by Keith Miles
‘Who introduced Mardie Cutler to you?’
‘Mrs. Kallgren.’
‘When?’
‘Not long after we moved in, I guess,’ she decided. ‘Zuke went to this big party Mr. Kallgren threw and came home with a dinner invite. I was thrilled. We went to this mansion in Fremont Place. I’ve never seen such a beautiful house. Like a palace.’
‘Who was there?’
‘That was the funny thing. I’d expected a lot of people. But it was only us, Mr. and Mrs. Kallgren and this woman who works for him. Suzanne Fricker. Something to do with contracts.’
‘Yes, I’ve met Suzanne,’ I said.
‘The meal was delicious. Served on silver.’
‘How did Mardie’s name come up?’
‘Mrs. Kallgren was asking me about my work. How I kept in shape. Then she went on to say she had this fantastic girl who gave her fitness classes. Mardie Cutler.’
‘Go on.’
‘I can’t quite remember how it happened but I agreed to meet Mardie and try a session with her. That Suzanne woman knew Mardie as well. Recommended her. She turned out great. Until…’
She buried her face in both hands to cope with the grief.
Valmai looked at me, then reached out to put an arm around her.
‘How did Zuke get on with Mardie,’ she asked, gently.
‘He liked her.’
‘Was that all?’
Helen’s hands went down and she was quite composed.
‘It’s all I needed to know. The rest was up to them.’
Valmai studied her carefully for a minute, then spoke with muted sympathy. The natural enmity she felt towards Helen seemed to be fading away.
‘Why did you marry him?’
‘Because he was the only man who asked me.’
‘There has to be a better reason than that, Helen.’
‘Zuke was kind to me. He took me seriously. I loved him.’
‘You must have known you were taking on a few problems.’
‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Helen with a sigh. ‘But they didn’t seem to matter. You knew my story, you would understand. I came from a poor country to a rich one. All my life, I wanted to marry someone here. To be an American citizen.’
Valmai nodded and sat back in her chair. I took over.
‘That party at the Kallgrens’.’
‘Yes?’
‘Did Howie Danzig know about it?’
‘Of course not,’ replied Helen. ‘Zuke made me promise never to tell him. Howie didn’t like Mr. Kallgren at all.’
I knew why the Everetts had been invited to dinner. It was the last piece of evidence that I needed. I gestured to Valmai and we both stood up to go.
‘Thanks, Helen,’ I said. ‘You’ve been a great help.’
She got to her feet and seized my arm impulsively.
‘I owe you an apology, Alan. For my brother.’
‘Blood is thicker than water,’ I offered.
‘I tried to stop him but he wouldn’t listen. Angel is loco sometimes. He frightens me. That’s why I wouldn’t speak to you when you called yesterday. But Dominga told him you’d been here.’
‘Is he always that impetuous?’ I asked wryly.
‘You know what happened when we crossed the border,’ she reminded. ‘Those bandits. Find the pretty one. When Angel tried to save me, they knocked him to the ground. He still carries the scar on his head.’ A spasm of pain shot through her and she trembled. ‘There is a scar inside his head as well. Because of that day, he cannot bear any man to touch me.’
‘Not even your husband?’ I said.
‘No. He thinks they all want to defile me.’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘There were other men but I lied to him about those. With Zuke, it was different. You cannot hide a marriage. Angel went mad. He threatened to kill Zuke. At the start, I thought he had.’ She released my arm and stood back. ‘I’m sorry for what he did to you, Alan. He’s my brother and I love him but he is in the right place now. Angel needs to be locked away. Someplace where they can help him.’
I thanked her again and we turned to go into the hall. Helen came after us and said nothing until the front door was open. Then she offered a hand to Valmai. There was an awkward pause. Valmai then shook the hand and leaned in to kiss Helen on the cheek.
‘Would you like to stay for a little?’ invited Helen.
Valmai considered. ‘Please. I’d like that.’
The two wives had found something in common. It was time to leave them alone together. One last thought nagged at me. A smiling visitor kissing Helen’s hand.
‘Gamil Amir called yesterday,’ I said. ‘I saw him as I left.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He said he’d come to pay his respects.’ A smile brushed across her face. ‘Then he asked me if I’d have dinner with him next time he was in Los Angeles. I told him I’d wait and see.’
‘You should have introduced him to your brother,’ I suggested with a wicked grin. ‘He might have had second thoughts.’
I gave them each a farewell kiss and arranged to meet Valmai later on. Then I hurried out and down the drive. The battered Oldsmobile seemed like a fitting memorial to Angel Quiroga.
I was in such a rush to get back to my own car that I completely forgot about Orgaz. My sole purpose was to reach Kallgren as soon as possible. His wife had not just casually mentioned Mardie’s name in the course of a dinner party. The girl had been planted in the Everett household deliberately. She had been used by Kallgren and then disposed of before anyone could learn the truth.
Zuke would only have been invited to dinner for one reason. I was not surprised that he had kept it secret from his manager. As I thought about Howie Danzig, lying critically ill in hospital, I felt even more urgency and broke into a trot.
I was puffing slightly when I reached the car park but I didn’t slow down. The Honda was on the second level and I ran quickly up the ramp. My vehicle stood in shadow. Another car and a van were nearby. I fumbled for my keys but I didn’t need them.
Before I could take my hand out of my pocket, I was pushed hard against the side of the Honda and held there while a cloth was pressed over my nose and mouth. By the time I realised what was happening, it was too late to struggle. Red hot needles sped up my nostrils and jabbed my brain. My eyeballs were on fire. My throat was smouldering.
The nightmare started immediately.
My father had bought Alcatraz and installed me as its only guest. I was in a tiny punishment cell from which all light was banished. It was foul-smelling and oppressively warm. Noise assailed my ears from all directions. Something pummelled my body.
A small grille opened in the door. I had visitors.
Rosemary peered in at me through the bars and clicked her tongue in severe disapproval. Then Lynette’s face appeared as well. My daughter had been brought to see her father in his moment of maximum distress. She tried to put a hand through the bars to reach me.
I lunged towards her and banged my head on the steel door. My father’s laugh reverberated around the cell. Another face came into view. It was my bank manager. Donnelly. He watched me with a cold smile, then slammed the grille shut to blot out the light.
The whole cell now seemed to contract and revolve. It picked up speed and hurtled through the air until it landed in the sea with a huge splash. Water rushed in to engulf me. When I tried to swim, I found that my hands were tied. When I tried to speak, salt water gushed into my lungs. I was drowning.
My head started to clear with painful slowness.
The first thing I noticed was the water. It was beneath me. I wasn’t drowning. I was in some kind of small yacht. An engine came to life and its subdued roar matched the throbbing of my skull. I o
pened an eye but it was filmed over and I could see almost nothing.
My hands were tied behind my back. Another thick rope held my body tight against the chair in which I was sitting. I opened a second eye and the blurred vision improved. I saw that I was in the cabin of the craft. It was well-appointed and tailored for comfort. Two bunks were set against one wall. A long, upholstered seat stood opposite. There was a small desk and I was in the armchair behind it. Desk and chair were screwed firmly to the floor. The telephone and answering machine on the surface of the desk were also held in place.
I tested the ropes with a heave but my bonds held tight.
I could still taste the chemical that had overpowered me.
As my brain started to function again, I tried to work out what had happened. My attacker had been waiting for me. While I was still unconscious, he’d driven me away in the van or the car that had been parked near the Honda. I opted for the car. The man would have known that Orgaz was lurking outside and a van was much more likely to arouse a detective’s suspicion. I’d been smuggled out in the boot of a car.
It was no wonder I’d had a nightmare about being locked up in a confined space. All my neuroses had been touched off.
There was a clock on the cabin wall. I had a rough idea what time I’d left the Everett house and got back to the car park. Allowing a margin for error, I estimated that the longest I could’ve been unconscious was half an hour. Probably less.
We couldn’t have driven all that far from Santa Monica.
The note of the engine quickened and water swished beneath us. We were on the move. Through one of the portholes, I saw that we were easing past a forest of masts and rigging. There seemed to be no end to the vista.
It gave me our location. Marina del Rey.
The largest man-made small-craft harbour in the world. Just south of Venice, the harbour is a magnet for devotees of sailing and deep-sea fishing. Zuke had once shown me around it on one of my previous visits. I forgot how many thousands of craft he told me were moored there.
Marina del Rey was within easy reach of Santa Monica.
I was going on a pleasure cruise. Even in its befuddled state, my mind told me that I wouldn’t be coming back. In a frenzy of anger, I strained against the ropes but they held firm. There was no way that I could break free.
Only one hope remained. To summon help.
My hands and body were tied but my legs were not. If I could somehow use them to reach the telephone, I might have a slim chance of raising the alarm. I set about my task with a zeal that was tinged with unashamed panic.
The first problem was to remove my shoe and a sock. A shoe alone would not suffice. I had to press a single number on the digital display and a thick sock would make that difficult. What was needed was an unencumbered big toe.
My shoe flicked off easily but I soon realised that I’d have to shed the other in order to dislodge my sock. Curling one set of toes inside the top of the other sock, I pushed and jiggled for all I was worth. Over-eagerness told against me. I felt perspiration trickle down my neck. Pausing for a rest, I schooled myself to be more patient, then started again. The sock slowly gave way to my persistence and rolled off. The whole operation had taken several minutes.
I lifted my knee as high as I could and got the heel of my bare foot on to the desk. A new challenge presented itself. The telephone had not been designed for use by the big toe of someone who was tied in a chair. I was at the wrong angle. Struggling against my bonds, I bent over sidewards so that my leg could twist over. My foot was now parallel with the top of the desk.
The rope was biting into my flesh and every movement was a separate agony but I forced myself on. It was all to no avail. The telephone was a few vital inches out of reach. Panting from my exertions, I throbbed all over with pain. Despair began to nibble at me. My hope had been stillborn.
Then I noticed the answering machine.
It couldn’t save me but it might help to clarify something. If I switched it on and played back some of its messages, I might learn who owned the yacht and who, therefore, had ordered my abduction. To have my suspicions confirmed would be a small but important consolation.
The answering machine was closer than the telephone but it still posed problems. Because it was further to the left, I had to use the other foot. This meant removing a second sock, but I went through the ritual once more and another big toe was soon ready to go to work. I got my left foot up on to the desk, angled it over so that it was parallel with the top, then moved it gingerly towards the machine.
A downward jab of the toe depressed a button and a light showed that the answerphone was now on. I hit another button and activated the replay tape. There was an electronic bleep, then a man’s voice was heard.
‘Returning your call. I agree. This deserves some kind of celebration. I suggest the same place as before. Now that it’s all signed and sealed, we ought to formalise things by—’
He was cut dead in mid-sentence.
A stocky figure had come into the cabin, seen what I was doing and dived at the desk to switch the machine off. He swung an arm to knock my foot off the desk and the blow was felt in every part of my body. To ensure that I had no further fun with my big toe, he unplugged both the telephone and the answering machine.
My contact with the outside world had gone.
The man stood over me and glowered. He was in his twenties. Hispanic, swarthy, medium height, chunky build. Close to, he didn’t really look like Angel Quiroga but there were definite similarities. Both men had the same manic glare.
We’d met before. I’d seen him through the window of his Pontiac Grand Am on the road from Stinson Beach. I’d viewed his handiwork in a Santa Monica garden and at a Magic Show in a downtown hotel. I’d felt his crushing strength in a car park. To assist my identification, he pulled out a stiletto from beneath his coat and held its point an inch from my eye.
Fear made me stiffen as he turned the blade in his hand. His lips drew back to reveal uneven teeth. He enjoyed my suffering for a few minutes, then laid the point of the knife against the side of my head before running it right down my cheek in a soft caress.
A visible shudder went right through me.
‘You’re dead,’ he growled.
‘Why didn’t you just stab me in that car park?’
‘I have orders.’
‘Who from?’
‘To make you disappear.’
‘Mr. Kallgren?’
‘For good.’
‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ I pressed.
He crossed to the cabin door, then thought of a joke.
‘Don’t bother to put your shoes back on.’
‘My shoes?’
‘You won’t be needing them where you’re going.’
His cruel laugh went back up on deck.
I was left in a welter of apprehension but my thoughts were not entirely concerned with my own immediate fate. The voice on the answering machine kept coming back to echo in my ears.
I’d recognised it at once.
It was Phil Reiner.
The next half an hour was a race between hope and despair. Still held fast in the chair, I did my best to persuade myself that I would somehow be rescued. Orgaz would certainly have reported my disappearance by now and they would be out looking for me. They might even have traced the car which took me to Marina del Rey.
Depression set in when I considered the hopelessness of their job. Searching for a small yacht among the thousands in the harbour would be like finding a very small needle in a very large haystack. The police had no idea in which direction we’d sailed. After half an hour we must be well clear of Santa Monica Bay. One more speck on the vastness of the Pacific.
As I began to surrender to the notion that death was almost inevitable, I sensed what form it would t
ake and I blenched. Zuke and Mardie had died in a gruesome manner but there’d been a merciful swiftness about their despatch. It was all over in a flash. They’d been the unsuspecting victims of opportunist murders. Both had been stabbed during moments of relative happiness.
My case was different. I had to endure the torture of the wait. Whoever had given the command wanted me to suffer. There would be no stiletto this time. No dead body to help the police with their enquiries. Just a few brief bubbles on the surface of the water.
While a hired killer was about his business, Rutherford Kallgren would be sitting in the comfort of his office waiting for a phone call to tell him that Alan Saxon had been eliminated as well.
The address book of his crimes would vanish with me.
My thoughts strayed to the people I’d be leaving behind. Lynette would be destroyed. Her relationship with her father had been sustained over the years by infrequent meetings, irregular letters and impromptu phone calls but there was a wealth of unspoken love that bonded us together. I wished I’d rung her since I’d been in California. All that she’d have to remember me by were a view of Santa Monica Beach and an aerial shot of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Post cards from a man in a hurry to get killed.
Rosemary would be shaken by my death as well—I would be out of her reach at last. Clive Phelps, of course, wouldn’t forget me. He’d write the obituary of a lifetime in his newspaper and then go out and get himself gloriously drunk.
Katie Billings would be sad. I’d warmed up a cold winter for her and shared a lot of happiness in her cul-de-sac. Donnelly, I suspected, would not hear the news for some time. He’d go on sending me hate mail about my financial shortcomings.
Then there was Carnoustie. I’d left her in a garage to be serviced and refurbished while I was away. I had a vision of her wasting away in the corner of the forecourt, a faithful animal that has lost its master and has no wish to outlive him.
Noises sliced through my morbid introspection. The engine slowed down, then cut out. Waves lapped as we began to drift on the tide. Heavy footsteps descended from above.
The man who came into the cabin was tall, wiry and middle-aged. He had the look of a sailor about him and wore a full beard. Tucked into his belt was an automatic pistol. Without saying a word, he untied the rope that bound me to the chair. Pulling out the gun, he jabbed it against me to indicate that I should rise.
