A Few Minutes Past Midnight (22 page)

“Then that’s what you tell them.”

“Why can’t you stay and tell ’em yourself?”

“The nephew killed his aunt and he’s going to get away if I stay here and get pulled in by the police. By the time they believe me, our boy will be halfway to who knows where.”

He nodded and I hobbled through the gate and toward my car. It was a long hobble. He stood here watching and called, “Good luck.”

I waved back over my shoulder and got into my Crosley and closed the door just as a cop car, siren going, pulled up in front of the cemetery. I slouched down, reached up, and tilted the mirror so I could see what was happening.

Two cops in raincoats got out reasonably fast and approached the caretaker. They started to talk. The caretaker didn’t look my way. He turned, and the cops followed him toward the rows of buried dead.

I sat up and started the car. I drove with one foot. The ankle was bad enough without giving it a chore. Shifting gears and hitting the brake with the same foot wasn’t easy.

Wet, in pain, and trying to think, I drove. Who could I call? Phil? It was after midnight. I would wake Ruth and I’d probably have a hard time making him believe that my latest hunch, even though it was supported by the words of Jeffrey Pultman, was right. I had already been wrong once tonight and he was going to have some tough questions to answer the next day about flying Chaplin to the Mexican border.

Gunther? The phone would ring in the hall. I’d eventually get him, but what could he do? He could give me advice, which I badly needed. But by the time we figured something out, Pultman would be gone. I rejected Jeremy for the same reason, and there was, anyway, a likelihood that his wife Alice would answer the phone and be less than happy with me. Shelly wasn’t even a serious consideration. Chaplin? I’d already sent him to the Mexican border and back.

I was on my own and out of ideas. Then I realized there was someone nearby I could probably count on. I drove, windshield wipers scraping against glass, trying to think.

In about ten minutes, I pulled in front of a two-level courtyard of apartment buildings off of Third Street. I hobbled to the door to Anita Maloney’s apartment and knocked.

“You’re about nineteen hours early for our date,” she said.

I didn’t smile. Even though it was after midnight and she was wearing a blue robe, it didn’t look as if I had awakened her. She had a cup of something hot in her hand.

“You look awful,” she said, holding the door open for me to hobble in. “What happened?”

“Long story,” I said. “I’ve got to tell it fast and use your telephone. Your daughter here?”

Anita had a grown daughter who frequently spent the night if she was having husband trouble.

“No,” she said.

“Have anything dry that might fit me?” I asked starting to sit in a chair in the small living room.

“Wait,” she said. “You’re wet. Sit in that one.”

I moved to a wooden armless chair near the telephone table. She handed me the cup and I drank. It was tea.

“Thanks.”

“Get out of those clothes,” she said. “I think I have some things from my ex in a box. They’ll come close.”

I sat and drank the tea. Then I took off my clothes, all of them, after taking everything from my pockets and removing my empty holster. I dropped the pile on the floor.

Anita came back in with clothes in her arms. She looked at me.

“You should spend more time in the sun,” she said, handing me the bundle.

“I’ll make a note,” I said.

“So,” she said as I dressed. “What’s going on?”

I told her fast. The clothes fit reasonably well: trousers, a tan shirt, dark sox. I did without underwear.

“And he thinks he killed you?” she asked.

“Not sure,” I said. “But I think so. I was lucky. He was using my gun, which, along with its owner, has a long history of unreliability. Why aren’t you in bed?”

“Did the shift till ten at Mack’s,” she said, sitting across from me. “Couldn’t sleep. I was reading when you knocked. What now?”

I reached for the phone book and said, “I make some calls.”

And I did. I called the Los Angeles Airport and was told by the woman who answered that there were no flights out after midnight. She also told me there were no scheduled flights out after midnight at any of the airports within a hundred miles. I thanked her and asked Anita for a pencil and some paper. She got them while I was looking through the book for private airports. I found six of them in greater Los Angeles and started dialing as Anita handed me pencil and paper.

The first three I got, in order, were a janitor, a mechanic, and a man who had just flown in on his private plane from San Diego. All three said there were no flights going out till morning. At number four I reached a man who said “Watkins Airport.”

He was a pilot and he did have a charter going out in about an hour.

“Who’s the charter?”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Mikelewski of Air National Defense,” I said. “We have reason to believe a Nazi collaborator is planning to fly out of the Los Angeles area in the next few hours.”

“My charter’s for a Mr. and Mrs. Walter Cannon.”

“You’ve met Cannon?”

“Yep.”

“Average height, a little on the thin side, about forty?”

“Nope, about six-one, over two hundred pounds, and not a day under sixty.”

“Where are they going?”

“Denver,” he said.

“Why so late?”

“Didn’t say,” the pilot said. “He’s paying premium. I’m collecting premium. I didn’t ask.”

I tried the next airport. A telephone operator came on and said the number was no longer in service and the business, which had been there, was closed for the duration of the war.

That left one, the Richard Barth Airport in Glendale. The remarkably bright voice of a young woman answered, “Barth Airport.”

“You’re open,” I said.

“Twenty-four hours,” she said. “Family-owned business.”

“You have a flight out in the next few hours?”

“Four of them,” she said.

“Who are the passengers?”

She didn’t ask me for identification, so I gave her none.

“No passengers,” she said. “Freight only. Flights to Fresno, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Reno. Can’t tell you the cargo without approval of the clients.”

“No passengers?”

“Not a one. Not ever.”

“Thanks,” I said and hung up. I looked at Anita and shook my head.

“Well?”

“Watkins Airport in Burbank,” I said. “Couple named Cannon are flying to Denver. That’s about it.”

“Maybe this Jeffrey Pultman lied about having to catch a flight?”

“He thinks he killed me,” I said. “He told me because he was about to shoot me.”

“But he didn’t shoot you.”

“I don’t think he knows that.”

“Slim lead, Toby,” she said.

I got up. When my left leg touched the ground, I yelped and sat back. There was no chance I could put my own shoes back on.

“Sit there,” Anita said, getting up.

She was gone for about two minutes. When she came back, she was wearing a green pullover dress. She handed me three aspirin and a glass of water, and knelt in front of me with a wide roll of white adhesive tape.

“Advantage of working in a drugstore,” she said, starting to tape my ankle. “You get things free. This is going to hurt.”

“It already does,” I said. But what she did hurt even more.

“That’s it,” she said. “See if you can stand.”

I stood. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t impossible.

“I can make it,” I said.

She helped me put on my shoes and sox and I started for the door.

“I’m driving,” she said.

“Anita, there’s no …”

“It wasn’t a question Toby,” she said. “It was a statement of fact. You can’t make it to Burbank on that ankle, not if you want to use the brakes. Let’s go.”

We went. She had a car but we took mine. Anita could drive. She liked to drive.

“You have to get up for work in the morning,” I said.

“I’ve got an intimate confession, Toby,” she said over the scrape of the windshield wipers. “I’ve got insomnia. Since I was in high school. I don’t usually fall asleep till dawn. That’s why I work the noon to seven shift.”

“Bad dreams?” I asked.

“Bad memories,” she said.

It took us forty minutes to get through Coldwater Canyon and across to Watkins Airport. The rain had stopped, but the streets were still wet. There was traffic, but not much. There’s always some traffic in Los Angeles.

Watkins Airport was in the field outside of town on La Tuna Canyon Road. I knew the area. I had grown up in Glendale, not that far away. I had been a cop who sometimes found himself on unpaved roads at night.

We drove through the wide-open, steel-mesh gates and headed for the brightly lit little wooden building with a big painted sign that read “Watkins Airport.” A single covered lamp illuminated the sign. There was a nightly blackout but the airport didn’t seem to be in touch with the world and the war. A single car, a two-door, definitely prewar car was parked in front of the building.

Seven small planes stood silently, propellers toward us, next to a long narrow runway that ran deep into the darkness. Anita drove as close to the wooden building as she could get and we got out.

The pain was bearable. We went to the door and into the office. An overstuffed man in an unzipped flight jacket sat reading a copy of
Look
magazine. The man wore thick glasses and definitely needed dental work.

“I called you,” I said. “Mikelewski.”

“Air National Defense,” he said. “Yeah.”

“The Cannons.”

“Not here yet,” he said looking at his watch. “They said they’d be here before one, but I’m in no particular hurry. They paid in advance.”

It was almost one.

“You don’t think they’re Nazis, do you?” he asked, putting his magazine aside.

“We’ll see,” I said. “Miss Rand and I will wait and see.”

“Fine with me,” he said. “I got paid even if you drag ’em away in chains. You armed?”

“No,” I said.

“What if they are?” he asked.

“I’ll worry about that when I determine if they’re the ones we’re looking for.”

“Well,” the big man said. “I’ll worry about it right now if it’s all the same to you.”

He got up, crossed the room, opened a desk drawer, and came up with a large revolver that looked as if it could have been taken from the dead cold hands of Billy the Kid.

“We get vandals,” he explained. “War going on. Airplane parts are worth beaucoup dollars.”

“They’re coming,” said Anita, touching my arm.

The pilot and I paused and listened. A car was coming.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Glen Overbee,” he said.

“Put the gun in your belt and zip up,” I said. “Just in case.”

The car stopped in front of the door. The car door opened and closed. A few seconds later a man stepped in, big, around sixty, definitely not Pultman. He looked around at the three of us.

“We’re ready,” he said to Overbee. “My wife’s in the car.”

“Tell her to come on in,” Overbee said, moving around the desk. “I’ll get the plane ready.”

“We’ll wait outside,” Cannon said, glancing nervously at us.

“My name’s Mikelewski,” I said. “This is Miss Rand. Air National Defense.”

Cannon nodded and said to Overbee, “I’d like to get going.”

Overbee nodded, pursed his lips, and moved to the door, pausing to look at me. I shook my head “no” to let him know this wasn’t the man I was looking for.

“Do you mind telling us why you’re taking a charter flight to Denver at one in the morning?” I asked.

“Business,” he said, moving toward the door.

“What kind of business?” I asked.

“Government contract,” he said. “Hush-hush. I’m not at liberty to talk about it. Some British and Canadian Air Force officers want it this way. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He was out the door before I could say more. Anita and I moved to the window. Overbee had turned some runway lights on. He was climbing up a wooden step stool through the plane’s open door.

“Now what?” Anita asked.

“We watch,” I said. And we did.

The plane’s engine started and Overbee leaned out the door and waved at the car. Cannon got out, walked around the car, opened the door, and helped his wife out. She was about average height, dark hair, a bit too much makeup. She wore a thin brown coat with the collar up. She carried a medium-sized leather suitcase. He took her hand and they hurried toward the plane.

“Why isn’t he carrying the suitcase?” Anita asked.

“Think about it,” I said. “Then answer a question.”

“You want to know if that’s a woman?” Anita asked.

“That’s what I want to know,” I said.

“It isn’t,” she said. “Makeup job is good. But that’s not a woman’s run. Steps are too long. And look at the way she’s carrying her arms.”

We were out the door and into the night. Cannon and Pultman had a thirty-foot lead on us and I was hopping on a bad ankle. Overbee was leaning out of the plane watching. I held up my hand and pointed at the Cannons. He nodded. When the couple was within a few feet of the step stool, Overbee came out with his six-shooter aimed at them.

The sound of the turning engine drowned out what they were saying, but it was clear Cannon was arguing with the pilot. Overbee was unmoved. Cannon looked in our direction frantically and Pultman, in drag, did the same.

Anita and I moved as quickly as we could, but it wasn’t quick enough. Pultman ran, and Overbee hesitated. People weren’t supposed to run when you had a gun pointed at them. And he wasn’t about to shoot a woman in the back.

“Bring him into the office,” I shouted at Overbee.

He cupped his hand next to his ear and I shouted again. This time he got it and nodded his head.

“The car,” I told Anita as Pultman, wig flying into the air, suitcase in hand, ran across the small airstrip.

We got to the Crosley and Anita sped after the killer with the suitcase. We passed Overbee who was guiding Cannon back to the wooden building. Overbee gave us a wave to let us know he had the man with the frightened look on his face under control.

“There he is,” I said.