The Falcon's Malteser

THE FALCON

Johnny Naples was taken to the morgue. We were taken to the Ladbroke Grove Police Station. I don’t know which of us got the better treatment. While he was carried out on his back, covered with a nice clean sheet, we were dragged out, handcuffed together, and thrown into the back of a van. It had turned out, of course, that the drunk in the street had been a plainclothes policeman. The Alsatian was a plainclothes police dog. The Hotel Splendide had been the subject of a major police stakeout, and we’d more or less asked for trouble the moment we’d walked in.

We were left to stew in a bare-bricked interrogation room. Or to freeze, rather. That place couldn’t have been much warmer than the morgue. There was one metal table, three metal chairs, and five metal bars on a window that would have been too small to climb out of anyway. A blackboard lined one wall and there was a poster on the other reading CRIME DOESN’T PAY, underneath which somebody had scrawled NEITHER DOES POLICE WORK. The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke. I wondered how many hardened criminals had grown harder waiting there.

Herbert had said little since he woke up. But after about twenty minutes he suddenly looked around as if he had only just realized where he was. “Nick . . . ?” he said.

“Yes?”

“You don’t think the police think I had anything to do with what happened to the dwarf, do you?” he asked.

“No,” I replied soothingly. “You went up to see him. There was a gunshot. You were found holding a smoking gun. The dwarf was dead. Why would the police think you’re involved?”

At that moment there was a rattle as a key was turned in the lock and the door swung open. Herbert groaned. The man who had just come in didn’t look too happy either.

“Herbert Simple,” he said.

“Inspector Snape,” Herbert muttered in a strangled voice.

“Chief Inspector Snape,” the man growled. “No thanks to you.”

The chief inspector was blond-haired and built like a football player, with those slightly squashed shoulders that come from too many tackles. His skin was the color of raw bacon and he spoke with a northern accent. He was wearing an off-white shirt that had probably been pure white when he put it on, and a tie that had slipped over his collar in its struggle to get away from his bulging neck. He was followed by a smaller, squatter version of himself with black, permed hair, an open-neck shirt, and a gold medallion glittering in the forest of his chest. The assistant—if that’s what he was—stood there, pounding one fist into the palm of his hand, looking at us with unfriendly, muddy brown eyes. Well, if these are the cops, I thought, I’d hate to meet the robbers.

“Herbert Simple,” Snape repeated, drawing up a chair.

“Can I hit him?” the other policeman asked.

“No, Boyle.” The chief inspector smiled unpleasantly. “Herbert Simple.” He said the name a third time, chewing on the words like they were stuck in his teeth. “The worst police constable that ever served in my station. In two months you did more damage than the Kray brothers managed in twenty years. The day you left, I cried like a baby. Tears of pleasure. I never thought . . . I hoped, I prayed that I would never see you again.” His piglike eyes were turned on me. “And who are you, laddie?” he asked.

“His brother,” I said.

“Bad luck, son. Bad luck.”

“Can I hit him?” Boyle asked.

“Relax, Boyle.” The chief inspector took out a cigarette and lit it. “Now, the question I’m asking myself is, why should a luckless, hopeless, brainless ex-policeman like Herbert Simple be mixed up with a man like Johnny Naples?”

“I didn’t shoot him!” Herbert cried.

“I believe you.” Snape’s nostrils quivered as they blew out two streams of smoke. “If you’d wanted to shoot the dwarf, you’d have probably missed and shot yourself in the foot. After all, when we sent you for target practice, you managed to shoot the instructor. But the fact still remains that your fingerprints are on the gun—and nobody else’s. So perhaps you’d better tell me what you were doing there.”

“Naples was my client,” Herbert squeaked.

“Your client?”

“He’s a private detective,” I explained.

“A private detective?” Chief Inspector Snape began to laugh. He laughed until the tears trickled down his checks. At last he managed to calm himself down, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Boyle handed him a handkerchief and he blew his nose noisily. “Now I’ve heard everything!” he said. “A private detective. And your client’s dead. That makes sense. The moment he came to you he was a marked man. But what private detection did Naples want?”

“It’s private,” I said.

That wiped the smile off Snape’s face. At the same time, Boyle grunted and lumbered toward me. I’d seen prettier sights in the London Zoo. Fortunately for me, Snape held up a hand. “Forget it, Boyle,” he snapped.

“But, Chief . . .”

“He’s underage.”

Boyle grunted again and punched the air. But he hung back.

“You should watch yourself, son,” Snape said. “Boyle here is very into police brutality. He watches too much TV. The last suspect we had in here ended up in intensive care and he was just in for double parking.”

“It’s still private,” I said.

“All right,” Snape grumbled. “If you want to see your big brother arrested for murder . . .”

“Nick . . . !” Herbert whimpered.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “We don’t have to break a client’s confidence.”

“Your client’s dead,” Snape said.

“I noticed. But he’s still our client.” I gave him my friend liest smile. “Look, Chief Inspector,” I said. “You tell us what you know and we’ll tell you what we know. That seems fair to me.”

Snape looked at me thoughtfully. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Thirteen.”

“You’re smart for your age. If you go on as smart as this, maybe you won’t reach fourteen.”

“Just tell us.”

“Why should I? How do I know you know anything at all.”

“We know about the key,” I said. “And about the falcon.”

I admit they were two shots in the dark. The Fat Man had mentioned a key, and with his dying breath Johnny Naples had muttered something about a falcon. Neither of them made any sense to me, but I had gambled that they would mean something to this Snape character. And I was right. He had raised an eyebrow at the mention of the key. The other one joined it when I followed with the falcon.

He finished the cigarette, dropped the butt, and ground it out with his heel. “Okay,” he said. “But you’d better be on the level, Nick. Otherwise I’ll let Boyle spend a little time alone with you.”

Boyle looked at me like he was trying to work out a new pattern for my face.

“Johnny Naples flew in here from South America a month ago,” Snape began. “We picked him up when he came through passport control, then we lost him, then—just a few days ago—we found him again at the Hotel Splendide. We’ve had him under observation ever since. You and your brother were the first people to see him, as far as we know. He never went out—not while we were watching.”

“Why were you watching him?” Herbert asked.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Snape snapped. He lit himself another cigarette. He didn’t look like a chain-smoker, but that’s the sort of effect my big brother has on people. “Johnny Naples was a nobody,” Snape went on. “A quack doctor with a run-down practice in the backstreets of La Paz, Bolivia. But with his last patient he got lucky. You already know about the Falcon, but I wonder how much you know? His full name, for example—Henry von Falkenberg. I reckon he was out of your league. To be fair, von Falkenberg was in a league of his own.

“Look—every country has its big crooks. In England, the Fat Man is probably number one. America has its godfathers. In Italy, there are the Fettuccine brothers. But the Falcon—he’s an internationalist. He was half English and half German, loyal to neither country, and living, when we last heard of him, in Bolivia. There wasn’t a single criminal organization in the world that he wasn’t doing business with. You steal a truck-load of mink coats in Moscow? You sell it to the Falcon. You want to buy a kilo of cocaine in Canada? Just have a word with the Falcon. He was the number one, the top man, the king of crime. If there was a country in the world where the police didn’t want him, he’d have taken it as a personal insult.

“Now, like any big businessman, the Falcon needed funds—a financial platform on which to build his deals. But unlike most businessmen, he couldn’t just open an account at your local credit union. He didn’t trust the Swiss banks. He didn’t trust his own mother—which is probably why he had her rubbed out back in 1965. The only currency the Falcon would deal in was diamonds: uncut diamonds. The franc might fall, the ruble might rise—but diamonds held their own. In every major city he had his own little stash of diamonds: in Paris, Amsterdam, New York . . . and London. In fact, London was the center of his operations, so that’s where he had the biggest stash. We can’t be sure, but we believe that perhaps only a mile from here, he’d managed to conceal diamonds to the value of five million dollars.”

He paused for effect and he got it. I licked my lips. Herbert shook his head and whistled.

“The Falcon was a great criminal,” Snape continued. “But a month ago his luck ran out. He could have been arrested. He could have been machine-gunned by a rival gang. But in the end he was run over by a bus. It was a crazy end to a crazy life. It happened just outside La Paz airport as he crossed the road to catch a plane to England. We believe he was carrying the key to the diamonds with him. And the man who just happened to be on the scene, who traveled with him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, was Johnny Naples.

“So the Falcon is lying on his back with the life running out of him and he—and only he—knows where a fortune in diamonds is hidden. Now, we can’t be certain, but people who are dying tend to blurt out secrets that they would otherwise keep to themselves, and we believe the Falcon told Johnny Naples where he could find those diamonds. Look at it this way. A few days later, Naples dumps his job and takes a first-class flight to London. There’s no reason why he should have come here unless you put two and two together and make—”

“Five million,” I said.

“Right.” Snape stood up and walked over to the blackboard. He had produced a piece of chalk from his pocket. “So Johnny Naples flies to the end of the rainbow—in this case, England. But he’s not alone. Because all sorts of people are interested in the diamonds now that the Falcon is dead.” He turned around and scrawled a name on the blackboard.

The Fat Man

“He’s number one. The Fat Man had often done business with the Falcon. If anybody knew about the secret stash, it would be him. And he could use the money. Give the Fat Man five million dollars and maybe he could go international himself. He could become the next Falcon. He probably knew where the dwarf was staying before we did. Did he kill Johnny Naples? If so, he’ll be on his way to the diamonds . . . and that’s bad news for all of us.”

Snape wrote a second name beneath it.

Beatrice von Falkenberg

“She’s the dark horse,” Snape continued. “The Falcon’s wife—his widow—once Holland’s greatest actress. He fell in love with her when he saw her in Othello. She played the title role. From all accounts it wasn’t a happy marriage. She spent six months of the year in London and six months in La Paz. Did he ever tell her where the diamonds were hidden? If he didn’t, she’ll want to know . . .”

Two more names followed.

William Gott and Eric Himmell

“They were the Falcon’s right-hand men, his two lieutenants. If they could get their hands on the diamonds, they’d have enough money and enough power to take over the Falcon’s empire. Gott and Himmell are killers. Although they were born in Germany, they were both educated in England, at Eton. During that time, the vicar and the PE instructor went missing and the assistant headmaster was found hanged with his own old school tie. They arrived in London the day after Johnny Naples. They’re here now, and they’re deadly.”

The Professor

“He’s another mystery. But if anybody knows where the diamonds are, it’s likely to be him. He was the Falcon’s technical adviser, his tame egghead. He was brilliant but crooked. For example, he invented computer fraud five years before someone invented the computer. If the diamonds are in some sort of safe, he’ll probably have built it. But about a year ago he went missing. He could be dead. Nobody’s heard of him since then.”

Snape turned to the blackboard and wrote a final name.

Herbert Simp

That was as far as he got. The chalk broke in his hand.

“And at last we come to you,” he said. “Hopeless, horrible Herbert Simple. You say Johnny Naples was your client. I want to know why. I want to know what he wanted. I want to know what he said. I want to know what you two are doing mixed up in all this and I want to know now!”

He paused.

Things were beginning to make some sort of sense. Not a lot of sense, mind you, but at least we knew what stakes we were playing for. Johnny Naples had come to London in search of five million dollars and he had left us a box of Maltesers. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was all we had. The trouble was, if we told Snape what Naples had given us, we’d lose that, too. The way I saw it was like this. A lot of people were interested in what had taken place in our office that Thursday morning. The Fat Man was one of them. And perhaps it had been Gott and Himmell who had ransacked the place that same night. Sooner or later they’d come gunning for us, and if worse came to worst, we’d have to give them the Maltesers. Which meant we had to keep them from Snape.

And—okay—I’ll be honest. If we were really sitting on the key to a fortune, I wanted to be the one to turn it. There were plenty of things I could do with five million dollars. I figured I’d let Herbert keep the other half.

“Come on,” Snape growled. “It’s your turn. What did Naples want?”

There was another long silence. Boyle shuffled forward and I noticed that this time Snape made no move to stop him.

“Naples came here looking for the money,” I said. “You were right there. But he was followed. He was afraid. That’s why he came to see us. He thought we’d be able to give him some sort of protection.”

“Nick!” Herbert muttered.

“He didn’t tell us anything more than that . . .”

Boyle’s hand clamped down on the back of my neck. He half dragged me to my feet. Now I knew how a piece of scrap iron feels when it’s picked up by a mechanical grabber. I waited for him to crush me. “You’re lying,” he rasped.

“Scout’s honor!” I pleaded.

“You knew about the key,” Snape reminded me.

“Only because Naples mentioned it. But we haven’t got it. You can search the office if you like.”

“We already have,” Boyle said.

“Then you’ll know that somebody tore it apart. Look—if we knew anything, why do you think we went to the Hotel Splendide? The place was searched and we got scared. We went to see Naples to ask him what was going on, but by the time we got there, he was dead. Honest!”

For a moment the only sound in the room was a vague creaking as my neck splintered in Boyle’s grip. But then he must have gotten some sort of signal from Snape. He released me and I collapsed in my chair. My legs had turned to jelly. I could hardly move my head.

“Okay, we’ll play it your way, son,” Snape said humor lessly. “We’ll let you go. But I don’t believe you and neither will the Fat Man or any of the other nasties waiting for you out there. It’ll be interesting to see which one of them gets to you first.”

“And I suppose you’ll stand by and watch,” I muttered, rubbing my neck.

“Don’t worry,” Snape said. “We’ll be around to pick up the pieces.”