East of Suez (29 page)

“And they reported that you had got away with the money?”

“Yeah. They didn’t look for me very hard. They knew I wouldn’t surface if I wanted to live.”

“You think it was the same lot that got to Ranken?”

“That son of a bitch! He got me into this mess. He was the mastermind behind the drugs exchange at the reef.”

“He was your only contact with the drug dealers?”

“Yeah. Then he started making moves on Vicky. And when I had to take to the hills, he was all over her like a tent.”

“You know about Ranken?”

“I can’t say I’m sorry. He was a predator. He knew Vicky wasn’t in a position to complain, and he took advantage of that: I was on the run, and she couldn’t go to the authorities.”

“So, gentlemen? Where do we go from here?” This from the policeman, looking at me.

Clay scratched his chin with the side of his hand. “How long you been livin’ up there in your old cabin?”

“Don’t remind me. I’ve been living rough for too long.”

“But you had help?” I suggested. “You had access to your swimming gear?”

“How do you know that?”

“I didn’t see your stuff in your flat or up at the cabin, so you must have a place for it downtown.”

“Do you have to know where?”

“Saves guessing. I’d put my money on Fiona Calaghan.”

“Yeah, she’s an old friend. I couldn’t have hidden out so long without her.”

“She has a boat.”

“That was only part of it. She put me up. She got me clothes, kept me informed.”

“You were lucky there.” Clay was rubbing his chin, while I wondered how she managed the traffic in and out of her place.

“
Hey!
You guys! I’m a happily married man. Fiona’s a pal. She’s terrific. But I’m still in love with my wife. Remember that!”

“Vicky could have helped you out at the reef, couldn’t she?”

“I’d trust my life to Vicky, but not my boat. The currents can be murder out there by the reef. Besides, by the time I needed her, she was dead. Or so I thought.”

“Where is all this going?” Clay put in. “Stop with the cat and mouse and let the rest of us in on it!”

“I think I know.” It was the policeman. “You hijacked the exchange!”

“He
what
?”

“Jake—if I may?—went out to the reef and took one of the dropped items. Am I right?”

“You got it. I knew when they were going to make the exchange—”

“By the phases of the moon,” I added. I remembered the calendar in the Granges’ apartment. “With an exchange on the night of the new moon, the parties didn’t have to confer about where and when. That was a clever idea. And you knew about it?”

“Well, yeah. Sure. I’d been in the office while these things were going on. I saw the players every day, but I wasn’t allowed on the field. I just ran the diving, the boats, and the marina.”

“Did the government boys know what was going on?”

“No, they were only looking for tourist dollars,” Jake said, with a grin.

“Am I gettin’ dim in my old age or what?” There was a gleam in Clay’s eye. “You sayin’ that the heavies were dealing drugs under your nose and that they kept it up after the feds moved in on you?”

“They were that sure of themselves.”

“A system like that wouldn’t work three days with the people I know,” Clay shrugged.

“I think we are dealing with a villain who isn’t cut from common yard goods,” I said. “I also think this was a complex operation involving several people.”

“Where’d that idea drop from, Benny?” Jake was becoming more involved as our talk went on.

“Well, look at it this way: there was an exchange of money for drugs, right? That means we are dealing with two sides right from the start. Do they trust one another? I doubt it. One side is carrying expensive coke or crack. The other side is loaded with cash of some kind to cover the agreed exchange price. If one side isn’t on the ball one day, the other side will end up with both the drugs
and
the cash.”

Clay nodded. “So they watch each other like a couple dudes with blades.”

“Are you saying that this exchange is made automatically, without consultation?” The policeman’s voice was almost child-like.

“I was just going to. What better place? Tide charts read the same for everybody. No need for meetings, and if the supply is always the same, then the money is always the same. The only need to talk comes when prices change or supply runs short.”

“Cool! No fuzz comin’ round. Nobody sees faces. Yeah, that’s
cool
.”

“Where did Ranken fit into this?”

“The exchange took two sorts of specialists, on both sides. There were the money and drug people on dry land and there were the divers who actually made the exchange.”

“Benny, are you usin’ a Ouija board, or did you run a scam like this back home in Canada?”

“Look, Clay, the way I see it is this: Ranken was killed, not because of something he did, but because of something Jake here did. It was a tightly run exchange; everybody played his part. When something went wrong, as it did the other day, the players assumed that the weak link began at home. One of their people dropped the ball. Ranken was the unlucky fall guy.”

“Are you saying that I’m responsible for his death, Cooperman? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“
Easy
, Jake! It’s not like you held a gun to his head. His people could as easily have found another explanation for the missing … What exactly is missing, Jake? Is it the drugs or the money?”

“I just grabbed the first bag I saw and got out of there. When I opened it on the boat, I found that it was the money. One hundred and sixty thousand dollars. In used American bills. Nothing bigger than a fifty.”

Somebody whistled. It might have been me. “I thought cash wasn’t used for this sort of thing any more. Don’t they use euros or gold or jewels?”

“Mr Cooperman, Ben, the American dollar is still sterling in Takot. Large amounts of bullion and gems attract too much attention. Wherever they turn up. And the euro is still an abstraction to most people here.”

“I’ll try to remember that.” I took a breath, then thought of something totally irrelevant: “Jake, do you write poetry?” Jake grinned.

“No. Why?”

“What about Vicky or the kids?”

“I don’t think so. What’s this leading up to?”

“Well, I found a scrap of poetry in your apartment. If you didn’t write it, who did? Do you have friends who leave their writing lying about?”

“Thomas Lanier scribbles a little.”

“He tutored the kids for a time, didn’t he?” I was glad to find that my memory was functioning for once.

“Sure. He tried to teach them Latin, of all things. And he certainly left things lying about. All of his friends have some of his belongings. Again, why?”

“The beginning of an idea, that’s all.”

There was a pause. I seemed to have dropped the ball. Then Clay put me back to work: “Benny, you haven’t told us who the dudes are who were the perps. Do we know them?”

“Well, I think the fact that Beverley Taylor’s gone underground strongly suggests that she was Ranken’s underwater partner. When he was killed, she might have thought that she would be next.” A forgotten thought popped back into my head. It was a non sequitur, but I had to deal with things when I thought of them or they’d disappear. Turning to Clay, I said, “Remember when we went to his apartment?”

“Yeah. We’d been doing some running. I remember.”

“Well, when we buzzed up to Ranken’s place, we got an answer. Somebody was there. It couldn’t have been Ranken—he was already dead. Somebody else found the body before we got there. Who was it? We’re looking both for the killer and for the man who discovered the body. Two people. May I ask you, Jake, were you the voice on the intercom when Clay and I rang the apartment?”

“
Me?
”

“Come on! We don’t have time for little secrets if we want to get to the big one.”

“Okay,
okay
! Yes, it was me. I was following a hunch that Ranken was at the center of all this, so I paid him a visit. I guess you know what I found.”

“Then you weren’t there very long?”

“No! You came along before I could go through his papers. I took to the stairs as soon as I hung up the phone. Is that a big part of the puzzle?”

“Don’t ask me. I can join up the dots, but I don’t read minds. I met a young diver the other day who used to be broke, but, according to his pals, he’s now pretty well off. Do you know …” Here I had to consult my Memory Book. “George, from Stuttgart? Anyone know him?”

“I know him.” The policeman grinned. “Some passport irregularities, but he’s not a very interesting figure, he’s no mastermind.”

“Maybe he was recruited for just that reason. And who might recruit a none-too-bright young fellow with a German background?”

“Another German?”

“The lawyer!”

“Bernhardt Hubermann!” Clay and the policeman spoke together. Jake lagged behind.

“Hubermann? But he’s my lawyer! What’s going on here?” Jake asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that your lawyer has been playing a hand in all this,” the colonel said. “I would be shocked to find that he’s only playing two hands.”

“You mean he’s behind it all?” Clay demanded. “He’s Mr Big, huh?”

“As big as we’ve got so far.”

“
Ha!
Stay tuned! Maybe we should see if he has any input to add,” suggested the policeman.

“Do I have a seconder?”

TWENTY-FIVE

ON THE STAIRS,
I wondered about the expression on the lawyer’s face when he’d see the four of us. He’d surely know the game was up. What could he do but sputter and try to lie his way out? As we were going through the door, the policeman held it open for a slight young woman, whom I recognized as Hubermann’s secretary. When I said “Hello” she blinked, then smiled at me, as though she was surprised at the size of our delegation. She let us file into the empty waiting room.

After a moment or two at her desk, she rang through to the inner office. “I was sure he was here,” she said, in her careful English. She got up and went through the door while I tried my hand at a
Time
magazine so old its age showed in the cover photograph. It was the picture of an American senator who had briefly shone in the firmament then vanished from sight like a meteor.

I heard a scream, a groan, then a bump from the other room. We rushed through the connecting door to see the secretary on the floor as though hit by lightning.

“She’s alive!” said the policeman. “Just fainted or had a spell,” he added.

“She looked fit when she came in with us. I wonder …” Jake backed away from the woman on the floor. He could see that there was already too much help on the scene.

“Let her be!” said the policeman. His voice was strained, as though he had a bad cold. “She’s just fainted from shock.”

I looked around and up at him. “Shock? How do you know?”

“The desk. Look behind the desk.”

I looked. The lawyer was in his office, all right. He was on the floor, with a few file folders and papers under and around him. He was dead. His skull had been crushed by the lead statuette that used to stand on his secretary’s desk. It didn’t look as though its use as a murder weapon had damaged it in any way. The blood, of course, would come off.

I am no expert at judging time of death, but between gagging and trying to maintain my balance, I could see that the body was still warm and the blood was fresh. There was a groan from the other side of the desk. The secretary was coming around.

“Ohhh!” She made a sound difficult to record, when she realized where she was and what she had just found on the floor.

“It’s all right,” the policeman said, and repeated it often enough to get me to nearly believe it.

“Could I have some tea?” she asked, as soon as she could sit up. Jake attended to that, while I tried to examine the papers under and near the body. They appeared to be loose pages: general correspondence, prepared by the secretary and ready for signing. But, behind the wastepaper basket, I found a draft letter that had not yet been typed. Near it were some legal papers in a clump. I poked them at the secretary, partly to take her mind off the dear departed.

“What’s this?”

She didn’t need much time. “I typed them yesterday. They’re copies of a lease on a property in France: it’s in a hamlet called Labadie, near Bouniagues, not far south of Bergerac.” She went on to tell me that the place was being rented to an F. Lamont Walker, of this city. It’s funny, I thought, how important random facts are at a moment of shock or surprise. I wrote these facts in my Memory Book, just to keep me calm. Writing my own name and address would have done as well. I tried to get back on my feet in order to do something useful.

She was sitting up now without my help, and a cushion from a couch had been put behind her.

“Are you up to this?” I asked after she had a sip of tea. She nodded feebly.

“I know you are his secretary, Miss …?”

“Robb. Mrs Ursula Robb. I am fine, now, just a shock, you understand.”

“Was he alone when you went for lunch?”

“Oh yes, quite alone.”

“And you were out, how long?” She tried to find a time that would clear her of any lingering suspicion: “Maybe twenty minutes. Maybe more. I had some typing—”