Darkest Hour (22 page)

Simon decided to let Wanda’s version of the abduction stand. He didn’t want her to panic. “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t have you spoiling my plans by leading the fuzz to my doorstep.”

“But where is your doorstep? Where are you?”

“Can’t tell you. The line might be bugged.”

“Then tell this creep making like a warden to take me home! I’ve got an eight o’clock rehearsal curtain tonight. I’ll get killed if I don’t make it.”

“You’ll make it,” Simon promised. “Rehearsal at eight tonight. Definite.”

“And you?”

“Trust me, baby? Okay?”

“Okay,” she conceded, “but when I see you! Oh—!”

She was fighting mad and that was good. Simon liked to leave with the fire burning brightly. He handed the telephone back to Berlin and watched him replace it gently on the cradle. “That was wise,” Berlin said, “and I’m sure that Miss Call will make her rehearsal tonight if you will relinquish the notebook and the sample without any foolish and futile heroics.”

There was a young man named Delaney whose body had been found with his tongue cut out. Max Berlin was an expert surgeon. Simon felt a bitter, brassy taste in his mouth. He hadn’t the strength to walk across the room without stumbling. He had to save Wanda the only way he knew how. He fell back on the bed and threw one arm over his eyes. He didn’t want to look at Berlin when he complied.

“Why didn’t you stick to milking wealthy, genteel whores?” he asked.

“Time passes,” Berlin said. “Youth doesn’t last forever. Besides, one gets bored with bedroom intrigues.”

“And the traffic with top Nazis in need of facial adjustments runs out. But there are always speculators who find it necessary to migrate to a country where there’s no extradition agreement, which, incidentally, doesn’t include Mexico.”

“I’m aware of that, Drake. Were you planning to have me extradited on some charge? There’s no need. I’m meeting Sanders in La Verde tomorrow afternoon. I’m buying that land from him.”

“If Monterey hadn’t leaped over that stair rail at the Seville he would have been killed on your orders.”

“True.”

“And your men killed Sam Goddard and Eve Potter.”

“True again. Where is the delivery Monterey took from Kwan?”

“What is it, Berlin? The cure for malaria? That is it, of course. The scourge of the earth and innocent thousands will suffer and die for your profit. The Führer would be proud of you.”

“Excellent speech, Drake, but we’re both too sophisticated for morality plays. How many innocent thousands died at Hiroshima? How many innocent thousands are dying on both sides of the mess in Viet Nam, and don’t other thousands profit? I lost my illusions at an early age. Man won’t reform; he only grows worse. In this world it is possible to use or be used. Having been educated by the latter experience, I choose to live by the first. I can give you only a short time to consider. If you prefer to be alone—”

Berlin moved toward the door. Still holding one arm across his eyes, Simon said, “Wait!”

“Yes?”

“There’s a man in Beverly Hills. A private detective named Jack Keith. Show him the ring. Tell him I said to get Wanda to rehearsal tonight.”

That was enough. Berlin left the room and Simon heard the door lock. He turned his face to the wall shaking with humiliation. This was how the winners played the game. A defeated and restless populace needed a scapegoat to put them on their feet. Restore the ego with a scapegoat. Exterminate a race. The Nazis realized over six hundred a head from the victims of the gas chambers. Six million times six hundred restores a nation. God’s in his heaven, all’s right for the master race. “As the twig is bent—” Simon made a fist of his right hand and began to knead the air. Pain electrified his arm, but each fist made the arm stronger and the pain lessened. He rolled over and slid his legs off the bed until his feet touched cold tile. Lean on the right leg first. The strong leg. Gradually rise. Gradually shift weight. Sharp, staggering pain. Try the brandy from Berlin’s private stock. Warm. Head-clearing. Try the wooden door. Yes, still locked. Try the glass door. Also locked. Those sensuous, life-instilling sounds were coming from a transom too high to be reached without a ladder. Looking up made him dizzy. Need strength. Try the coffee. Cold now. Try the telephone.

“How’s about a fresh pot of coffee and a plate of ham and eggs in this room?” he asked.

“Bueno, Señor Drake,” the soft voice replied. “How do you like your eggs, señor?”

“Over easy,” Simon said. “And another glass of that brandy.”

“Pronto, Señor Drake.”

Nothing to it. Just like Death Row on the eve of an execution. Simon circled the room several times to strengthen his leg and then moved to the bathroom. The stubbled face that peered back at him from the bathroom mirror looked like something a park custodian should have picked up on the end of a stick. He opened the medicine chest and found an electric shaver and a toothbrush. He was completing the shave when he heard the hall door open and close. He returned to the bedroom and found the breakfast tray replenished. He ate hurriedly, trembling with hunger. Strength. He had to renew his strength.

The girls left and he tired of watching the shimmering pool. He husbanded the brandy, drinking half and saving half, and then, after two more times around the room, he returned to the bed and fell into a deep sleep. It was hours later when the sound of the heavy door opening and closing awakened him. Past midday. Shadows across the pool now. A heavy silence in the air. Something missing. The breakfast cart. Something added. His clothes laid neatly on a straight-backed chair. Simon slid to the floor and tried his leg again. Less pain, more soreness. He made it to the chair and examined what had been deposited while he slept: the sweater and car coat he had taken from Buddy’s closet, his own shoes and shorts, a pair of new tan Levi’s with the manufacturer’s tag still stitched to the waistband. Apparently Buddy’s flannels had gone the way of a surgeon’s scalpel. He dressed and examined his coat pockets. His wallet, money and identification were intact. He looked at his watch. It was almost three o’clock. He tried the heavy carved door again and it was unlocked. He finished off the brandy and stepped out into the hall.

He was in a wide corridor with a red tile floor and white plastered adobe walls. A series of carved wood doors led to other rooms; farther down the corridor were other doors marked “Sauna Baths,” “Exercise Room,” “Massage,” “Medicinal Bath.” At the end of the corridor a stairway led up to an enclosed area posted: “Hospital—No Admittance.” Another corridor, which he followed, led out to a huge patio where a group of patients were sunning themselves about a less exotic pool occupied by the more rotund guests. In one area of the patio a mixed-gender group in sweat shirts and pants was being mobilized for some muscular activity, and beyond them a wide, curving drive led to an open gate. Simon threaded his way toward this exit. Attendants were easily recognizable by the immaculate white of their uniforms. None of them seemed to take notice of him as he passed. A guard at the gatehouse was watering a pathetic patch of shrubbery hemmed by healthy succulents and his attention was caught by the sound of a motor just as Simon, responding to the same stimulus, darted behind a wisteria bush. It was the big green Cougar with Otto at the wheel. He stopped to speak to the guard.

“If you’re going into San Diego give my wife a call,” the gatekeeper said. “If she’s shacked up with anybody boot him out.”

“I’m going to Ensenada to go fishing,” Otto said. “Keep your bed clean on your own time.”

The gatekeeper cackled. “Fishing! I know what you’ll be fishing for! Don’t bring back anything contagious. The boss still believes in the immaculate conception.” The Cougar roared forward and the gatekeeper was left chuckling at his own low humor. He didn’t look up when Simon strolled through the gates. It was almost too easy.

A well-traveled unpaved road stretched before him. Simon started walking at as brisk a pace as his leg would allow. He was out of sight of the spa when the sound of another motor approaching from the rear sent him scrambling for the shoulder. The car thundered past in a cloud of yellow dust, braked to a screeching halt and ground into reverse. It was a big Buick with the top down and both seats filled to overflowing with waving femininity. “Hey, Americano, want a ride?” “Say, he’s cute! When did you check into the fat farm? I may stay another week!” The faces—all smiling, mouths open, eyes carefully guarded by sunglasses—were too similar to give separate entities to the words. The rear door swung open and generously larded thighs twisted to make room on the seat. “There’s only one village within twenty miles so there’s no need to ask where you’re going,” the driver said. “Hop in. My name is Angie. Next to me are Phyllis, and then Mary, and in the back seat Shirley, Jane and Lou. What do we call you?”

“Simon.”

“Right. What happened to your leg, Simon? Pull a muscle on the morning hike? That group-activity director’s a slave driver. And how do you like that menu? A thimble of this, a gram of that…. Know where we’re going? First to the bakery and then to the beer tavern.”

“You’ll be sorry when you step on the scale in the morning,” Shirley warned.

“In the morning I’ll worry about it. I’ve knocked off seventeen pounds in two weeks and I’m ready to start eating the cactus plants. Imagine paying two hundred bucks a week to get tortured!”

“I can get it for you wholesale,” Simon said, rubbing his jaw.

Angie laughed and started off on another subject. The nice thing about driving to town with a carload of women was that he didn’t have to talk. There was no opportunity. Within five minutes they reached the highway, swung west and began a gradual descent into a small green valley where the bell tower of a rusty brown church gave the first indication of the village below. It was a small, sleepy town—off itinerary for tourists and offering little of scenic value save the church and an old-fashioned plaza with an ornate wooden bandstand long unused and badly in need of paint. There was a two-story hotel with a glazed brick façade concealing the neglected interior, a post office, a taxi stand where the driver listlessly polished the hood of an aging Plymouth sedan, and a dozen or more family-operated shops that suddenly came alive at the sight of the carload of visitors. “Baskets, señorita? Handmade. Wrought-iron candelabra? Bird cages? Guitar, señor? Candles? Souvenir?” Angie parked the convertible in front of a bakery shop with half a dozen tables set up in the brick patio, and Simon slipped away from the calorie hunters.

It still seemed strange that Berlin had done nothing to stop him from leaving the spa. Was the return of his clothing a signal that the trade was completed, or had something gone wrong and was he being used again? He walked to the corner and tried to get his bearings. It was a typical border town. The main intersection was the road they had just traversed and a divided highway that terminated at the plaza. The highway ran north up a hillside above which, perhaps a dozen blocks away, a flag was flying over a square cement building. Stars and stripes. Home and freedom. Simon rubbed his leg. He could make it but it would be slow, painful and without cover. He limped toward the taxi. The driver looked up sullenly as Simon touched the handle of the rear door.

“This taxi taken, señor,” he said.

“By whom?” Simon asked.

“Touristas.”

“What tourists?”

“Qué hora est?”

Simon glanced at his watch. “Three twenty-five,” he said.

“At three-thirty
touristas
come. This taxi taken.”

“I don’t believe you. Who told you to tell me that?”

The driver glanced up on the street. A policeman wearing a khaki uniform and a service revolver on his hip had stopped directing a group of school children across the street and was watching the dialogue at the taxi stand. One hand rested loosely on his hip just above the gun holster. It was obvious that Max Berlin knew the first requisite to the successful operation of a business in a foreign territory: bribe the local officials.

“Is there a bus?” he asked.

“To where, senor?”

“San Diego.”

“Si, señor. Everyday at ten o’clock in the morning. You buy tickets in the hotel.”

Simon couldn’t wait until morning, but he did go inside the hotel. He asked the desk clerk for a public telephone and was politely informed that only local calls could be placed because a windstorm had blown down the lines to the Estados Unidos. It was a lie. Berlin’s call to New York had gone through without a hitch, but Simon knew that an argument would bring the policeman with the gun at his finger tips and a trip to a cell where the wait would be longer and less comfortable. Without comment he returned to the street to ponder Berlin’s strategy. He was sadistic, but something more than personal satisfaction must be involved in this game of assumed indifference. He walked back to the plaza and stared up the hill to where the flag was still flying. It was a magnet and a challenge. Berlin must be aware of that. Not feeling up to Angie and her friends again, he circled the plaza. The sole industry of the village seemed to be an ugly brick brewery located at the lower end of the square. Simon watched a pair of huge silver trailer trucks approach the main intersection. One turned west onto the Ensenada highway, the other shifted into low and began to grind upward toward the border. At the same time a blue station wagon bearing California plates and an inordinately long radio aerial descended from the border area. The driver was a woman wearing dark glasses and a large straw hat. The station wagon parked just ahead of the Buick convertible and the woman stepped out on the street. A tourist. She didn’t seem overweight and there was a chance she had dropped over the border for souvenirs or tax-free perfume, or even to smuggle some tax-free liquor into California. In that event she would soon be returning over the border and there was a lot of room in the back of a station wagon. He strolled back across the street to the bakery.

A native musician with a small Mexican harp had set up shop in the patio. He was strumming a sad-gay folk song that ended with a flourish as Simon arrived. Angie led the applause and started the light rain of coins that began to fall at the harpist’s feet, and Simon strangled a shout as the straw-hatted tourist turned about to observe the action. Vera Raymond. She recognized him immediately and her eyes commanded him to silence.