Darkest Hour (13 page)

Eve Necchi’s murder brought the reporters and mobile TV units back to Marina Beach, and Duane Thompson, seeing an opportunity to improve his image, occupied most of the evening newscast. He was handsome, suave and genial; the smiling district attorney of Marina Beach who dreamed of a governor’s mansion by and by.

“We have several definite clues and a suspect who, for obvious reasons, can’t be named until my office has attained sufficient evidence to make an arrest. Meanwhile, citizens of this area need have no fears. This murder wasn’t the work of a psychopath who might endanger the community. This was a crime of passion—”

Simon flicked off the TV. Hannah, seated beside him on the lounge in the den, seemed fascinated by the inactive tube.

“He keeps smiling like the Cheshire cat,” she observed. “The commentary was all right, but the commercial was too long.”

“And the conclusion is wrong, as usual,” Simon said.

“Do you mean that the murder wasn’t a crime of passion?”

“Right. Thompson’s probably got a search going for the Marine—”

“What Marine?”

“One on some snapshots taken with Eve Necchi—love in bloom, 1959. He should have checked with Franzen before he made that statement about a crime of passion. Any good homicide cop could have told him that Eve wasn’t killed by any man who had ever been in love with her. The body was stuffed in a steaming shower in a deliberately vulgar position. Any one who had loved her, even if he killed in hatred, would cover the body or arrange it in a more compassionate manner. That’s the difference between love and lust, homicide style.”

“Then it may have been a psychotic killer,” Hannah reflected.

“As to his mental health, I wouldn’t care to commit myself. But this killer wasn’t acting under compulsion; he knew what he was doing, who he was killing, and why.”

“Why?” Hannah demanded.

“I’m guessing now, but when Eve got those film strips out of my wallet she must have realized what they were and become frightened. She left the hotel about half an hour after she left my room. I think she met someone, talked it over, and then decided to come down here and lure me to that motel.”

“Motivation blackmail?”

“That’s what she said. It might have been a come-on to find out how much more I might know about Kwan’s murder. It’s the motivation for Eve’s murder that disturbs me the most. She was the expendable type. It’s possible she was killed to implicate me.”

Hannah was following closely. “Keep talking,” she said.

“All right. Here’s what I know. Eve telephoned me last night from the pay phone outside the motel office. She wrote my name and telephone number on the cover of the telephone book. Why, I don’t know.”

“She might have forgotten it and written it out to see if it looked right. I often do things like that.”

“All right, I’ll buy that. But Franzen’s got that cover now. He said that he wouldn’t show it to Thompson, but if Thompson does get it and traces it to Eve and then traces Eve to the Balboa Hotel the same night I was registered in the hotel … no, wait. I get a reprieve. Eve signed in as Eve Potter.”

Simon got up from the divan and cleared off the coffee table. Then he went to his room and returned with the file of photographs he had taken from Sam Goddard’s darkroom, and the copy of
Chic
magazine, and spread them out on the table. Hannah hunched up closer to the display. She was interested, but still hung up on Eve’s murder.

“You weren’t seen at the motel last night, were you?”

“I don’t think so. Gusik didn’t see me, that’s for sure. I think Franzen would have told me if he had an eyewitness or anything at all against me other than that telephone book cover, but he could be playing cat and mouse.”

“How long will it take Duane Thompson to learn that Necchi and Potter are one and the same?”

“Knowing Duane, a lifetime. But if Franzen decided to one-up-manship him and conduct his own investigation, I could be in trouble.”

“Then you don’t have much time to find the killer, do you?”

It was a quadrangle. It began at San Diego with a Eurasian named Kwan who made habitual stopovers at hotels and motels to do special work—but why did he take a room in a hotel with the balcony over a piano bar where the nightly trade could play havoc with concentration? There were motels out on Mission Bay that provided enough privacy for Robinson Crusoe. There was an obvious reason which might, or might not, be the right one. The Balboa was centrally located and easily accessible to public transportation. It could have been a meeting place. Simon left Hannah’s question unanswered and opened the pages of the magazine to the Max Berlin story. Then he picked up the group study from Goddard’s file and placed it beside one of the more striking photos of Berlin.

“I got these photos out of Sam Goddard’s darkroom,” he said. “Do you see anyone you know?”

Hannah donned her tinted bifocals and leaned closer to the table.

“Max Berlin—” she said slowly. “Where was this taken?”

“His south-of-the-border salon.”

“And there’s Monte! What do you suppose—? Why, that old hypocrite was getting beauty treatments! So that’s how he kept that handsome, unsagging profile!” Her fingers flew among the photographs. She found the blowups of two of the men in the group photo and the two closeups of the bandaged faces. “And surgery,” she said.

“Face lifting?”

“Oh, it has a much fancier name. Don’t you see, it says in the write-up that Max Berlin’s father was a surgeon in Germany.”

“Do you believe everything you read?”

“Why not believe this? Little Max, or whatever his real name might be, followed in Papa’s footsteps—but he’s smarter than Papa. He commercialized his art.”

“So we have an added feature of the establishment,” Simon mused. “Vera Raymond told me that Goddard had considered doing a feature on Max Berlin and then dropped the project. Maybe it was just too hot to handle. Why do you suppose he included these closeups and the blowups?”

“Before and after?” Hannah suggested.

“Possibly. But which is before and which is after?”

Hannah scanned the blowups again. Neither of the men was handsome; the blunt-featured one looked like a thug, and the aesthetic one was flabbily foppish. Compared to Max Berlin’s tan, both were pale. “If the group photo isn’t before they should get their money back,” she said.

“That’s what I was thinking. And if that’s true, then Sam didn’t get any after shots and we don’t know how the boys look today.”

“Oh, they should be recognizable—unless you mean plastic surgery instead of face lifting.”

“Exactly.”

“But why?”

“What else do you see in the group photo?”

“There’s an Asiatic.”

“N. B. Kwan.”

“Kwan? The man murdered at the Balboa?”

“The same. Now that widens the vision, doesn’t it? That expands the mind. What kind of trip are you having, Hannah?”

“Interesting,” she said. “Do you suppose Monte knew Sam took this shot?”

“That I couldn’t say.”

“But two of the men in the picture are dead now—and so is Goddard! Simon, are you sure Sam Goddard died in an accident?”

“At this point I’m not sure of anything, but it won’t be easy to prove otherwise. His body was cremated. I do know that he was on his way to Santa Monica when the accident occurred because that’s what he told Vera, and I found a highway map in the car Monterey rented that had been given to him by the Palms Hotel in Santa Monica. I think we can assume that Goddard had an appointment with Monterey, and that the business on the agenda concerned the gentleman he had photographed impaled on the balcony railing.”

“The Palms!” Hannah exclaimed. “Is that hotel still open? But I suppose they’ve remodeled it like everything else. It was quite a gay place long, long ago.”

“Then it’s a name Monterey would have remembered—just as he remembered the Seville Inn.”

Hannah was frowning. “Simon, I don’t understand one thing. If Monte killed Kwan—and if he did, it must have been in a towering rage, because Monte wasn’t a killer—and then told Sam Goddard about it, why didn’t he go to Sam’s house? Enchanto is on the way to Santa Monica.”

“If he killed a man who was involved in vice activity—someone whose death might call for a vendetta—he was in too big a hurry to stop anywhere. Besides, he had a receipt for a car rental in his pocket from Able Rentals in Santa Monica, and that would indicate that he didn’t drive up the coast. He probably flew right after calling Sam. Use your imagination, Hannah. Think of the pressure a man would be under who had just killed in the manner Kwan was killed. I think we can dust off Duane Thompson’s purple prose and call it a crime of passion. I don’t know what Kwan was mixed up in, but I think he was doing a lot more than his homework in that hotel room. Whatever it was, Monterey was in it too.”

“And Max Berlin?”

“It would appear that way. You’re good at expressions, Hannah. You told me that Monte was in a state of panic. In this photograph he’s relaxed. How does he look to you?”

Hannah had pushed her glasses to the tip of her nose. She pulled them up into place. “Tired,” she said.

“But he’s relaxing poolside.”

“He still looks tired—tense. Maybe that’s a better word. Relaxed he isn’t, Simon.”

“And Kwan? What do you see in his face?”

“Intelligence. Confidence. Yes, he’s relaxed. The other two—we might call them Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—”

“It’s not original, but go on.”

“They look—” Hannah picked up the photograph in her hands and studied the men carefully. “They look smug. They’ve eaten the canary, feathers and all, and found it delicious. I don’t like them at all. They aren’t actors.”

“I hardly think so.”

“They look like gangsters.”

“You’re still thinking of that bomb.”

“Of course I am. I had Chester drive the Rolls down to Meyers Garage today. Meyers Senior telephoned me later and said he would keep it locked up until the parts come in, or until he can have them made. I know it will be expensive. I can borrow from the bank, but every time this country has a moral reformation the interest rates go up.”

“I’ll pay for it,” Simon said. “Where’s Chester now?”

“He’s gone to a black-power meeting, I think. I encourage him to be civic-minded.”

“So you’ve been here alone all afternoon?

“Alone with Rover. And his name isn’t Rover. I called the agency and they told me that his name is Zorba. Isn’t that terrible? A German dog named Zorba?”

“I like Rover,” Simon said. “Now, tell me what you see in Max Berlin’s face.”

Hannah took several minutes to study all the poses of Berlin. He was handsome, striking, domineering and aristocratic. “He’s a tough cookie,” she announced. “He’s beautiful—see those high cheekbones. See those eyes. He’s almost delicate, but he’s not effeminate. No, very masculine. Very tough, indeed. He had to be to survive.”

“The story says that he never married.”

“Of course not! Why should he? Can’t you just see those oversexed neglected businessmen’s wives throwing themselves at him, and can’t you see him having his fun discarding them with contempt. Oh, they will love it! ‘Hurt me! Hurt me! Give me a thrill!’ I know the type. Garbage!”

“Not your style?”

“Good Lord, no! I’ve had my lovers, Simon. I’ve had my thrills. But I would have been too much for Max Berlin! His type has a fatal flaw: they can’t give love. It has to be a conquest—never a yielding or sharing. Centuries ago he might have worshipped a queen from afar, dallied with a dancer and ended up founding a monastic order. A hundred years ago—”

“What about thirty years ago?”

Hannah fell silent. She was listening to the sounds of the past: the boots crashing on cobblestones, the young voices singing exuberant marching songs that turned to hysterical shouts— “
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
” The sounds of madness. Shuddering, she pushed the magazine aside.

“My God, you’re right,” she said hoarsely. “Thirty years ago that handsome Nordic could have been a Hitler Youth.”

What do beautiful, blond Hitler Youths grow up to be? The world of the Third Reich had crumbled beneath a man who called himself Max Berlin; but he had landed on his feet in fine, hand-tooled leather boots bearing no visible scars of humiliation or defeat. There was pride in his face, cruelty and a sardonic smile that seemed to suggest he had solved the enigma of life and found it a vulgar joke. Hannah was right; he was a very tough man.

“Kwan was born in Hong Kong,” Simon remarked.

“A lovely place,” Hannah said. “I was there on my second honeymoon.”

“I don’t think Kwan’s section of Hong Kong was so lovely. Federal agents are investigating his death. Jack Keith thinks something was found in his clothing. Probably heroin.”

“I told you that bomb planted in my car was a gangster tactic!”

“But why? Are you sure Monterey didn’t tell you anything? Mention a name or a place?”

“Simon, I swear, I told you everything I remember!”

“Or try to give you something? Did he have anything in his hand?”

“How do I know? All I could see was that terrible look on his face!”

“That must be it,” Simon mused. “They’re looking for something. Kwan was in the hotel to meet somebody and accept a delivery of some sort. He was beaten and murdered. Max Berlin came down from his pedestal long enough to identify the body at the funeral parlor and pay the mortician’s bill. Monterey’s room at the Seville Inn was searched. A chair was found on the balcony with an oily footprint on the cushion. An agile man could gain access to the rain gutter that way.”

“To hide something?” Hannah asked.

“To search for something—No, you may be right! It could have been Monterey who put that chair on the balcony. If he did—if he put something in the rain gutter—it’s probably still there. Hannah, I think you called it. I don’t have much time to catch Eve Necchi’s murderer.”

He scooped up Sam Goddard’s photos and put them back in the file. With two of the subjects and the photographer dead, the group was already becoming a collector’s item. He called the Palms Hotel in Santa Monica and asked if Martin Montgomery had been a registered guest during the past week. The manager was cagey. He asked if Mr. Drake was with the police. “Mr. Drake is with Continental Pacific Insurance,” Simon said. The magic words worked and he was told that Mr. Montgomery had checked in at the Palms on Sunday night and left Monday evening without checking out or paying his bill, and since he had taken his luggage with him somebody owed the Palms twelve dollars. “That’s all I wanted to know,” Simon said. “Send a bill to Continental Pacific and we’ll pay as soon as the case gets out of probate.” He cradled the telephone quickly before the hotel man realized he would probably have an eight-lane freeway running through the lobby before that day came to pass, and then picked up the telephone again and placed a call to Able Rentals in Santa Monica.