After Midnight (16 page)

“What do you know about Becker?”

“Nothing. I only heard—”

“You hear too much. Forget what you hear. You’re in too deep.”

Nancy gasped. It was like a painful punctuation—the death rattle of an illusion.

“
I
am in deep?” she echoed. “Frank, I did nothing but tell the police what you asked me to tell them.”

“And reversed yourself later. Go ahead, tell another story and see how fast they lock you up as a psycho. I’m leaving.”

Lodge picked up the suitcase.

“But why?” Nancy persisted. “Why did you come here? Where are you going? What kind of man are you? Frank—”

It was that way with those sensible, hard-driving women who walked on the seashore, read poetry and dreamed of the ideal. The ideal came, shining and bright on the white steed of romance, not because he was so different from the others but because the need had grown so strong. But now the exciting, seductive infidelity to a mediocre pattern of life was finished. The end was bitter—as bitter as the small revolver Nancy Armitage held in her hand.

“Where did you get that gun?” Lodge demanded.

“From that dear old man who makes my life so pleasant,” Nancy answered. “He has a gun collection. For three years I’ve had to hear the history of each weapon over and over and over—Frank, why did you kill Roger Warren?”

It wouldn’t have mattered what Lodge answered. He gambled that she was bluffing, made a lunge for the gun and caught the blast just above his hip. He looked surprised, stepped backward, and then, tightening his grip on the suitcase, ran past her into the next room. Nancy whirled about and raised the gun again, but this time Simon’s strong right arm caught her across the jaw and laid her out cold on the king size bed. He grabbed the gun and raced after Lodge. A trail of blood led across the living room and down the short flight of stairs. The front door was open. Simon stepped out on the driveway and then leaped back against the building as Lodge’s activated compact roared into the street.

Simon pocketed the gun and ran back upstairs. He found Nancy conscious and sobbing hysterically in the bedroom.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Simon said. “And unless I’m mistaken he’s got a shipload of heroin in that suitcase.”

“Heroin?”

“The stuff he killed Roger Warren to get.”

“And Becker, too?”

“Probably. Miss Armitage, shut up and wash your face! If you have any luck left, you may not be a murderess—but you’ve made a big mistake. You should have stuck to your poetry books. Illusion—and a man like Frank Lodge—don’t mix.”

Simon drove Nancy Armitage to the house on Pacific View and saw her safely inside. She was in a state of shock, but, by the time he had transferred her to Mrs. Rainey’s smothering care, he knew all he needed to know about the romance of a lonely lady who played at elegance on her free days and had, one day on the beach below Seacliff Drive, met a stranger who was quiet and gentle and who seemed lonely, too. Then he understood why she had been so interested when Frank Lodge gave his folding chair to a boy on the beach. He was leaving town and hadn’t told her. She had left Simon and returned to her rooms and telephoned him, in spite of his previous instruction that his wires might be tapped.

“When did he tell you that?” Simon asked.

“The day after the murder. He was afraid he might be suspected. He thought he might have accidentally left prints in the house. And he didn’t want anything to link us together because of his job and his wife.”

“Then you knew he was married?”

“Yes—but I didn’t know we would get so involved. I thought I could cut it off any time I wished. I didn’t know how terrible it would be to have a little happiness and lose it so soon.”

“How many times did you go to The Cove?” Simon asked.

“Three. Three Sundays before—and including—the day Roger Warren was killed. But we never stayed late. We were always back in time for my appointment with Mr. Merton.”

“You just stayed until the white boat came in,” Simon suggested.

“The white boat?”

“Until dusk, then.”

“How did you know?”

“E.S.P.,” Simon said. “Who played the juke box?”

“I did. I saw that title and I liked the song.”

Simon was right. Guilt. Guilt smeared all over Miss Armitage’s Puritan conscience. She was having an affair with a married man and all of her mores condemned her. When Lodge came forward the day after the crime and offered his testimony, he was laying the groundwork for the story he would convince Nancy that she must tell. But she needed no instructions when Simon threatened to expose her Sunday companion in court.

“I believed him,” she said. “That’s what I can’t get over—I
believed
him!”

It was the oldest story in the world. When Nancy had learned Lodge was leaving, she telephoned and forced a last dinner date in his house. She arranged with a caterer for the food and the setting, and picked up the wine at a small import store. It was all very romantic—except for one thing.

“When did you get the gun?” Simon asked.

“Two days after the hearing,” she admitted, “when Frank asked me not to contact him again until everything blew over. I knew what he meant. Even then, I knew. But I didn’t know until tonight that he was a murderer!”

“Save it for the district attorney,” Simon said.

It was then that he left Nancy Armitage with Mrs. Rainey and telephoned Lieutenant Franzen. He gave Franzen enough information to send a police car screaming to the house on Pacific View and enliven the police radio with the description of Frank Lodge, who was somewhere in the night driving with a bullet in his stomach and a destination unknown. Simon didn’t wait for the police. He drove to a telephone booth and called Hannah.

“Simon, I need you!” she insisted. “Come home at once and explain those Samuel Olson wires!”

“I can’t,” Simon said. “I’m a fugitive.”

“You’re a what? Who did you kill?”

“My pet theory. But it’s all right because I’ve got a new one. And Hannah, if anybody asks you, it was Frank Lodge who stabbed Roger Warren.”

“Lodge!” Hannah shrieked. “Simon, where are you? What’s happening?”

It was a dirty trick, but Simon hung up.

He knew that Franzen would be looking for him. He had to keep mobile. He had sent out six wires and had three responses. Nancy Armitage was on the verge of hysterics. Frank Lodge was in full flight. Wanda had left the house hurriedly. While he was still in the booth, Simon rang her number. There was no answer. It was too late for the false rendezvous at the Post Office, and that would be the first place Franzen would look as soon as Nancy mentioned the wire. The police would also cover the Alameda home of modest citizen Lodge, and, since that was where Simon had been located twenty-four hours ago, they would also cover Eddie Berman’s Mobile Club in Santa Monica. And yet, at one of the places Simon investigated, Roger Warren had once made a contact that put him in the no-fishing business. Simon decided to check August Mayerling’s response.

The Profile was closed, but a party was in progress in the upstairs apartment. He rang the bell and asked for Mayerling and was greeted like a member of the club. Augie was out, he was told, but there was always room for one more. Augie had received a wire and rushed off to Aunt Charlotte in Santa Barbara.

The incredibly handsome Adonis who relayed the information added:

“Auntie’s ill and Augie’s gone to hold her hand, or some droll thing. What are you drinking?”

“Ambrosia,” Simon said. “When did Augie leave?”

“Directly after the wire arrived. About four p.m.”

“What’s Auntie’s number in Santa Barbara?”

The air chilled instantly. “I’m not sure that I know,” the Adonis said, tightly. “Now that I think of it, I’m not even sure you’re a friend of Augie’s.”

There was a familiar, pungent scent in the air. Somebody was smoking pot, and this group would go no further. They were fortyish and getting a little tired of it all. It was the teen-agers who became junkies. It was nothing but a mild little tea party, and August Mayerling’s reaction was the normal flight pattern for his breed. Simon would have considered the visit a waste of time if Mayerling hadn’t been a photography bug and displayed his art in framed specimens on every convenient wall area. Simon ignored an unspoken invitation to leave the party and wandered from print to print looking for a familiar face until he found something much more exciting. It was a truly impressive shot of a docked freigher. What excited Simon was the name lettered on the hull: S.S.
Dobson
.

“Are you a shutter bug, too?” the Adonis asked.

His voice had taken on an icy quality.

“No,” Simon answered. “Only a devoted fan.”

He left then, without waiting for the ambrosia, and drove to an all night coffee shop near the public beach. There, steaming cup in hand, he placed a call from the public booth to the berth of the line operating the
Dobson
. They could give no information on the membership of the crew, but he did learn that the ship was sailing within the hour for San Francisco and thence for the Orient. She carried accommodations for twelve passengers, all of which were sold, and the passenger gangplank would be removed in thirty minutes. It was all Simon needed to know.

He drove fast, both hands on the steering wheel and the accelerator pressed to the floorboards. The wide lanes of the freeways laced and interlaced, arched and curved, and finally deposited the rented car, like something expelled from a pin-ball machine, into the suddenly darkened streets of the harbor area. The S.S.
Dobson
was docked at the far end of the approach, beyond the railroad tracks and behind a berth which now showed only a few widely spaced lights on the parking side and a blinding battery of lights on her superstructure. There were three passenger cars and a departing taxi in the parking lot. He braked to a stop alongside a conspicuously white compact and leaped out. The hood of the small car was still warm. He opened the door on the driver’s side and the dome light bathed the interior in brightness. The sedan was upholstered in white leather overlaid with an abstract pattern of blood.

Simon didn’t waste time closing the door. He ran. He ran across the eighty or ninety feet separating him from the bow of the S.S.
Dobson
, and then he ran a few hundred feet further to where the dockhands were removing the gangplank. Someone shouted as he leaped onto it and sprinted toward the deck, and at the top of the plank an irate officer insisted he couldn’t board now because the “all ashore” bell had sounded.

“I’m tone deaf,” Simon said. “Where’s the Captain?”

Something huge in a dark uniform with braid on the sleeves loomed before him.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded. “Who are you?”

“I’m Simon Drake and I’m looking for a man named Samuel Olson,” Simon answered. “Is he on board?”

“What do you want with him if he is?” the man asked.

“I want to ask if he’s seen Frank Lodge. His car’s parked down below in the lot and it’s drenched with his own blood. He’s been shot—”

Simon got no farther. The man with the stripes on his sleeves suddenly grew taller and then lunged past Simon and galloped toward the gangplank. He was too late. The ground crew had their orders and no one had countermanded them. The gangplank was gone and the ship was slowly pulling away from the dock. A blast from the boat whistle vibrated through the night air and the diesels began to purr. Olson (he could be no other) posed like a ballet dancer at the edge of the railing and then, as the distance between the ship and the dock widened, deliberately leaped into the water.

Simon ran to the rail. Olson’s cap had dropped on the deck. Now, in the churning waters below, a matted towhead bobbed into view and Olson treaded water until he could get his bearings.

“Man overboard!” Simon yelled.

The ship’s whistle came again. As the echoes died away, the shrill scream of a police car siren careened in from the blackness beyond the parking area and came to a stop a few feet from where the gangplank had been. The doors of the sedan burst open and Simon watched as Franzen and a uniformed officer scrambled out from the front seat. Then, surprisingly, he saw Commander Warren and his bodyguard, McKay, climb out of the rear.

“In the water!” Simon yelled. “Olson’s in the water!”

Franzen impaled the swimming sailor with the police car searchlight. Panicked, Olson turned and tried to swim toward the receding ship. A warning shot went over his head. He swam. A second shot came closer and he stopped. Then he turned about and swam meekly back to where a group of dockhands were waiting to pull him from the water. Only then did Simon realize the ship had changed course and was nosing back to the berth.

Ten minutes later, Simon and Lieutenant Franzen found Frank Lodge in Olson’s bunk. He had been given a sedative to diminish the pain and was trying to stuff a towel in the hole in his stomach. He was in no condition to talk. Franzen called for an ambulance and Lodge was rushed to a hospital with a good blood bank, but long before he made the transfer Simon found the heroin in the suitcase. The motive for Roger Warren’s death was clear.

Commander Warren stood by as Lodge was removed by stretcher from the cabin, and saw the package Simon recovered from the mattress relinquished first to Franzen and then to the federal agent attached to the post.

“Franzen,” he demanded, “What’s going on here? Someone sent an idiot wire to my mate and I called Duane Thompson to have it traced. Suddenly I’m dragged pell-mell to the docks to watch you take pot shots at a sailor—”

“Who is a smuggler,” Franzen said.

The commander was no fool, but his mind was resisting what he didn’t want to know.

“Olson? Was that man Olson?” he asked.

“S. Olson—but he didn’t send the wire. Mr. Drake did that. How did you get onto the operation, Drake? You never saw the lab report on the carpet sweepings taken from the Warren house.”

Franzen was beginning to feel quite comfortable in his new eyeglasses. He could see Simon’s surprise and enjoy it. It was all the satisfaction he would get from this case.

“Yes, they found particles of heroin in the carpet,” Franzen said. “Lodge must have opened the package to make sure of the shipment and spilled some of it on the carpet. We didn’t know it was Lodge then. We didn’t even know it was an operation. We thought one or both of the Warrens might have been using the stuff.”

“Roger—using dope!” the commander exploded.

“It might have been better for him if he had,” Franzen answered, “instead of starting a two man operation in syndicate territory. That’s living a little too dangerously.”

It was Lieutenant Franzen’s headache now. All Simon had to do was explain how he had traced Frank Lodge from a slamming door that couldn’t have been heard in the ocean-side bedroom of the house next door, to Olson’s cabin on board the
Dobson
. But he couldn’t do that, fully, until Olson told his story. Dried out and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he made the statement in the small hours of the morning after the
Dobson
had been cleared and allowed to sail. He was a burly, semi-illiterate a few years older than Roger Warren and a world apart in background, but their paths had met one day on the docks when Roger drove his shutter-bug employer on an artistic safari to the waterfront. Olson had an eye for Roger’s Mercedes and Roger had an eye for Olson’s friends. One
of
them, who stood for beers at a nearby bar, had frequented Eddie Berman’s Mobile Club in Santa Monica. He was known to be a pusher with good connections, and Roger’s wits were sharpened by the high cost of living. Two days after the initial meeting he returned to the
Dobson
alone with a business proposition. Olson was smuggling heroin for the syndicate. By adding milk sugar to his ditty bag, he could cut the raw product for over the railing delivery to Roger and make up the weight discrepancy with minor dilution of the residue.