“Coffee doesn’t keep you awake, I guess.”
“It never did me.”
“Well, all right then. Do you do this show every Wednesday?”
“Every Wednesday.”
“Maybe I’ll come again sometime.”
“Let us know. Usually Joe is here. I’m sure you’ll be talking with him, so you and Joe will be old friends the next time you come in to see the show.”
“Right. I’ve gotta talk to Mr. Khoury.”
Part Two
I’m no genius, sir. All I can do is get every fact I can find, put ’em together, and when I come across little inconsistencies I have to find the explanation.
Eight
Yussef Khoury strode into the surf at the San Luis Rio pier. The fishermen on the pier regarded him with hostility. They didn’t like scuba divers fooling around in the water near the pier. Sometimes one .of them would get tangled up in a fishing line. Sometimes one of them would hook himself and then would complain. Khoury had gone into the water here only once before and was not aware of how the fishermen felt. He wouldn’t have cared anyway.
The wind blew warm and gentle on this Wednesday afternoon, August 10, and the surf was not running hard. Swimming out, he was soon beyond where the waves churned up sand. Through his mask he could see the sandy bottom, and he could see five or ten yards ahead. He was aware of the fishing lines and avoided them. He swam between two of them and then between two piles and beneath the pier. Under the pier, visibility was more restricted, but he could see where he was going.
He swam along, working his flippers smoothly, heading for the end of the pier.
Reaching the end, he went to the bottom and was in some twenty feet of water. He had told Kim not to throw the Bali-Songs and the pry bar but only to drop them. If waves and current had not moved them, they should be lying on the sand and gravel just below the end of the pier. The fishermen cast their lines out, but he hoped to find what he was looking for closer in.
Finding the knives was easy. Kim had used good sense and had opened them, so they would move less readily and would be more visible when he came for them. He found one lying within six feet or so of a fisherman’s hook, with only a little sand drifted over it. The other one was no more than four feet distant from the first. The pry bar was a little more difficult. It was half buried in sand and might in fact have stayed there unfound indefinitely.
He closed the Bali-Songs with gloved hands and stuck them in his weighted belt. Carrying the burglar tool in his left hand, he swam slowly forward, watching intently for the lines dropped by the men on the dock.
He held back while a fish investigated some bait, seized it, and thrashed in its struggle against the upward tug on the line. Joe Khoury ate fish with much pleasure, but he had always scorned the simpletons who threw their lines into the water and dragged the creatures out one at a time to flop and suffocate on the dock or in a boat. His sympathy was with the fish, and he was for an instant tempted to swim forward and cut the line.
But it was essential that he draw no attention to himself, so he swam past the fishing lines and out to sea.
He stayed close to the bottom as he swam out into deeper water. Scuba diving had been his sport for a decade, and he swam confidently. He had the best of equipment, years of experience, and knew his own limitations. As he swam farther out, where the water was fifty feet deep and more, the water became clearer. He saw seals hunting. He spotted a huge turtle. He saw one six-foot shark, but it did not frighten him. He knew the shark would see him as a smoothly moving creature, obviously one not sick or injured, and too big to attack. He could not be certain that the shark actually saw him, but he judged it had, and it went past and on, taking no apparent interest in him.
Two hundred yards or so off the beach he came upon a landmark that he had heard about and then located during his first swim here. It was a twin-engine airplane that had landed on the water in 1968. The pilot and passenger had escaped and were rescued. The plane still lay on the bottom, corroded and slowly collapsing, festooned with weed that acted as camouflage, yet entirely recognizable for what it had been. It told him how far out he was and how far he had to go.
A hundred yards beyond the airplane he came to what he wanted. It was the edge of a steep slope down to deeper water. The slope by no means marked the edge of the continental shelf, but it marked the end of water less than a hundred feet deep and the beginning of water two and three hundred feet deep. The bottom here was a forest of gently undulating kelp, alive like a tropical forest with ten thousand species of underwater creatures, very few of which the scuba diver could ever see.
Khoury swam just beyond the edge of the slope and let go of the burglar tool. It dropped slowly down and disappeared in the kelp. He disliked having to surrender the Bali-Songs to the sea. They were beautiful objects, but he could not risk keeping them. Reluctantly he dropped one, then the other, and they followed the pry bar, down and out of sight, never to be seen again.
Yussef Khoury surfaced, just to orient himself, to see if current had carried him north or south of the pier at San Luis Rio. He adjusted his return course a little to the north and went down again about twenty feet, to be beneath the chopping propellers of boats that might come speeding by. Satisfied with what he had accomplished, and grateful to be in the challenging yet forgiving water, he swam toward the beach.
2
Columbo sat on a wooden bench on the sand some distance from the pier. He knew Yussef Khoury was out in the water somewhere. Mrs. Takeshi had told him Mr. Khoury had gone out scuba diving, to soothe his spirits, to be away for a little while from the agony of the murders committed in his house. He had told her he was going to San Luis Rio; and, sure enough, parked a little distance from the pier was the distinctive gull-wing Mercedes.
“Yeah,” one of the fishermen on the pier had said, “some damn dummy is out there someplace, if he ain’t drownded. Went wobblin’ down the beach like a half-wit turtle and into the water. Maybe half an hour ago.”
Columbo squinted into the sunlight on the water. Now and again he thought he saw a head bob up, enveloped in black rubber, but it was his imagination, apparently, because he never spotted the black lump a second time anywhere near the same place.
He had finished the cigar he’d begun just before he went into Hammond’s and had decided not to light another one. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t, because he had tried his every pocket and couldn’t find a match. Maybe it was good luck. A man could smoke too many cigars.
On the other hand, he’d found the yellow pencil his wife had put in his inside jacket pocket this morning. She’d sharpened it but had put it in point down, and it had poked a little hole for itself and slipped down inside the jacket’s lining. So he had a pencil for once—just when he didn’t have anything to write.
Something was going through his mind while he waited for Khoury. He enjoyed limericks, but he was having trouble with this one. It started—
* * *
There was a young man from New York
Who feasted on cabbage and pork.
It made him quite ill
So they gave him a pill—
* * *
And then what? He was tempted to go up to the telephone at the bait shack and call his wife to ask her if she knew. But then Khoury might come out and he might miss him. So…
Anyway, here he came!
A man stumbled out of the surf fifty yards north of the pier and stood for a moment shaking his head while the surf rolled in around him. Then he pulled the mouthpiece out of his mouth and lifted his mask. He shook his head again and began to plod up the beach, his flippers impeding his walk.
Columbo trotted toward him, raincoat flapping. “Sir! Sir! Are you Mr. Khoury?”
The man stopped and stared at him, as if the man in the bizarre raincoat were as idiosyncratic a figure as he himself was in his black rubber with his tanks on his back. He nodded, and the man kept trotting toward him. He covered only fifty yards or so
but was winded as he reached him.
“Sir… sir,” Columbo puffed. “I’m Lieutenant Columbo, LAPD, homicide.”
“Ah-hah,” said Khoury. He thrust out his hand. “You’re investigating…”
“Yes, sir. And my condolences, Mr. Khoury. My sympathy.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. It was kind of you not to insist on seeing me this morning when I was just coming out of what Dr. Amos gave me last night.”
“Well, sir, there was no reason to put any more burden on you this morning. When I heard you’d come out for a swim, I figured maybe—”
“Of course,” said Khoury. He began to plod on up the beach toward his car. “I hope you won’t think it’s callous of me to go out in the water the day after my wife is murdered. But getting down there, down into that peaceful other world, is really very therapeutic, Lieutenant. Do you dive, by any chance?”
“Well, no, sir. Actually, I can’t swim at all. I come from New York City, and I never learned.”
“You ought to join a club like ours,” said Khoury. “You can learn to swim and to go down diving at the same time.” He tilted his head and regarded Columbo with curiosity. “If I judge right, your age and mine are not too far apart. Scuba diving is the very best thing for men our age. It doesn’t take great physical strength or even the stamina of tennis, but you do have to work your heart and lungs, and it’s great exercise for them. Besides, to get down there and see what’s underneath the ocean—Well, it’s fascinating. I’m rambling. You can empathize, maybe.”
“I sure can,” said Columbo. “Yes, sir. And I don’t really have to bother you right now. But you can understand. We’d like to close this case as quick as possible.”
“I agree with you one hundred percent. Nothing would bring me more comfort than to have the case successfully closed today or tomorrow. I hear you’ve already made an arrest. Poor Cathy.”
“Actually,” said Columbo, “she’s being held on something else, a narcotics charge. But she can’t— or won’t—account for her whereabouts last night.”
“I know she has a long criminal record,” said Khoury, “and I know she was a member of the original Manson Family. I know she’s an eccentric. I know she still thinks Charles Manson is God. But even so… I can’t believe she’d commit such a horrible crime.”
“It is a little hard to believe, sir.”
“Think of this, Lieutenant. Whoever came to my house last night had to know a lot about the house and the habits of the people in it. How did they know, for example, that the alarm system wouldn’t be on? Cathy couldn’t have known that. She was never in the house.”
“That’s a fact,” said Columbo. “I’m glad we agree that she doesn’t make a very good suspect.”
“Well, I… I wouldn’t write her off entirely. There was a certain antagonism between her and Arlene.”
“Enough to make her kill her?” Columbo asked. Khoury shook his head. “No, I suppose not.” They had reached the small parking lot. Khoury stopped, leaned against a guardrail post, and pulled off his flippers.
“That’s a wonderful car y’ got there,” said Columbo. “It’s a German make, isn’t it? My car’s a French car. That’s it over there. What year is your car, Mr. Khoury?”
“It was manufactured in 1954,” said Khoury.
“That old! I thought my car was old. You’ve kept it in very good shape. I try to take good care of my car, but you can see it does need a coat of paint. Needs some dents hammered out, too. Of course, it was never the elegant car yours is.”
Khoury walked on toward the Mercedes.
“I stopped at Hammond’s and talked to Miss Dana. Saw the fashion show, too,” said Columbo. “She surely is a beautiful woman. I—”
“Then you saw her model some lingerie,” said Khoury. “You do know she’s a beautiful woman.”
“Yes, sir. She told me where you were last night. You understand, I had to ask. I don’t want to seem like I’m snooping into a man’s private life, but—”
“Lieutenant,” said Khoury, “I can’t imagine how you could investigate Arlene’s murder without snooping into my private life. I haven’t the least objection to your doing so.”
“Well, thank ya. A lot of people don’t understand.”
Reaching the car, Khoury began to unstrap his scuba equipment. He reached into the back of the car and pulled out a large yellow nylon bag. Carefully, he packed each item into the bag. The idea was to confine any and all saltwater and sand inside the heavy nylon. Having packed the equipment, he reached for another bag, stripped off his black rubber suit, and packed it inside. Under it he was wearing a pair of red Speedo trunks. They were dry and he put his dark-blue knit pants over them. He slipped a white golf shirt over his head. He sat down on the car seat and pulled on a pair of white running shoes. Finally, he put on a pair of dark airman’s sunglasses from the glove box.
“According to Miss Dana, you spent the evening with her at a motel called Piscina Linda. That’s an interesting name. That means beautiful swimming pool.”
“They have an exceptionally fine swimming pool there,” said Khoury.
Columbo pulled out his little notebook, flipped over a couple of pages, and frowned at a note he’d made earlier. “You arrived at Piscina Linda about seven-thirty, had dinner in the dining room, and returned to your room at, say, nine. You didn’t leave until almost one-thirty in the morning.”
Khoury nodded. “Yes. That’s right.”
“And it was kinda unusual for you to stay there that late. Usually you left an hour or so earlier. Was there any reason why you stayed so much later than usual?”
Yussef Khoury smiled. “I wish I could tell you it was a romantic reason,” he said. “The fact is, we got interested in a late-night television movie.”
“Have you had a chance to check to see whether or not anything was stolen from the house?” Columbo asked.
“I haven’t. Mrs. Takeshi checked the usual things: the silver, television sets, and so on. My wife kept a considerable amount of jewelry in the bedroom. I haven’t been in there. I don’t know when I will go in there. The way I feel now, I’ll probably sell the house.”
“The investigating detectives found a lot of jewelry in drawers in the bedroom,” said Columbo. “They wrote down an inventory of it and left it where it was. Maybe you can look at the inventory.”
“Yes,” said Khoury.
“Well, then. I won’t take any more of your time this afternoon. I’m sure you know we’ll be doing everything we can to clear this case up as quickly as possible.”
“I do understand. And I thank you, Lieutenant.” Khoury extended his hand, and the two men shook hands. Columbo smiled and nodded and walked away toward the Peugeot.
He stopped and turned back to Khoury. “Oh, I should ask you one more thing, sir,” he said. “There is a little contradiction between something you said and something Miss Dana said. I’d like to clear that up. Nothin’ important, it’s just that I’m always uncomfortable having any contradiction not resolved.”
“What is it?” asked Khoury.
“Well, sir, you told me you stayed at the motel later than usual because you got interested in a television movie. Miss Dana told me it was because you went to sleep. Y’ see that’s a sort of… inconsistency.”
Khoury grinned. “You’re sharp, Lieutenant Columbo. You don’t miss anything, do you?”
“In my line of work, you can’t afford to. I’m no genius, sir. All I can do is get every fact I can find, put ’em together, and when I find little inconsistencies I have to find the explanation. Most of them don’t amount to anything, but—” Columbo shrugged. “Y’ see how it is.”
“It’s simple enough,” said Khoury. “We stayed late because I was enjoying the TV movie. She went to sleep. When she woke up she may have thought I’d been asleep, too. But I hadn’t. I’ve seen that movie maybe four or five times, and I like it. I’d never go to sleep on it.”
Columbo nodded. “Okay. That explains it. I
nconsistency explained. I won’t worry about it.”
“Would you like to know what movie so much interested me?” asked Khoury.
“Oh, no, sir. That won’t be necessary.”
"Barry Lyndon, Lieutenant. One of my favorites. Have you ever seen it?”
“Oh yes, sir. I enjoyed that one myself. Thank ya, sir. And, once again, my sympathy.”
Yussef Khoury waited in the gull-wing Mercedes until Columbo had pulled out of the parking lot and was almost out of sight down the highway. Then he picked up his cellular telephone and put in a call to Kimberly. They had agreed on Barry Lyndon as the picture they’d been watching, but if Columbo called her—which he just might—it was essential that she say she went to sleep during the movie, and he probably hadn’t. As he put it to her, “We must sing from the same sheet, baby. We must sing from the same sheet.”
Nine
1
Columbo hated the morgue. He was smoking a cigar to overcome its cold and antiseptic smell, but it was a smell that nothing could overcome. The smell was not, of course, the worst of it.
“I know you hate it, Columbo,” said Dr. Culp. “You’ve told me often enough.”
Dr. Harold Culp was a man of forty, forty-five maybe, and if he were the former he was prematurely gray, with prematurely thinning hair. The round tanned bare spot on the back of his head was not wide enough for the bald spot of a tonsured monk; it was more like the size of a yarmulke. He looked at Columbo through horn-rimmed bifocals as he pulled on a white knee-length coat and rubber gloves.
The corpses of Steven Heck and Sergio Flores were in drawers. The body of Arlene Khoury lay on the examining table. Dr. Culp whipped off the sheet that covered her. Columbo winced and for a moment turned his face away. But he had to look at her. He couldn’t refuse to look at her.
Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders Page 7