts of D.C., half hotel and half country club. Tropical plants with leaves as big as umbrellas and as glossy as green leather grew out of meandering black earth troughs in the lobby. Functional modern furniture squatted on carpet islands. There was a lot of plate glass and roof-supporting columns with blue-tinted mirrors. I followed the sign down a flight of naked wooden steps which clung to the curtained wall like lichen to a rock and deposited me on a lower level of the lobby. A twin row of shops with Fifth Avenue names led to cashiers’ booths and turnstyles.

  A girl in pink shorts and blue halter told me it would be two dollars and fifty cents. The smile was as brief as her hotel uniform when I told her I was only looking for someone. We played with the idea for a few minutes, but finally she let me through. A sign showed the way to the men’s locker room, another to the women’s. A third led you past a trough of heavily chlorinated water to the sundeck, an expanse of porous pale-blue concrete sporting round metal tables with beach umbrellas over them, stiff metal chairs and a few dozen sun-worshippers in tinted glasses, bathing suits and Coppertone.

  Fawzia Totah was sitting near the edge of the swimming pool, which was shaped like a cock’s comb. She wore a black one-strapped bathing suit of stretch nylon, the kind that would fit any size from Tom Thumb’s kid sister to Primo Carnera’s girl friend. It fit her like paint fits a terra cotta statue. Her skin was darker than I had thought it would be. Her legs were longer than I had thought they would be. She sat there with her knees up and surrounded by her arms. Picture of a girl hugging herself when every man on the sundeck would like to be hugging her.

  She let go of her knees and lit a cigarette. She was facing the entrance to the men’s locker room, and watching it. She took three short, angry puffs, ground the cigarette out on the concrete, and field-stripped it. Limerock must have taught her that, I thought.

  A bronzed lad with a good physique came by, giving her the eye. Fawzia shriveled him with a glance. I went back to the lower-level lobby and thanked the girl in pink shorts and blue halter for trusting me. I found a telephone booth near the naked wooden stairs and dialed Sammy Green’s office.

  A voice I did not recognize answered the phone. “Green Detective Agency. Lasitter speaking,” it said.

  “This is Chester Drum. Sammy around?”

  “No, he ain’t. He got called down to Alexandria. He figured you might call, Drum. He says I’m your boy.”

  “I’m at the Montrose Park Hotel. Lower lobby, in a seersucker suit. Bring bathing trunks unless you like the kind they rent you.”

  “I heard it was something … what I mean, a shady deal.”

  “Not from Sammy Green, you didn’t,” I said. Suddenly I disliked the voice on the other end of the wire. It was a voice which rubbed its hands together.

  “Sammy said to get ready for a shady deal. No kidding.”

  “Bring whatever you’ll need for a few days,” I said, ignoring the remark. “Nothing fancy.”

  “Rod?”

  “No,” I said. I had my own Magnum .357 in the shoulder rig. “How soon can you be here?”

  “Figure an hour.”

  “Take a cab.”

  I hung up and bought a newspaper and went upstairs to the main lobby to read it. On the first page of the second section there was a little piece on Al Hajj Azaayim Bey, director of the Islamic Center. He was resting in a small private hospital in the southeast section of the city. He had divided the American entry in the journey to Mecca into two sections to give himself forty-eight additional hours of rest, the article said. The first section would leave next Tuesday and the bey’s next Thursday. A representative of the Saudi Arabian ambassador would see each party off at the airport.

  I took my newspaper downstairs and had two bacon and tomato sandwiches and a chocolate malt in the Montrose Park coffee shop. The sports section said the Senators got their lumps at Griffith Stadium last night. They always got their lumps, particularly in late August. The sports section also said the Yanks and Dodgers were driving for their respective pennants. I didn’t think it was very original.

  Lasitter met me in the lower lobby fifty minutes after I had called Sammy Green’s office. He was wearing a whipped-cream white sport shirt over chocolate slacks. He was a little man with short legs and a long, narrow torso. He had a long face, too, as expressive as a hatrack, with blue, wrinkled pouches under small deep-set eyes, a narrow nose with the red, swollen tip of the habitual drinker, a small straight slash of a mouth and a weak chin. He was carrying an ancient Gladstone bag spotted with the faded remnants of stickers.

  I disliked him on sight. We shook hands. His palm was small, hot and damp. He said, “What gives?”

  I jerked a thumb toward the entrance to the swimming pool. “Dame inside,” I said, “getting more stares than a Marilyn Monroe calendar. She’s waiting for a guy who probably got here by now. I don’t know what he looks like, but if you were a girl you’d probably whistle at him. The dame is wearing a black bathing suit with a single strap. Fits her like skin. If you get close enough, her eyes are violet. Watch them. Don’t let them know you’re watching them.”

  “No kidding?”

  I let that one pass. It was my fault.

  “Then what?”

  “They’ll have to change when they come out. Beat them out here and give me the word, then drift out to the parking lot and wait in the
rear seat of a gray Chevvy with this number.” I wrote the license number on the margin of the first page of the newspaper and gave it to him. “You got it all?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t get it.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, trying to be friendly. “I’m not sure I do, either.”

  “What are we gonna do, snatch ’em?”

  “What the hell makes you think so?”

  “It just looked like a snatch job to me, that’s all.”

  “All right,” I said. “Get in there and do as you’re told.”

  “You don’t have to bite my head off. Is it a snatch job or ain’t it a snatch job?”

  “Would it matter?”

  I was right about his voice. He rubbed his hands together. “Sammy’s got me on a salary,” he said. “It don’t even leave enough do re me for a fifth of hootch. If it ain’t a snatch job, okay, but if you’re gonna snatch ’em like I think you’re gonna …” He rubbed his hands together again.

  I took fifty dollars from my wallet and gave it to him. The money disappeared. “And fifty more to match it after,” he said, and headed for the girl in the nearest cashier’s booth.

  A cigarette cooled me off some. I went upstairs and had a bourbon highball at the bar, and that helped too. Then I walked outside and found the doorman idling against his call desk.

  “Remember the dame?” I said.

  He looked at me blankly.

  “Green and ivory Nash Rambler? She looks better in a bathing suit?”

  “I read you now.”

  “You’re right, pal. She looks delicious in a bathing suit. I’ve decided to eat her.”

  “Well, I wish you luck, General.”

  “It’s Major,” I said. “But how did you ever know I was in the Army?”

  “I guess a fellow gets to know, he’s been in my job long enough, General.”

  “You certainly do, pal. How would you like to be of service to the armed forces of your country?”

  “How so?”

  “You’ve seen her in the pool, you said. She usually meet the same guy?”

  “A colonel. A light colonel. He’s in there right now.”

  “Come by car?”