The Second Longest Night

by Stephen Marlowe

  “That's fine, Drum. That's what I thought. That's what I was hoping. Here's what I want you to do. You're Senator Hartsell's son-in-law, or, his ex-son-in-law. The chairman of my committee is a hidebound old fool, but he'll listen to you. So will the newspapers. Tell him I couldn't possibly have been seeing Deirdre. Tell the newspapers the same thing. Write them an indignant-husband letter. I'll give you a hundred dollars.”

  I just stared at him.

  The nice boy smile was wearing a little thin, but he still tried. “I'm not very good at this sort of thing,” he admitted sheepishly. “Isn't that enough money? Two hundred dollars? Will that be all right? All I earn is a Congressman's salary. Fifteen thousand a year. I can go as high as five hundred. I haven't been around long enough yet to climb aboard any of the gravy trains. Like Senator Hartsell and that Lake Maracaibo oil venture.”

  I was almost ready to throw him out on his ear. But this interested me. “Would that be Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela?”

  He lapsed into the confidential tone again. “The Senator's making a fortune on it. Of course, I don't think he'll be able to spend the money for a long time.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because if he takes the money out of Venezuela, he'll have to pay a stiff U.S. income tax on it. In Venezuela the cost of living is high—too high for most people if they want to live like most people want to live. But Venezuelan income tax only makes rich people richer.”

  “All this is common knowledge?”

  “About the low income tax rate in Venezuela? Of course.”

  “No. About the Senator's oil wells in Lake Maracaibo.”

  Young Cabot sucked in his lower lip. “Perhaps I told you something I shouldn't have. But I thought you were a member of the family and knew about things like that. I hope I haven't betrayed a trust.”

  “Whose trust? Deirdre's? She's dead. I already know everything Francisco Del Rey knows.”

  Cabot felt better. He smiled. “I misjudged you, Drum. You know your way around. Then five hundred dollars will be all right?”

  I walked through the archway and peeled more paint off it. One of these days I. would complain to the building manager. I got Cabot's tweed coat from the waiting room and brought it back to him. “Get out of here,” I said.

  At first he didn't think I was serious. When I ignored him and began picking up the file folders from the floor, he finally got the idea. He gave me a very highbrow sneer and shrugged into his tweed coat. It made his shoulders look much broader than they were. “I'm disappointed in you,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  “If you change your mind, call me.”

  I put an armful of folders back in the A—F drawer. When I looked up again, he was gone. He had gone quietly. He hadn't bothered to shut the door. I threw the window open wide and took a deep breath of the clean cold winter air.

  I called the telephone answering service and learned that the personnel man at the Venezuelan Embassy had called to say that he was sending me a biography of Francisco Del Rey, ex-third secretary over there. Del Rey was not a career diplomat and had resigned from the Venezuelan Department of State. The personnel man hoped the information was what I wanted. It was not what I wanted.

  I took a drink from the office bottle and wished a futile wish. I wished people would take the trouble to learn more about their Congressmen before they voted.

  Chapter Five

  HOME, SUCH AS IT is, is not far from the Uline Ice Arena. Since it's also pretty close to the tracks leading into Union Station from up north, the windows sometimes rattle. I watched the gay girls wearing gay plaid jackets toting white-shoed ice skates into the arena. I listened to the big freights go by and watched the window vibrate sympathetically.

  I was grateful for the noise. I can't think when it's quiet. Sometimes I don't know if my clients realize part of the so-much-per-day-and-expenses goes for thinking too.

  What did I have? I had a dead ex-wife—a Senator's daughter and a Communist. The police said suicide. The Senator didn't think suicide and wanted me to find out. I had a dead Communist named Alex Lubrano who had been killed as a warning to me or because he knew something he wasn't supposed to know, or both. I had a live South American Communist who had killed the dead Communist named Alex Lubrano right before my eyes, and who now was safely back in Venezuela. I had a naive young free-lance writer who might have been casing me or might have been on a story about Deirdre Hartsell, but who probably was not as naive as she looked. I had a sharp young Joe College Congressman who would sell the old homestead and grandma if it would aid his political aspirations. And I had some talk about a fortune in Lake Maracaibo oil.

  Suicide isn't sudden. It isn't as the newspapers fantastically assert, because of overwork. It's gradual. You're out of tune with your environment. You've always been that way. You take your life and thus inflict the ultimate in self-punishment, or you take your life by way of thumbing your nose at friends and relatives who criticized you. The last gesture. You don't like me. You'll be sorry.

  But neither pigeonhole would accommodate Deirdre's once high-flying wings. To the police, it was simple suicide. But Senator Hartsell didn't think so, and neither did I.

  Blairy was a question mark. It was worth five hundred dollars of his father's money for me to lay off. Had Blairy brought the whirlwind into my office? No, Blairy would have been very neat about it. Francisco Del Rey's friend with the squashed nose, then? But Del Rey had written thirty on his American escapade. Squashed nose couldn't be in his employ, not now. Hell, it might have been a disgruntled ex-client. It might have been anyone. It might have been the cleaning woman looking for the lewd stories she was sure private detectives collected.

  I put a call through to Jack Morley's home and got his wife Betty and said, “This is J. Edgar Hoover,”

  “Really?” she said.

  “No, but I might have been if I'd stuck it out with the F.B.I. long enough.”

  “Honest, Chet, you kill me. Just a minute and I'll get Jack.”

  Seconds later, I was telling Jack Morley it was me again. “I'm going to take a trip,” I said. “Do you know someone who can hurry me through 'the passport red tape?”

  “I suppose so, but—”

  “This telephone call is being monitored and you are going to get into trouble for that bit of influence peddling, but thank you anyway.”

  “But you wouldn't be going to Venezuela, would you?”

  “Yeah. Venezuela.”

  “My God,” Jack groaned. “Don't look for trouble, Chet.”

  “I've got to.”

  “I shouldn't help you do a crazy thing like that. Del Rey had diplomatic immunity here. You won't have anything like it down there.”

  “So get me a job with the State Department in Venezuela. I have a nice smile and can type fourteen words a minute.”

  “Be serious, Chet.”

  “O.K. I'm serious. I'm going to Venezuela. I'd like you to help me leave in a hurry, but if you won't I'll wait the normal two weeks and there won't be any hard feelings. All right?”

  “No, it's not all right. You know I'll cut the tape for you. But I think you ought to let it rest.”

  “You may say that the purpose of my visit is pleasure.”

  “You cocky bastard.” Faintly I heard Betty scolding him for such language. We bantered it around for a while and then cut the connection.

  And the doorbell went buzz.

  I let in Marianne Wilder, who looked around the small apartment with the easy observational care of a writer—or a detective. “You were in the phone book,” she said. “I hope I'm not disturbing you.”

  I said something about my efficiency apartment not having seen so much beauty since Raymond Loewy sent three of his young girl designers to do my interior decoration.

  “Why don't you say it, Chet? You must be mad at me.”

  “Why should I be mad at you?”

  “Because of Duane Cabot, that's why.”

  “Cabot told yo
u about our meeting?”

  “I realize he isn't Sir Galahad. I realize his Holy Grail, if any, is on Capitol Hill or in the White House. But I can't help it if I love the guy.”

  I lit a cigarette and she said, “Oo, could I have one?” just like a little girl. I gave her that one and lit another for myself. Neither one of us said anything while a train rushed by and rattled the windows.

  “What did you want to see me about?” I asked.

  “I'm coming to that. First, though, I want you to know I didn't come to your office to see what kind of a guy you were for Duane.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “I really wanted to do a story on Deirdre Hartsell. I still want to. But Duane happened to be talking about private detectives and I said I knew one and I thought he was a good one.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I can't get any place with the Hartsells. Every time Mr. Hartsell wants to tell me something, Blairy won't let him. Besides, they say Lydia knew Deirdre better than anyone else did. She was in Washington when it happened, you know.”

  “No. I didn't know that.”

  “Well, she was. Duane's going to California on business in a week or so, and I'm going out there with him to see Lydia. Her husband works on the big observatory out there on Hall Mountain. Duane would have gone sooner, only I called Hall Mountain and found out Mr. and Mrs. Homerson—that's Lydia's husband's name—aren't there right now. They're not even in the country.”

  I said, “Is that so? They wouldn't happen to be in South America, would they?”

  “Why, yes. In Venezuela. But how did you know?”

  “Trade secret,” I said.

  “I'll bet. Chet, could you give me a letter of introduction to the Homersons?”

  “I never even met them. Why don't you ask the Senator?”

  “He wouldn't do it. Blairy told him not to. He said I shouldn't go around bothering the family about Deirdre. But it doesn't matter if you never met them. They know of you. Will you do it, Chet?”

  I said I didn't see why not. I went into the kitchenette and found some paper and a ball point pen, I wrote a very formal this-is-to-introduce letter and gave it to Marianne. She spread it on the table in front of me and read it over my shoulder. She was wearing a touch of musky perfume. There was still nothing but a fingernail on the third finger of her left hand. Her short blonde hair brushed the side of my face. She finished reading the letter and reached for it, but I caught her wrist with my hand and said, “If I was a private detective like all the private detectives in all the books you read about private detectives, I would make a pass at you now.”

  She turned her face toward me and grinned. She was so close I could hardly focus on her features. “So make a pass,” she said.

  I kissed her playfully, just touching lips. She pivoted in toward me and sat down on my lap and I kissed her hard and long and I don't know who it surprised more, me or Marianne. The next logical step was to reach for the top button of her wool jersey blouse.. I reached for the top button.

  She brushed my hand away and stood up. “Umm,” she said. “You sure know how to kiss.”

  I reached for the button again. “Uh-uh,” she said. “Kissing is all right, but that's as far as it goes. You know, I could go for a guy like you, Chester Drum. If I wasn't engaged to Duane.”

  “But kissing is all right?”

  “Of course kissing is all right. Is there anything not normal about wanting to kiss a man you like?”

  “Duane might think so.”

  “Well, Duane has his symbols and I have mine.” Now she was talking about symbols. “Symbols,” I said. “Sure. I knew Duane was having fun with Deirdre Hartsell before I said I would marry him. Me saying that was his symbol. My symbol is when he gives me an engagement ring. Then I'll stop wanting to kiss men like you.” She stood with her hands on her hips and smiled up at me. If I moved in her direction she would start to pucker her lips.

  “You,” I said, “had better get the hell out of here. I don't have symbols. Just animal instincts.”

  “It was nice,” she said. “I'd like to kiss you again.”

  “And I'd start reaching for buttons and things.”

  “Would you have to?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I would have to.”

  “Gee, that's too bad.”

  I led her in the direction of the door. “Young lady,” I said, “you make me feel old.”

  “You are not old. How old are you, twenty-eight?”

  “I'm thirty.”

  “You don't look thirty. I'm twenty-one. You see,” she said, giving me an impish smile, “you're not even old enough to be my father.”

  “Scram,” I said, “Please scram. This is your last chance.”

  “Well, thanks for the letter.” She stood on tiptoe and touched her lips to my cheek. They were soft and warm. She ducked outside and down the hall before I could start reaching for buttons and things.

  Blairy had orange juice, muffins, scrambled eggs, bacon and coffee on a tray in his hands when he opened the door of the Hartsell house in Georgetown for me on Sunday morning.

  “Well,” I said. “I see they've finally put you to work.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?” he said.

  “I'm always in there pitching. Is your father up yet?”

  “I don't know. The tray is for me. I like to eat it out back in the garden.”

  “In this weather?”

  “In any weather.”

  I watched Blairy heading for the terrace door leading to the garden in the rear of the house. He looked back at me and made an unpleasant face. When he opened the French doors I got a blast of cold air and a view of big winter-red azalea bushes on the left, a boxwood hedge like a stone wall in the center rear with blue-green Greek junipers in front of it, and three big holly trees with glossy spiked leaves and bright clusters of berries on the right. Then I went up the marble slab stairs and when I was on a level with the top of the big crystal chandelier in the living room, I stopped to look at it. I had always wondered how they kept those things clean. They don't. It was black with dust.

  “Is that you, Blairy?” Senator Hartsell called. “I thought you wanted to have breakfast in the garden so you could unclutter your mind for poetry.” He still said poetry like it was a dirty word.

  “I don't have to unclutter my mind,” I said. “Oh, it's you, Chet. Come on in.” It was a long, narrow, coffin-shaped bedroom. The bed was a high-poster in pale maple. It looked very distressed. All the furniture looked distressed. That was the general idea. Antique-ish, as they like to say in Georgetown. A pile of gray ash which looked soft as cotton lay between the firedogs on the hearth. Senator Hartsell was sitting up in bed, wearing his quilted smoking jacket and dogearing a copy of the Congressional Record.

  “What have you got for me?” he said. “Some choices. How is Mrs. Hartsell?”

  “She sleeps best in the morning, which is why we have separate bedrooms. What choices?”

  Before I could tell him, he said: “Say, do the police really know what they're talking about? Did you kill this Alex Lubrano person?”

  “That's a lot of work for fifty dollars a day plus expenses.”

  “The description of the man they're searching for fits you.”

  “And a lot of other people. Such as Blairy, stretching it a little. Or Duane Cabot. Except for one thing, you never would have thought it was me.”

  “I don't follow you, Chet.” He got out of bed and padded barefoot across the high polish of the parquet floor and the big hooked rug. He went into the bathroom adjoining the bedroom and I heard him making teeth-brushing noises.

  “That brings us back to the choices,” I said. “You can either keep on paying me fifty plus a day for some reason I can't figure out or tell me some facts.”

  He gargled and came back into the bedroom. He stood in front of a mirror and gave his hair a workout with a set of military brushes. “I'll tell you anything you want to know,” he said. “Of c
ourse I will. Why shouldn't I?”

  “You right away thought of me when you read about Lubrano's murder because you knew I would get around to Francisco Del Rey sooner or later. Why didn't you tell me about him?”

  Senator Hartsell smiled at me in the mirror. It was a practiced smile which would satisfy his constituents on the weekly canned television report to the folks back home. It didn't satisfy me. “Is that what's bothering you?” he said. “But you mentioned you would get around to asking for a list of Deirdre's snotty friends. You hadn't asked for the list yet. Del Rey would have been on it.”

  “I'm not talking about Deirdre's snotty friends. I'm talking about your oil interests in Lake Maracaibo.”

  He was still looking at me in the mirror. He wasn't smiling now. He said nothing.

  “It's some kind of a slippery deal, isn't it? Legal, but not quite kosher? And you got it through Del Rey, didn't you?”

  “Now I know why you charge fifty dollars a day,” Senator Hartsell said.

  I told him it would be a good living if I worked every day and charged all my clients that price. And then I said, “It must be pretty damn important if Lydia's down in Venezuela checking up on it for you. If she has a mind as sharp as Deirdre's was.”

  “She doesn't. She's vacationing in Venezuela. We have friends there. Chet, I'm glad to see you can dig so deep so fast, but you're going off in the wrong direction. What happened to Deirdre has nothing to do with Lake Maracaibo and any interests I may have there. I hope you understand that. I hope you believe it. I asked you to investigate Deirdre's death for me. It would be foolish if I hid anything from you, wouldn't it?”

  “What kind of oil deal is it?” I said.

  He shook his head in the mirror, then turned around and shook it again. “I'm sorry, Chet. I can't tell you.”

  “Would you happen to know who's blackmailing Duane Cabot?”

  “Blackmailing him? Cabot?”

  “Well, not quite. Making insinuations about him. Maybe blackmail will be next. It often is.”

  “I don't know anything about it.”

  “Making insinuations about him and Deirdre which can hurt his career?”