That was the state of my emotional life when I headed for Gallivan’s drinking bash in the late Nikos Karados’s suite on the 19th floor. I could be girl-watcher without feeling guilty, I assured myself. Actually it would have to be just in passing. My job was to sniff out some kind of lead to a particularly subtle killer who might also be girl watching.
The Beaumont’s suites and rooms are soundproofed by experts. When I walked along the 19th floor corridor, it was as quiet as St. Patrick’s Cathedral. When the door of 19A was opened in answer to my buzz, I was nearly knocked over on my back by a wave of sound—loud voices, music, slightly drunken laughter. An astonishing redhead with green eye shadow and a skirt that came a good four inches below her hip bones grabbed me by the front of my dark blue blazer, pulled me into the room, and gave me a full and very active kiss on the mouth.
“Welcome!” she shouted at me, when she’d finished working me over. Then she laughed as she saw me reaching for my handkerchief. I had to be smeared with that scarlet lipstick. “You’re safe, baby,” she said. “It doesn’t come off. A House of Lazar special.”
Well, that was one way to promote a product.
No two suites at the Beaumont are decorated in identical style. Nineteen-A has dark green brocade walls with a Flemish painting or two strategically placed. It is usually reserved for the very rich and the slightly old-fashioned. Nikos Karados, despite his mod contacts, was fond of it and had always asked for it over the years. It was far from being the correct setting for the current production.
A young man in tight pants, a Nehru jacket, a string of coral beads around his neck, strutted past me, jabbing a finger at me and chanting, “Here come de judge! Here come de judge!”
There were girls in very chic see-through black lace, there was one in a camellia-pink pants suit, and another in black satin pants with a white silk turtle-neck blouse and a little black bolero. I saw Mrs. Michael Faraday in a handsome dark brocade embroidered, no less, with rhinestone snowflakes. Pants and ersatz jewelry and see-through tops or flesh-colored tops that looked like skin seemed to be the order of the day. And the men—if they were men! Max Lazar, standing over by the fireplace sipping a martini on the rocks in a huge glass, had set the pattern. His hair was long, growing down into his open collar, his pants were tight-fitting, made of a shiny black material, and his white shirt was open to the base of his hairless chest. On his bare feet were black patent leather evening pumps. There was a cowboy vest made out of what looked like sable. There were more Nehru jackets, and turtle necks, and beads everywhere. I saw Tim Gallivan coming toward me, armed with two martinis. He’d changed from his conservative business suit into blue chino slacks, a navy turtle-neck sweater, brown loafers on his bare feet.
“Every inch the Southampton croquet player,” a pleasant female voice, cultivated, said at my elbow.
You couldn’t speak softly in the room because of all the laughter and screaming and the two boys in the far corner with Beatle hairdos working on a guitar and a set of blood-red drums.
Gallivan reached me and handed me one of the martinis. He introduced me to the lady who’d just finished describing him.
“Monica Strong—Mark Haskell,” he said. “You two should get to know each other. Monica’s the gal who’s staging the Lazar showing, Mark. She’ll be coming to you for help along the way.”
“Pleasure,” I said.
Monica Strong did not belong to that fifty percent of the world which is twenty-five or under. Without meaning to downgrade her in this mod society, I guessed she was in her late thirties or early forties. She had on a very chic beige jersey suit with a wine-red blouse. There was a floppy bow at her neck. She had the legs for the short skirt. But with this one you didn’t look at the clothes first. She had a really beautiful face—classic in structure: high cheekbones with little hollows below them, a wide, generous mouth, and candid gray-green eyes under long black lashes. Her hair was a shiny bird-wing black, quantities of it done in a very elegant bouffant coiffure. For my money she outshone all the groovy kids in the room, even the glamorous Mrs. Faraday.
“I’ve been wanting to find you, Mark,” she said, “but things are on the hectic side. There are details I need to work out with you.”
“Any time, anyplace,” I said.
Gallivan had drifted away, leaving me with the lady and my bathtub of gin. The stomping and shouting to the music seemed to grow louder.
“You have enough models here to show three designers’ collections,” I said.
Her smile was enchanting, if just a touch bitter. “About half of these gals aren’t models,” she said. “Fashion has become a Barnum and Bailey world, Mark. Everyone gets into the act, particularly the young matrons in the high-fashion world. The nuder the look, the surer you can be that they aren’t professional models.”
I took a sip of my drink. It was dynamite. “I wonder how Nikos would have enjoyed this?” I said.
A shadow crossed the lovely face, and for just an instant some sort of guard was lowered and she looked wounded, hurt.
“Nikos resented age,” she said. “Contributing to the insanities of these groovy young people delighted him. He thought they were utterly mad, but he loved them. Yes, he’d have enjoyed it.”
I glanced toward the bedroom door. The traffic in and out of there was just as heavy as it was in the living room. “I haven’t seen the little secretary about,” I said.
Monica looked at me, an elegant eyebrow raised. “Secretary?”
“Jan,” I said. “Jan Morse.”
“Oh.”
I grinned at her. “Oh what?” I said.
She laughed. “Oh damn!” she said. “I was being bitchy. Jan isn’t one of my favorite people.”
“She seemed pleasant, and harmless, and very genuinely concerned for Nikos. I was with her when it happened,” I said.
The gray-green eyes looked at me steadily, the long lashes unblinking. “A man-eating shark probably looks pleasant and harmless—to other sharks,” Monica said. “Shall we talk about something else, or would you like to circulate?”
She didn’t give me any choice. She turned away and edged through the mob toward Max Lazar, who stood by the fireplace, dark and brooding, surrounded by a platoon of young and very exposed wives of older and very rich, not-present husbands.
I headed, glass in hand, toward the bedroom. The scene there was different. It was crowded and hot and noisy, but very In. A campy-looking gray-haired man wearing gold beads over a pink turtle-neck sweater was telling dirty stories. Propped up against the pillows on the huge double bed where Nikos Karados had slept last night were a pair of identical twins. They had mahogany-red hair worn in long bobs. They had on black velvet pants suits, their long legs stretched out in front of them, feet in black patent leather pumps. Their white shirts were frilly lace at the collars and cuffs. They were holding hands. It took me a moment to realize that one was a girl and one was a boy. The court jester, the old camp in the beads, was directing his performance at the couple on the bed.
“Suzie darling, have you heard the one about the television comic who came face to face with Merle Oberon on the beach at Acapulco?”
The girl twin opened her mouth and spoke. She should never have done it. Her voice was high, flat—awful.
“Tell us, Zach dear,” she said. It was enough to end all illusion of glamor.
I realized this must be Suzie Sands, the top high-fashion model in the business. Her fee for being photographed in the great clothes was a hundred and fifty dollars an hour. The look-alike young man must be her Tommy whom she was putting through law school. I wondered if he wore his beads to class.
I wasn’t particularly interested in the story about the TV comic and Merle Oberon. I edged over to the door that I knew led to Room 1907. The key was on this side. I turned it, opened the door, and went through it.
The room is a single with a small entrance alcove and a bathroom with a black marble tub built close to the floor like a swimming pool.
Jan Morse, still wearing the elegant black jump suit with the pink ribbon at her wasp waist, was flat out on the bed, hands locked behind her golden head. Stretched over her eyes was what looked like a wet washcloth.
I closed the door, trying to make noise.
“I thought you’d never come,” Jan said. She reached up and took the cloth from her eyes. She’d obviously been trying to reduce the slight puffiness produced by tears. When she saw me, she sat up. “Oh, it’s you,” she said.
“You were expecting maybe Richard Burton?” I said. “You invited me, remember?”
“Not without knocking,” she said. “I don’t know you that well—yet.”
With the door to the Karados suite closed, the silence was deafening. I took a sip of my martini and watched the girl on the bed. She had pulled her knees up under her chin, wrapped her arms around her legs, and was staring back at me like a concentrated thinker. “The mind of a twelve-year-old and the instincts of a Lolita,” Gallivan had said.
“The key was on the other side of the door,” I said, “so I thought—”
“I know what you thought,” she said. She swung around and dropped her legs over the edge of the bed. They were long legs, lovely legs, and the stockings were so sheer and so exactly the color of her bronzed skin that I wouldn’t have been sure she was wearing any if I hadn’t seen the panty-tops while she was sitting up on the bed. “Can I have a sip of your drink?” she asked.
“Sure. I’ll go back and get you one of your own if you say the word.”
“I might lock the door on you,” she said.
“Then the person you were expecting couldn’t get in,” I said.
“You’re a smart schmuk,” she said.
“A little while ago you chose me to help out with your loneliness,” I said. I handed her my martini jug, still half full.
She took a very ladylike swallow and handed it back. “That was yesterday,” she said.
“That was an hour ago.”
“An hour ago is yesterday,” she said. “An hour ago is a year ago—Deadsville. Lived through and dead.”
“All right, let’s begin with now,” I said. “Can I help with your loneliness until the person you’re expecting arrives?”
“Do whatever you damn please,” she said. She got up and walked over to the window which overlooked the East River. She stood with her back to me, staring out at the early evening darkness. After a moment she spoke to me without turning. “How well do you know that old quack?” she asked.
“What old quack?”
“You know a lot of old quacks?” She turned, and the brown eyes were wide and dilated. “The doctor back there when Nikos had his Thing.”
“Dr. Partridge? I know him well.”
“He killed Nikos, you know.”
I felt, suddenly, very wide awake. “You’re off your rocker,” I said. “What do you mean he killed him?”
“Those pills were no good,” Jan said. “Oh, I don’t mean if they had been Nikos mightn’t have died. But he didn’t react at all. And there was no odor to them. I was giving him mouth-to-mouth, you know—and there was like nothing.”
“You’ve given him mouth-to-mouth before when he’d had an attack?”
“No, but I’ve been around him when he took nitro. You could smell it on his breath. That old quack crossed him up with something that was nothing.”
“It should be very easy to check out,” I said. “The drugstore that filled the prescription is right here in the hotel.”
“They’d cover up for the old quack.” She turned back to the window. “You know what?”
“What?”
“Nikos was murdered,” she said without turning. “That’s why I couldn’t go to the party—to celebrate a murder.” She turned around. “Well, why aren’t you screaming a defense of your killer friend?”
I drained my martini glass and put it down on the center table. “I’m winded,” I said.
“You don’t believe it?”
“If there was anything wrong with those pills, Jan, it wasn’t Doc Partridge’s doing,” I said. “That I’d swear to.”
“And I can’t prove it,” she said. “The Doc took the bottle away with him. What if I went to the police? So they ask your old quack for the bottle and the right pills are in it now. End of investigation. And maybe I can get sued—or something.” She turned away again. “You know why I’d been crying when you came in?”
“Because you were sad about Nikos.”
“Because I was so goddam mad at the goddam frustrating position I’m in,” she said. “I can’t prove anything and yet I know!”
It had happened just a little too fast for me to be sure what league I was playing in. She had the facts upside-down, but she was right about the core of the truth. Someone had made certain Nikos wouldn’t survive his next angina attack.
My mouth felt dry. “Have you thought of the possibility that someone else might have shifted pills on Nikos? Because, seriously, you can count Doc Partridge out. He’s old, but he’s top-flight.”
The brown eyes narrowed.
“I mean, if the pills were shifted,” I said.
“Whatever those pills were, I tell you they weren’t nitro,” she said. “I would have smelled them on his breath.”
Well I knew they hadn’t been nitro, so she was right about that.
“What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “How could anybody have shifted the pills? Nikos always carried them in his vest pocket. He wouldn’t have walked across the room without them. They were the difference to him between living and dying—and I can tell you, Mark, Nikos didn’t want to die.”
“What about at night—when he went to bed?”
“He kept them on the bedside table.” Then she exploded. “You stinker!” she said. “You think I spent my nights with him?”
“Did you?” I said. “If you open up a murder investigation, it’s a question that’ll be asked, Jan.”
“Damn you!” she said.
“Just what were your duties as secretary? You say you didn’t type—clerical work?”
“I was his appointment secretary,” she said. “I kept track of who he had to see—and like when.”
“He had access to this room,” I said. “Key on his side of the door.”
“He didn’t sleep very well,” she said. “Fits and starts, sort of. If he had an idea in the middle of the night, he’d come in and wake me up.”
“An idea about appointments?”
“I think I’ve decided you are a nasty jerk!” she said.
“You brought all this up, not I,” I said. “Let’s get back to the pill bottle on his bedside table. You spent your nights here, waiting for him to get ideas. Who spent time in the other room with him?”
“The key was on his side of the door,” she said. “These rooms are soundproofed. You ought to know that. You work here.”
“I’ll bet you’re a wonderful guesser,” I said.
“I think I’d like it if you went back to the party,” she said.
“Let me make something quite clear to you, baby,” I said. “If Nikos went to Doc Partridge for a prescription for nitro pills, that’s what he got. If the pills in the bottle when he had his attack weren’t nitro, then somebody shifted them. If you go to the police and open up this can of peas, you’re going to be asked all these questions by someone who’ll demand answers. And everyone else who was close to Nikos will be asked questions about him, about you, and about anyone else who was close to him. I’m not being a jerk. I want to help. Who are the very close ones who would come and go in Nikos’s bedroom?”
I could see her struggling with a decision. I watched her, thinking Chambrun would be pleased with the way I was handling things. She’d opened the door for me to ask questions I couldn’t have asked on my own.
“It wasn’t just nighttime,” Jan said.
“How’s that?”
“He spent a lot of time propped up in bed in ther
e—holding court, you might say. People came and went in droves. The hall door was left on the latch, so he wouldn’t have to get up to open it if anybody knocked or rang. We all knew if the hall door was locked that he wasn’t receiving.” Her brown eyes, which had been averted, turned to me. “What you’re thinking wasn’t so, Mark. Sex was a thing of the past with Nikos. Because of his heart—well, he was afraid. I mean—well, that’s what I mean.”
“Suppose you try saying all of what you mean,” I said.
She looked like a puzzled little child when that frown creased her forehead. “I’ve been with Nikos for almost two years,” she said, “sleeping, most of the time, in a room right next to him or near him. So, if he had ideas he wanted to make notes on—well, like I told you. But in all that time, Mark, he never put a hand on me—except maybe a little pat on the shoulder if he helped me on with a coat or something. Nothing sexy; no mauling or pawing. And I never saw any dirty-old-Mansville routines with any of the other girls. He liked to have us around; he loved youth; I think he must have been a pretty lusty kid when he was young. But he wasn’t young now. He didn’t look it, you know, but he was seventy-five.”
He hadn’t looked any age, I thought; a great, fat Buddha.
“I think like it was maybe after his heart trouble started, which was long before me, that he got interested in women’s fashions. It’s not like the dressmaking business your hard-up aunt used to go into in the old days. It’s a whole world in itself, you know?”
“Vaguely,” I said.
“Oh, it’s a great deal more than clothes and accessories—carefully matching dresses, cosmetics, and hairdos. It’s what you do, and where you go and what you own. Women who make the fashion scene, like Dodo Faraday, are photographed in Rome, in Acapulco, in Antigua; they’re shown reading expensive art books, talking Italian to Italians; they get their pictures taken leaving such In-places as La Grenouille, Le Mistral, or one or two other glamor haunts where they go for lunch and eat only a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You see what I mean?”
“Keep coming,” I said.
“This fashion world, Mark—it’s a symbol of youth, of better education, of wealth, of a special kind of sophistication, of a kind of special know-how. You don’t make the list of Ten Best-Dressed Women just by wearing the best clothes. You have to have the right attitudes, involve yourself in the right activities, and own the right possessions.”
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