(1969) The Seven Minutes (47 page)

‘No … no … I don’t think so. Wait, let me sit up.’

He made the effort, and she assisted him. As he came upright his brain felt scrambled and his vision blurred again, but then, quickly,

his head felt better and clarity of thought and sight returned.

‘What happened, Mike ? I got here five minutes ago. The door to the suite was wide open, and the light was on in the reception room. All the other lights were out. I didn’t know what was going on. I called for you. No answer. And then I heard what sounded like a moan. It was from this room. So I came in and turned on the lights, and there you were. It was frightening. I was going to phone for an ambulance, but then I thought I’d see how you were first. Are you sure you’re better?’

‘I’ll live. One codeine should do it.’

‘Do you have some?’

‘In the bathroom. I’ll get the -‘

‘Let me.’ She leaped to her feet, looked around, and, following his pointing finger, disappeared into the bathroom.

After a moment, Mike Barrett struggled to his feet. When Maggie Russell returned with the white pill and a glass of water, he quickly downed the pill.

“Thanks, Maggie.’

‘Now can you remember what happened?’

He remembered vividly. ‘After phoning you, I drove back from the Valley. I came up here, and the second I entered my office, before I could turn on the light, some big fellow jumped me from behind. I got free from him, but then he called out to someone else, so there were two of them. The other one started to pistol-whip me. I went down, and I think I heard them saying they’d better get out of here. Then I guess I passed out.’

‘But who was it? And why?’

‘I don’t know who. It was dark. I’d just walked in, and my eyes didn’t have time to adjust. But I have an idea who was behind it and maybe why.’

The telephone.

He turned around. His desk looked like it had been swept by a small typhoon, and the carpet was strewn with papers and a chair was overturned. On the desk his telephone stood in its accustomed place, but the base was dismantled, its casing removed so that the inner mechanism lay exposed.

Head still aching, chest throbbing, he walked stiffly to the telephone and studied the instrument.

“They got away with it,’ he said at last.

‘With what?’

‘I came back to the office wanting to make sure, and now I am sure, unless the telephone company is offering a new judo service for subscribers. Someone planted a monitor in my phone, and then they must have found out I knew - that means my secretary’s phone had been bugged, also, because I hinted at it pretty broadly when I called her from New York - so they came back after hours to remove the evidence. I happened to stumble in on them.’ He poked at the telephone. They took this apart, removed me device, but I

came in before they could put Humpty Dumpty together again.’

‘But who would - ? You should call the police.’

‘The police?’

She seemed puzzled by his tone, and then some vague comprehension crossed her features. ‘Oh,’ she said.

‘I’ll enlighten you in a little while,’ said Barrett. ‘First I’d better call my partner.’

He went into the reception room, and before dialing he examined Donna’s telephone. He pried at the casing with a thumbnail. It was loose. Yes, they had come here shortly after Donna had left - they must have waited for her to leave, and she had appearently left late - and then they had removed the electronic bug from her telephone before getting to work on his own.

He lifted up the receiver and dialed Abe Zelkin at home.

He had hardly finished saying hello when Zelkin asked worriedly, ‘Mike, what’s this Donna told me ? About our missing out on those Jadway letters?’

‘Abe, it’s a long story, but I’ll make it short and save details for tomorrow.’

Recounting what had happened at Olin Adams Autographs, he hurried on to tell how they had all overlooked the obvious from the time that they had lost Christian Leroux to the opposition. Then Barrett related the assault upon him in his office, and the condition of his telephone.

‘To heck with that,’ Zelkin was saying. “The thing is - your condition. Are you sure you’re okay?’

The codeine had begun to take effect. Tm feeling fine, Abe. I’ll see how I am in the morning. Maybe I’ll look in on Doc Quigley. What’s tomorrow? Saturday. I’ll drop in on him at home.’

‘I want you in shape for the trial Monday morning.’

‘I’ll be in shape,’ said Barrett grimly. ‘Maybe our case won’t be, but I will. As to our case, that brings me to one more piece of bad news. I went straight from the airport to Van Nuys. Abe, I hate to tell you, but we’ve lost Mrs Vogler.’

He could hear the sharp intake of Zelkin’s breath. ‘No kidding. How did it happen? The telephone bug again?’

‘No, this time it was another device. It’s called the Osborn Gambit. To fill you in briefly …’

In passing, he had mentioned Mrs Vogler to Faye, he said. Hell, when you’re going steady with a girl, you should be able to feel your secrets are safe with her. Not so with Faye. He had underestimated the bonds of Faye’s father fixation. She had been the device by which his intention to use Mrs Vogler had been transmitted to her father, and from her father this information had been passed on to Frank Griffith. And then, simply, Barrett spoke of the scene with Faye last night, his refusal to play the Osborn game. As a result, he had lost Faye and, because money usually undermined principles, he had failed to hold on to Isabel Vogler.

‘So on Monday morning, Abe, I’m afraid we’re going up against a howitzer with a bow, just a bow, not even arrows.’

‘Never mind about that. We’ll do our best.’ Zelkin hesitated on the phone. ‘I’m sorry about you and Faye.’

‘Faye’s the least of it. That one wasn’t made in heaven. It would never have worked. As for the vice-presidency - let’s be honest -I’d look lousy in a yachting costume. I once suffered mal de mer just reading Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Besides, I had an offer of a permanent partnership from a friend named Abe Zelkin. I’m going to write and ask him whether it’s still open.’

‘Cut it out. If I wasn’t so worried about you, this would be one of the happy moments of my life.’

“Then we’re partners, Abe. From here on in, rise or fall, it’s Zelkin and Barrett.’

‘Barrett and Zelkin. The sign goes up tomorrow.’

‘We’ll flip for top billing. Then the first order of business is this. Those specialists in counterbugging you originally had in, that outfit that detects eavesdropping equipment. Can you get hold of them again?’

‘I certainly can - and will.’

‘Are you sure they’re really good?’

‘Mike, they’re the best. When they’re through, we’ll be foolproof once more, every bug exterminated. They come in with two things. Something called the Sentry 101. They plug it into every phone, and the dial tells if there’s a tap on. Then they use a thing called the Sweet. It’s a box with antenna and dials, and it shows up any hidden transmitting equipment. And this time we’ll have them put a jammer next to each phone. They’re around two hundred fifty dollars each, but we can rent them, and they are guaranteed to garble any wireless tap put on in the future.’

‘Great. I think my phone and Donna’s are clean now. But we’d better have our offices looked over, anyway. Including your office, Leo’s room, even Phil Sanford’s hotel suite. Everything should be checked and debugged. Can you get that outfit in on Monday ?’

‘I’ll have them in Saturday.’

‘Not that we’ll have any more secrets. I’ve just about run out of leads. Still, you never can tell what’U turn up. If we do get another break, I want them to hear about it first in court.’

‘Mike, have you given a thought to who is behind this?’

‘I could make a good guess. Let’s discuss the louse after we’ve been debugged.’

Having finished his phone conversation with Zelkin, Mike Barrett returned to his office.

Maggie Russell had restored order to the room and was gathering up the last of the papers. Silently he observed her as she rose and walked to his desk. Her hair was attractively tousled and her hips moved nicely beneath the short, swinging chiffon dress.

She caught him staring at her, and she flushed.

“Thanks, Maggie,’ he said. ‘Well, I’m all set now. I promised you dinner. What are you in the mood for ?’

She did not reply at once. Finally she said, ‘Mike, I didn’t mean to listen, but I couldn’t help overhearing part of your conversation on the phone.’

‘There was nothing private.’

“The part about Faye Osborn.’

‘I told you about that earlier, didn’t I?’

‘I thought it was only part of the lure. To get me to meet you and make me feel more comfortable.’

‘I wouldn’t do that, Maggie.’

‘Not that Faye has anything to do with our - our business meeting. It’s just that, well, if things were the way they were, and I were seen dining with you, it might have been misunderstood. I mean, women are very possessive - I’m no different - and I wouldn’t want to be caught up in anything nasty or bitchy.’

‘When you speak of Faye, use past tense.’ .

‘Well… if you say so.’

‘In fact, let’s not speak of her at all. Let’s talk about us. I’m hungry, which means I’m feeling better. What about you?’

‘Hungry.’

‘I don’t know your tastes yet, Maggie. French, Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Vegetarian?’

‘Italian.’

‘Perfect. What about a really good place ? Ever been to La Scala in Beverly Hills?’

‘I don’t think so. Is it dress-up?’

‘You’ll do fine.’

‘I don’t mean me. I mean you. Even without a shirt* shouldn’t you were a necktie?’

He looked down at his bare chest, and they both laughed. ‘I’ve got a clean shirt in the closet,’ he said. ‘I’ll just be a jiffy.’

Although the two dining areas in La Scala Restaurant were confined, and the booths and tables seemed crowded together, the diners forming couples and groups at the various places did not intrude upon each other’s privacy. Such was the atmosphere and ambience of the restaurant that a man and a woman dining together, although surrounded by other diners, could enjoy a feeling of intimacy and at the same time feel separate from these others.

Seated close to Maggie Russell at a wall table in the rear, Mike Barrett appreciated this intimacy that did not depend on isolation. The codeine had done its work, and the two drinks before dinner had helped. The demi-sized bottle of chianti wine that had come after the minestrone soup and with the fettuccine had been all but emptied. He felt no pain.

During the meal, in response to Maggie’s questioning, Barrett had repeated, at greater length, what he had already told Abe

Zelkin an hour ago. A wide-eyed Maggie Russell had listened attentively to his recital of Leroux’s being whisked away from Antibes, of the plain-clothesmen appearing by coincidence at Quandt’s filth factory, of the Jadway letters begin spirited off by an impostor, of Isabel Vogler’s curious amnesia and change of heart in Van Nuys.

Now, having completed his recital, Barrett caught the last of the buttered flat noodles on his fork and devoured them.

Maggie set down her wine glass. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ she said. ‘It’s the kind of thing you see or read about in mysteries, but you know they are make-believe. Even when you learn about those electronic devices in the news, it’s hard to accept the reality of human beings like us stealing into someone else’s office or home and secreting those instruments, and some person somewhere overhearing conversations that are supposed to be private. It’s hard to believe that it really happens.’

‘Well, it happened.’

‘It’s not only immoral, but dirty, just as dirty as some voyeur sneaking up to a private bedroom window at night to watch a couple making love on their bed.’

‘Your voyeur does it for his own sexual gratification. Yerkes is a member of the Anything Goes Club, and he does it for power.’

Power can be sexual gratification, too,’ said Maggie. ‘If you ever saw Luther Yerkes, you’d believe that’s the only kind of sexual gratification he is capable of enjoying. He gives me goose pimples. And he’s most obvious when he thinks he’s being subtle. You should see the way he twists Uncle Frank around his finger. You wouldn’t believe it, the way Uncle Frank accepts everything Yerkes says, even thinking he’s initiated things Yerkes has suggested to him.’

‘Frank Griffith has to believe everything that Yerkes advises. After all, in your uncle’s world the values and standards he lives by have reached their fullest flowering in the person of a Yerkes. To the merely rich, Luther Yerkes is a maharajah.’

‘But you don’t think it was Yerkes who brought off Isabel Vogler?’

‘No,’ said Barrett. The highest power wasn’t needed for that operation. It was strictly Frank Griffith, I’m almost certain.’

‘And you don’t think the District Attorney was a part of this?’

‘I really don’t think so. Maybe I tend to be a boy scout, as my ex told me last night when our parting was such unsweet sorrow. No, I don’t think Elmo Duncan is the instigator of what’s happened. He may know it is happening and with silence give consent, and thus be an accessory after the fact. Yet I’m sure he’s not the instigator, only the beneficiary. When Elmo Duncan unloads his big guns come Monday, most of the world will credit him with pounding us to smithereens. Nobody’ll know that it is Yerkes who’s running the supply line, with assists from Willard Osborn

and Frank Griffith and God knows whom else. I’ll confess our defenses are damn weak - especially after all the sabotage - to stand up against a formidable lineup like that one.’

Impulsively, Maggie reached out and covered Barrett’s hand with her own. ‘Mike, don’t include me in that lineup, even if I am a relative of Frank Griffith’s.’

‘You’re not a blood relative. You’re not anything remotely like Griffith.’

He wanted to take her soft hand, hold it, but she had already removed it. She said, ‘I’m not, and blood or no, neither is his own son like him. I’ve told you before that I felt I shouldn’t see you, because I can’t be disloyal to people I’m living with or with whom I’m associated. I’ve thought about that, and now I can give you a fuller picture of what I honestly feel. It’s not the Griffith family as a whole I’m protective about. It’s only Jerry, Jerry alone. He’s the one I’m loyal to. Aunt Ethel - well, she’s helpless and I’m sorry for Uncle Frank - after the way he has behaved, the way he is still behaving, I care for him less and less. That’s not quite true, either. To care for a person less means you’ve had to care for them somewhat at some time. I’ve never cared for him in any way. I’ve tolerated him, survived him, and in my feline way I’ve protected Jerry from him. I don’t give a damn about Frank Griffith. I’m sure he’s a self-righteous bastard, everything Isabel Vogler first said he was, doubled and redoubled in spades.’