The Excluded Exile (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 12)

by Frank W. Butterfield

  1198 Sacramento Street

  San Francisco, Cal.

  Saturday, March 5, 1955

  Half past 1 in the morning

  It was past dawn and cloudy outside when I heard a knock on the bedroom door. The room was chilly. I pulled the covers around me and said, "Come in, Gustav."

  The door opened. Instead of Gustav, Mike walked in. He strode across to the bed and knelt down beside me, putting his blazing blue eyes at the same level as mine.

  "Well, good morning," I said in a whisper.

  He kissed me on the cheek, ran his hand through my hair, and then sat down on the floor. "Good morning. Welcome home," he replied in a whisper.

  "How'd you know we were here?"

  "I have my spies." He grinned. "You look nice and tanned."

  I looked at him for a long moment. "Is there something wrong?"

  He didn't reply immediately. Finally, he shook his head. "No. I just thought that, if I came to see you like this, then I wouldn't wanna knock your block off on Monday at the office." He reached over and ran his hand through my hair again.

  I grabbed his hand and kissed the back of it. "I can only say I'm sorry so many times, Mike."

  He nodded. "I know. And not to sound like a broken record, it's just that I worry about you when you're not around. It may take me a long time to get over you desertin' me after Pearl Harbor."

  I looked at him and wondered. "That's the first time you've said that."

  He shook his head. "No, it's not."

  I nodded. "Yes, it is. You've never said that I deserted you before."

  He blinked a couple of times. "That so?"

  "Yeah. That's so."

  He grinned. "Maybe I am getting better."

  I chuckled. "Maybe."

  He leaned forward. "What happened?"

  I rolled my eyes. "I don't know where to begin."

  "The last I heard from you was when you sent the telegram about keeping track of Tom Jenkins."

  "He's upstairs in the Sapphire Room with his squeeze, Bobby Stanhope. We need to find jobs for them. Under the table."

  Mike groaned. "Did you smuggle them into the country?"

  "Yeah. Bobby doesn't have a passport but Tom has one. His tourist visa from when he came in last time should still be good."

  Mike crossed his arms. "This sounds like the kind of thing that Robert should handle. I can't have those kids anywhere near my P.I. license and," he reached over and squeezed my nose, "neither should you."

  I nodded and rubbed my nose. "You haven't done that in a long time."

  He laughed quietly. "No, I haven't, have I? OK, so they're here. What else?"

  "Tom's trust was being raided by his trustee and a bank teller who also happened to live up the street from Tom's house. The bank guy thought that the trustee was stashing the cash in the house so he killed the mother, and the trustee, in an attempt to get the loot. He was gonna do the same to Carter and me—"

  From the other side of the bed, Carter said, "But Captain O'Reilly and John Murphy outsmarted the twit and saved our necks."

  Mike said, "Morning."

  Carter replied, "Decided to barge in and wake Nick up from his beauty sleep instead of killing him, did you?"

  "Yeah. But this time, I blame you as much as him."

  "Do I get a good morning kiss like Nick did, then?"

  "No, not this time." laughed Mike.

  "I'll take it on account. Go on, Nick. Tell him the rest."

  "Before I go on," I said, "how's Sam?" Sam Halversen worked for Mike. He was a childhood friend of Mrs. Kopek, which is how we met him. He'd been hit with a nasty strain of flu from China a few weeks earlier.

  "He's recovering nicely and at home. Your home. I believe he's upstairs in the green room so Mrs. Kopek can keep an eye on him. He'll be back in the office in a week or so."

  "He's here? I wonder why she didn't tell us that last night?"

  "Probably to keep you from running up there and waking him up," replied Carter.

  "And you wouldn't have done the same?" I asked.

  "No. I would have run up, picked him up, and kissed him soundly on the lips. I may do it yet."

  Mike and I laughed at that. After a moment, Mike prompted me. "So?"

  "So, then the homosexual chief inspector—"

  "Sheesh, Nick. How the hell do you always do that?"

  "Do what?" I asked.

  Carter replied, "Mike, son, haven't you figured it out yet? He's like a kid collecting dolls. He's got all the cops and firemen. Hell, he even has an F.B.I. agent. Oh, and he's collected the only homosexual spy that we've ever met."

  "Who was that?" asked Mike.

  "Fellow by the name of Lee that we met in Hawaii. Helped Nick break into China."

  "'Break into'?" I asked.

  "Sure. What else could you call that?"

  "Creating an international incident," replied Mike with a grin.

  "Anyway," I said with some heat, "the chief inspector is now on suspension."

  Mike rolled his eyes. "I suppose you wanna open a Sydney office."

  I nodded. "Of course. Haven't you ever wanted to go down under?"

  Mike laughed. "Sure. So, once again, you destroyed another promising police career. What else?"

  I rolled my eyes again. "This is why you didn't hear from us."

  "Us?" asked Carter.

  Mike said, "Yes, that's the correct term. Go on, Nick."

  "Because he told us to get out of the country."

  "Banned again?"

  "Maybe. It was because the statement we made that supported the arrest of the bank teller required us to admit our engagement in unnatural acts."

  Carter said, "The more unnatural, the better, I'd say."

  Mike laughed. "Hell, yes."

  "Who's telling this story?" I asked.

  Mike pointed his chin at me. "Go on."

  "We'd met an old guy, one Henry Harkaway, a few nights earlier."

  "He's in love with Nick," added Carter.

  Ignoring my husband, I continued, "The arrests happened a week ago. On the Friday. Hargrove, that's the chief inspector, said we had to be gone by Monday when everyone in the government would have copies of the statement. The next flight out wasn't until Tuesday and we couldn't wait for one of our planes, so Murphy suggested we call Henry and we did. Henry had mentioned that he owned a seaplane."

  Carter sat up, rolled over, and rested his head on my right arm. "Mike, you shoulda seen that plane. It was an old Pan Am Clipper. Biggest damn thing I've ever seen." He paused for a moment. "I want one now."

  I laughed. "I think that's the last one in existence. And I can't see Henry giving it up. Plus, where would we keep it?"

  Mike rolled his eyes. Looking at Carter, he said, "I'm counting on you to keep this one in line. Don't disappoint me."

  He and Carter laughed. I wondered if they'd had a conversation about that before.

  "Anyway," I said, "we spent Saturday afternoon and night getting Tom's house packed up. Henry had us drive up the coast to meet him and his crew in the middle of nowhere so we wouldn't be noticed as we left."

  "The crew?" asked Mike.

  Carter replied, "Every goddam one of 'em."

  Mike nodded and said, "I swear, Nick Williams, if you don't know every homosexual in the world, I'd be surprised."

  "Are you two finished?" I asked.

  Mike ran his hand through my hair. "You're getting off easy."

  "Fine," I replied. "So, we flew from Australia to Fiji—"

  "Where it was hot as hell," added Carter.

  "And then we flew to Henry's island."

  "Henry has an island?"

  I nodded. "He found it just before the war. The first war, I mean. And he turned it from a big pile of sand to a garden. Palm trees, banana trees, roses, bamboo. There's even chickens and monkeys. And a house he built himself."

  "Beautiful," was the only thing that Carter said.

  I nodded and sighed. "It was."

  Mi
ke frowned for a moment. "I can't believe it, but I'm finally jealous."

  I reached out and ran my hand through his pomaded hair. "You'll have to go with us next time."

  "Next time?" asked Carter with hope in his voice.

  "Sure. Henry said we'd be back."

  Mike smiled. "I'd like that. And Greg, too?"

  "Of course." I smiled. "He'd love it."

  "Why'd you leave, then?" asked Mike.

  I sat up. "Evelyn." I looked at Mike. He stood and stretched. "How is she?" I asked. "Do you know?"

  He sighed. "She's fine. But she's having trouble eating. That's what Mary told me yesterday."

  "You're in touch with Mary?"

  Looking down at me, he smiled wanly. "Yeah. I'm not as close to them as the two of you, but yeah."

  He walked over to the Chesterfield and looked at the cold fireplace. He rubbed his hands. "Damn, it's cold in here. Do you always keep the windows open at night?"

  Carter jumped out of bed and began to build a new fire. I stood up, pulled on my trousers, and said, "I'm gonna ask Gustav to bring us some breakfast. Any requests?"

  "Flapjacks!" was Carter's immediate answer.

  "Fine by me," added Mike.

  "Be right back." I opened the door and padded down the hall towards the stair.

  As I did, I heard Mike say, "Must be nice having all this help."

  Carter replied, "It's fucking amazing, son."

  They both laughed as I ran down the stairs.

  . . .

  Once we were settled in with breakfast on trays in front of the roaring fire, I asked Mike, "How's Greg?"

  "He's good. I sent him down to L.A. to work on a couple of jobs with Micky and to train him. Guy's good but a little rough around the edges. By the way, you need to check in with that Ben White."

  "Why?" I asked as I bit off a piece of bacon.

  "I think the movie's really gonna happen. But I heard from Micky that Ben's having some trouble with Metro."

  Carter huffed. "Ben's always having trouble with someone."

  I shook my head. "He's just getting his feet wet. I'll check in with him later today."

  Micky was our first hire for an office down in the L.A. area. He was friends with Carlo Martinelli, an ex-fireman who also worked for us down there. Martinelli had worked at the same firehouse with Carter until '53. He and Ben White were lovers and had moved down south a few months earlier. I'd helped Ben set up a production company, including buying the rights to It Was Raining Then, a movie Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had been set to produce in '53 when both their leads had died under mysterious circumstances. Ben was a Hollywood producer, through and through, even if he didn't know it yet.

  Carter asked, "Are you OK with Greg being out of town like that?"

  Mike nodded. "Yeah." He chewed thoughtfully on his bite of flapjacks. "I don't like it but that's the job and he's really good at training the new guys. He's done some wonders here. He also has a nose for telling when someone's not pulling their weight." Looking over at me, he said, "I've fired a couple of loose cannons since you've been gone. They were trouble and it was Greg who told me they would be before there were any signs."

  "Trouble how?" I asked.

  "One of them was harassing Marnie."

  "How so?"

  "Treating her like she was his personal secretary. Interrupting her and demanding she do things for him first."

  "Sounds like a gem. How'd she handle it?"

  "You know Marnie. It mostly rolled off her back. But she let me know the score and I took care of it as soon as she did."

  "Good. What about the other one?"

  Mike shook his head. "I think he was a Bureau plant."

  I looked up from my coffee. "Any proof?"

  "Other than both Greg and Walter being very suspicious of him from the moment he started working. He claimed he'd been a detective in Merced. But when he began to act screwy, I had Walter check. They had no record of him." Walter was our resident brainiac. His research skills were legend.

  "Wait," said Carter. "Aren't we doing employment screening before hiring?"

  Mike nodded. "And his checked out. Then we realized that the phone number he'd listed in Merced for the police department was a private number. When Marnie first called to check the reference, the person had answered as if it were the station. She didn't think anything about it."

  "What tipped you off?"

  Mike laughed. "I don't know quite how to say this but he was just too..." He ran his hand over his face. "He was too normal."

  Carter frowned. "What does that mean?"

  "It was like he was reading from a script. He was the poster child for the well-adjusted homosexual. He had a boyfriend. They lived in Eureka Valley." Mike looked at me. "On Collingwood. Two houses down from Alex and Marnie. Only, when I asked Marnie if she'd ever seen Roscoe, that's his name, she said she hadn't. As far as she knew that house was empty. There were lots of other things that didn't check out. It's like they set him up with a script and a backstory."

  Carter said, "I guess they ran out of actual homosexuals."

  "Or realized that the guys they'd been relying on weren't that reliable," I added.

  Mike shook his head. "Could be."

  I thought for a moment and then said, "This is good news. It confirms, as if we really needed more confirmation, that there are rogue agents behind all this. They're getting sloppy."

  Mike nodded. "When we realized what was going on, that was the first word that came to mind. Definitely sloppy."

  Carter asked, "What about Newland? Did Robert send him packing?"

  Mike nodded. "Yeah. It wasn't pretty. The guy kinda broke down. We had to break into your bar, Nick."

  I looked up, alarmed. "Not the good stuff?"

  Mike laughed. "Don't worry. The rye, not the old stuff your father brought you."

  I grinned at him and asked, "What'd you think of Tony?"

  Mike nodded. "Good man. I got the sense he liked to play loose and fast with things like another P.I. I know."

  "That wouldn't be the shrimp next to me here on the sofa, would it?" asked Carter.

  Mike laughed. "That's the one."

  I rolled my eyes and asked, "Is he still here?"

  "Nope," said Mike with a mouth full of bacon. "I sent him back to Honolulu. Got a telegram yesterday that he found an office and has put in an order for a phone. Also already has a client."

  I was surprised. "What about licensing?"

  Mike shrugged. "Before Tony got here, I asked Kenneth to check on that—"

  "How are our two attorneys in love doing?" I asked, referring to Kenneth Wilcox and Benjamin Ross.

  Mike shook his head. "They're both doing just fine. You know, you weren't gone that long." He took a drink of coffee and then continued. "Anyway, Tony should be OK. The territory rules are pretty loose. But, just in case, I got in touch with a captain I know in the Honolulu P.D. who said he'd help Tony get his license. And watch out for him."

  Carter asked, "One of us?"

  Mike shrugged. "Dunno. He used to be at North Station when I was a patrolman. Moved out there back in 1946. Hell of a nice guy, regardless."

  Right then, there was a knock on the door.

  I looked up to see Marnie poking her head inside the door. I pushed my tray to the side and stood as I said, "Come in, doll."

  She walked in with Alex, her husband, behind her. He seemed to be shy. I couldn't blame him. He was always the odd straight guy out whenever he came over to the house.

  "Sorry to barge in, Nick. I just couldn't wait to come see you." She walked up and gave me a tight hug. "You're so tan!" She looked over at Carter. "And, you too, Carter."

  I kissed her on the cheek and said, "Good to see you, doll. How the hell are you?"

  She stepped back and folded her arms. "I'm mad at you, that's how I am."

  I nodded. "Sorry for not staying in touch."

  Alex walked over, put his arm around Marnie's shoulder, and quietly said, "Don't ever
fucking do that to us again, Nick."

  I looked down at the floor and said, "I'll try not to."

  Mike laughed. "Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one. Wanna take a swing at him, Alex? He deserves it. But," he held up his right hand, "before you do, I think Carter's as much to blame as Nick is."

  Marnie broke free from Alex's arm and walked over to Carter. She put her hands on her hips, looked down at him, and said, "Yeah, you." She poked him in the chest. "Don't do that again, mister. You hear me?"

  He nodded with a contrite expression on his face. "Yes, ma'am. I hear you."

  She sat down next to him, put her arm through his, and sighed. "Who am I kiddin'? I can't stay mad at either of you for long." She wiped away another tear. "But don't make me put a bell around your neck, 'cause I will!"

  We all laughed at that.

  I stood by the Chesterfield and looked around the room, feeling grateful for the wonderful friends and family in my life. Suddenly I had a thought. I walked over to the valise that we'd thrown on the floor by the bathroom door. I reached in and picked up the bundle of letters from my mother. They were still in the red ribbon that Mrs. Tutwiler had wrapped around them.

  Before I could say anything, Carter said, "Alex, son, could you go over and close the bedroom door? Be sure to lock it, if you don't mind. Nick has something important he wants to tell all y'all."

  I watched for a moment as Alex crossed and did what Carter asked. I walked over and sat next to my husband. I handed him the bundle.

  Marnie sat down in the chair across from me and asked, "What are those?" as Alex sat on the arm of the chair.

  "They're letters from my mother."

  She gasped and put her hand over her mouth.

  Carter asked, "Do you want me to read the first one?"

  I scooted up next to him, squeezed my eyes closed, and said, "Yeah."

  I could hear him carefully open the thick envelope. I waited as he read it. I decided to open my eyes. When I did, I could see her beautiful writing on the paper in Carter's hand. I looked across at Mike, who had closed his eyes. Marnie was openly crying. Alex looked worried.

  Carter cleared his throat and started.

  Hotel Geneve

  Londres 130

  Mexico City

  Sunday, January 12, 1930

  My dear Parnell,