The Brink of Murder (13 page)

“The safety’s on,” he said. “Maybe she tried to get out and panicked. It has happend. If she had been drinking her reflexes were slowed down. She might even have ben asleep.”

“Where’s the telephone?” Simon asked.

“I saw one on the kitchen wall.”

“It has a short cord. When I talked to her at three I had the impression she walked into another room with the telephone while we were talking.”

“Try the bedroom.”

It was a one-bedroom apartment but the rooms were large and airy. Behind a bank of utility closets they found the bedroom door—open. Inside the room a king-size bed, hastily made with lumps still showing under a psychedelic-print spread, was flanked by lamp tables. On one of them was a white telephone with a cord long enough to reach into the living room. On each table were ashtrays partially filled with cigarette butts. One tray held the mentholated brand, the other was half-filled with a regular brand with cork tips. No lipstick. Opposite the bed was a portable television. A large dresser with a mirror and a small chest of drawers completed the furnishings. A closet-lined hall led to the bathroom—tub with shower, cabinet-type lavatory with an imitation marble top that extended over the toilet tank, and a small dressing table. The floor was carpeted with soft yellow shag that had escaped the worst of the firemen’s damage but still carried a few large, soggy footprints.

“She sounded sleepy—a little slow responding on the telephone,” Simon reflected. “It might have been because she wasn’t anxious to have me come over. I had the impression that one of the party guests had stayed the night.”

“Probably Corman,” Reardon said. “They were pretty close.”

“You’ve checked that out?”

“Naturally. I’ve had Mary Sutton watched since Barney came up missing. He might try to contact her.”

“All the way from South America?”

“If that’s where he is. We don’t know that, do we? We don’t even know that the man who called himself Barry Anderson and took a Braniff flight south was really Barney. Lots of men limp. I’ve known wilder coincidence than that in my years of police work.”

“Do you think Barney took the money?”

Reardon opened the medicine cabinet above the lavatory and began to take a silent inventory of the contents. Dentifrice, hair spray, suntan lotion—”In my position I have to think so until he proves otherwise,” Reardon admitted. “Naturally, I can’t tell that to Carole—but she’s no fool. Only one man is missing from Pacific Guaranty. That’s important. The two of us know Barney and we’re wondering why the hell he did it, if he did it. Lieutenant Wabash isn’t emotionally involved in the case. Last night he said: ‘Why think about motive? No man needs a motive to take a million bucks. He takes it because it’s possible.’ Wabash could be right, you know.”

“But Barney—”

“Is a human being like the rest of us. He may have been a football hero but that was a long time ago. The real world is rough on heroes. Especially Barney’s world.”

Reardon opened a bottle of aspirin and shook one out into his palm. He scrutinized it. “Bayer,” he said, and returned it to the bottle. He opened another bottle and shook out a few smaller pills. He touched one to his tongue. “No label,” he said. “Maybe birth control. I understand no modern girl is without them today.” He checked out the Listerine mouth wash, the iodine and a couple of brand-name sleeping aids. He found a thermometer and a hypodermic needle. He found a bottle of wheat germ tablets, several vitamins and several face creams and then opened a small jar labled “hormone cream” and scowled at the contents.

“Does this look like cream to you?” he asked.

Simon looked into the jar. It contained a fine white powder.

“I keep shaving cream in an empty peanut can,” Simon said. “Broke the jar and couldn’t find anything else to hold it.”

Reardon took a pinch of the powder and touched it to his lips. “This isn’t shaving cream,” he said, “it’s hard stuff.”

“Heroin? Mary Sutton?”

Reardon nodded. “Tough to swallow, isn’t it? The stuff shows up everywhere. Maybe that’s why she sounded slow on the telephone—and why she isn’t responding to treatment. I’m going to call the hospital.” Reardon re-capped the jar and stuffed it into the pocket of the coat he was still carrying over his arm. Then he pulled out a few sheets of Kleenex from the wall dispenser and wrapped up the hypodermic needle carefully before putting it into his inside coat pocket. He closed the medicine cabinet and returned to the telephone in the bedroom. He was dialling when Simon returned to the living room.

The light was still blazing. On the floor where Reardon had found the ashtray Simon spotted a familiar object. He picked it up and dusted off the soot. It was a flight schedule. The same schedule, or one like it, that he had seen in Mary Sutton’s desk. It hit him then, suddenly, as if the last three or four hours had been a bad dream and he was beginning to wake up, that he shouldn’t have given her that hour of grace when he telephoned. He shouldn’t have telephoned at all. He should have come to see her—cold. He should have hit her with a verbal attack that would force out of her everything she knew or even suspected, because Mary Sutton had to know all the angles at Pacific Guaranty. The apartment was nice—or had been before the fire. The furniture was expensive—the rent must be at least 200 a month. Mary Sutton had come a long way in her brief years and she had to be tough as nails under that charming façade. She probably had a good salary for a woman, but the main difference between a man and a woman these days was usually about $7,000 a year and anyone with normal intelligence would resent that—perhaps enough to participate in a robbery that would wipe out the inequity for life. More than anything he wanted to talk to Mary Sutton and he couldn’t—not tonight—perhaps never. He heard Reardon coming back from the bedroom. At the same time he heard a key scratching helplessly at the hall door the manager had nailed shut. Reardon heard it too. Instinctively, he turned off the overhead light and motioned Simon to keep quiet. After a few seconds the key stopped scratching. Muffled footsteps moved away from the door.

“I’ve got to see who that was,” Reardon whispered. He walked through the living room back into the kitchen area and was approaching the service door when the sound of the scratching key came again. Reardon stepped back behind the door as it opened. Paul Corman walked into the apartment.

Corman looked haggard. He hadn’t shaved for at least 24 hours. His hair was rumpled. He wore a tweed jacket over a turtle-necked sweater, slacks that looked as if they had been slept in, and rubber-soled brogans that made a hissing sound on the carpet. He stood in the middle of the kitchen floor and called out: “Mary, I’m back. I came back to apologize, honey. I didn’t mean a damned word that I said—” Then he saw Simon standing in front of the burned-out débris and his jaw fell down into the folds of the turtle neck. “You still here?” he said hoarsely. “My God, what’s happened?” There was no way to answer him until his eyes took in the whole scene. By that time Simon realized the man was drunk.

“Mary!” Corman yelled. “What have you done to Mary?”

“I haven’t done anything to her,” Simon said. “There was a fire. She’s in the hospital.”

Corman’s brain couldn’t seem to comprehend. “Don’t lie to me!” he bellowed. “Mary didn’t want you to come here but you had to come anyway. Why couldn’t you leave her alone? If you’ve hurt my girl I’ll kill you, you over-paid shyster!”

Corman lunged across the room. He was small but wiry. He was all over Simon before he could side-step the attack and his fists, flailing at Simon’s head and into his stomach, were like anvil blows. A volcano of hostility was erupting and even if Simon was the innocent bystander who got in the way there was no time for objective analysis. Simon tasted blood in his mouth and lashed out at something that felt like flesh and cracked like jawbone. A few more pieces of broken furniture wouldn’t matter now. Corman crashed against the sideboard, shattering the rest of Mary Sutton’s ceramic display. With an animal roar he lunged forward again and this time the momentum alone was enough to send Simon sprawling on the floor. Before he could get up again the huge feet of Captain Reardon stepped over him, and the huge right hand of Captain Reardon ploughed into Corman’s middle and bounced him back into the cushionless chair where he folded like a wet newspaper and didn’t move.

“Are you all right?” Reardon asked Simon.

Simon scrambled to his feet and made sure his head was still attached to his neck. “Physically, yes. Psychologically—”

“Cool it!” Reardon ordered. “Both of you!”

The admonition was wasted on Corman. He leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. For a moment it seemed that the manager might have vomit to clean from the damaged carpet but Corman just shuddered a bit and then raised his head. He looked around the room as if slowly becoming aware of the débris of disaster. The scorched smell of fire still lingered in the room. Eventually his eyes fixed on the boarded window. “Fire,” he mumbled, doing a slow re-take on Simon’s words. “Mary in the hospital.”

“She went through the window like a flaming torch,” Simon said.

Horror was replacing the fury on Corman’s face. “You were here.”

It was both a statement and a question. Simon shook his head. “On the street. On my way up. I never talked to her at all.”

“It’s still your fault,” Corman muttered. “If you hadn’t called we wouldn’t have quarrelled. She said you were coming and I told her not to talk to you. We had a few words and I left with my steam up. I wanted her to go with me—up to Mammoth. Somewhere away from this Amling mess.”

“Why didn’t you want her to talk to me?” Simon asked.

“I told you. She needed to forget Amling. He’s gone with the loot—we all know that. The great Golden God had feet of clay.” Corman’s fingers worked at his jacket pocket and pulled out a crumpled package of cigarettes. He took one out and looked about for a match. The cigarette had a cork tip. “Everybody knew it but Mary,” he added bitterly. “She was still carrying a torch.”

“I thought Mary was your girl,” Simon said.

“Sometimes—on lonely nights. I’m the boy who keeps away the things that go whoosh in the dark. It was Amling she cared about and he never gave her a tumble. Why did you have to butt in, Drake? I had just about convinced her that we should drive up to Mammoth—”

Corman couldn’t find a match so he dropped the cigarette to the floor. He came slowly to his feet and the fury began to flood back into his eyes. “She would have been out of here—safe with me instead of here in a burning room!” he shouted.

The telephone began to ring.

“Shut up and sit down,” Reardon ordered.

“I could have made her forget about Amling. Damn you, Drake—”

“The telephone is ringing,” Reardon bellowed. “Don’t you move—either of you—until I get back.”

Simon and Paul Corman stood measuring each other like a pair of fighting cocks with an interrupted main event, while Reardon went back into the bedroom to answer the telephone. He was gone for about three minutes that seemed an hour and a half, because the decorative wall clock the firemen had missed stood at fifteen minutes past nine. The hospital had called to tell Reardon that Mary Sutton was dead.

T
HAT’S THE WAY
it went. A man tried to do a favour for an old flame who had married a very nice guy and ended up playing heavy in a lop-sided triangle nobody could ever straighten out. Corman took the news like a man being given the death sentence. He was sobbing when Reardon turned out the lights and led the way through the service door and down the stairs where he returned the key to the manager and told him not to let anyone into the apartment. Mary Sutton was dead and her death was a police matter. Corman drove his own car to the hospital. Simon rode back with Reardon but didn’t go inside. He had a bruise on his jaw the size of a golf ball and felt a deep need for the tender remonstrations of his wife. He got into his own car and drove back to the hotel where he found Wanda, still wearing her coat, sitting up in bed staring at the late show and chewing her cuticle. It was an old John Wayne picture and she never chewed cuticle for John Wayne. It had to be worry over Mary Sutton. He mixed a couple of drinks from the bottle of Scotch and then told her everything that had transpired since he had put her into the cab. She cried a little over Mary Sutton and fussed a little over his bruise. Then she fell asleep on his shoulder without removing her coat. Simon napped intermittently until grey light at the windows indicated a new day in the wings and everybody could be thankful that Thanksgiving was over for another year.

The morning paper hadn’t picked up the Mary Sutton death story in the early edition that came on the coffee tray, but it did announce the termination of the overcast. Simon gave Wanda permission to drive her little compact back to the beach if she stayed on the freeway inland from the coastal fog. As soon as she pulled out of the garage he headed the Jaguar towards the office of David G. Adler.

It was on the ground floor of one of the older buildings that survived the widening of Fairfax Avenue. Simon drove into the parking-lot and walked back to the front door. A buzzer sounded as he stepped inside but the office was empty. It was about the size of a double garage with two desks, four chairs and the rest of the area taken up by filing cabinets and bookshelves. A partition at the rear of the room marked off what Simon supposed to be the stairway to the upper floor until a bumping, rolling sound preceded a hearty-voiced: “Don’t go away. I’m coming as fast as this contraption will move.”

Simon advanced towards the sound and saw a barrel-chested man with curly grey hair manipulating a powered wheel-chair with a combination of expertise and boyish glee. He was about 45 and must have been quite an athlete before his legs became useless stumps lost in the folds of his gabardine slacks. The slacks were held up by striped suspenders that showed beneath an unbuttoned cardigan as he steered the chair down the ramp from the second level. He made a smooth turn into the office and rolled into place behind the second desk.

“You’re Simon Drake,” he said. “Recognize you from your picture in the paper when you married Wanda Call. Lucky bum!”

“I agree,” Simon said.

“And I’m Adler,” the man added. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I usually have a receptionist but nobody’s working until Monday except you and me.” Adler opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a rather thick file. “I live in the upstairs apartment,” he added. “After our talk yesterday I came downstairs and did a little research on Alverna Castile. You know interesting people, Drake. Not quite up to your usual clientèle.”

“I don’t know her at all,” Simon said. “I just know of her. When I was in college her name was bandied about the frat houses quite a bit.”

Adler chuckled. “That must have been about the same time I was in the army getting ready to leave some of my anatomy in Korea. Alverna had several houses then. The fancy one, the one the newspapers called the Love Chalet in the Mount Waterman recreational area, and cut-rate places at San Diego and Long Beach. The Love Chalet was strictly first class. One hundred dollars a night in the days when a hundred dollars was real money.”

Adler opened the file as he spoke and his fingers, as long and tapered as a musician’s, withdrew a carefully-typed, double-spaced sheet of legal-size paper.

“I have a contact in the profession who specializes in this sort of thing,” he added. “I called him last night and he sent over everything he had on Alverna. I’ve condensed the material in this profile, but the press clippings and other data are here for you to double-check.” He began to read from the typed sheet. “Alverna Castile, born 19 June 1932. Daughter of Maria Castile, a prostitute, and Donald Castile, a dock worker who was killed on the job when Alverna was three. Whether or not the mother was a prostitute before this event is unknown. Probably not. But by the time of Maria’s death when Alverna was fourteen, the daughter was already in the trade. She was supporting a half-brother, Anthony, aged five, father unknown.

“Alverna was made a ward of the court and placed in a juvenile home, and this is interesting because it’s the only time in her life that she ever appeared before a judge. She was a witness in the trial you mentioned on the telephone yesterday and, by that time, one of the most successful madames in the ancient trade, but she never was convicted of any charge or served a day of her adult life in jail.”

“Good connections,” Simon said.

“The best. At the time of the Smalley affair—he was the policeman who was dismissed from the force on a bribery charge and yelled foul, naming all those glamorous names that made the headlines in ‘57—she was rumoured to have the wealthiest clientèle this side of Polly Adler. Smalley, incidentally, never proved any of his charges and left the area shortly thereafter—probably at the request of his insurance agency. I don’t know where he is now. My informant suggests Miami but that’s hearsay.”

“I’m not interested in Smalley,” Simon said. “I’m interested in Alverna.”

“Right. Alverna escaped from the juvenile hall before her fifteenth birthday and married a longshoreman twenty years her senior. His name was Joseph Carnes. Marriage kept Alverna out of the courts and that’s apparently what it was for because she seems to have gone right back to her old trade.”

“What happened to Carnes?”

“Died of acute alcoholism in 1954. I doubt that they ever lived together as man and wife but Alverna, who had gotten up off her back and became an entrepreneur, paid all his bills at the sanatorium where he spent most of the last three years of his life. She never married again. At the time of the Smalley inquiry she was only twenty-five and reputed to be worth three hundred thousand dollars. Like any smart peasant she put her money in land. She owned all the properties where her houses were located including fifty acres of resort lands surrounding the Chalet. The Chalet burned to the ground in ‘59. Maybe arson but it was never proved. All that’s still standing is a brick barn and a few sheds. She sold off the land after the fire—all but a couple of acres around the barn. It’s enclosed with an electrified fence and a lot of ‘Keep Out’ signs. I haven’t checked it out but presumably she still owns the property. Smart peasants always keep something in reserve.”

“When did she get out of the vice field?”

Adler’s eyes crinkled in an appreciative smile. “How do you know she did?”

“Because I think she’s changed her name and is operating in a legit field now.”

“You’re right. After that fire in ‘59—in the winter, I think, November or December—Alverna Castile dropped out of sight. All her properties were sold off including, I suppose, the famous card file. Within a year nobody talked about Alverna Castile again. She was issued a passport in 1961 and spent some time abroad. The only thing I have of a later date that pertains to her in any way is a 1965 conviction of Anthony Castile on the charge of assault with intent to kill.”

“The half-brother.”

“Yes. He had gone into a foster home when the mother died and ran up quite a record with the juvenile authorities. Like Alverna, he escaped conviction and we can assume it was her money that kept him out of jail. Attempted murder is another matter. He was no longer a juvenile and he drew a ten-year sentence.”

“Where is he now?”

“San Quentin. He lost his chance for parole a couple of years later when he was in a knifing mêlée that put him in the hospital for a while. Either Alverna’s money couldn’t help him any more or she washed her hands of him somewhere along the line. There’s no evidence that they were ever close.”

“Any pictures?” Simon asked.

Adler thumbed through the file and took out two newspaper clippings dating back to the 1957 affair. One picture showed a well-dressed young woman with a movie-queen figure holding a large handbag over her face. The other photo caught her full-face and angry. Fifteen years could make a lot of difference in anyone’s appearance, but Simon was convinced this was the same woman who had been photographed twice in the company of Barney Amling. He took out the two photos and placed them beside the clipping.

“What do you think?” he asked Adler.

The investigator leaned over the desk and snapped on an intensity lamp for closer scrutiny. “Alverna Castile,” he said.

“Now she calls herself Verna Castle. She owns The Golden Fleece restaurant, the Manina View Inn and lives on a yacht at Marina del Rey.”

Adler still stared at the photo. “She’s better looking now,” he said. “What’s she doing with Barney Amling?”

“That’s what I’m hiring you to find out. I’m Amling’s lawyer.”

Adler whistled softly. “Wouldn’t the newspapers like to know about this. Not to mention the police and the FBI!”

“Luckily, they don’t,” Simon said. “Verna Castle took out a loan from Pacific Guaranty two years ago. I want to know how big the loan was and what rate of interest she pays—if any. I also want to know if there’s any connection between Verna Castle and Vincent Pucci, another Pacific Guaranty customer.”

Alder leaned back in the wheel-chair and drummed his fingers on the top of the desk. He might be crippled below the waist but he was still a dynamo of energy waiting to be turned on.

“Do you think Amling took the million dollars?” he asked.

“Nine hundred and fifty thousand,” Simon corrected, “and I don’t think he took it unless there was some tremendous pressure. I think he was blackmailed.”

“Is that a hunch or do you have facts?”

“At the moment it’s a hunch and the egotistical belief that I know something about Amling’s character. He’s a family man, Adler, and he had it made. He had no reason to throw his life away. These pictures were taken within the last two months before his disappearance. I’m not going to tell you who took them or how they came into my possession, but I do want to know why Amling met Verna Castle at her restaurant on at least two occasions and why he spent at least one night in a suite she maintains at the hotel. I don’t think it had anything to do with passion.”

“I’ve got a hunch you’re right,” Adler said. “The old Alverna was too hard-nosed a businesswoman to give anything away. I’ll tell you a little story to illustrate what I mean. When I was in boot camp in ‘52 the Chalet was a thriving enterprise. Some of the fellows in my squad decided it would be great to go up there on a weekend pass, but that came to two big bills and none of us had that kind of money. So we set up a raffle—twenty tickets at ten dollars a piece. I was in on it but I didn’t win and that was a relief. You might not suspect it, but I was a shy country boy at the time. The fellow who won was hell-bent for anything. He was just ahead of me in the action that cost me the use of my legs. They took him home from Korea in a box. But he had his weekend with all the trimmings: Champagne, massage, the girl of his choice for two nights. Before he left he told the girl about the raffle and she was so amused she told Alverna. Well, Alverna said it wasn’t right that a kid who was going overseas to fight for his country should be out so much money for a little fun so she got generous. But not too generous. She returned his contribution—all ten dollars of it. Do you want to take the file with you?”

“After that story I’ll have to get to know Alverna better,” Simon said. “I’ll go over it in detail when I get back to the beach. I’m giving you my card with my home telephone number. Call me as soon and as often as you learn anything interesting. Did you know that Amling’s secretary died last night?”

Adler nodded. “It was on the radio just before you came in. She died as a result of injuries incurred when she jumped out of a window to escape a fire in her apartment.”

“Maybe,” Simon said, “but I’d like to see the autopsy report if you can arrange it. I was in the street outside that apartment when she came out of the window. Have you ever seen anyone try to escape from a burning building by jumping backwards?”