“In that vicinity.”
“Mr McClary, is it true that some of the outstanding CDs are forgeries and the holders are uninsured?”
“That’s a lie!” McClary shouted. “Every account with Pacific Guaranty is fully covered by federal insurance. Make that perfectly clear in your reports.”
By this time Simon had reached Mary Sutton’s office. The door opened and Paul Corman, bushy-haired and belligerent, came through the doorway. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I want to see Miss Sutton,” Simon said.
“She’s busy.”
“So am I. I think your boss needs you. The boys from the press are giving him a bad time.”
He shoved past Corman and entered the office, closing the door behind him. It was smaller and less impressive than Amling’s, but it did have windows looking out over the city. Mary Sutton, subdued in a grey business suit, stood before them with her back to the door. She turned her head as Simon came into the room. She wore wide tinted glasses and Simon suspected that she might have been crying.
“Who blew it?” he asked.
Her voice was drained of emotion. “I wish I knew. With so many employees there was bound to be a leak sooner or later.”
“Is the loss really a million dollars?”
“Nine hundred and fifty thousand to be exact.”
Mary Sutton came away from the windows and sat down in the leather chair behind the desk. She opened one of the drawers and took out a small bottle of aspirin. Pouring a glass of water from a carafe on the desk she downed the dosage.
“Care to join me?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Simon said, “but keep me in mind. I have to ask some questions, Miss Sutton. If you care anything at all about Barney, or even about your job, you’ll answer.”
She poured a second glass of water and began to drink slowly.
“First of all,” Simon continued, “how sound is the association? Was Barney’s job in danger?”
“No way,” she said. “The missing money is covered by the federal government. The association is in fine shape. A few years ago a lot of S & L’s in this area were top heavy with real estate which is slow to liquidate, but we came out fine—thanks to Barney. Our major commitments are the best in the business.”
“Such as Pucci Developments?”
“Don’t knock Pucci. A lot of people don’t like what he’s doing, but his developments are always bonanzas. That’s what pays dividends.”
“If the association is that sound,” Simon reflected, “Barney’s motivation must be emotional.”
Mary Sutton sighed wearily. “Now you want to know about ‘the other woman’,” she said. “There are at least one hundred female employees in this onice, Mr Drake, between the ages of seventeen and sixty-five who got goose bumps every time Barney Amling walked through the corridor. Any one of them would have been delighted to go to bed with him and, had he given any of them a tumble, it would have been the sole topic of conversation at the next coffee break.”
“Present company included?”
“Definitely—except that I never attend coffee breaks. The dull truth is that Barney was all business in the office and all family outside. If he has another woman stashed away somewhere it’s the best-kept secret since the first atomic explosion at Alamagordo.”
“Or the million dollar theft at Pacific Guaranty. Who else in the organization has access to the vaults?”
The question intrigued Mary Sutton. “Ralph McClary,” she said, “Paul Corman—myself. Are you insinuating that Barney is the victim of a plot?”
“I’m his lawyer,” Simon answered. “I have to insinuate. It’s a big job to pull alone. He might have a partner. I suppose McClary’s top man with Barney away.”
“That’s right.”
“Did he get along well with Barney?”
Mary Sutton emitted a short humourless laugh. “If you’re dreaming up a conspiracy—forget it. Old Ralphie wouldn’t have the imagination or the guts.”
“It did take guts,” Simon reflected.
Mary Sutton pushed away the glass of water and put the aspirin bottle back into the drawer. Her hand hesitated for a moment and then took a sheaf of typewritten sheets out of the drawer and placed them on the desk. “The last time we talked you asked if Barney had been under any special pressure,” she said. “I was still in a state of shock at the time. Later I remembered a dictation tape Barney made a few weeks ago. It was one of those last-minute things he dropped on my desk as he was leaving for the day. Most of the staff had gone home so I typed it up myself. I typed the entire tape before I realized that Barney’s mind must have wandered while he was recording and he neglected to erase the unrelated passages. Some of it just didn’t make sense.”
“In what way?” Simon asked.
“Read it for yourself. I re-typed the material, of course, making the necessary deletions. This is the original.”
The pages Simon read consisted of a standard business communication. Then, abruptly, the subject matter changed. “There are times when justice is helpless,” Simon read. “Civilization is based on law, but what if the law is savage? What if corruption has become so deadly a cancer that the healthy can be saved only by cutting away the disease? If, in the process, the diseased die—is that so great a crime as the alternative?”
Simon looked up from the paper. “Was this on the tape in Barney’s voice?”
“Yes,” Mary said. “Read the rest of it.”
Simon continued. “Man must sometimes take the law in his own hands. Even murder has its rightful place in sophisticated society when no other course of action is possible.”
“What was he talking about?” Simon asked.
“I don’t know. At first I thought Barney had started to tape a speech in the middle of the dictation. He made many speeches before various organizations. But he never made a speech like that!”
“Didn’t you ask him about it?”
“I never had a chance. Other things came up and the copy I turned in for his signature had none of this in it. I put these sheets away in my desk and forgot about them until this morning.”
“Do you still have the original tape? I’d like to hear the voice inflection during the interpolation.”
Mary noted the date on the correspondence and consulted her files. When she returned with the tape Simon was examining an airline schedule he had found in the open drawer.
Mary smiled wanly. “Silly, isn’t it?”
“You heard about the reservation in the name of Barry Anderson?”
“Yes.”
“Then silly is the right word if you’re thinking of going after Barney. You’re already top banana on Lieutenant Wabash’s list of suspects.” Simon told her about the stakeout at her apartment and watched the colour come up in her face. Nobody likes to be watched—especially a young lady with a gentleman caller. “Did Corman spend the night?” he asked.
“Is that any of your business?”
“Only insofar as it might concern my client.”
“If a girl can’t have caviare, does she have to starve?”
“Not in my culture. Do you mind if I keep this tape for a while? I’d like to study it in the privacy of my home.”
“Go ahead,” Mary said. “After what you’ve just told me the whole office may be bugged. And don’t worry. I’m not about to fly off to Argentina to share ill-gotten gains. I may not live high, but I pay my own way. I like living in a country where a girl doesn’t have to behave like a saint until the domineering male decides to make her another of his legal possessions.”
“Good,” Simon said. “If you do hear from Barney, directly or indirectly, call me immediately. I’ll leave a card with my private number. Remember that your boss is in a very dangerous position.”
“Dangerous?” she repeated.
“Anyone walking about with almost a million dollars in cash is in danger. Even if he doesn’t have the money word is out that he has. That makes him a target for worse troubl
e than extradition.”
Mary Sutton seemed impressed. Simon started to open the door but she restrained him. “There’s something else, Mr Drake,” she said. “When we talked in Barney’s office I had the feeling something was missing from his desk. This morning I went back to check. He had a double picture frame made from an old silver watch-case—his father’s, I think. There were two pictures in the frame: one of his wife and one of his sons. The frame is gone now. He must have taken it with him—and that’s peculiar because he never took it with him on any of his other trips.”
“His wife and sons?” Simon repeated.
“Frightening, isn’t it? It’s as if he knew he might not see them again and wanted something to remember.”
• • •
Simon managed to get out of the building without being interviewed for somebody’s evening news telecast and drove back to The Mansion. He found Hannah strung out on a back-strengthening exerciser in the gymnasium. At the rate her physical therapy programme was developing, she would soon be the strongest 62-year-old lady in the hemisphere. Karate would be the next step. Opposite the exerciser was a television where a newscaster was relating the sensational theft story over vintage shots of Barney Amling in action at his professional prime. The concluding scene was the last game when virtually the entire opposing team fell on him as he faded back to pass. “Barney Amling never ran again,” the newsman intoned in a theatrical voice-over, “until the day he left his office in the Pacific Guaranty towers to disappear from view.”
Simon snapped off the set. “Barney’s been tried and convicted,” he exploded, “and we don’t even know if he took the money. Have you heard anything from Jack Keith?”
“Two more cables saying that he hasn’t been seen in the vicinity,” Hannah answered. “Wanda called. She has to work again tonight and said you could find her at the same place if you’re in the neighbourhood.”
“Anything else?”
“Chester explained how he got his teaching assignment while he set me up in the machine. The college has a federal grant! Chester says he was hired because they needed a ‘house nigger’ on the staff to qualify for aid. He said a grant is like welfare with dignity. I think he’s being modest. He’s really brilliant. Anyway, while we were talking a call came in from Ojai. It was the Dr Larson who came here with Carole Amling. He sounded upset and asked that you call him as soon as you came in. The number’s on your desk calendar in the den.”
Simon started for the stairs.
“Wait,” Hannah called after him, “I’m not sure I can get out of this rig without help.”
“Keep trying,” Simon called back. “It develops character.”
The number was on the desk calendar. Simon dialled direct and got Larson on the fourth ring.
“I guess you’ve seen the newspapers,” he said.
“Not yet,” Larson said, “but we know the story on Barney is out.”
“How’s Carole taking it?”
“Like a soldier—the way she takes everything. Wait, she’s here now. You can talk to her yourself.”
Carole Amling’s voice was tense. “Si, I’m sorry to lean on you like this but Eric thought you might help us. Kevin’s gone. We came up here to spend the Thanksgiving holidays at Eric’s place. He thought I needed a change from the tension at home.”
“Good thinking,” Simon said.
“It seemed so. We bought no newspapers and Eric doesn’t even own a TV, but we forgot about Kevin’s transistor radio. He must have picked up the news about his father’s disappearance and the theft at Pacific Guaranty because he’s gone.”
“How long ago?”
“Little Jake saw him ride off on Eric’s bike after lunch. That was over three hours ago. We drove into the village and found the bike at the bus depot. There was a bus back to LA two and a half hours ago. We think he was on it.”
“Why don’t you call Reardon and have him check out the depots?”
“I can’t, Simon. Kevin’s hurt and having him picked up by the police would be too much humiliation. I have a feeling that he’s gone home. I would go back and look for him but the house is probably surrounded by reporters at this time and there’s Little Jake to consider.”
“Have you called the house?”
“Yes. Norman, one of Kevin’s friends, is house-sitting for us. He promised to call if Kevin did come back but I can’t be sure. Kids stick together in times of trouble. Si, I’m so frightened.”
“Don’t be,” Simon said.
“But Kevin’s in shock.”
“The young bounce back easier than we do, Carole. But if it will ease your mind I’ll drive over to Palos Verdes later and see if he’s there.”
That pleased her. Her voice came back warm and firm. “Oh, if you could,” she said. “I hate to be so much trouble.”
“I’ll put it on the bill. I think Kevin’s just running in panic. He’ll probably call you before I can get to your house anyway. How are you otherwise?”
“Okay, I think.”
“Good. Take care and keep under cover a little longer. The newspapers have to be sensational to sell all that advertising.”
“I know,” she said, “and I know something else, too. I know that my husband is no thief.”
Simon concluded the call and reflected on the things people think they know about other people and don’t. But loyalty was the only glue that held the idiot world together and he wanted Carole to cling to hers. Barney Amling had inspired too much of it in his 40 years to be written off as a phoney without even digging for motivation. Simon could think of only three possibilities: passion, money and mental breakdown. There had been too much logic in his preparation for flight to indicate the latter, and there still wasn’t a clue as to the object of overwhelming passion unless Mary Sutton had lied.
It was still too soon for Kevin to have reached his home. Simon got out his sound equipment and inserted the tape he had received from Mary Sutton. The beginning of the tape was standard dictation but it was still a shock to be sitting in his own den listening to Barney’s measured baritone when he had been missing for almost two weeks. Halfway through the dictation the voice tone changed abruptly. The volume rose, as if Barney had started to read a speech, and then lowered in staccato intensity. When the passage concluded Simon heard a click, as if the dictating machine had been turned off. Another click and the letter resumed in the same tone as the opening of the recording. One thing was certain: the entire tape was in Barney Amling’s voice even if the content seemed to come from two different minds.
Simon put the recorder on rewind and took it all from the top again. Then he learned where to stop the rewind to catch only the interpolation and played that part over three times until his mind could play back the words and inflections without benefit of the tape. There was passion in Barney’s voice almost to the point of pain. There was anger and despair. Barney Amling was a winner in a dirty world and he couldn’t have been naïve. The words he was saying to himself constituted no great breakthrough in human knowledge. He had been on the bottom of that scrimmage pile when his first world ended and he must have known, through the shock and pain, that the reason was because he was the best in his line and that made him target for the day. He had hauled himself up from that first disaster and started a new career in a world no less dangerous than the gridiron. Heading for the top again and the second obstacle, alcoholism, broke him again. Up from that disaster to create a career no less brilliant than the first. Naïve, no. The word wouldn’t fit Barney Amling. Those were no cynical generalizations on the tape. The shock in his voice had an explicit target.
Shock. Something more. Simon groped for the right word. Outrage. Barney Amling had spoken from the deepest sense of outrage.
“… Even murder has its rightful place in sophisticated society when no other course of action is possible.”
Simon switched off the recorder for the last time and was amazed to see the day was almost over. The sky had turned bittersweet orange
behind Catalina Island. Some of the taller trees at the edge of the grounds flared up against the horizon like slender, black strokes on a Japanese print and the distant sheen of the sea had the stark coldness of winter. In the service yard below he saw Chester diligently polishing the hood of Hannah’s vintage Rolls-Royce, while Hannah, giving evidence of her capacity to get out of the exerciser, issued directives. If Chester one day became president of the college he was about to join as a staff member, he would probably still come around to polish Hannah’s Rolls if she needed him. It was a pleasant thought but not enough to push Barney Amling from his mind. Had Barney polished the hood of his Continental, or had he relegated the job to Kevin or Little Jake? The Continental with its expensive mileage on the odometer. Simon raked through his pocket for Vincent Pucci’s card. With a coastal map he could pinpoint the new development and calculate the mileage from the Pacific Guaranty tower. At the moment Pucci was the only one in Barney’s circle who seemed capable of inspiring the outburst on the tape.
But Simon didn’t have time to get the map. The door chimes at The Mansion were installed in Hannah’s honour to play the opening bars of “Give My Regards to Broadway”. When they began to play it was like a spritely accompaniment to a funeral. With both Chester and Hannah in the service yard, the phrase repeated often enough to inspire an aversion to George M. Cohan before Simon could sprint down the stairs and open the door. A skinny young man wearing a peaked cap removed his finger from the chime button and grinned foolishly.
“Some doorbell you’ve got there,” he remarked. “I haven’t come across one like that before.”
“I’m thinking of having it replaced with a sponge knocker,” Simon said.
“Are you Simon Drake?”
“I am.”
“Red Flash Messenger Service. Sign here, please.”
Simon signed the receipt book and accepted delivery of a nine-by-twelve inch manila envelope. He tipped the boy and closed the door quickly before he could play with the chimes again. There was no indication of the sender on the envelope. He opened it and took out two glossy photographs of a type taken by professional photographers in night-clubs. The setting in each picture seeemed identical—a table at some exclusive restaurant or bar. The subjects in each picture were identical: a man and a woman. The woman was late 30s or a well-preserved 40. Attractive, well-dressed and completely unconscious of the camera. The man, equally oblivious to the camera, was Barney Amling.
The Brink of Murder Page 8
