The Simeon Chamber (17 page)

“Where did the items come from?”

“We weren’t stupid, monsieur. I think we tried not to know, but we knew.” He nodded his head slowly. “They were stolen. Oh, we had no hard evidence, but we knew it nonetheless.” The Frenchman sipped from his glass and cleared his throat.

“All that this sailor ever demanded was that we prepare a sales slip for the purchase, so that it would appear legitimate. He told my brother that if anyone ever asked, all he had to say was that he purchased the items from a stranger whom he had never seen before.” 5

“In any event the buying and selling of these art objects continued for several months. By that time we had been paid a great deal of money. The sailor referred to it as our commissions.”

Jake had been listening quietly in the corner and finally relaxed, placing the automatic pistol in his pocket on safety and removing his hand from the coat to cross his arms.

“If I remember, it was June, or early July, that my brother told me he had received an envelope from this man Jones. My brother said that he had been instructed to give the sealed envelope to whoever delivered the next shipment of art.”

“Then this Jones didn’t deliver the art to the shop himself?” asked Sam.

“Oh, no. He took no risks himself. He never brought anything to the shop. He dignified his activities by calling himself a broker. No, the packages for his client were always delivered by another man, a large man dressed in crude working clothes. My brother recognized him from the docks. He was a sailor on a coastal freighter. This man always followed the same routine. He would appear at the shop with a package—sometimes large, sometimes small. He would say that it was `a delivery for the committee.`”

“The committee?” asked Sam.

“Yes.”

“What was the committee?”

“I will get to that.”

Sam was in no position to make demands.

“Anyway, my brother had been given a sealed envelope to deliver. But for some reason, I don’t know why, he became suspicious. Maybe it was something that the sailor, this Jones, had said or the way he said it—anyway, my brother steamed open the envelope. Inside was a single typed page—a schedule of merchant shipping then in port, the cargoes carried by some of the ships, projected departure times and their destinations. Both my brother and I knew that there could be only one purpose for such a list.

Black market activities were one thing, espionage was another. We wanted no part of it.

“When the man from the freighter arrived my brother took possession of a large sealed envelope. He gave the man the 7

agreed-upon money. But he did not deliver the envelope containing the shipping schedule. My brother was scared. He’d had enough and he wanted, how do you say, to make an end of it.”

“Your brother kept the package given to him by the courier?”

“Yes. And as you may have guessed by now, that packet contained the four pages, or parchments as you call them. But it also contained something more.”

The old man rose from his chair and walked slowly to a large ornate chest against the wall behind his writing table. Jake followed his movements closely and placed his hand back into his coat pocket.

Lamonge opened a drawer and removed a worn leather folder and returned to his desk. Jake relaxed.

“I discovered this after my brother’s death.”

The old man pulled a single sheaf of letter-size paper from the folder. It was tattered on the edges and showed signs of wear along the folds.

“This letter was my brother’s insurance policy, against the sailor and the committee,” said the Frenchman. “Or so he thought.” He slid the paper across the desk toward Sam, who held it under the light of the desk lamp. The single sheet carried the Nazi swastika on its letterhead and words in German beneath the symbol, but the text was written in perfect English. It was dated April 30, 1942, and was simply addressed to “The Committee”: Gentlemen:

We have made a truly rare find as a result of our occupation of the Lowlands and France. Enclosed you will find sample pages of a manuscript written in the hand of the English explorer Francis Drake. It is part of a complete journal written by Drake and detailing the exploits of his voyage around the world (1577-79).

My principal has instructed me to make these pages of the Journal available to you so that you might satisfy yourselves as to the authenticity of the document. The entire journal is yours for the sum of one million dollars, American. Surely your benefactor will pay twice that for so rare a find. This offer will remain open for thirty days.

Please make contact in the usual 9

fashion. Regards, Reinhard Heydrich Oberfurer S.D.

Sam wondered if the German who’d written the letter had bothered to translate the journal or the four pages of parchment. He guessed that he had not, or the price would surely have been much higher. Bogardus took a pen from the desk and made several notes on a pad that lay in front of him, tore off the slip of paper from the pad and placed it in his shirt pocket. He handed the letter back to the Frenchman, who replaced it carefully in the folder.

“The day after my brother received the parchments the courier returned to the shop. This time he came with the sailor Jones. They threatened my brother and made a shambles of the shop. They demanded the parchments and the shipping schedule that Jones had left with him. In fear for his life he surrendered both.”

“What about the letter from the German? Didn’t they ask for that?”

“No. Either they forgot about it or didn’t notice that it was missing. Jones refused to return the deposit of five thousand dollars that we had advanced to the courier when he made the delivery. For two weeks my brother tried to locate him at Treasure Island to retrieve his money. Finally, about a week later, he saw the man Jones on the base and went to his superior. Of course he couldn’t tell the officer about the black market activities, so he told him that this man—Slade was his real name —had stolen the parchments.”

“What did you say his name was?”

“Raymond Slade,” said the old man.

Sam leaned back in the chair and remembered the photo he had taken from the files of the naval board of inquiry—the photograph of Raymond Slade, the other missing crewman who had disappeared with James Spencer from the Ghost Blimp. He sat trancelike, listening to the old man describe how his brother and sister-in-law met their fate just days after their last encounter with Slade—the victims of a fiery single-car crash on a lonely stretch of highway in the delta. “Only the grace of God caused them to leave Jeannette with me that day,” said the 1

Frenchman.

“You never went to the police with any of this?”

“How could I? I had no evidence that this man Slade was responsible for their deaths. Besides, I couldn’t implicate him without revealing my own black market activities. And I had the responsibility of raising my niece.”

“Did you ever see this man Slade again?”

“No! I was too frightened. For weeks after my brother and Ming Lee were killed we stayed in the shop, afraid to go out.”

“You don’t have any idea what `the Committee` is?”

There was a slight hesitation from the Frenchman. Sam was prepared to press the point when Lamonge turned and walked to the hutch again. He produced a small black book, a telephone directory, opened it and handed it to Sam. On the open page halfway down were the words “Committee of Acquisition,” and next to them was a name—

“Arthur Symington”—and what appeared to be a phone number, a two-letter prefix followed by only four digits. Sam knew the number would no longer be in use.

“Who’s Arthur Symington?”

“He was the contact, the buyer for the committee.

My brother identified him as the man who came to the shop to buy the art objects given to us by Slade.”

“Do you know if he’s still alive?”

“No,” said Lamonge, “but I know that the number in that book used to ring at the offices of a newspaper here in San Francisco.”

“A newspaper?”

“I called the number after I found the book and it rang at the switchboard of the newspaper.”

“Which one?” asked Sam.

“I’m not sure after all of these years, but it was one of the big ones. It’s still in business.”

That narrowed the field to two.

“How much of this did you tell to my partner?”

The Frenchman looked down at the desk in front of him. “That is what is so tragic, monsieur. I told her nothing. I merely warned her to be more discreet in her dealings concerning the parchments.” He looked sheepishly at the lawyer. “And I asked her to leave. She seemed surprised, almost offended, when I confirmed that the documents might be genuine.”

So Pat had been killed for nothing. 203

Something deep within Bogardus began to boil. It was an alien sensation, something primordial, an urge the lawyer did not fully comprehend. Revenge was certainly not contrary to his nature, but in the past his vendettas had always been bridled by the rules of society. His mind had been conditioned to weigh precise legal principles, to balance human behavior against the black-letter precepts of the law. The sum of the equation was called “justice.” This was something new. It found its roots in his very nature and flowed from instinct, not intellect. For now he knew that if given the opportunity, he would kill to avenge Pat’s murder.

Lieutenant George Fletcher had the round red face of an aging cherub, resting over a fleshy double chin. He could no longer remember the last time he was able to fasten the collar on his assortment of button-down dress shirts. The knot on his narrow tie routinely rested on the ledge beneath his chest that was formed by a protruding stomach. What hair remained on his head was found in thin gray wisps that Fletcher preened with a pocket comb, more from habit than necessity.

Two years from retirement, he was hopelessly out of shape and out of date, but his superiors knew that notwithstanding his appearance and lack of conditioning, George Fletcher was the best detective in the Central Homicide Division.

There was fog and a light drizzle outside his fifth-floor office window as Fletcher read the preliminary lab report and the field notes of the detectives who had responded to the scene. The murder had been planned and carefully executed. Not the work of a panic-stricken burglar caught in the act of rifling the woman’s apartment. Nothing of value appeared to be missing. There were no signs of forced entry and no fingerprints other than the victim’s. The only peculiarity were minute traces of sodium hydroxide (lye), and charred animal fat. It had been found on both the inside and outside knobs to the front door and the door to the victim’s bedroom.

Fletcher ran through the obvious theories. A jealous lover. A client dissatisfied with the results of a criminal case. A disgruntled spouse in a domestic case. Perhaps the killer’s way of lodging a consumer complaint. Or maybe Susan Paterson was a direct 5

player in the booming cocaine market. There’d been enough drug-related executions in the city over the last five years to keep the medical examiners working in shifts trying to keep up.

The victim had no criminal record. a rap sheet from the Department of Justice in Sacramento turned up no arrests or convictions. A check with the F.B.I. netted similar results. There were no drugs found in her apartment.

And something else didn’t fit. Why would a woman who was wearing a three-hundred-dollar silk Halston dress be carrying a frayed knee-length coat and scarf that looked like the discards from a rummage sale? Or did they belong to someone else, perhaps the killer?

Fletcher closed the legal-size manila folder containing the reports and pictures of the scene and pressed the button on his intercom.

“Jack, bring him in.”

Fletcher leaned back and listened as the springs of his ancient oak swivel desk chair issued their familiar discordant groan under the weight of his body. The door to the office opened slowly, and in walked a gaunt man in his late thirties.

A small bandage covered part of his forehead on the left side. His eyes had the haunted look of one who’d just lost a friend or loved one to violence. Fletcher had become all too familiar with that vacant, soulful expression during his years working the homicide beat.

Trailing along behind, Sergeant Jack Mayhew slipped inside the small office and closed the door. He played Jeff to Fletcher’s Mutt. Tall and gangly, with a toothpick dangling from his lip, Mayhew dropped one cheek of his skinny behind onto the credenza in the corner and folded his arms, flashing alternate blank stares at the lawyer and the detective.

Fletcher didn’t move from his chair. Instead he coldly studied the man’s face. There was something familiar about the tall, lean lawyer. Fletcher had seen Sam Bogardus before, but couldn’t place where.

“Mr. Bogardus, please take a seat.

I’m Lieutenant Fletcher. I’ve been assigned to investigate the death of your partner Susan Paterson.”

Sam settled onto the hard seat of the 207

oak chair across the desk from the detective.

“She was a beautiful woman.”

“In more ways than one,” said Sam.

Fletcher looked hard at Bogardus and caught a brief hint of recognition in the lawyer’s eyes. “Have we met before? You look familiar.”

Sam hesitated. To lie or not—for an instant the option flashed through his brain. “You have a good memory, Lieutenant. It was the Henderson case some years back—the indigent charged with assault with a deadly weapon down in the Tenderloin. I was with the public defender at the time and I believe you were assigned to the case after the booking.”

“Ah yes,” Fletcher’s recognition of the lawyer was followed by instant regret. “I remember. Your man beat the rap.”

“He didn’t beat anything. The arresting officers should have been commended for their honesty to the court.”

Fletcher wasn’t sure if Sam was turning the sword in the wound or trying to offer him a sugar pill.

“Honesty, yes. That’s what it must have been.” Fletcher’s voice was thick with sarcasm. He remembered all too well the courtroom scene. The two young officers at the preliminary hearing, each sequestered outside of the courtroom while the other was examined by Bogardus. The defendant was a two-time loser. A conviction for assault with a deadly weapon, given his priors, could carry a twelve-year term. There’d been no time for the D.A. to prep the two officers before the appearance.