Death After Breakfast

by Hugh Pentecost

  At about five I begin to circulate through the active rooms, aiming to hit the Trapeze last. I am supposed to be looking for familiar faces, customers who have been turning up for years at these way stations. I have learned which ones wish to be greeted, which ones wish to be ignored. Often there are famous people, movie stars, stage stars, United Nations luminaries, local political figures. I must decide whether to pass the word along to the gossip professionals, like Shirley. “Seen at the Trapeze Bar in the Beaumont last night was the glamorous Miss Whooziz being squired by Mr. McSchmoe, the well-known continental playboy.” A lot of people go to places like the Trapeze just to be seen, and they feel cheated if nobody notices. Others—and I have to make the judgment—would consider a gossip column item an invasion of privacy.

  Most of the people in the Trapeze that late afternoon I’d seen there hundreds of times before. I was about to slide up to the bar for a drink when I noticed a man sitting alone at a corner table. It was Chester Cole, the public relations man for Duval’s film. He was hiding behind the dark glasses he seemed to wear night and day.

  “I thought all you people had taken off for the coast,” I said, as I reached his table.

  “Buy you a drink?” he asked.

  “Only the call girls around here get drinks bought for them by the customers,” I said. “Let you in on a secret. I don’t have to pay for drinks in this place.”

  “Well, sit down anyway,” he said.

  I sat with my back to the wall where I could watch the comings and goings. I nodded to an approaching waiter. They all knew my five o’clock drink was a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks with a splash of water.

  “Only the glittering ones went to the coast,” Cole said. “Clark Herman has a finished picture that’s opening here in a couple of days. I stayed behind to give it a push.” The black glasses turned my way. “You’re the one with stories to tell.”

  “Let’s see, how does it go?” I said. “The police expect an early arrest.’”

  “A real crazy doll from all accounts, your Mrs. Kauffman,” he said. “Hollywood is shaking in its boots.”

  “Oh?”

  “A hatful of big-name male stars have, it is said, been involved with the lady in the past.” Cole laughed. “They’re all rushing around trying to set up alibis for themselves. The ones making films out of the country are thanking their lucky stars. I’d have to guess the police are suffering from too many possible suspects, not too few.”

  “Right about now Homicide is talking to the husband,” I said. “He’s probably adding to the list. What about your stable? Anybody there worried?”

  Cole gave me a sardonic smile. “You can write off our glamorous leading man. He isn’t the type.”

  “We have Robert Randle pegged,” I said, remembering the registration card with the letter G written on it. “Let me tell you, the police aren’t writing off women. Women hated her, women whose men go involved with our Laura.”

  “You can forget about Janet Parker,” Cole said. “She’s the old-fashioned type. She’s been quietly married to her high school boy friend for the last ten years. A lot of us have tried and been laughed off, including your friend Mayberry. What a clown!”

  “What about the big shots, Herman and Duval?” I asked.

  “I got the impression that neither of them had ever met her until they arrived here at the hotel,” Cole said. “I know they both talked to her, trying to get her help in changing Chambrun’s mind about the filming at the ball.”

  “I don’t imagine our Laura wasted any time with new men if they appealed to her,” I said.

  “I don’t know about Clark Herman,” Cole said, “but I was present when Duval talked to her.” He laughed. “He didn’t go to see her, you understand. Had her brought to him. He was at his disagreeable best. He didn’t ask, he made demands. A genius makes demands. He was about as unpleasant as a big shot as you can imagine. He was waving a fifty-thousand-dollar donation to the fund under her nose, and it was going to be his way or else. I would guess he was about as attractive to her as a hooded cobra. In any case, he’s about as old as she was, or a year or two older. I understand her present taste was for younger ones.”

  I grinned at him. “What about you? You belong in that younger group.”

  He made a wry face. “I like to make my own passes,” he said.

  The waiter brought my drink—and a message. Chambrun wanted to see me in his office. I excused myself, and, carrying my drink, I went out a rear door of the Trapeze to the second floor corridor.

  Ruysdale wasn’t in her office, and I went straight through into Chambrun’s sanctum. He was sitting at his desk, and Ruysdale was over by the windows looking at the park. There was something curiously tense about the atmosphere. I had seen that look of dark anger on Chambrun’s face before. I wondered what I had done wrong.

  “You sent for me, boss?” I asked.

  His heavy lids lifted and he looked at me. I could have sworn there was something like pain in that look.

  “I have some bad news for you, Mark,” he said.

  I was fired, I thought. “ t would be nice to know what I’ve done,” I said.

  “You haven’t done anything, Mark,” he said. “It’s your Miss Thomas.”

  “Shirley?”

  “She’s dead,” Chambrun said.

  I couldn’t take it in. I didn’t believe it.

  “I’m sorry,” Chambrun said. “I wish to God that was more than just a word.”

  The room started to spin around me. I remember I dropped my drink on his Persian rug. Ruysdale was coming toward me from the window, her hands held out in friendship and compassion.

  PART 3

  ONE

  SOMEONE YOUNG, AND VITAL, and close to you simply cannot die. It had to be some grotesque joke, and yet I knew that, coming from Chambrun, it couldn’t be.

  Ruysdale, her hands cool and reassuring, guided me to one of the leather armchairs. I didn’t resist sitting down because my legs were about not to hold me up. A moment later she handed me a shot glass full of liquor. I drank it, and it burned like fire. All the while Chambrun sat hunched in his desk chair, his bright black eyes watching me with a rare sympathy.

  I guess he decided I was ready for it and he gave it to me. There had been a call from Bernice Braden, a girl who did secretarial work for Shirley. She was obviously hysterical and she had called Chambrun because she didn’t know what to do, and Shirley had told her on the phone that morning, that if there were any sort of emergency she should call. Bernice is a nice girl, married, with a couple of kids, who types and machine-copies Shirley’s column for syndication. It helps add to the Braden family’s income. She comes and goes, collecting copy from Shirley, letting herself in and out with her own key to the apartment That was why Shirley and I had used my apartment for our thing together. Bernice was apt to show up at odd times. She had no regular schedule.

  I tried to concentrate on what Chambrun was telling me.

  Bernice had let herself into the apartment about a quarter past four, a little more than an hour ago. The place was a shambles. Shirley was there, dead. She had some kind of awful wound in her head.

  “According to Mrs. Braden, every scrap of paper in the place had been burned in the open fireplace,” Chambrun said. “Correspondence, files on people and events Shirley kept in metal cabinets. Her job to collect anything and everything on people with any news value.”

  I struggled up out of the chair. I had to go to her.

  “No point, Mark,” Chambrun said “They will have taken her to the medical examiner’s office by now.”

  My legs gave out and I slumped down into the chair again. My eyes stung, and I realized that tears were running down my cheeks.

  “Hardy was here when we got the word,” Chambrun said. He was feeding me little bits and pieces, I suppose to keep me from concentrating on the central horror. “It’s not his case but he feels responsible in a way.”

  “Responsible?”

 
“He had asked Shirley to dig up everything she could find on Laura Kauffman, in her files, from her sources. It was his notion that someone would appear on a list she could compile who could be placed here in the hotel on the night Mrs. Kauffman was killed.”

  “Oh, God!” I said.

  “Hardy’s at Shirley’s apartment now,” Ruysdale said. She had brought me another drink. “We should hear from him soon. Dear Mark, I wish there was something sensible for me to do or say.”

  It came pouring out of me then. I was choking on the words. She wasn’t just a little tramp I’d shacked up with for the sexual delights she’d offered. She was gay, open, undevious, a marvelous companion.

  “She wasn’t like the other garbage collectors who do gossip columns,” I heard myself saying. “She never wrote things that would hurt people. She left the rotten stuff to others. Why, for Christ sake? She was so in love with life—and living!”

  “Not a nice world we live in,” Chambrun said.

  “What the hell do you care?” I shouted at him. “It didn’t happen in your lousy hotel!”

  Ruysdale’s cool hand rested against my cheek. “Easy, Mark,” she said.

  Of course I was off my rocker. Chambrun cared. He cared because he was my friend, because he hated violence. I had to yell at someone. I had to do something! I realized that the hot, burning feeling in my gut was not the result of a second straight slug of whiskey. It was a rage so intense I might die of it if I didn’t do something. Somewhere there was some sonofabitch who had done this awful thing to a nice, decent girl and I was going to find him and kill him.

  “I’ve got to go over there,” I said. “I’ve got to dig out every single fact there is, and then I’m going to—”

  “Mark!” Chambrun’s voice was sharp. It stopped me after I’d taken two steps toward the door. “I know how you feel,” he said, gently now. “Let me tell you, you have to be detached to make any sense in a situation like this. Leave it to the people who aren’t personally hurt by it—Hardy, whoever is in charge of the case. Let them put the pieces together. They will, you know. All you can do in your state of mind is muddy the waters.”

  “I have to go to her,” I said “Wherever she is, she’s all alone.”

  “She’s dead, Mark.”

  It wouldn’t have hurt any more if he’d hit me over the head with a sledge hammer. I swayed back to the chair and crumpled down in it again. I couldn’t get things separated in my aching skull. I could see her, and smell her, and feel her warm skin against mine, and her tender arms around me. I could see the love in her eyes and feel her happy, passionate response to my lovemaking. I could see us walking arm in arm down Fifth Avenue on a spring day, window shopping like children outside a candy store. I could hear her laughing at our private jokes. I remembered how men looked at her and how they envied me.

  There had been bits and scraps about our pasts as we lay together in the night. Where was it she had grown up? Somewhere in New England, wasn’t it? I seemed to recall that her father had died of a heart attack while she was in college. Her mother? I couldn’t remember anything about her, or the mention of any sisters or brothers. Someone would have to be notified. Bernice Braden might know.

  “Family,” I said, still choking on tears.

  “Mrs. Braden doesn’t know of any,” Ruysdale said.

  “Maybe she had a will,” I said “Someone has to make arrangements for—for—”

  “All in good time,” Chambrun said.

  “Of all the people I know in the world she deserved this less than anyone,” I said.

  “No one deserves violence,” Chambrun said, his voice gone cold. “Even a blackmailing bitch like Laura Kauffman didn’t deserve what she got.”

  How could he think of anyone else but Shirley? How could he mention Laura Kauffman in the same context? What else was there to think about but Shirley and the bastard who’d killed her?

  The little red light blinked on the phone at Chambrun’s elbow. He let Ruysdale take it.

  “Hardy,” she said.

  Chambrun leaned forward and switched on the squawk box. “I’ve got you on the box, Walter,” he said. “Mark’s here with us.”

  “Jesus, Mark, I’m sorry,” Hardy said.

  I blubbered something unintelligible.

  “Sergeant Caldwell is in charge here,” Hardy said. “Good man. One of the best. So far there isn’t much. It was a gunshot; damn near blew the top of her head off.”

  I heard a kind of quavering cry. It came from me.

  “Everything Miss Thomas ever committed to paper has been destroyed, burned in the fireplace,” Hardy said. “He took his time after the shooting. Desk, files, everything ransacked. Books taken off the shelves as if he might be looking for something hidden in them. You have to guess he didn’t find what he was looking for, but he made sure he hadn’t overlooked it and left it behind. Mark, do you know anything about family?”

  I shook my head.

  “He doesn’t know,” Chambrun said.

  “Did she have a lawyer? Was she religious? Did she have a priest, a minister, who might know about family? The secretary doesn’t know.”

  “We didn’t talk about lawyers or God,” I heard myself say.

  “The syndicate that handled her column might have answers,” Chambrun said. “Mrs. Braden should be able to put you on to them.”

  “Good idea,” Hardy said. He hesitated. “There’s one sort of far-out coincidence, Pierre. The gun that killed her was a .44 caliber handgun.”

  I didn’t get it for a moment. Then I remembered it was a .44 that Chambrun’s abductor had carried.

  “No way to connect the two guns,” Hardy said. “As far as we know your man didn’t fire his gun anywhere, so there’s nothing for ballistics. But it’s an oddity.

  “In order to protect the rights of the great American sportsman we don’t have any decent gun laws,” Chambrun said. “There are probably thousands of those .44’s available to any creep who wants one.”

  “I know,” Hardy said. “But the coincidence is worth bearing in mind, Pierre. Be seeing you.”

  Shirley, it turned out, had made a new will a couple of months ago. She’d used her syndicate’s lawyer to draw it up for her. She had left everything she had to me, for God sake. There wasn’t any money to speak of. She’d been too young to be concerned about old age. But all her books, her papers—which were now nonexistent—the stuff in her apartment, were left to me. She’d never mentioned it to me. Why should she? She hadn’t dreamed of dying. She was immortal, just as all of us are when we think of ourselves.

  She had left me one obligation. I was to see to it that she was cremated.

  I can’t really put times together. I know it was evening when I got to the city morgue with an authority from the lawyer. They’re pretty cold-blooded in the morgue, but the guy who handled me had some feelings. They keep the bodies in sort of icebox drawers. We stopped by the one that had Shirley’s name on it.

  “If you cared about her, you won’t want to look at her,” the man said. “Official identification was made by her secretary.”

  Poor Bernice Braden. I realized I didn’t want to see anything that would blur my memory of what she’d been. I turned away from the box. I still had my Shirley, alive and laughing and loving. I made arrangements for the cremation, and that was that.

  A light summer rain was falling when I walked out onto the street. Where to go? What to do? Who to talk to? There was only the Beaumont, and Chambrun and Ruysdale. I walked what seemed miles in the rain. I must have been a sight when I walked through the revolving door from the street into the Beaumont’s lobby, my hair matted, my suit waterlogged.

  Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, had me by the arm and was steering me to the elevator. He is a mischievous, smiling Italian who, for the first time I could remember, looked dead serious. He went upstairs with me, took my key from my shaking hands, and opened the door to my apartment. I was to take a steaming hot shower while he made me a drin
k. I got out of my clothes and into the shower. When I came out and had toweled myself down, I went to my closet for a bathrobe. There, hanging right in front, was a negligee Shirley kept there. I sat down on the floor, stark naked, and cried. Mike Maggio let me weep it out.

  Then, after I’d had the drink Mike made me, believe it or not, I slept on the couch in my living room. I couldn’t face the bed where she had been only the night before.

  If you’ve ever been through that kind of experience, and I hope to God you haven’t, you’ll know that nothing is stable. You tell yourself you have to go about your regular routines, and you do, in a mechanical fashion, but every now and then your grief sweeps over you in waves, literally doubling you up with pain. I woke up, bones aching, a little after midnight. For about ten seconds I wondered why I was there on the couch, and then it came over me like a nausea. I wanted to get out of the apartment. She was everywhere.

  Normally there were things to do at this time of night. It wasn’t much better out in the real world. I should have known that Shirley’s death had already been on radio and TV. Everyone who knew me and of my connection with her had words of sympathy. And questions! Did I have any idea who might have done it? Did I know why it was done? Reporters, still hanging around for some news in the Kauffman case, had something new to occupy them. Me. They followed me around like the tail of a kite as I went from the Blue Lagoon, to the Spartan, to the Trapeze.

  In the Trapeze I was astonished to see Chester Cole, the PR man for Duval’s film, still sitting where I’d left him at that corner table, hours and hours ago. He looked stiff drunk to me, or maybe it was just that he hadn’t moved for so long. Five o’clock I’d left him, one o’clock now. I asked Eddie, the head bartender, about him.