After Midnight (17 page)

The
Dobson
operated on a forty-two-day round trip schedule to the Orient. Once every six weeks, on Sunday, she passed within a few miles of The Cove boat landing. To avoid suspicion, Roger took up deep sea fishing—choosing one Sunday a month spaced at six-week intervals. He used the white boat because it was easily identifiable at sea and flew a special flag when approaching the point of contact. Olson used a matching flag to mark the floating capsule he tossed overboard.

“Six-week intervals,” Simon reflected. “If only I had asked Charley Becker about the frequency of the rentals—But by the time I realized the visits to his father’s yacht were a red-herring operation, Becker was dead and the commander and Wanda were on the suspect list.”

Olson suffered the interruption without comment. When Simon stopped talking, he resumed.

“I don’t know nothing about red-herring operations,” he admitted “I only know what I did. The first time we tried the trick, I took out four ounces of pure H from the shipment. Warren wanted to start small so the pushers wouldn’t holler the product was weak. He sold it for two thousand bucks. We split my forty to his sixty. That was because he had to get rid of the stuff.”

“To Mayerling and his friends,” Simon mused.

“Who?” Franzen echoed.

Simon didn’t feel generous. He decided to let Franzen do his own digging.

“An old vaudeville act Hannah Lee knew,” he answered. “How many times did you deliver to Roger Warren?”

“Three,” Olson said. “The first time he rented a boat it was a dry run. He wanted to get the feel of her and time his speed to the rendezvous area. The first delivery was in July. On the second, in August, I cut eight ounces out of the shipment. The third time I took twelve ounces.”

“You must have thought you were in the clear to keep escalating that way,” Simon remarked.

“Sure we did,” Olson replied. “In August, two weeks after the second delivery, I got word from Lodge to meet him at the City Motel in Marina Beach. I didn’t know any Frank Lodge and I was scared—but I went. It was nothing. He was a replacement for my old contact man and wanted to brief me on some minor changes in the operation.”

“Why did he pick Marina Beach for the meeting if he wasn’t watching Roger Warren?” Franzen asked.

“I asked him why we met at Marina,” Olson said. “He told me his front job was with a company that had clients in the town. He even showed me the sales catalog. It sounded OK, but after that meeting Warren wanted to pull out. Then he lost a roll on the horses and said we would pull it once more. Warren said three was his lucky number.”

“What did you think when you heard he was dead?” Simon asked.

Olson tried to grin. “I thought he couldn’t count. Anyway, I was glad it was over.”

“And you didn’t wonder what happened to that last delivery?”

“I didn’t care! Look, all I got out of the deal was the short cut on a price Warren probably lied about anyway. It wasn’t worth the risk. When
Lodge
came up that gangplank tonight with his guts shot out, I thought he was coming after me. It just wasn’t worth it!”

“What was he coming after?”

“A ride to Hong Kong—or anywhere. Don’t you get it, lawman? Frank Lodge goofed. On his job you don’t do that. I mean, you just don’t make mistakes. They take away your gold star if you do—and feed the sharks with what’s left…. Have you got a cigarette on you?”

Simon didn’t but Franzen did. He handed Olson the package and the kid grabbed it with both hands. He lit up and leaned back in the straight-backed chair Franzen had found for him—exhausted and too scared to let down his guard. Outside the windows a moist dawn was stretching over the rooftops like a silver gray cat rousing from sleep, and the berth where the S.S.
Dobson
had been the theatre for violent action was deserted. The whole of the living world seemed contained in one small room.

“Is that all there is to it?” Commander Warren demanded. “This seaman tells a story to save his own skin and my dead son’s branded a dope peddler?”

“No, that’s not all,” Franzen said wryly. “There’s the package of heroin Frank Lodge took from your son’s house.”

“And the tennis trophy,” Simon added. “I think Roger meant to wrap it in the bamboo paper and transfer the drug to his tackle box. He was running scared. He needed a decoy. But when he returned to the yacht and learned Wanda had gone ashore with some sailors, he forgot that detail. And so, hours later, he came home angry and drunk with the trophy still in the tackle box and the heroin still in the bamboo wrapper. Frank Lodge, with a pair of high powered binoculars in his hands, watched the arrival from the house next door. The quarrel made a perfect setup for murder. All he had to do was wait until the house was quiet and then carry out his assassination contract with a minimum of danger. But he overreached himself. He planted the knife on Wanda’s bed—the last place she would have put it. Then, like an ordinary good citizen, he reported what he had seen and heard to the police and testified at the preliminary hearing.”

“Where did Nancy Armitage come in?” Franzen asked.

“Sometime after Lodge took the house. She made a convenient companion on the Sundays he watched Roger go fishing off The Cove pier. A couple isn’t as conspicuous as one man alone. Lodge knew the
Dobson’s
schedule. He knew that Roger, if he was the man cutting in on a syndicate operation, wouldn’t return empty-handed on Sundays when the ship passed near the fishing waters. I imagine the first time the heroin was cut there was some doubt. It could have happened on the Asiatic side of the operation. Naturally, nothing was said to Olson at the July meeting. But by the time the second job was pulled, there was a leak. Roger drank. Being insecure, he probably dragged when he drank. Whatever it was, something sent Lodge to Marina Beach to rent the house next door to the Warrens. In order for an organization to function efficiently, it must be disciplined. Once Lodge had proof of Roger’s guilt, he could proceed with the discipline.”

“But why did Armitage shoot Lodge?”

Simon smiled blandly. “Who knows? If I were defending Miss Armitage in court, which I won’t, by the way, I’d say she shot him because she loved him. I’d probably be right. What I do know is that he was leaving her and she didn’t like being left.”

“They’ll do it every time,” Franzen muttered. “Why did you send a wire to McKay?”

“Because, until Nancy Armitage showed up in Lodge’s beach house, I wasn’t sure who she covered for when she refused to testify, and I wasn’t sure who tried to kill me—and Mrs. Warren—last night when we left the restaurant.”

“Tried to kill you?” Commander Warren roared. “If somebody tried to kill you, Drake, it couldn’t have been my mate!”

“But I didn’t know that,” Simon answered, “any more than you didn’t know Wanda could have killed your son. You should have used those Sundays she spent on the yacht getting closer to her instead of driving her away. You might have liked her. She could teach you to watusi and swim and possibly even to laugh once in a while. It’s good for high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries.

“But that’s beside the point. Lodge tried to get Wanda convicted for Roger’s murder and failed. He should have left town—his job was finished. But Nancy Armitage told him I knew she was with a man the day of the murder and that frightened him. In Lodge’s business it’s fatal to leave tracks. I think he followed me the day I went to the yacht. Charley Becker recognized him and so Charley had to go before he could remember to tell me who kept company with the nurse who wouldn’t testify. Later he tried to kill me—or at least frighten me off the case.”

“All for a few thousand dollars’ worth of narcotics,” the commander reflected.

“You’ve missed the point,” Simon said. “The amount Roger skimmed off the
Dobson
shipment wasn’t important. The fact that he dared to do it was. Fools rush in where angels get their feathers singed. Look at Olson. He’s so glad to be alive even a police escort looks good to him.”

Olson’s shaggy head came up from the cigarette he had smoked down to the filter. He stared at Simon and then at Franzen.

“Do I have to sit here all night?” he asked.

“Only until the federals decide who gets custody of the baby,” Franzen said. “S. Olson—merchant seaman. I found that registration card at City Motel, too, Drake. When Commander Warren came in with McKay’s wire we traced it to the office of origin and learned that you sent it. Then I remembered your interest in Frank Lodge and went back over his background. And guess what? We all met like a big family reunion on the docks at sailing time.”

Somewhere down the hall a telephone was ringing, and a telephone in a near empty building just before dawn is a commanding sound. Franzen nodded and one of the plainclothesmen he’d brought along went to answer it. Nobody spoke until the officer returned with a message.

“It was the hospital,” he reported. “They pumped blood into Lodge for an hour. He got scared that he wasn’t going to make it and made a full confession.”

“And?” Franzen asked.

“He’ll live another fifty years if he can find a sharp enough lawyer.”

Simon knew it was time to go home.

It was sunrise when Simon reached The Mansion. He didn’t look in on Hannah. Rousing her at such an hour was not only dangerous, it was heresy. He went directly to bed and slept until noon when Duane Thompson telephoned and demanded an immediate appearance at City Hall. Through a fog of confused memories, Simon recalled that—among other events on the busy agenda of the previous evening—he had witnessed an attempted murder and that clarified Thompson’s point of view.

He drove to the rear parking lot of City Hall and entered through the back doorway. Before facing Thompson or any of the reporters who might still be cluttering the halls, he wanted to see Nancy Armitage. He found her in a private cell in the woman’s section looking none the worse for her first night behind bars. She had, in fact, the strange radiance that emanates from one who has found satisfaction.

“You’re lucky,” Simon said. “You’ll be charged with assault with a deadly weapon—not murder. If you like, I’ll recommend a good lawyer. A friend, but not too good a friend.”

“I was thinking of you, Mr. Drake,” she said.

“Thank you, no. I expect to be busy. Besides, I’m a witness to the act. That would prejudice me.”

“But I didn’t mean to shoot! I only meant to frighten him into taking me with him!”

She probably believed every word she said. That would be an asset on the witness stand.

“You just keep on saying that and you won’t have any trouble,” Simon declared “But be sure and tell your lawyer not to ask my opinion. I saw the expression on your face when you pumped lead into Lodge’s stomach. You were having too much fun for me to ever get my heart into any defense of poor Florence Nightingale.”

This was a personal report. The one Simon later made to Duane Thompson was more detailed and less analytical.

Thompson was happy. With the deft touch of a miscast press agent, he was turning the fiasco of the Roger Warren murder into a masterpiece of police deduction. Olson was a federal prisoner—as Lodge would be if he escaped the death penalty—but the murder charge took precedence and the full publicity coverage would now come to a man who had an iron-clad case. Nowhere at any price was there enough protection to save Lodge now. August Mayerling’s aunt in Santa Barbara had suffered a complete relapse and it was doubtful that August would return to Marina Beach before the end of the year. Eddie Berman’s lawyer had sealed him off from any communication, and the powers that paid Frank Lodge for his extracurricular activities didn’t include legal protection in the contract.

Simon told Thompson all he knew about the devious trail that had led from the murder on Seacliff Drive to Seaman Olson’s midnight swim in the glare of police searchlights, and explained how a faulty lock on the Warrens’ front door had brought the trail back to Frank Lodge’s front window.

“Lodge heard the door banging in the wind because he stood at an open window in the living room with a pair of binoculars in his hand when the Warrens came home. He must have been watching that window for hours, because the quarrel at The Cove sent the battling Warrens off in one direction, and he had to get Nancy Armitage back to her night patient. He knew Roger had the package of heroin, but I don’t think he worried about it. He’d watched Roger for months. He knew his contact was local and that he always brought the package home with him. It was just a matter of time.

“He knew he was going to kill Roger that night, and Lodge is an improviser. We can see that in the way he used an oil slick on the dock when he dropped Charley Becker’s body into the sea. The Warrens came home battling—as usual. The door kept banging after they went upstairs—which meant it was left unlocked. He heard Roger ask for a knife. Then the quarreling stopped. Lodge waited until all was quiet and went next door to do the job he had contracted to do and found everything set up for him: a murder weapon complete with fingerprints, a drunken victim in a chair in the living room and a drunken wife sleeping in the bedroom. All he had to do was take the heroin, kill Roger and leave the knife.”

“Obviously,” Thompson said.

“Obviously?”

Thompson smiled blandly. “A professional killer can’t be apprehended as quickly as an ordinary ‘it-all-went-black’ family murderer. He needs to be lulled into a false sense of security.”

“Thompson,” Simon howled, “you’re not going to palm off
my
investigation,
my
demolished brakes and
my
encounter with Nancy Armitage and her lover over a hot gun collection as your master plan to catch a killer!”

“I’m not?” Thompson said. “Give me odds.”

Simon couldn’t do that. Gambling was illegal in California.

He left Thompson to his fantasies and drove back to Seacliff Drive. The front door was still unlocked at the Warren house. He entered and walked up the short flight of stairs to the living room. The drapes were drawn and a light burned in Wanda’s bedroom, but the house was empty. He found one closet door open. The contents seemed intact—except for one empty hanger on the floor. Retrieving it, he found the crumpled wire from Olson on the floor. Wanda was gone. Her clothes, cosmetics and her French perfume were still in the house, but she was gone. Simon listened to the surf bothering the rocks on the beach below for nearly an hour and then abandoned the vigil.

He returned to The Mansion late in the afternoon to find Hannah in heated telephone debate with someone who probably regretted the whole thing.

“No, you may
not
call me Hannah!” she announced. “My name is
Miss
Lee and I cherish the sound of it. I reserve the use of my first name to my closest associates and refuse to share the privilege with every upstart switchboard operator who thinks it’s smart to be familiar. Now, put through my call as you’re paid to do and we’ll remain self-respecting strangers.”

When Hannah saw Simon in the doorway she abandoned the entire project and demanded to be brought up to date. Newspapers were so impersonal. He told her about Nancy Armitage and her face glowed with malevolent delight.

“I told you not to trust that woman!” she exclaimed. “Conscience! Humbug! Beware of volunteers, Simon. Always beware of volunteers. Oh, that reminds me. Commander Warren called. He wants you to come out to the yacht.”

“Why?” Simon asked.

“Protocol. He wants to surrender his sword, I think. He says that he always admits an error.”

“So do I,” Simon said, “and then I try not to repeat it. I’ve been out to the commander’s yacht. I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t like him or his nineteenth-century mind. Why should I accept his apologies when his contempt is so flattering?”

“But, Simon,” Hannah begged, “what will happen to that sweet little Wanda Warren?”

Simon knew he was in trouble. Never in her life had Hannah Lee called any woman “sweet” without having something up her sleeve.

“She’s not my baby,” Simon said.

“But she is a human being. Simon, you sent her a wire. What did she do?”

“She ran. What did you expect her to do? She always runs. She ran away from her father. She ran away from the commander’s sarcasm. She ran away from my wire. That’s her pattern.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. I stopped by her house but she hasn’t come back. Scared, I suppose, of facing another trial. Well, let her go. She’s still attractive—physically. She can go back to wriggling in public until she finds some nice young man who likes spineless, clinging vines and makes her a better offer.”

Hannah cocked her head like a mother hen watching the frantic scratchings of her young.

“You sound bitter,” she observed.

“Well, I’m not! I’m relieved to have it all over with. Now let’s forget the whole affair and get back to basics. How’s the garbage pickup these days, and when do I get my dinner?”

“I hope that question was in two parts,” Hannah remarked. “As for your dinner, it’s waiting. Just open the doors to the dining room.”

Hannah liked elegant touches. Simon assumed that she had prepared a surprise, and he was right. He opened the double doors that led into the dining room—but it wasn’t the same room at all. The large formal dining table was shoved against one wall. In its place, cosily set before the fireplace, was an intimate table for two. Twin rows of wine glasses were separated by ornate candelabra, and a silver wine bucket housed a bottle of champagne. Simon had the eerie sensation of having wandered back into Frank Lodge’s apartment—and then he realized the room was occupied. Wanda moved toward the candlelight, slight, slender and attired in something so form-fitting he had to fight down a feeling of slow strangulation. Quite deliberately, she took the bottle from the ice bucket and inserted a corkscrew. The cork came out easily with a sharp pop, and Wanda beamed.

“There, I’ve done it,” she said.

“What are you doing here?” Simon demanded.

“I fooled you. I decided to stop running. Shall I pour or do you pour? I’m never sure which is right. I guess it’s tea that a woman pours.”

“When did you come here?” Simon asked.

“Last night.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“Of course not! I came after I got that wire. It didn’t make sense to me and I was tired of being locked inside that house. I came here because—well, where else could I come?”

The strangulation feeling was giving way to something much more frightening. Simon began to feel warm all through his body. Wanda was even lovelier without a dryer on her head. Young, homeless, dependent—

Suddenly he panicked.

“Hannah!”

He whirled about but Hannah, leering happily, was slowly drawing the doors together.

“Hannah, this isn’t fair!” he cried. “I’ve been torpedoed!”

“On the contrary,” Hannah said. “When Wanda came last night we had a woman to woman chat. We both agreed you were much too professional to work for charity.”

“But I love charity!” Simon said. “Hannah, don’t leave me! This woman is mercenary. She married Roger Warren for his money. She as much as admitted it!”

“Bully for her!” Hannah murmured. “I always knew there was something I liked about the child.”

The doors closed, and from the far side of the room came the throbbing strains of Nancy Armitage’s plaintive love song. Hannah’s theatrical sense left nothing undone.

“Mr. Drake,” Wanda inquired, “don’t lawyers do anything but talk?”

There was only one thing Simon could do in such a situation. He faced the music.