Darkest Hour

by Nielsen, Helen

  “I take it this is Eve Necchi’s handwriting,” Simon said, indicating the registration card.

  “That’s right,” Franzen acknowledged.

  “But you’re not sure about the other writing, is that right?”

  “We haven’t had an expert look at it, if that’s what you mean. It was found in the telephone booth outside the manager’s office at the motel. Did Eve Necchi telephone you last night?”

  “I never heard the name Eve Necchi until this morning,” Simon said. It was a technical truth, but Franzen looked unhappy.

  “You have an unlisted number,” he reminded Simon.

  “That’s true. But sometimes I give it to people and they call me later.”

  “To make dates at motels?”

  Simon laughed. “Now you know my secret. Hannah Lee’s insanely jealous of younger women. She won’t let me bring a woman to the house, and, since I’m a healthy, red-blooded American boy—”

  Pete Franzen was a nice guy who would go out of his way to be amiable, but his face suddenly reddened and a white line of anger laced about his mouth. “Damn it, Drake, I’m trying to do you a favor,” he said. “I found this telephone book cover myself, and I’ve kept it under my hat because I wanted you to know about it before Duane got hold of it. He hates your guts after what you did to him on your last case. He’d love to nail you with anything handy.”

  “You’re withholding evidence from the D.A.,” Simon said, “and Duane Thompson has a lean and hungry look. Aren’t you taking chances?”

  “Everybody needs a friend sometime.”

  “Yes, everybody does. And you would rather have me than Thompson. I don’t blame you.” Simon leaned over the desk and studied the handwriting again. He was certain that Eve had written his name on the book, but he didn’t know why. She already had his number in her head. But even if Franzen proved the handwriting was Eve’s, he could never prove that she had actually called him or that he was the one who gave her his number. It was nothing to worry about unless Franzen had other evidence up his sleeve.

  “Is this why you called me down here so early in the morning?” he chided. “I haven’t even had my coffee.”

  The interview seemed at an end when Franzen returned the file to his desk. He accompanied Simon to the door and into the hall. “I’ll buy you that cup of coffee if you want to step down to the snack bar,” he offered. But the hall was busy with people and two of them took precedence over creature comforts. The first was Duane Thompson, the photogenic district attorney who always froze with professional jealousy at the sight of Simon. Thompson was playing the grand political game of “how to get on top and stay on top, and how to get back on top if you take a licking.” He was no better a loser than anyone else, but usually a much better actor. At the moment his chagrin was showing. It was the only thing about him that didn’t look like what the best-dressed politician should wear. The man who had been talking to Thompson before Simon came into view was a husky backfield type, class of ‘45. He wore white jeans and a fisherman’s knit sweater, and his ruddy face broke into a spontaneous smile at the sight of Simon. His name was Bob Gusik.

  “Am I glad to see you!” he boomed. “This is what I call luck. Haven’t laid eyes on this man, Thompson, in at least three months and this morning he’s right here. Simon, I need a lawyer.”

  “Why?” Simon asked.

  “Didn’t you hear what happened at my place last night? Murder!”

  “I heard, but you didn’t kill the woman, did you?”

  “Hell, no! I just don’t want to get sued for negligence or anything. Christ, Simon, you know a property owner doesn’t have any rights in this state! I trust nobody. Come by sometime and brief me on my position.”

  Bob Gusik was as open-faced as a Danish sandwich. Thompson had his professional smile back in place, and Franzen was digging coffee money out of his pants pocket. Bob Gusik had just established that Simon Drake hadn’t been on the premises of his establishment in three months and nobody looked surprised or disappointed. Simon felt a couple of tons lift from his shoulders. Thanks to the late show he was just a name scrawled on a telephone book.

  Simon had a cup of coffee with Franzen at the garage-level snack bar and then drove down to the beach. There was a viewpoint at the south edge of town with a small parking area and cement steps leading down to the sand bar that stretched between two rocky protrusions of land. The day was chilly and the air smelled of approaching rain. Simon left the XK-E nosed against the protective railing, tugged the collar of the Aquascutum up around his ears and took the steps down two at a time. He could always think better with sand under his feet and the soft therapy of surf wooing the shore. It was still on the early side of nine o’clock and the beach was deserted except for a line of slender sandpipers waiting in formation for the waves to recede and then rushing forward en masse to forage the provision deposited by the sea before the next wave sent them scurrying back to higher ground. Simon ducked his head against the wind and struck out in long, muscle-building strides. He had covered about a hundred yards when a shout from above jerked his eyes back toward the place where he had left the Jaguar. A bronze Caddy sedan was paired beside it now, and a young man with red hair and an unbuttoned white trench coat that slapped at his calves as he ran was loping down the steps to the beach.

  “Si—! Simon Drake! Wait for me.”

  It was Jack Keith. He covered the distance between them in a matter of seconds. He was a rangy, long-legged man of thirty who wore field boots with his business suit and carried a snub-nosed pistol strapped to his hip. Self-consciously, he buttoned his jacket to conceal the weapon.

  “I called The Mansion,” Keith said, “and Hannah told me that you were called to city hall. She thinks you’re in trouble. What’s going on here?”

  “Murder,” Simon said.

  “So I heard. Is this a private beach or may I join you?”

  “Be my guest,” Simon said.

  They walked together and Keith made his report. “N. B. Kwan,” he began. “Oh, you do pick the pretties for me! Kwan was skewered on a balcony at the Balboa Hotel in San Diego—but you knew that when you called me. Where shall I begin?”

  “‘Begin at the beginning and continue until it seems that something has been said,’” quoted Simon.

  “You sound more like Hannah all the time. All right, I checked out Kwan at the university. Science major. Brilliant student. No bad habits, no women. He lived like a monk and worked like a dog. Born in Hong Kong in 1942. Chinese father, English mother. N. B. stands for Norman Bryce so it seems that Britannia ruled. British passport, and don’t ask me where I got the photograph.”

  It was small—passport size. Kwan. Simon fitted it to the group photo in Sam Goddard’s pilfered file and it matched. “Back up,” he said. “No women?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. Death came from a brutal, sadistic beating but there doesn’t seem to be a sex angle. There’s speculation in unquotable circles that it was a crime of vengeance.”

  “Why?”

  “No answer. I told you this was a pretty one. The law’s clamped a lid on it and the story’s dead in the press. I smell federals.”

  “FBI?”

  “Among others. Kwan’s clothing was confiscated—everything he wore and everything he had in his suitcase. He had a history of periodically going to hotels and motels to write class papers. A complete loner. Not even a protest movement in his curriculum.”

  “Our group-happy society would find him guilty of heinous crimes on that basis alone. Who has the clothing?”

  “I’m not sure. My informant knows only that everything was searched by every means in the police lab and specimens were taken of deposits in the pockets.”

  “Marijuana?”

  “I suspect something stronger. You don’t call in the feds because an undergrad smokes pot. Somebody bought Kwan a new suit for his funeral.”

  “He wasn’t buried,” Simon said.

  “I know. I followed your
trail to the mortuary. How did you get hooked on this case, Simon? Who’s the client?”

  “It could be me,” Simon reflected. “I’ll fill you in later. What do you know about Max Berlin?”

  Apparently everybody but Simon read Chic, or else Keith had done some very fast leg work.

  “Nobody knows about Max Berlin,” Keith answered, “but a lot of people are wondering. He doesn’t seem worried. A mysterious reputation, especially if it’s off color, only makes a man like Berlin more attractive. Berlin’s made a fortune from woman’s vanity. One rumor is that he provides clients at his spas with more than the advertised services.”

  “Reducing, relaxation and sex,” Simon mused. “Sounds like a going combination.”

  “I’d buy stock in the company if it was on the board. Berlin has no criminal record—not under that name, anyway. He travels freely all over the world and lives high, high on the hog. Kwan had no record nor does the alleged brother-in-law, Dr. Wong of El Centro. But if Berlin’s mixed up in Kwan’s murder, he’s playing it very cool. He went to the mortuary with Wong knowing he might be seen and recognized.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t worried because he knew Kwan’s murderer was already dead,” Simon said. He couldn’t stop there. He had to tell Keith about Hannah’s frantic call from the La Verde drunk tank and the subsequent plunge of the late Monte Monterey. The tale then led naturally to Sam Goddard’s funeral and the pictures found in his darkroom.

  Keith’s eyes were intense with excitement. “Now, that’s interesting,” he said. “Kwan’s body wasn’t discovered until Monday morning when a cleaning woman stepped out on the adjacent balcony and screamed up a storm. The room she was cleaning was occupied by a Miss Eve Potter of San Diego, whose landlord was decorating her apartment and she couldn’t stand the smell of fresh paint. She didn’t hear the fight because she’d taken a sleeping powder. At least, that’s what she told a reporter on one of the dailies.”

  “Eve Potter,” Simon repeated. “I know something she didn’t tell that reporter. She had another name. Eve Necchi.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They had reached the pile of ragged rocks, bleak and wet from the churning sea, that formed a wall at one end of the sand bar. No cement steps led up to the street at this end of the beach; it was the turning-back place. Simon swung about and faced Jack Keith, who was still absorbing that last revelation.

  “Necchi,” Simon repeated.

  “I know. I got it the first time.”

  “Did you check out Eve Potter’s apartment to see if it really was freshly painted?”

  “Of course not! My assignment was Kwan, not the girl next door. What’s the inside on the Necchi murder? Was she an addict?”

  “A boozer,” Simon said, “but that’s not why she came to Marina Beach. Her motive was blackmail. The intended victim was Simon Drake.”

  “You? So that’s what you meant by saying you were ‘the client.’ What did she have on you?”

  “Nothing but a bad case of mistaken identity. What she did have was something on Kwan’s murder and now even that slim evidence is missing. Jack, keep digging on Kwan. See if you can find a point of contact between Kwan, Berlin and Monte Monterey. I don’t want to tell you all I’ve learned because it may color your approach, but I think this is a very messy show and somebody is willing to do anything to keep it from getting on the road.”

  The rocks formed an elbow of shelter from the wind. Keith dug out a pipe and tobacco pouch from the pocket of his jacket, filled the pipe and lighted it with an old-fashioned torch match. The action loosened the trench coat again and the pistol strapped to his hips reminded Simon that men on dangerous jobs still carried arms and that Sam Goddard’s gun was missing.

  When the pipe began to draw Keith took it from his mouth and said, “Berlin, Kwan and Monterey. That’s an interesting triangle.”

  “Make it a quadrangle,” Simon said. “A man named Sam Goddard was on his way to Santa Monica where Monterey was waiting for him in the Palms Hotel—and don’t ask me how I know that because we don’t have time for a full résumé—when his car ran off the Coast Highway in the fog and landed in a ravine. You can read his obituary in Tuesday’s papers. Check your public library.”

  “Accident?”

  “Officially.”

  “It does happen, Simon. You’re getting to be a nervous Nellie.”

  “You could be right,” Simon admitted.

  Keith raised one finger in a jaunty salute and started back down the beach toward the cement steps. Simon wasn’t ready to leave. There wasn’t another living thing on the beach but the busy sandpipers, and yet he felt vulnerable. High above the shoreline the bland glass faces of the beach houses stared out to sea, and all that was needed was a strong pair of binoculars and a murderer suffering morning-after qualms to give identity to two men in an apparent casual encounter. He squatted on the rocks and watched the surf until Keith was safely up the steps and the Caddy had pulled away from the viewpoint before making his own slow-paced return to the Jaguar.

  The sheet of memo paper Simon had taken from Goddard’s desk was still in his coat pocket, and on it was the description and serial number of Goddard’s gun. Simon drove to the nearest telephone and placed a call to Vera Raymond. Her voice came on strong and steady. A good cry and a night’s sleep could work wonders in any situation. He asked as casually as possible if Sam owned a gun and received an affirmative answer. He asked if it was in its usual place and allowed her time to look. Her voice had trouble in it when she returned to the telephone. The gun was gone. No, she hadn’t seen him take it when he left for Santa Monica Monday, but that didn’t mean that it hadn’t been taken. Sam’s personal effects had been returned by the Enchanto police and they said nothing about a gun having been found in the wreckage.

  “Maybe he sold the gun,” Simon suggested.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” she protested. “Just a week ago he said something about teaching me how to use it. He was worried about all the hooliganism going on in the beach towns. He said that if the law couldn’t protect people from vandals they had a right to protect themselves. Do you suppose he took the gun to be oiled or repaired?”

  “Is there a gun shop in Enchanto?”

  “There’s a sporting-goods store. Quite a good one. It’s called Smitty’s.”

  “I’ll call them and ask,” Simon said.

  News traveled more slowly along the highway than it did in Marina Beach. Vera hadn’t mentioned the motel murder, and that either meant that she hadn’t heard of it or didn’t make a connection with Simon, which was the way he liked to leave it. He concluded the call and placed another to Smitty’s gun shop. Smitty answered. He didn’t need a description; he knew Sam’s gun. He had sold it to him five years ago.

  “It was beautiful,” he recalled. “Steel-blue barrel…. No, I never worked on the gun. Sam was in about a week ago to buy a box of shells. Said he was going to set up a target and get in some practice. He would have told me if anything was wrong with the weapon. Why are you asking?”

  “It’s missing,” Simon said.

  “Missing? Say, shouldn’t that be reported to the police?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Simon answered.

  • • •

  Simon liked to see a policeman’s eyes when, he talked to him. He left the phone booth and drove down the coast to Enchanto-by-the-Sea, which looked even more disenchanted in the gray of the morning. The city offices were housed in an ugly yellow stucco building with a red tile roof and arched windows. Everything was under one roof: police department, fire station and the Chamber of Commerce housed in a small office off the tile courtyard. The whole arrangement gave the impression of a taco house that had gone out of business. There was no morgue. All accident and homicide victims were taken directly to Willows Mortuary because Willows owned the only ambulance in town. But the officers had made a complete listing of Goddard’s effects, and the .38 Smith and Wesson wasn’t one of them.
>
  Simon gave them the serial number.

  “You might want to contact the highway patrol and have the accident area searched,” he suggested. “I think Goddard carried the gun. It might have been thrown out of the car on impact. You don’t want some wild kid to find it and use it on a cop for target practice.”

  It wasn’t a hard sell. Simon left the police station with the distinct impression that no stones, proverbial or otherwise, would be left unturned at the scene of the crash and proceeded to Graybar’s Garage, where he was told the remains of the Porsche awaited its fate.

  “The body’s shot,” Graybar said laconically, “but the motor’s in fine shape. I don’t know who this wreck belongs to now, but if it belongs to Miss Raymond ask her what she wants for it. I can put the motor in a dune buggy I’m building for my kid brother.”

  “What happened to the right side?” Simon asked. “Why isn’t it scraped like that all over?”

  “I think she sideswiped something. There’s a steel mesh fence separating the highway up where the wreck was found. It looks to me like Goddard bounced off it a few times in the fog before he went over the embankment. Sam Goddard drove like a crazy man. He was sharp but he only had to miss once. The car has a roll bar, but you can see what happened. The door sprung open and he went out of it head first. He never would use the seat belts I installed for him.”

  “Instantaneous death?” Simon asked.

  “Man, I’m a mechanic, not a medic. I’ve seen guys walk away from a mess like this. Goddard’s number was up. That’s the only way you can look at it.”

  Simon didn’t argue the point of view. He examined the inside of the car and found a road map of California folded open to the southernmost area including a part of Mexico, a small set of wrenches, a screwdriver and a flashlight that wouldn’t light. Graybar assured him there was no gun in the car and suggested that he report the missing weapon to the police.

  “With all these wild, hooligan kids running loose,” he said, “you can’t be too careful who gets hold of a loaded gun.”