Severed Key (13 page)

The answering service was operated by a lady who sounded like a recorded message. Her file on Keith showed that he had switched his calls to her office prior to going to Kelly’s party and checked in at six-thirty a.m. the following morning. During that time he had received one call—from New York City. By using all the charm and legal persuasion in his repertoire, Simon was able to con the lady into believing that Keith’s life, not to mention her monthly fee, depended on tracing the source of that call. Minutes later, he was talking to a certain Aron De Witt of the De Witt Investigation Service.

“My name is Simon Drake,” he said. “I’m a lawyer.”

A jaded voice responded, “I’ve heard of you, Drake.”

“I am Jack Keith’s lawyer—and his friend. Keith is missing. Have you talked to him since yesterday morning?”

There was a slight pause. The reply sounded a shade less jaded.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Keith is being sought by the Los Angeles police—Homicide division.”

“Homicide?”

Simon smiled at the mouthpiece. The voice inflection was improving. “Frankly, I’m worried,” Simon added. “Keith hasn’t contacted me—the most logical thing to do in this kind of trouble. I’m going to ask you to stretch your ethical code a little and tell me what you and Keith discussed yesterday morning. I suspect it was something called the Mercury Travel Agency.”

There was no answer.

“Assuming that silence means assent,” Simon continued, “I’ll try to stimulate your vocal chords with a little name-dropping. What about Sigrid Thorsen for a starter? Johnny Sands? Arne Lundberg?”

“All right, I’ll buy your story,” De Witt answered. “Three out of four isn’t bad.”

“Who is the fourth?”

“The man who operates—among several dozen other ventures—the Mercury Travel Agency: Angelo Cerva. Heard of him?”

It must be getting stuffy in the telephone niche. Simon began to perspire. “Better than that—I’ve seen him.”

“That’s what Keith said. Cerva’s changed his base of operations.”

“And three people are dead,” Simon mused.

“The Thorsen girl and Lundberg. Who’s the third?”

“A local butterfly named Tracy Davis.”

“Never heard of her.”

“I don’t think anybody had until the police found her body in Keith’s bed. Now suppose you tell me everything you told Keith yesterday morning and maybe I’ll be able to fit Tracy into the picture.”

De Witt’s story was brief. Keith had rung him up the first time immediately after learning that Sigrid Thorsen and Sands travelled with the same agency. He wanted details on their respective bookings and background material on the agency itself. Sands’s flight had been booked originally on the plane taken by the Thorsen girl. Her own booking was a week later. Then Sands cancelled and Sigrid took his cancellation. Sands took an earlier flight to Las Vegas.”

“Was there a relationship between Sigrid and Sands?” Simon asked.

“It looks that way. He set up the screen test that got her her first television commercial. I wouldn’t have learned about that if I didn’t have a dirty mind.”

“No confessionals, please. Where does Cerva fit in the triangle?”

“Nowhere—except that he banks the agency profits. He’s too careful to leave tracks.”

“But not too careful to be seen with Sands at the Los Angeles airport. Did Keith mention two men named Franklin and Pridoux?”

“Negative,” De Witt said.

“That’s odd—no, it isn’t. You’re in New York. They’re from D.C. He would have used another contact.”

“Now I think you owe me some answers.”

“Later. I just told you—three people are dead who were alive before Cerva came west. I don’t want the body count to go up to four.” Simon started to hang up the receiver when a fragment of his last conversation with Keith surfaced from memory. “Wait a minute, De Witt,” he said. “The last time I talked with Keith he suggested that he knew who had written that retainer letter from Sweden. Did he get the information from you?”

“Retainer?” De Witt echoed. “Oh, sure. The letter from the father who turned out to be dead. No, he’d just traced the letter the night before we talked. He must have worked out that angle himself. The only thing he did say, and we weren’t talking about the letter, was something about a Costello angle. No, this is what he said, exactly: ‘Maybe they pulled a Costello twist.’”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you examine his files. Maybe he’s worked on another case that clued him in on the letter business.”

“I wish I could,” Simon answered, “but the law has his place sealed off like a contagion ward. I’ll just have to find him.”

“I hope you do before he ends up wearing cement sneakers.”

“Thanks,” Simon responded dryly. “I need all the bright encouragement I can get.”

Simon left the telephone and walked to the front entrance. He gave the doorman a claim ticket and waited for his car. A taxi pulled up to the kerb and deposited a pair of so obviously newly-weds that the rice still seemed to be clinging to their hair. They reminded him of Wanda and he wondered if the Las Vegas police had stopped bothering her about Jack Keith’s disappearance, and then he pondered De Witt’s gloomy commentary and tried to picture the impending wedding without a best man. The picture wouldn’t take. Keith was too resourceful to get boxed in so easily, especially if the box was oblong with six brass handles.

The doorman returned, finally, muttering over the generation gap. He had been ringing the garage for five minutes without receiving a response from a newly-hired attendant. Simon decided to get the Jaguar himself. He retraced his steps across the lobby and took the elevator down to the garage. He could find no sign of the attendant, but he knew the car would be near the exit ramp since he wasn’t an overnight guest. He found it quickly enough. The keys were in the ignition. He opened the door and started to get in, but, as the door swung outwards, he glimpsed a reflection of someone in the rear-view mirror. Thinking it was the delinquent employee, he turned just as a large man, his face lost in shadow, raised his right arm and brought down a blackjack that grazed Simon’s left eye before smashing into the chrome frame of the mirror.

The brief warning given by the reflection was enough. Simon rolled backwards as he fell and scrambled to shelter behind a convenient Cadillac. An arresting shout echoed through the vault-like garage. Peering between the wheels of the Cadillac, Simon could see his attacker hesitate momentarily and then turn and run towards the daylight at the end of the exit ramp. He was a huge man who loped with the easy grace of an athlete. His hair looked white until he reached the sunlight. It was blond—incredibly thick and blond. Using the side of the Cadillac for leverage, Simon pulled himself to his feet as the shouting attendant arrived on the scene.

“What’s going on here?” the boy cried. “Hey, you’re hurt! Your eye’s all over blood!”

AT ABOUT THE same time Simon started his day’s work at the Los Angeles coroner’s office, the day was beginning in a different way for four young people fifteen miles south of Tijuana.

The sea was calm. Waves lapped lazily at the sands of Rosarito Beach as if stirring themselves awake after a peaceful night’s sleep, and the sun, rising in a cloudless sky, shrank to a small patch of shade behind the van. It was the sun in his face that awakened Travis. He opened his eyes and squinted at the sky. It was warm. He threw back the folds of the army blanket that had covered him and stretched and wriggled in the sand. Then he sat up and sniffed the air. Coffee. He looked around for his boots. Finding them half buried under the battered guitar case he had used for a pillow, he emptied sand out of each one and then drew them on with loving care. They were the finest boots he had ever owned. He had bought them with the biggest half of his first two weeks’ pay cheque after his return from Vietnam. When they were on he stood up and breathed deeply of the sea air, counting audibly—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Then he hitched up his trousers and began to sing in a loud voice: “Nita, Juanita, ask thy soul if we should part—”

The smell of coffee was coming from the far side of the van. Travis took the guitar out of the case and walked around the back of the van slapping the back of the guitar in passing. “Rise and shine, lovebirds!” he shouted. “The honeymoon is over!” On the far side of the van he found the girl, Nita, still dressed in the bright pink blouse and skirt she had worn to the wedding, bending over the beach fire tending the coffee pot and a skillet in which were frying two yellow-faced eggs. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

“You!” she gasped.

“No hard feelings,” Travis said. “Besides, we can’t fight. We’re not married yet.”

Nature had been generous with Nita. Long black hair hung loosely on her shoulders. Her eyes were large and sable brown and her dark skin had no need of cosmetics. She tossed her head angrily. “Yet!” she scoffed.

“It’s in the air,” Travis said. “Romance! Can’t you feel it?” He grabbed for her waist but she quickly stepped aside. Shrugging, Travis dropped to one knee and placed the guitar on the sand. He poured coffee into one of the ceramic mugs Nita had taken out of the picnic basket and was dousing the cup with a stream of condensed milk when Bob, hair tousled and eyes blurred with sleep, stepped out of the van.

“Hail the happy bridegroom!” Travis cried. “How was it, man? Any better with a piece of paper?”

“Romance!” Nita scoffed. “I know all you ever think of!”

“All
you
ever think of!” Travis retorted. “Girls don’t fool me. I’ve seen those magazines you read. What’s the matter, Bobby boy? You look hung over.”

Bob grinned sheepishly. “Must be that cheap wine we drank after the wedding. How did you make out sleeping on the beach?”

“I didn’t,” Travis said. “Yonder on lonely army blanket is where I spent the night. Nita took the sleeping bag and slept in front of the van. I guess she was afraid we might pull out and leave her.”

“That was not what I was afraid of,” Nita said tightly. “How do you like your eggs—sunny side up or over?”

“Sunny likes them over,” Bob answered.

“Oh, wow! We can see who’s going to wear the jeans in this family,” Travis scoffed.

“And I like them over,” Bob added.

“There, you see? A perfect match. You can bet Dear Abbey never hears from either of you.” Travis gulped the coffee which was scalding hot, grimaced and managed another swallow. “Now, me, I have a problem.”

“We know that,” Bob said. “You have mouth trouble. You talk too much.”

“I have a problem,” Travis continued, “trying to convince this lovely lady that I’m serious. Zonked about her. Way out.”

Bob winked and Nita smiled in return.

“And what’s more important, that I’m a man of means—”

“I said you talk too much!” Bob said sharply.

“—and talent. Did you know that I’m a song writer, Nita? You didn’t? Well, don’t let that bother you because nobody else knows it yet—but they will! Listen, I pulled this one out of my head last night when I was fighting that crawly blanket.” He put down the cup of coffee and picked up the guitar. He strummed an introductory chord and began to sing:

“Sounds like a calf I raised when I was a kid,” Bob said.

“Sounds more like a bull,” Nita suggested.

“Jealousy! That’s all it is. Jealousy!” Travis stalked down the beach kicking flurries of sand before him in mock anger as he walked. He looked back and saw Sunny, wearing faded jeans and a bikini top, emerge from the van and run to greet Bob. They embraced, wrestled playfully, and then Bob left her to help Nita with the breakfast and came down the beach to where Travis was watching the sea.

“The girls want to stay over another day,” he said. “But I told them we had to get back to our jobs. We left that suitcase buried in the garage. If we stay away too long we might have prowlers.”

“Now you’re beginning to think like a family man,” Travis said.

“I don’t know about that. I’m beginning to think that money’s more trouble than it’s worth. And I don’t mean because I had to marry Sunny—that part’s a groove. But I worry about the money—especially when you start sounding off about what a man of means you are just to impress a chick.”

“What did I say?” Travis howled. “Anyway, I have to do something. She turned puritan on me last night when I was hot as a pistol for her. Someday that chick’s going to get her neck broken.”

“Forget it.”

“Forget it? Listen, Roberto, give me another day—no, two or three hours with Nita and I’ll have her purring like a kitten.”

“Maybe so, but not here. Today we’re going home.”

“I’d like to stop in Tijuana a while on my way back.”

“Man, your head is really O.D.! You’re not picking up any horse this trip. All we need is for you to get busted before we get that letter from Morry and take off for Brazil.”

“Okay, okay. I won’t even pick up a little grass if you’re running that scared.”

“I’m running that scared. And for all of our sakes, I hope you’re running that scared too.”

And then Travis looked at him in that angry way he had the first time they talked about the money. “I’ll tell you how I’m running,” he said. “I figured it out while I was in ‘nam. It’s like everybody in the world is trying to prove he’s alive. Everybody is yelling, ‘I’m here! Look at me, I’m here!’ Only most of them stutter a little and never get the words out before they’re dead and somebody’s putting a stone over their grave that says, ‘He was here.’ Well, that ain’t going to happen to me. I
am
here and people are going to know it before I die. You better believe it! So don’t you talk about that money being trouble. There’s no way of getting out of this deal. No way!”

The girls called down to them to come back to the fire and get their breakfasts, and Bob waved and yelled back that they were coming. It wasn’t much of a honeymoon but he planned to make up for that when they were in the clear with the money. Just how he would explain it to Sunny was a hurdle to take when he came to it.