Darkest Hour

by Nielsen, Helen

  “Look behind you,” Keith answered.

  The station wagon had just come into view and stopped a few feet from the three men standing before the open van. Vera Raymond held a small microphone in her hand. She put it down and stepped out of the wagon and Simon got the significance of the tall antennae. Vera was the go-between. She had been in radio contact with Keith all the time. She must have received the ring from him after he arranged Wanda’s release.

  Keith waved her back to the car. “Keep moving!” he shouted.

  “I can’t until you move the Cadillac,” she said.

  “Okay, I’ll move it.” Keith started to turn away but Simon blocked his passage. “You drive the truck,” he said. “I want to borrow the Cadillac.”

  “Don’t be an idiot!” Keith protested. “You can’t go back to the spa now. You’ll be shot on sight. It’s all over anyway. Berlin got the notebook and formula in exchange for Wanda, and whoever paid him to snatch it has completed the deal. They’ll beat the legitimate drug interests by several months and that’s all they need. The legits won’t squawk because publicity will hurt their Dow Jones. The ball game’s over, Simon. Forget it!”

  “Forget it!” The words were Vera’s. Tense and ashen-faced, she walked slowly toward them. The challenge was for Keith; her eyes were on the truck driver. Suddenly, so quickly Simon had barely enough time to pull back his hand, she reached for the Luger. The tension had to explode somewhere. The driver was a substitute for Berlin. “Forget that Sam was murdered?” she cried.

  “Vera, no!” Simon said. “This man goes into the truck. The one who killed Sam Goddard is dead.” He had no doubt that she would have shot the driver if she held the gun. The driver had no doubt either. He leaped up into the trailer and Simon slammed the doors shut and fixed the latch. “Go back to the station wagon,” he ordered. “Get away from here fast.” Vera didn’t seem to hear. There was something sick in her eyes that was frightening. “Please!” Simon begged. Slowly, like a sleepwalker, she responded and returned to the wagon. Simon turned to Keith. “One of the men who killed Goddard is dead,” he added, “but the other is still alive, for a few hours at least. It will take Berlin that long to learn what happened here. That’s all the time I need.”

  But now Keith had noticed Simon’s leg. Using it on the truck driver had worsened the limp. “You’re hurt!” he said.

  “I’ll survive,” Simon retorted. “You drive the truck to wherever you can get transportation home and abandon it. If Berlin wants his assassin back he can send out a posse. And no police on this—not yet. I want to take this man alive and talking. We don’t need Duane Thompson’s heavy hand spoiling the show.”

  Simon didn’t wait for an argument. The keys to the truck were in the ignition. He tossed them back to Keith as he passed the cab. The keys to the Cadillac were also in the ignition where they would have to be to insure a quick getaway. Simon limped to the sedan and wrenched open the door. He had the motor running and the big car nosed about in the right-hand lane before Keith could get his jaw limbered up to curse. It was only about five miles to the junction now and he would find another route back into Mexico. Keith had stripped the Cadillac of excess weight and it was over-powered. It wouldn’t go as fast as the XK-E, but it had an even chance of catching the Cougar. An even chance was all anyone could ask.

  • • •

  Only a small part of a lawyer’s life is spent in a courtroom; the greater part of his energies go into research and public relations, and outguessing Otto meant projecting into his mind and trying to imagine what he would do on a holiday. Otto didn’t seem a complex type. He had told the gatekeeper at the spa that he was going fishing, and that was probably exactly what he meant to do. Simon drove directly toward the fisherman’s wharf. At sundown Ensenada had a mellow, pinkish cast. The sea was choppy and the wind high; the sky clear, the air cool. Day was ending and the sturdy little fishing craft gossiped at anchor like housewives at the market place. It was too early for much business at the hot spots, but it was tethering time at the motels and Simon kept a weather eye out for the green Cougar.

  He found it one hour later in the parking area which serviced the Harbor Hotel. It was a motel-type building with all rooms opening on outside balconies. The manager was all too eager to tell Simon that Otto had room 27 and that it was two doors from the second floor. Simon ascended quietly, his fingers gripping the Luger in his right-hand pocket. It was totally dark now, and the cheap drapes drawn at the window of Otto’s room showed a light within. Simon listened at the door. Hearing nothing, he raised his hand to knock, but then the door opened under his pressure. The small room contained a double bed, a soiled arm chair and a dresser. A black slicker hung on one hanger of a clothing rod and a canvas bag, unopened, stood on the floor, but no one was home. Otto had come; Otto had gone. Unaccountably, he had left the door unlocked. Simon turned his attention to the dresser where an empty cigarette package was stuffed into an otherwise unused ashtray. There was also a ballpoint pen and a sheet of ruled tablet paper attached by paper clip to a sheaf of newspaper cuttings. The cuttings were all stories on Eve Potter’s murder, and the tablet paper was covered with an uneven handwriting in German. Simon strained to translate:

  “I make this confession to ease my conscience. I can no longer live with the guilt of what I have done …”

  Florid, Teutonic and pathetic. Max Berlin must have composed the note himself. Someone had come to Otto’s room and set the scene for the phony suicide, and that meant that somebody else was waiting for Otto’s return. Simon returned to the balcony. Darkness gave more contrast in the parking lot now: more depth to the shadows and more light from the street. He watched the approach for at least five minutes before he saw the huge bulk of Otto come into sight. He carried a small package under one arm and was hungrily devouring a triple-scoop ice-cream cone. As he reached the Cougar a second man, smaller and stealthier, moved in behind him. Otto was unaware of the follower. He unlocked the Cougar, tore open the package and took out two packs of cigarettes, tossing the rest of the carton into the front seat. He started to relock the door.

  Simon leaned over the balcony. “Otto! Behind you!” he yelled.

  Otto pivoted. Simon saw the flash of light on a knife blade as he scrambled down the stairs. The two men were grappling when he reached the scene. He grabbed the assassin from behind and heard the knife clatter to the ground. “Hit him, Otto! Hit him!” he said. Otto cocked a huge fist and sank it into the attacker’s jaw. Skin ripped, bones crackled and the man slumped against Simon’s shoulder. With one arm now freed he could draw the Luger and point it at Otto’s head. “Unlock the trunk,” he said. Otto obeyed. “Otto,” Simon said, “this is Max Berlin’s man. He was sent here to kill you. Put him in the trunk and lock the lid.”

  Otto had a chocolate ice-cream mustache and a bloody gash on his right forearm. He was in a state of shock and didn’t understand anything but the Luger. Obedience was the keystone of his culture, and the gun was authority. When the attacker was locked inside the trunk, Simon directed Otto upstairs to his room and let him read the confession.

  “But I didn’t write this!” Otto roared. “Who wrote this? You wrote this?”

  “It’s all I can do to read German, let alone write it,” Simon said. “And this German was written by a German. I think Berlin did the job himself. He doesn’t need you any more, Otto. He told me that today. He’s a big man now. He doesn’t want reminders of the old days. Look at that slash on your arm. Imagine how it would look if your body had been found on this bed with both wrists slashed and that letter and those clippings on the dresser. Let’s see what the rest of the note says. Isn’t that Garcia’s name down there? What does it say about Garcia in La Verde?”

  “It says that I killed Garcia!” Otto cried. “I didn’t shoot Garcia. You shot Garcia!”

  “But you did kill Eve Potter.”

  “No, not alone. It wasn’t my idea, anyway. Garcia said: ‘Kill her or else she talks.’ Garcia
told me to kill the woman.”

  “Who killed Sam Goddard?”

  “Garcia! Goddard had a gun and shot at him, so Garcia picked up a rock—”

  “Save it,” Simon said. “I’m a lawyer, Otto, and I tell you no lies. The only thing for you to do now is to come back to Marina Beach with me and tell your story to the district attorney. You’ll go to jail but I think I can promise that you won’t die—not if you cooperate with the authorities and tell them everything you know about Max Berlin. He can’t reach you in jail. At least you’ll be alive.”

  Otto sat down on the bed and put his huge hands over his face. His shoulders trembled. After a few moments Simon realized that he was crying.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  On the concluding day of the pretrial of Otto Schneider for the murder of Eve Necchi Potter, Simon appeared as a witness for the prosecution. Although the prospect of cooperating with Duane Thompson was somewhat nauseating, the greater prospect of exposing the Berlin operation overcame personal dislike. But Berlin had sent his second-echelon legal talent to defend Otto. “Defend” was hardly the proper term. The actual purpose of the legal assistance given the bewildered Otto was to get him indicted, convicted and sentenced as quickly and quietly as possible, and to protect the interests of Max Berlin to the maximum. Over the protests of a young lawyer named Drager (unofficially affiliated with Malvern and Robles) the suicide note found in Otto’s room in the Harbor Hotel was admitted as evidence. The defense provided three expensive handwriting experts to prove the handwriting was not that of Otto Schneider, and Duane Thompson provided one with equally impressive credentials to prove that it was. The defense claimed that Otto had an enemy who had tried to frame him for this lurid crime and pointed to Otto’s attacker in the Harbor Hotel parking lot as the guilty man. This man, Martin Lukas, having been duly transferred to the Marina Beach County Jail for the purpose of the trial, had been found dead in his cell as the result of an overdose of heroin.

  Lieutenant Franzen broke the news to Simon the night the body was discovered.

  “Somebody got to him after he was put in the cell,” Franzen said, and Simon mentally added another corpse to Berlin’s death list.

  Without Lukas the suicide note remained as state’s evidence, but it wasn’t a deciding factor. Simon’s testimony was more damaging. It was given in three parts: the rehearsal of the meeting with Eve at the Balboa Bar—which Drager tried to turn to the advantage of the defense by establishing the availability of the victim: the call he received from her on the night of her death and the subsequent discovery of her body and his communication with Lieutenant Franzen immediately thereafter; and finally, and most damaging, his story of the events leading up to the fatal shooting of Garcia. Bonnie Penny’s testimony was given first and established the scene. Simon, unflinchingly, supplied full details. Still pending was his appearance before the inquest into Garcia’s death which would be held at La Verde. He freely admitted firing the shot that killed Garcia.

  “And you are positive,” Thompson demanded, “that Otto Schneider was driving the automobile from which the deceased, Luis Garcia, emerged and threatened you and Miss Penny with a loaded gun?”

  “Positive,” Simon said. “And Garcia did more than threaten. A shot was fired.”

  “And you were, furthermore, then of the opinion that the defendant was in fact a killer?”

  “It was more than an opinion,” Simon answered, before Drager could object. “Just forty-eight hours before the Gateway Bar shooting the same two men jumped me at the Seville Inn. Garcia hit me with the gun then and dropped it. It exploded. I recovered the exploded shell casing and checked it back to a gun registered to Sam Goddard, who was allegedly killed in an automobile accident about a week earlier. Goddard carried the gun with him when he left the house on the day he died but it wasn’t found on his body or in the car. I did find an exploded shell casing at the scene of the accident—”

  By this time Drager was on his feet screaming, and the judge was forced to concur that the testimony had no bearing on the murder under investigation, but Simon had planted a seed.

  “Garcia was holding the same gun—a Smith and Wesson .38—when we were jumped outside the Gateway Bar,” he protested. “Why shouldn’t I think that he meant to kill us? I asked him to take me and leave Miss Penny. When he refused, I shot him. It was self-defense. Otto Schneider was at the wheel of the sedan then. When the shot was fired he drove away and left Garcia calling him.”

  Thompson picked up Sam Goddard’s gun from the exhibit table and held it before Simon. “Is this the gun you have just described, Mr. Drake?”

  Simon tried to concentrate on the weapon, but all he could really see was Vera Raymond’s tragic face. She was seated beside Wanda in the spectator section. Wanda had just flown in from the East Coast—he hadn’t spoken with her yet. Now he couldn’t enjoy watching her because Vera’s eyes dominated the room. They never left Sam’s gun. “Yes, that’s the one,” he admitted.

  “But Garcia was killed with a .22-caliber automatic. Do you own such a gun?”

  The question was out of order. Thompson couldn’t resist getting in one low jab. “I do not!” Simon answered. “I was given that gun by someone who knew I was in danger. I didn’t have any more time to register it with the police than Eve Necchi Potter had to protest when Otto Schneider walked into her room at Motel Six. Sorry about that!”

  The defense attorney screamed another protest and the judge’s gavel banged, but the jury was convinced that the accused man was a killer. When subsequent testimony by the operator of an all-night gas station placed the dark green Cougar within a mile of the murder scene shortly before Eve’s death, the evidence was sufficient to bring an indictment of first-degree murder. On the advice of counsel, Otto made a plea of guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Everybody was happy, especially Duane Thompson, who had discovered that his left profile photographed better than a full-face shot and took advantage of the fact when braving batteries of cameras.

  • • •

  Later, Simon and Wanda watched the television coverage.

  “Beautiful!” Simon exclaimed, as the newscaster switched to another topic. “Duane Thompson scores again! All he needs to do now is to come out with a statement on foreign policy—one that sounds big and says nothing—he’s a shoo-in for governor. Sacramento’s loss will be Marina Beach’s gain.”

  Wanda chuckled and stretched catlike on the bed. She had dressed hours ago, if tight beach shorts and a pink velour top constituted dressing. Simon had gotten as far as his boxer shorts before becoming enthralled by the film reenactment of the recently-ended drama. His own part of the trial testimony had been concluded at 11 A.M. of the previous day. Wanda had been waiting curbside with the Jaguar and drove him directly to a resort motel farther down the beach. It was off season and delightfully deserted: a perfect place to unwind and renew an old acquaintance. But now she had decided that they must go out and walk on the beach at sunset and then dress and go out for dinner, and all this in spite of excellent room service from the kitchen and bar. Simon had a counterplan. If the newscast lasted a bit longer it would be too late for a sunset walk. After that he could improvise.

  Wanda was frowning. “Simon,” she said, “why did you keep using Sam Goddard’s name in your testimony?”

  “Because Sam was murdered, too.”

  “But it had nothing to do with the trial. I sat near Vera Raymond yesterday. She was taking it all in, and I could see how miserable she was. I could actually feel the tension. It would be better if she tried to forget it.”

  “That will take time,” Simon said. “Vera’s one of those women who bear up under stress and collapse when it’s over. You should have seen her reaction when Jack Keith suggested the same thing at the border a few weeks ago. She’s bitter because no action is being taken in Sam’s death. I turned the shell cases over to Franzen. He thinks it’s murder, too, but there won’t be any prosecution. Otto’s lawyer put in a plea of guilty. H
e’ll have a brief trial and an automatic sentence. I know Max Berlin would rather see Otto get death, but that’s impossible now. He can always have him killed after he goes to prison.”

  “Simon!”

  “It happens, honey. Don’t worry about it. Otto’s death is no great loss to anyone—except the federal-investigation services that would like to wring the truth out of him. They know all about Berlin’s operations. They can’t act without evidence.”

  “And they don’t have evidence because of me.”

  “Wanda, for God’s sake don’t develop a guilt complex. Berlin’s won this round—that’s all. Sooner or later he’ll make a slip—”

  But Wanda’s eyes were shining with inspiration. “You could write a book on Berlin,” she said. “Nobody sues for libel any more unless it’s a publicity stunt. You could use a pseudonym for Berlin—”

  “Like what? Max Peking? A megalomaniac by any other name? Wanda, sweetheart, don’t you know that any exposé of Berlin on that level would triple his business? The ladies would flock to the salons! It would be the chic thing to do in the beautiful-people set. No, the truth is hard to swallow but Berlin is home free this trip. He bought that land from Whitey, by the way.”

  “Hannah’s real estate friend in La Verde? Doesn’t he know what Berlin is?”

  “Whitey knows that a sale is a sale. Don’t look so shocked. Whitey’s clean. He made his money at a time when you had to be a mental delinquent not to make it. He loves everybody and everybody loves him. He did fire Alex Lacey when he learned Alex was Berlin’s finger man who informed him that Monterey was in La Verde. Berlin will find a successor if he needs one. But Monterey’s dossier was what created the need for a La Verde contact. With Monterey dead there may be no replacement.”

  “But I still can’t see why nothing can be done. You have the tape with Monterey’s voice—”