After Midnight (14 page)

“Who—?” he asked.

“Somebody you’re supposed to have seen earlier today, Mr. Drake,” the officer said. “A man named Charles Becker.”

The blow that had laced across the back of Charley Becker’s skull when he leaned forward to look for the gin wasn’t lethal. What killed him was the water in his lungs, and no autopsy could determine if the blow was sustained before he went into the ocean or by contact with the pier understructure after the drop. An oil slick on the pier was too marred by footprints of would-be rescuers to leave evidence of faulty footing, and Becker’s death would have been listed as unquestionably accidental if Simon Drake hadn’t visited the pier an hour before the body was found. Sam Robbins, the cook, discovered the body. He emerged from the kitchen shortly before noon to find a dozen customers and nobody to serve them. He went out to the boat deck, saw Becker’s yachting cap beside the oil slick, and called the police. A deputy sheriff hauled the body from the water with an assist from McKay, Commander Warren’s mate, who watched the shore activity from the yacht until curiosity impelled him to row ashore and investigate.

At half-past twelve, that night in Lieutenant Franzen’s office in the Marina Beach City Hall, both Robbins and McKay affirmed Simon’s presence at The Cove fourteen hours earlier. Duane Thompson, still smarting from the defeat Simon had dealt him at the hearing, was present to hang on every word. Simon Drake had won his case; Thompson still had an unsolved murder on his hands.

“Mr. Drake,” he said sharply, “you’ve had a busy day. According to Mr. Robbins, you rented a boat from Charles Becker early this morning and went out to visit Commander Warren on his yacht? Were you invited?”

“Challenged,” Simon said. “I woke up this morning with the television set turned to the commander’s ‘press conference.’ He made some unflattering remarks about Mrs. Warren’s defense attorney.”

“You quarreled, then?”

“I wouldn’t say that. Why don’t you ask the commander?”

Thompson was transparent. The commander’s political backing was important to him. He knew about that $25,000 offer, and it must be torture to realize how narrowly it had missed going into his campaign fund.

“I shall, Mr. Drake. I shall,” Thompson said. “But the reason you were brought here was because, so far as we can ascertain, you were the last person to see Charles Becker alive. Where was he when you left him?”

“Listening to the juke box,” Simon said.

“I’m serious!”

“So am I. If you want details, it was a piece titled: ‘Baby, Baby, Cry for Me,’ and it was my dime.”

“Who else was in the place when you left?”

“So far as I know—nobody. I mean, no customers. I assume Mr. Robbins was in the kitchen. I never saw him.”

“I did hear the juke box play once,” Robbins recalled. “I remembered wondering who was at it so early in the day.”

Thompson ignored the comment.

“Did Becker say anything about going out to the boats before you left?” he asked Simon.

“No,” Simon answered. “We talked about other things.”

“What things?”

“Various things. Something about why Roger Warren never went deep sea fishing in a deep sea fishing boat.”

Duane Thompson took a white linen handkerchief from his hip pocket and patted the perspiration from his forehead. It was a rather chilly evening, but Thompson was the kind of man who excited easily and perspired freely even in those profoundly democratic shirtsleeves.

“Franzen,” he said, “I see no reason to detain Mr. Robbins and Mr. McKay any longer. They’ve completed the identification.”

It was a dirty trick. Both men were as eager as Thompson to know why and how Becker had dropped off the pier and now they were forced to leave. When they were gone, Thompson took Simon back to his own office and closed the door.

“Mr. Drake,” he said, “just what the hell are you up to? No, don’t answer until I bring you up to date on what we know. You went to The Cove, rented a boat and went out to see Commander Warren. We’ve touched on that part of your day. But later you visited The Profile, where Roger Warren worked before his death, and tonight you took Mrs. Warren to dinner at the Sans Souci.”

“You’ve had me tailed,” Simon said. “Why?”

“Let me finish. I left word at your house for you to call when you came in. Why didn’t you?”

“I had to go out again.”

“Yes, you had to go out again. You had to go to the club in Santa Monica where Wanda Warren danced before her marriage. And you weren’t tailed there. I played a hunch. Why have you made this circuit of Roger Warren’s haunts today? What are you looking for?”

“Money,” Simon said. “Mrs. Warren owes me a fee.”

It was a blunt answer, and it stopped Thompson in his tracks. Everybody knew Simon Drake was expensive. The district attorney shuffled a few papers on his desk and switched tactics.

“What happened to your Jaguar?” he asked. “Why did you take Miss Lee’s car to Santa Monica?”

Simon laughed.

“So that’s why I wasn’t tailed that far. Your man lost me. I had to switch cars. My brake fluid gave out.”

“Where’s your car now?”

“At Turner’s Twenty-Four-Hour Garage—I hope. I telephoned them where to pick it up…. Is that why you had me brought back here—to get an hourly report on my day?”

“I brought you back because Charles Becker’s dead,” Thompson snapped. “Now that we don’t have an audience you can give me the answer to your riddle. Why didn’t Roger Warren go deep sea fishing in a deep sea fishing boat?”

“I don’t know,” Simon said. “If I did, I might know who killed him.”

“And Charles Becker?”

“Probably.”

Thompson took out a cigarette case and offered it to Simon. Simon declined and Thompson helped himself. Over the desk lighter, he studied Simon’s face. They were two skilled pros on opposite sides of the same case and one of them was going to lose. Thompson had too much at stake to be that loser.

“I think you’re bluffine,” he said. “Commander Warren called me this morning after you left the yacht. He thinks you bribed Nancy Armitage to change her testimony. If he’s right, I’m going to nail you for it, Drake, and it will take more than your big brown eyes, your courtroom manner and your money to get un-nailed.”

That was the fun thing about living in a jungle. You no more than got the brush whacked away than it grew back again.

“Nail away,” Simon answered, “but first make certain the commander’s suspicion is logical and not just a normal emotional shock reaction. And don’t do what the commander did and tip your hand to the press. I might sue for libel.”

Simon left City Hall a few minutes later and drove directly to Turner’s garage. They had the Jaguar in the back of the shop with a work order on it, and it called for replacing the brake fluid tubes that had been neatly cut with a sharp instrument. For an additional twenty dollars not tallied on the bill, Simon got the work order changed to something routine that would satisfy Thompson’s investigator. Until he knew more about who was killing whom, he preferred to go it alone.

The man called Eddie, who operated Club Mobile and promoted the talents of Clarissa Valle, held his license under the name of Edward C. Berman. He was forty-seven, married, divorced and had two teen-age daughters in a fashionable finishing school in Westwood. In addition to the discothèque, he was a partner in a real estate development in Malibu and owned the twenty unit apartment building in which he lived. He had been arrested once, twelve years past, on a narcotics charge and subsequently acquitted. Other than that—and a few traffic violations—he was as clean as a Congressional aspirant endorsed by the Y.W.C.A. August Mayerling was thirty-nine, registered as an alien born in Germany, and carried a Mexican passport. All of this information was supplied to Simon by the detective agency which had provided him with background material on Nancy Armitage. As for Charley Becker, his life story began to unfold immediately after his death when two wives, neither of whom he had divorced, came forward to claim his estate while a third woman, unidentified, was the only one to visit the mortuary or sent flowers to the funeral.

Hannah’s arthritis kicked up in damp weather. When the call came through she was in bed—a huge, velvet canopied affair that would have appalled Queen Victoria in her prime.

“The S.S.
Dobson
—how horrible!” she reported. “Imagine anybody honeymooning on a ship with such an unphonetic name!”

“I wasn’t thinking of honeymooning,” Simon said.

“You should. Marriage is something that should be tried at least once. It’s educational. But I think the
Dobson
’s the ship you’re looking for. Homebound from the Orient—including Hong Kong. Passed within two miles of Commander Warren’s anchorage at approximately four-thirty p.m. of the same day Roger Warren went fishing for the last time. Cargo—”

“I’m not interested in the cargo she carried to port,” Simon interrupted. “I’m interested in the cargo that didn’t ride all the way.”

Hannah had a fast mind for felony.

“Roger Warren and the white boat!” she exclaimed. “Of course! The white boat because it could so easily be seen. What did he catch—heroin?”

“Probably,” Simon said. “He was familiar with the Club Mobile and if Eddie Berman’s had only one arrest with the kind of place he runs, he must be getting protection.”

“I told you it was a Mafia job!” Hannah crowed.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I think Roger’s operation was strictly private enterprise.”

“What do we do now? Call Thompson?”

Simon shook his head. “Prove it,” he said.

“But if there’s anything in this at all, Becker must have been murdered.”

“I think he was—and so does Thompson. But I’m not going to do his work for him.”

“And an attempt was made on your life—”

“—and Wanda’s,” Simon reminded her.

“Because she knows something. Can’t you see that, Simon? Whatever Roger was doing, she knew about it. That’s why she was supposed to die, too.”

There were some things nice people didn’t think about: thermonuclear war, genocide and Wanda being anything more than an innocent bystander in this sordid mess. Simon shook his head.

“There’s an alternative,” he said.

The third time Simon visited the house on Pacific View he never got beyond the patio. Mrs. Rainey met him at the gateway and explained that Nancy Armitage was out and so fine a roomer wasn’t to be subjected to any more snooping. And where, Simon inquired, had she gone? Walking on the beach, Mrs. Rainey answered. Simon then drove to the parking area just above the beach and scanned the curving shoreline. North—toward the new development on Seacliff Drive—the beach narrowed and threaded its way through a huge rock formation extending out into the surf. Walking toward the formation was Nancy Armitage. She wore a lavender sweater above pale blue Capris and a white kerchief on her head, but her free and easy stride was unmistakable. Simon hurried after her.

“Miss Armitage—” he called.

Afternoons were always windy at the beach, and the surf was noisier at the rocky end. She didn’t hear him. As Simon was about to call again, he noticed a man in swimming trunks who was trying to fold up a canvas chair on the narrow spit of sand just below the Seacliff houses. It was his pale body that made him so conspicuous: white skin above black trunks, white arms threshing about with the chair. A small brown boy in short levis scrambled over the rocks and came to the man’s rescue as Simon approached. Momentarily distracted, Simon now noticed that Nancy Armitage had stopped a short distance from the man in trunks and was staring at him strangely.

Now the chair was neatly folded. The boy grinned and handed it to the man.

“Keep it,” the man said. “I won’t be needing it any more.”

The voice was familiar. Simon forgot the nurse and turned back to Frank Lodge, who seemed smaller and more vulnerable in trunks than he had on the witness stand at the hearing. Now he stooped and gathered up a collection of sun lotion, beach towel and sandals, and, rising, became aware of his audience.

He seemed embarrassed.

“Mr. Lodge,” Simon said, “are you leaving us?”

“Drake—isn’t it? Yes, Simon Drake,” Lodge answered. He had to shout the words above the sound of the surf behind them. “I will be leaving soon. Confidentially, I was glad of the chance to get rid of that chair. Nearly broke my back bringing it down the stairs.”

“You should have taken your sun bath on the deck.” Nancy Armitage said quietly.

Lodge looked at the woman, but he didn’t answer her. He juggled the equipment in his arms, hesitated as if waiting to be excused, and then simply turned his back to both of them and stalked to the stairway. Simon stepped closer to Nancy.

“That was Frank Lodge,” he explained. “He was a witness at the hearing.”

“I know,” she said. “I followed it in the news.”

“I thought you would. How did it feel, Miss Armitage? Did you have any regrets?”

She buried her hands in the rolled up waistband of her sweater and began to walk slowly back along the route they had just taken. Simon followed at her side. As they walked away from the rocks the surf became quieter. They could speak in normal tones.

“That’s a strange question to ask,” she said. “Why should I regret telling the truth?”

“I have—often,” Simon said. “But then, I’m a nonconformist. I was thinking of Roger Warren. In spite of your bias against his wife, the jury failed to indict. And yet Warren was murdered—by someone. Do you have a second choice for killer, Miss Armitage?”

She was nobody’s fool, this mercurial Nancy Armitage. Her antennae were up and her radar working.

“No!” she said quickly. “I wasn’t acquainted with Mr. Warren.”

“But he did live dangerously.”

“I don’t know about that, either.”

“It’s obvious. His house—his car. The violent way he died. Did you know you had something in common? He was fond of your song—’Infidelity.’”

Nancy stopped and picked up a shell from the beach. She brushed the sand from it and carefully avoided Simon’s eyes.

“Who told you that?” she asked tightly.

“His wife. She played it on the juke box at The Cove when. I took her there before the hearing. She said Roger whistled it in the shower.”

“It has a nice melody,” she admitted.

“But it isn’t in the machine at The Cove any more,” Simon said. “It wasn’t getting any plays.”

The shell didn’t please Nancy. She threw it back in the sand and continued walking. She walked faster now with an independent swing to her gait.

“Mr. Drake,” she said, as he quickened his pace to keep up, “if you’re so smitten with the little widow, why don’t you shack up with her and work it out of your system—or are you afraid of knives?”

“Frankly, I’m more afraid of claws,” Simon said, “and yours are showing.”

“Not my claws—my instincts,” she retorted. “Why would you have gone all the way out to The Cove to play a juke box if she wasn’t under your skin?”

“All the way out?” Simon echoed. “You know where it is, then. You’ve been there?”

“A few times.”

“But you didn’t walk—not that far, even in the rain.”

They had reached the spot just below where Simon’s car was parked. She faced him—eyes blazing.

“Mr. Drake,” she said, “there are such things as cabs.”

“Yes,” Simon said.

“And friends with automobiles.”

“Admittedly,” Simon said. “And, while we’re on the subject, Charley Becker is dead.”

“I read that in the news, too.”

“Did you read that he was murdered?”

It became very quiet. Here the surf was just a whisper against the sand, and for seconds Nancy Armitage made no sound at all. Then, hoarsely, she said:

“That’s not true!”

“The District Attorney thinks it is—and so do I.”

“But why? He wasn’t—”

She stopped abruptly.

“He wasn’t what, Miss Armitage?”

“He wasn’t anybody.”

“Are you class conscious, Miss Armitage? Do you only approve of murder if the victim is a rich, spoiled bourgeois? You said something like that before the hearing—”

“I said that I lied about seeing Wanda kill her husband. You tried to imply then that we knew one another—but you didn’t succeed. You can’t ever succeed because it isn’t true. I don’t want to talk to you any more, Mr. Drake. You won your case. You got your client off free just as I said you would. You won. Please leave me alone!”

She wasn’t all ice, this conscience-ridden Florence Nightingale. Her voice was trembling with anger when she ended her speech, and she punctuated it by running quickly up the dozen wooden steps to the parking level.

“Miss Armitage,” Simon called after her, “are you sure you weren’t in front of the Warren house the night of the murder?”

She stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down at him.

“I went to an ambulance call on Palm Drive,” she said. “I told you that!”

“You told Duane Thompson that, too. And there was such a call and everybody accepted your story. But Miss Armitage—did anybody
see
you there?”

Simon was too close to Seacliff Drive to go home without making a call. He drove to the Warren house and found Wanda attired in a knee length smock with a portable hair dryer buzzing on her head.

“By the time we reach another planet,” he remarked, “Earthlings will look more like space people than space people. Where do you plug off?”

Wanda located the switch and put an end to the buzzing. Even with a balloon on her head she was lovely. Simon suggested dinner. She declined.

“I’m packing,” she said. “The rent’s up in three days.” And then she laughed ironically. “On our anniversary,” she added. “In exactly three days Roger and I would have been married a year.”

“Where will you go?” Simon asked.

“I did start out to have a career.”

“Not back to the Club Mobile! I won’t allow it!”

“
You
won’t allow it?” she echoed. “Mr. Drake, you sound just like my father!”

She switched on the dryer again and marched into the bedroom. Simon followed. It was still daylight and the sliding glass doors were open. The roar of the surf on the rocks below was a greater deterrent to communication than the hair dryer had been. He closed them.

“Have you read the papers?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m tired of reading about me. I haven’t even turned on the radio all day.”

“Then you don’t know that Charley Becker’s dead.”

He watched her face for reaction. There was none.

“I don’t know a Charley Becker,” she said.

“Yes, you do. He operated The Cove and rented the boat to Roger.”

Now her eyes widened in apprehension.

“That man is dead? What happened?”

“Officially, he fell off the pier and drowned.”

“And unofficially?—Oh, Simon, was he killed, too? Does it have anything to do with the record in the juke box?”

“It might.”

“Then last night—”

“Last night, in all probability, whoever killed Becker tried to kill us, too. The song ‘Infidelity’ was played repeatedly to frighten us out of the restaurant. The rest would have been automatic if my getaway speed hadn’t been underestimated. Think, Wanda, isn’t there anything you haven’t told me? Something Roger might have mentioned about his fishing trips? If only he’d talked in his sleep!”

Wanda sat down on the edge of the bed and deliberated.

“He didn’t even snore,” she said. “In fact, he didn’t sleep much.”

Simon stood facing Wanda with his back to the glass door. When a huge wave rolled in and crashed against the reef, the entire door shuddered as if reacting to a sonic blast.

“Is it that noisy here all the time?” Simon demanded.

“Usually,” Wanda said. “Roger told me it was because of the rocks, or the depth or something. Oh, I don’t know. It’s not so bad in the daytime, usually. When we first moved in, we couldn’t stand it. We were going to move…. Simon, about that car—”

Simon held up one hand for silence.

“I’m thinking,” he said.

He looked out through the glass doors. All of the new houses on Seacliff Drive had them. All of the new houses had sundecks. Frank Lodge was on his at the moment, apparently having abandoned the beach for the day.