The Second Longest Night

by Stephen Marlowe

  “I swear to God,” Mervis said softly, devoutly. “He'll hurt you, Drum.”

  Delcove rabbit-punched the side of my neck. I went over sideways off the stool. Mervis got his fingers around my upper arm and helped me back to the stool.

  “Well?” Delcove said.

  Just then the intercom buzzed on the desk. Delcove cursed with a high degree of originality, but Mervis walked over to the desk, flipped the switch and said, “Yeah?”

  A voice said, “There's a Lieutenant Casey here from District Homicide who wants to see Lieutenant Delcove.”

  “Muck him,” Delcove growled.

  “He's not here,” Mervis said.

  “Sorry, Sergeant. I told him you were both in.”

  “All right,” Delcove said wearily.

  “Send him in,” Mervis said.

  They put the overhead light on. They told me to sit on one of the semi-upholstered chairs. Delcove said, “You better not open your mouth about this, shamus. Because if you do it will be nothing to what you'll get afterward. Not that Lieutenant Casey's boys don't do the same thing, but you know how it is.”

  At that moment, Pat Casey knocked on the door. Bless his Irish mug, he didn't even look at me. He was all business but I thought he looked very lovely. He said, “Hello there, Delcove. I live down in Alexandria and I thought I'd drop in here on my way home and tell you what we've been doing over at District about this.”

  “First, we're going to pick up Max Joy for you people.”

  “We can do our own picking up.”

  “Well, we knew you would get around to it. We also know Joy usually hangs out on F Street in the District. You'd need our help on that, wouldn't you?”

  “Yeah,” Delcove admitted. He had deposited his leather glove in the sink. Pat went over there for a glass of water. Mervis wanted to stop him, but Delcove shook his head. When Pat came back he said nothing about the glove.

  “We've also contacted the Pan Am traffic man at International Airport,” Pat went on. “He remembers the incident. He's coming down here in the morning to make a deposition. Our Captain Levin arranged the whole thing with your Captain Liggett.”

  “We're much obliged,” Delcove said without feeling. “Our Captain Levin had a long talk with your Captain Liggett. Captain Liggett is very interested in the case. He realizes there may be international complications, so at Captain Levin's suggestion he contacted a man at Protocol in the Department of State. It seems that man knows something about this case. His name is Morley and you can expect him here in the morning, too. It's very possible that State will have more to do with the ultimate outcome of this case than you will, because if this Venezuelan Del Rey really had a hand in Lubrano's murder after he resigned from the Venezuelan Department of State, but while he still had diplomatic immunity because he hadn't left the country, State will have “to take charge of everything. In the background, of course.”

  “Why tell me all this?” Delcove wanted to know. “I appreciate the trouble you went to coining here, but I take my orders from Captain Liggett. If State butts in, he'll let me know.”

  Pat gave him a big friendly smile and said, “I'm trying to do you a favor, pal. You look like a nice guy. I wanted you to know that this man Morley who's coming here from State tomorrow, and who probably will be running the whole show for State, is a very close friend of Chester Drum here.”

  “Is that right?” Mervis said:

  Delcove didn't say anything. Then they made small talk over a trio of cigarettes and Delcove came over and gave me one. Pat said he had to be going, thanked Delcove for his time, and headed for the door. He winked at me on the way out.

  Five minutes later I was escorted to my cell and had a good night's sleep.

  Less than twenty-four hours later, I was a free man. I never even got around to calling a lawyer. Max Joy was rounded up during the night and broke very rapidly under questioning. He had to, for he thought he might be implicated in the murder. He said he would give a statement that he happened to be around when Del Rey roped and beat Alex Lubrano if I would testify that I had seen him leave before Lubrano was murdered.

  That was Item One. Item Two was the traffic man at the airport. He remembered the incident very well. Had he done wrong? he wanted to know. Should he have stopped the flight? Captain Liggett and company left that to Jack Morley, who was Item Three and who settled things with the aid of a long trans-Caribbean telephone bill charged to Uncle Sam. Yes, said the Maracaibo police. Francisco Del Rey was dead. A search was on for three Americans who had been seen in his presence, but it was believed they had escaped the country. Had the. Venezuelan Department of State in Caracas been contacted? Jack asked. He suggested that such contact be made. Two hours later, the first secretary of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington contacted Jack at the Alexandria police station. Was it indeed probable that a former, employee of theirs, one Del Rey, had been guilty of murder?

  It was possible, Jack said. He wouldn't say how probable. In that case, said the first secretary, it was his grave duty to tell Senor Morley that three Americans, whose names he now gave to Jack, were wanted for questioning in the slaying of Del Rey. Could they be extradited? That, Jack said, was a complicated problem, since extradition could not be effected without cooperation of the states involved. Which meant California for the Homersons and Virginia for me, unless the Alexandria police let me go, in which case it meant Washington, D. C.

  I tell you what, said Jack. We'll look further into our killing. If it appears that Del Rey was not involved and if you still want these three extradited, we'll start the ball rolling. But if it appears Del Rey was involved and if this fact will have to become public knowledge . . .

  That a secretary of the embassy committed murder in your country? demanded the first secretary, aghast. Surely, something could be done to keep this tragic thing from the public eye, since, obviously, the embassy had nothing to do with it. Well, Jack suggested cheerfully, why don't we leave it this way: no extradition until the facts about Del Rey were known. Then, if sufficient evidence could be amassed to indict the dead Del Rey, in theory, for the murder of Alex Lubrano, the United States Department of State would maintain the position that it was unnecessary to go through the motions where a dead man was involved—provided the Venezuelan Department of State did not press for the extradition of three Americans allegedly involved in the slaying of Del Rey, himself an alleged killer.

  Well . . . said the first secretary, not at all sure that he was on the strong end of this horse-trading.

  There followed a hurried huddle between Jack and me. Lieutenant Delcove was very impressed. Jack got back to the phone with the first secretary and asked him without preface if he knew the late Francisco Del Rey had been an active member of the Communist Party in the United States. If the first secretary had been aghast before, he was aghast-er now. It would be as Mr. Morley suggested, he said. Venezuela would await word from the United States. There would be no attempt at extradition if the facts about Del Rey became adequate for a theoretical murder indictment. And thank you very much, senor.

  Then Jack told Captain Liggett, “Of necessity, the Department of State will be very interested in the outcome of this case. If you can gather sufficient evidence to indict Del Rey—in theory, of course—we'd be very happy. You understand that nothing of this must leak out to the press, for the sake of our good relations with Venezuela.”

  “What about Drum?” Delcove asked. He asked it of no one in particular. He might have been asking God, he was that bewildered.

  “Oh,” said Jack, “you can release him in my custody.”

  That seemed to please Captain Liggett. Ten minutes later, I was outside with Jack, climbing into his car. “My God,” he said. “Only about half of that was official. Do you realize if you haven't been telling the truth all along you're looking at an ex-employee of the State Department?”

  I didn't say anything. I couldn't. If I talked I was liable to blubber like a baby. I merely smiled at him and
hoped it was enough.

  Pat Casey was waiting in the car. He didn't look at me, but he grinned and said to Jack, “Why do we do things like this for this guy?”

  “Vicarious thrill?” Jack offered.

  “Nuts,” said Pat. “Who the hell in his right mind would want to be a private dick, even vicariously?”

  “Because we feel sorry for him?” Jack offered as he started the car.

  “Maybe it's because we feel sorry for the slob,” Jack said, still grinning.

  Jack said, “Chet, you ought to take a long vacation.

  “I just had one,” I told him.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I'm going out to California to see Senator Hartsell's daughter,” I said.

  “You bastard,” they both said together. But they were smiling.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE ORANGE AND LEMON orchards lay out before me in the golden California sunshine. Five thousand and some feet up Hall Mountain, though, it was cold. From the outside in I wore a trench coat, a jacket, a sweater, a shirt and a woolen underwear top, but I was still cold. Almost forty miles away, you could see the far-off sparkle of the Pacific Ocean through the clear, transparent atmosphere. On a day clearer than this, the man at the gas station which offered you your last gas before the climb on the Star Highway assured me, you could see the hog-backed mountains of Baja California, a hundred miles distant.

  But I hadn't come here to see the mountains or the gleam of sun on the far Pacific, or even the big two-hundred-inch telescope.

  I had come because I was so close to the truth about what happened to Deirdre that I couldn't stop now. I had come because I was a trouble-seeking fool. I had come because the vendetta I had not wanted had been accomplished at other hands than mine. I had come because Francisco Del Rey was dead because Lydia Homerson had wanted him dead. I didn't know why; I was going to find out if I could. And I thought the answer to that question might also give me the answer to another one—why Deirdre had died.

  It had taken me six days to drive across the country to Hall Mountain in California. Six days alone at the wheel of a car is a lot of time to think. I could think through the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Ozarks and the flat Oklahoma oilfields and the cold bleak Texas Panhandle and on into New Mexico and sunny Arizona and thence to Southern California. By the time I reached Hall Mountain, I was almost talking to myself.

  You didn't worry about Deirdre, though. You felt a compulsive curiosity, but that was all. You could worry about Marianne Wilder if you wanted to. She was a nice kid, and that was all. Nothing serious. She would marry Duane Cabot, the finest catch on Capitol Hill, and breed little Cabot Congressmen, as the family had done for more than a hundred years. But on Hall Mountain she was poking her neck into something sinister. The fact that she was a nice kid was enough.

  I put the Chewy to rest in a public parking lot near the top of the mountain. I saw license plates from Michigan, Rhode Island, North Dakota, Virginia, New York and Ontario, Canada. The wind rattled the bare branches of giant oaks and chased me up a path leading to the largest of the three silver domes atop the mountain. At that moment it didn't look very big because Hall Mountain's top is a broad plateau many miles long and other steep hills thrust their humps up on all sides, but the man at the gas station said the dome was twelve stories high and a landmark all over San Diego County.

  At the entrance to the enormous dome a uniformed man was pointing to two lesser domes and telling his flock of tourists that these domes contained Schmidt refractors which acted as scouts for the bigger telescope, since they could see a lot more of the sky at one time than the two-hundred-inch baby in the largest dome could. Along with everyone else, I was impressed. I waited until the guide herded his charges inside and followed them. He looked to see if I had the small blue ticket dangling from my lapel. I did not. He gave me a stern glance. Without paying for the small blue ticket which identified me, I couldn't expect to be shown around, now could I?

  The ulterior of the dome was dim, gray, circular and enormous. The guide ushered his blue-ticketed people into a glass-walled visitors' room, but I walked across the stone floor toward a piece of machinery which was gray and gigantic, big as a trailer-truck standing on its rear end, but somehow delicate looking. This was the telescope which brings the stellar universe a million times closer than your naked eye can bring it. It was an altar, this monster machine, and the high-vaulted dome was its cathedral. It made you feel like that. It made you walk on tiptoe and whisper when you spoke.

  A tall man wearing a plaid mackinaw and ear-muffs came up and said softly, “Excuse me, sir? Have you wandered off from the group by mistake?”

  “I wasn't with “the group. I was looking for Dr. Homerson.”

  “You should have gone to the administration building first.”

  “Ah,” I whispered. “Sorry. If you tell me where it is—”

  “But you're lucky. Dr. Homerson is on duty now. You've come to the right place. He's got half an hour more of observation, though. He couldn't possibly be disturbed.”

  I said I'd wait. The man in the mackinaw, who seemed to be a custodian of sorts, apologized for the lack of heat inside the dome. In a rich voice he explained about heat and why they couldn't have any around here. He was every bit as good as the guide. Everyone I was to meet on Hall Mountain seemed to be like that—all of them knowing and all of them eager to tell you about their telescope. You've seen heat waves shimmering over a radiator? the custodian in the mackinaw asked me. Indeed I had: Heat waves, he' said, would play havoc with visibility. They'd distort images. They'd make things flicker. That was why it was cold.

  I paced back and forth to keep from freezing. I wondered if the visitors' room was heated, but when I looked in through the glass I saw the tourists were huddling in their winter clothing, their faces blue with cold. Finally, I went back down the path to the parking lot. I climbed into the Chewy and raced the motor and turned the heater on. I thawed out in about thirty minutes, cut the ignition and climbed uphill once more to the dome.

  Ralph Homerson was just coming across the dim floor when I entered. He was wearing a leather lumberjacket with a wool scarf sticking out at the throat. He had on a pair of bright red ear-muffs. He was staring Straight ahead. He was still up there in the sky, no doubt. He looked right through me.

  “Ralph,” I said. “How the hell are you? It's Chet Drum.” I spoke as if I were talking into a telephone, Ralph Homerson seemed that far away.

  “Drum,” he said. He looked at me with his myopic eyes. “Drum! I'm sorry, I was preoccupied. I didn't expect to see you here. What brings you to Hall Mountain?” He stuck out his hand. I shook it.

  His question was a good one. “Curiosity, maybe,” I said.

  My answer, which wasn't an answer at all, seemed to alarm him. His eyes got big and serious behind the glasses, but he gave me a wan smile and said, “I'm going down to the monastery to clean up. You'll want to come along and ask questions, no doubt.”

  “The monastery?”

  “Living quarters for the astronomers here. But I have a small house down below with Lydia.”

  “What makes you think I'll want to ask questions?”

  The same wan smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Everybody's doing it. The boys at the monastery are beginning to make fun of me. They call me Hall Mountain's answer to Marlon Brando.”

  We went outside and Ralph told me I could leave my Chewy in the lot. We got into his Dodge, which had chains on the rear wheels although the Star Highway was cleared of snow. Great banks of it were piled on either side of the road. The chains were very loud on the asphalt.

  “Who's been asking all the questions?” I said.

  “A girl named Marianne Wilder. She had a letter from you, but she still seemed surprised we knew you. Also a Congressman named Duane Cabot. They're here together.”

  “They would be,” I said. “What does Cabot want?”

  “I don't know, Drum. He does mos
t of his talking to Lydia. I — I don't know if I should tell you or not.”

  Instead of coaxing him, I let him debate it with himself. He needed an ear to bend. He said, “Cabot has Lydia plenty worried, I think.”

  “Oh?” I said.

  Ralph pulled the Dodge off on a side road about fifteen hundred feet down Hall Mountain. Here the chains on the rear wheels crunched against hard-packed snow. Ahead of us was a large barrack-like building with several cars parked in front of it. Although snow covered the ground, it was considerably warmer here. We were still almost five 'thousand feet above sea level, but sea level in San Diego County can be plenty warm, even in winter,

  I smoked a cigarette while Ralph went inside. He had asked me in, but not very enthusiastically. He probably took a lot of ribbing from the other sky watchers — bringing a politician, a journalist and now a private detective to their ivory tower.

  When he returned he spoke as if in answer to a question. “We're doing important work here,” he said. “That's why the boys hate being disturbed. It isn't the kind of work that gets publicity, because when the average layman thinks of astronomy he thinks of the canals on Mars and Saturn's rings and maybe even flying saucers. We're trying to make a systematic study of the visible universe with the two Schmidt 'scopes. And with the big mirror we're trying to solve the riddle of the red shift. . . .”

  “Doc,” I said, grinning, “it's beyond me. The red shift wouldn't have anything to do with politics, would it?”

  “It's like—well, like a balloon. You take one and blow it up. The more you blow it, the more the molecules of rubber on its surface rush away from one another. That's what the universe seems to be doing. Rushing apart like that. We call it the red shift because—”

  “I'm sure you folks have a good reason. The name intrigues me. Is that why Duane Cabot is here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A different kind of red shift. Communism.”

  We left the last of the snowbanks behind us, and rolled down into the sunny valley. I removed my trench coat and still felt warm.