“Have you found the diamonds?” I asked.
His head shook. “Originally, they were shipped as patent medicine pills. They’re still down there. Waiting with unlimited patience. Unfortunately, time is taking the ball away from all of us. Especially me.”
“Father,” Eva said, “how long have you known?”
“A couple of months. It’s a relief, really. An end to all the playacting.” He met my eyes. “You may not believe it, Hall, but I don’t enjoy hatchet work.”
“Such as Harold Masterson?”
“Among others.”
“I understand your concern. If the film had been released to the press, the shiny faces of Albert and Martha Klein would’ve appeared on every TV screen in the Western world, along with Eva and Clair.”
“How in the hell do you know about that?”
“Masterson gave me a copy. Your daughter’s seen it, too.” I pointed at my filing cabinet. “I can run it if you like.”
“God, no.” He coughed. “Do you think it matters now? I’ve spent fifty years trying to squash the memory of those two. That’s why I never begrudged Petacchi, even though he was a millstone around my neck. I’ve always appreciated services efficiently rendered.” He snorted in contempt at Tom. “So now you can pick him up and be a big hero. Not that I give a damn.”
Eva examined her father’s face. “Is revenge all you ever lived for?”
“You of all people ask me that?”
“Am I supposed to be grateful? ‘My Father the Murderer!’”
“What did you expect me to do? Do you have any idea how you looked when I brought you from the Carpathia? I can still remember Dr. Stevens—oh, how circumspect he was—breaking it gently. But how delicately can you phrase the news that your ten-year-old daughter’s been in a gang shagging?”
His shouts tore at the room. “Do you know how I felt for fifty years? Taking you to endless specialists. You didn’t say one word for two years. Two years, Eva! Paying off quacks who advised me to drop you in some snake pit. Hearing you scream in the night. The suicide attempts. The look of ungodly terror in your eyes when I, or anyone, tried to show a little affection. And you’re asking me to feel guilty?”
“You’re the one who hired them!” Eva cried.
“You’re a child in these matters …”
“Bullshit!” She flung an arm my way. “After all he’s said today, you have the goddam nerve to preach to me? Without your help the Kleins would probably have ended up in a padded cell, where they belonged. So you put them on your payroll and got burned. You lost your wife. You received your daughter as damaged goods. But you still had one more game to play!”
I rose from my desk. “Eva, cut it out!”
She ignored me, pacing before her father. Her shadow swung back and forth across the skeletal face.
“You could play gangster! All in the name of sweet vengeance. How delightful to be a righteous killer. Was it a thrill? Did it give you a kick, Father?”
“Are you telling me you don’t feel anything? After what they did?”
Eva stood still, gulping in air. “It’s a little late, isn’t it? I’m not sorry they’re dead, except when I think how they died. But I can’t nuture hate for the rest of my life. I’ll leave that to you.”
Ryker said nothing. Air rasped through his windpipes. His eyes were oddly triumphant, trapped in a dying body.
“Whatever anyone says, they’re gone. They paid very painfully.”
My wife glared at me. She was angry—really angry—like I hadn’t seen her in years. And I knew why. Disgust over this day of thrust-and-parry.
Well, she was right. I felt a little disgusted myself. I said to Ryker: “There’s one thing you’ve forgotten.”
“What?”
“Who killed John McFarland?”
“McFarland! I had nothing to do with it. He saved Eva’s life!”
“That’s right. You don’t have a motive. So the question remains. Who killed him?”
“Son, what are you saying?”
I regarded him mildly. “I haven’t said anything, have I? I can’t state for sure who killed McFarland; not anything I could prove in court. But the prime suspect is Albert Klein.”
Mike Rogers snapped to attention. “What!”
“Or Martha Klein.” My shoulders shrugged. “Either or both. I don’t know.”
“Goddamit!” Ryker spat. “What do you mean?”
His voice still rang in my ears as I sighed. “Albert and Martha Klein aren’t dead.”
31
A low growl bubbled from the depths of his chest. “What are you trying to pull, Hall?”
“Nothing. I merely stated a fact.”
“‘Fact’ shit! The fact is that Petacchi killed both of them!”
“No, Mr. Ryker. Alfredo Petacchi took credit for two murders in Honolulu because the victims were identified as Albert and Martha Klein.”
“Christ, what are you talking …”
“Tom,” I said, “will you please explain?”
He unclipped a Thermofax copy from his notebook and showed it to Ryker. “This is an FBI missing persons report dated January 25, 1942, made by a Margaret C. Kerans of Glendale, California. Her father, Mr. Brian G. Winter, age fifty-two, left Los Angeles that previous November twenty-fourth on Pan American Clipper Flight 208, headed for Honolulu as the first step in a long overdue vacation. The plane arrived safely in Hawaii, but neither she nor anyone else has seen Brian Winter since …”
Turning away from the great bloated clouds racing past the sunlit window, Brian Winter reclined his chair, held both hands over his eyes, and listened to his thoughts.
Forget her. You’re on a holiday. That trip to the islands you always promised the kids you’d take. Forget the mastectomies and the X-rays and the doctors with their hearty, taxidermic smiles. Forget the radium treatments and the morphine and her gray dry skin and the look in her eyes the last time you saw her.
Forget the funeral, with the black Cadillac limousines and the lilies and the damp words of pity and the fifty-dollar-a-minute pieties and her thin body, the raven-black wig against the purple satin, wrapped in a Nieman-Marcus suit, the face smeared with rouge, pink and waxy, like a freak out of the circus …
Winter bolted from his seat and unsteadily wobbled toward the first-class lounge. A blue-uniformed stewardess smiled in casual concern, then let him pass. Patting his forehead with a silk handkerchief, he settled on a couch.
“Anything I can get you, sir?” Another stewardess bent down to him.
“A … a Beefeater’s and tonic, please.”
As she hustled away, he leaned back, breathing slower and taking vague comfort at the spinning props and roaring engines beyond the window.
Winter looked up at the middle-aged couple playing euchre across the aisle.
“Your drink, sir.”
“Oh! Thanks.”
Holding the glass in one hand, Winter listened to the tinkling ice cubes and watched the couple. She grinned wickedly as her husband failed to make his third trick.
“Ha! Two points for me. You oughta go back to playing Fish!”
“I’d be even better off if you stopped cheating.”
“Sour grapes! Nothing but kvetching.”
Winter smiled as the man redealt each of them five cards. Midwesterners, he thought. Airborne toward that time-of-your-life vacation. No, maybe East Coast. New York? Jersey?
“Excuse me.”
Winter blinked away his daze. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry,” the woman beamed, “but you look so lonely sitting there I couldn’t help but noticing. Would you like to join us?”
“Well, I …”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” She flushed. “I’m Martha Klein and this is my husband, Albert.”
“How ’do.”
“Uh, hello.” Winter shook Klein’s bearish hand. “I … I wouldn’t want to impose …”
“Oh, come on!” he boomed. “You do know how to play, don’t yo
u?”
“Yes.” Winter scooted into a chair facing the table between the Kleins.
“You know Railroad?”
He scratched the back of his head. “I’m a little rusty …”
“Cutthroat, then! You know that?”
Winter nodded.
“Fine!” Albert slapped him on the back. “Cutthroat it is!”
Three hours passed and the doodling on the score pad reached toward the bottom of the page.
Martha Klein looked up from her cards. “Well, so you’re a widower, you poor man.” She clucked her tongue at Albert. “Lately it seems like so many men are losing their wives.”
Winter took no pleasure in picking up the trick. “One of the hazards of getting old.”
“I’m afraid so. That’s why Al and I decided to take this trip.”
Albert grunted. “Are you going to play, or have you turned into a pillar of salt?”
“Oh, hush up!” She turned back to Winter. “We scrimped and saved for the kids year after year. Finally we decided it was our turn, before it was too late.”
“You’re very wise.” Winter focused unseeingly at his cards. “I waited just one year too long.”
“Yep.” Albert made the fifth trick, then entered his three points for the march. “Time steals up on you. After Martha and me got rescued from the Titantic, we never took so much as the next sunrise for granted.”
“Really?” Winter glanced up in interest as he passed the turn-up for trump.
“Really. And here we are, nearly thirty years later, playing euchre at ten thousand feet.” He chuckled. “Life’s funny sometimes.”
Winter straightened in his chair. “Are you kidding about being on the Titanic?”
“What? Hell, no!” Albert scowled as his wife made the trick. “God’s Truth!”
Four hours later the Clipper landed at Honolulu Airport and the Kleins had become “Al” and “Martha” to Brian Winter. He grabbed his two-suiter from the terminal’s baggage claim and looked rather forlornly out upon the stormy night on the other side of the windows.
Martha Klein’s face was sympathetic. “Where will you be staying, Mr. Winter?”
“The Royal Hawaiian.”
“Oh! We’re booked at the Moana. Practically neighbors! Would you like to have dinner with us tonight?”
About to beg off, Winter took another look at the desolate terminal.
“Why yes, Martha. I’d love it.”
Brian Winter was drunk. Roaringly. Rum and vodka and pineapple juice poured from the Trader Vic’s bar in an unceasing flow of deadly “tropical coolers” which resembled a Carmen Miranda headdress. Canny bastards, these Hawaiians!
He giggled while red blowfish lamps and rattan walls wheeled around him. The Kleins swam up from the bottom of a wine-dark pool.
“… one last drink!” Al was saying. “We’ve still got some champagne left.”
“Champagne?” Winter held his head. “On top of all this booze? My God, Al …”
The Tattinger ’32 frothed pinkly in each of the upheld glasses.
“A toast!” Albert Klein laughed.
Martha sidled closer to Winter. “What to?”
“To us. True-blue, but fading fast!”
Foam trickled down his throat as Brian Winter laughed and laughed, unaware of Martha Klein’s fingers snatching the passport from his jacket.
Brian Winter told the Kleins the bad news when they met for breakfast at the Royal Hawaiian.
Al frowned in sympathy. “When did you notice it missing?”
“This morning. I hung up my jacket and went through the pockets, but no passport. I searched everywhere; the poor maid turned the room upside down.” He swirled cream into his coffee. “I simply don’t understand why anyone would steal something like that.”
“Maybe you just misplaced it,” Martha eagerly offered.
“‘Misplaced it’ and then some. I’m going to go to the State Department and file a report …” His voice trailed off into concern. “Al, what’s the matter? You don’t look so good.”
“I said the same thing myself.” Martha worriedly felt her husband’s forehead. “Maybe we should see the doctor here …”
He pushed her away. “Pipe down, woman! Jesus, you’ll have the hearse coming any minute!” Sighing, he nursed his coffee. “It’s called a hangover, my dear.”
As the waiter approached with orange juice, Al pointed a finger at Winter. “Don’t let me throw a wet blanket over your vacation. Martha wanted to go see the Pali this morning. You two can run along and let me die in peace.”
“I shouldn’t leave you alone,” she said.
“Bull.” He chucked the keys of their rented car across the table. “Brian, take the Ford and have a good time. You can even check out the State Department on the way home.”
The waiter passed juice glasses to the Kleins and started to walk toward Winter.
“Allow me,” Albert said, taking the glass off the tray. A tiny white pellet hidden between his index and middle finger dropped into the juice as he passed it to Winter’s hand.
“Well, if you’re sure you want to stay …”
“I’ll cope, with a little luck.” He rubbed his temples and watched Winter down the juice. “Just take the concerned Mrs. Klein away. As the Eskimos say, she’s all yours.”
Hedges of syringa lined the soft shoulders of the Pali Highway as the Ford chugged up the Nuuanu Valley.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Martha Klein nodded. “If I could only grow them like that back in St. Petersburg.”
Winter glanced away from the wheel. “Homesick?”
“Oh, gracious no!” She sighed. “I can’t wait to see the Pali. From all the pictures I’ve seen, it must be breathtaking.”
“Breathtaking and full of bloody history,” he snorted. “Like most landmarks.”
“I don’t like to think about things like that,” Martha said in gentle disapproval.
The car rounded a slow curve. As Winter turned into the straightway he suddenly winced.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten breakfast. Seems to be kicking back on me.”
“Is that a fact?”
Trembling, his lips parted. “I don’t feel so good …”
From that moment Winter was unable to talk. Sinking on the seat, he wretched over and over, hands sliding off the wheel.
The car steamrollered down the road as Martha Klein grabbed the wheel. She kicked his writhing feet from the pedals. A low blubbering sound drooled out of his mouth, then faded when she brought the car under control.
She glanced both ways. The Ford had the highway to itself. Quickly she drove into the roadside ditch, switched off the engine, then turned the key back to the ignition position.
Brian Winter lay facedown. She straightened him up, pulled the doctored passport from her purse and slipped it into his breast pocket. In one swift moment he had become the late Albert Klein.
She gently felt for the pulse in his throat. The eyes had no more expression than two pieces of carved soap.
Satisfied, Martha Klein grabbed Winter by the lapels and flung his head against the windshield.
Glass flew—delicate snowflake patterns crackling through the pane. The fissures radiated back to a red dripping center.
She dropped the body and picked up a glass sliver. Carefully inspecting herself in the mirror, she gave her face and arms a few strategically placed cuts.
Martha let the sliver tinkle to the floor. Except for the metallic pinging of heat dissipating under the hood, there was silence.
She left the car and started walking down the highway toward Honolulu. Martha cast a wary eye on the big gray clouds boiling over the mountain crests, but she plodded confidently onward. Rain or no rain, a car was going to show. She had her story all prepared. It was only a matter of time.
32
“… as usual, Albert and Martha chose their victim with exquisite care,” I said. “Brian Winter was recently widowed, unatta
ched, and unknown in Hawaii. Of course, he also bore a rough physical resemblance to Albert Klein.
“No doubt, he found them charming. As you know, Eva, they could turn good cheer on and off at will. It was child’s play to sweep Winter into a fast vacation friendship. And, in a carefree moment, very simple to snatch up his passport. The Kleins always had a talent for forgeries. In the privacy of their hotel room they merely airbrushed out the signature and pertinent information on Brian Winter and substituted Albert Klein’s. Soon after, they slipped something into Winter’s food or drink before he took a nice Sunday drive with Martha.
“The bitch.” I smiled bitterly. “That bitch with the trickling tears and the voice crackling with shell-shocked grief. I can still hear her. ‘My husband did not have a heart attack. He was murdered; poisoned. You’ve got to find them, officer. You’ve got to find whoever did it.’
“So the ambulance came and took the body away and, lo and behold, the doctors diagnosed nicotine sulfate poisoning.”
I stared up at the ceiling, then sighed and rubbed my eyes. “And I bought it. At least the part that mattered. I was twenty years old and so damned worldly. Martha Klein was filed under ‘Distraught but Harmless.’ I still believed it when I went to pick her up at the Moana Hotel, where she and Albert had finished disposing of yet another newly acquired friend.”
Reaching into my desk drawer, I pulled out a green glass bud vase wrapped in a clear plastic bag. “This belonged to a maid at the Moana Hotel named Catherine Maurois, who was HPD’s prime suspect in the murder of Martha Klein. She called in sick to her manager and went home early in the afternoon of November thirtieth, a few hours before I discovered the … corpse in Room 307.” My finger shook as I set the vase on the blotter. “No one ever saw her again. She followed Brian Winter into limbo. But I was lucky enough to get this vase from her daughter. Tom and his people at the Yard were able to lift some good latent prints.”
Tom cleared his throat. “There are prints belonging to a half dozen different people on that vase. But at least two—a right thumb and little finger—match those in the HPD and FBI file. The Late Great Martha Klein, needless to say.”
The Memory of Eva Ryker Page 29