Girl Watcher's Funeral

by Hugh Pentecost

“You should be,” I said. “Don’t trust anyone except the people in this room, you understand?”

  She nodded. Her fingers tightened on my hand and she looked past me to Hardy and Chambrun, who were coming her way. “Oh, God!” she whispered.

  I stood up beside her, my hand on her shoulder. I could feel her whole body trembling.

  Hardy can be a very tough cookie. I’ve seen him work on a suspect who wouldn’t play ball. He can also play it with sympathy.

  “At the moment I just want facts from you, Miss Morse,” he said. “Evidence seems to indicate that Rosemary Lewis either jumped or was thrown from that window. This is your room. You made the discovery. Will you be good enough to tell me exactly how it came about.”

  I gave her an encouraging little pat.

  “There’s a party next door, as you know,” Jan said, her voice unsteady. “I—I didn’t go to it. I know Mr. Karados wanted everyone to be gay, but I couldn’t get myself into the mood, somehow. I was in here when Mr. Haskell came in through the door from Nikos’s—Mr. Karados’s—bedroom. Then another friend of mine came in while Mark was here and I—well, I was rather rude to Mark.”

  “Go on, Miss Morse.”

  “Well, when my other friend left me, I went looking for Mark. I wanted to—to apologize for having been—rude to him. I—I found him eventually in the Trapeze Bar and we sat down at a table together. Then the house detective came—that man over there—and took Mark a few steps away from the table. I could hear what he said, though. That Rosey had—had killed herself—or been killed. I guess Mark was as stunned as I was. He didn’t come back to the table or explain anything. I sat there for a few minutes—like I couldn’t move. My legs wouldn’t work. Finally I—I came back up here—into this room. I—”

  “You came in from the hall, not through the suite next door?”

  “Yes.”

  “Letting yourself in with a key?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then the door from the outside hall was locked?”

  “Oh, yes. I always keep it locked. Like some complete stranger could just stroll in.”

  “So you came in here—”

  Jan nodded. “As soon as I switched on the lights, I saw something was wrong. I mean, the window was open—raised up above the air conditioner. I—I never opened the window, because the air conditioner made things fresher, like less pollution, if you see what I mean. So I went over to close it, and just as I started to pull it down, I saw—” She lowered her eyes. “I saw the piece of cloth from Rosey’s suit. I recognized it because it was a piece of tweed Nikos had bought in Ireland and given to her. From what I’d heard downstairs, I knew—I thought it must have happened to Rosey like in here. So I tried to call Mark on the phone and I was connected with you, Lieutenant.”

  Hardy’s face wore its sympathetic mask. “Now about the other door into the suite, Miss Morse. It was locked just now when Haskell knocked. The key was on this side. Had it been that way all evening?”

  “Oh, no,” Jan said. “Normally it wasn’t ever locked. Mr. Karados—well, he liked to be able to come and go. I never thought of locking it.”

  I saw Hardy’s face muscles tighten. “But it was locked just now.”

  “Oh, yes. I locked it,” Jan said. “Like I didn’t want people barging in and out after I found what I found and called you, Lieutenant.”

  “Before that it was unlocked?”

  “Oh, yes. Mark will tell it was unlocked when he came to see me earlier in the evening. It was never locked.”

  “Even when you left here and went looking for Haskell in the Trapeze?”

  “I never thought of locking that door.”

  “Then Miss Lewis could have come from the party into this room without any problems?”

  “Anyone could,” Jan said. “I mean like the door wasn’t locked.”

  “But would Miss Lewis have come in without a ‘May I?’ or a ‘please’?”

  “Of course. Rosey and I were really good friends. If she wanted to freshen up, or like go to the john with a little more privacy than she could get in there; or if—if she wanted to talk to someone away from all that noise—”

  “She wouldn’t have hesitated to use this room?”

  “Of course not. I mean, why should she?”

  “She didn’t ask you if she could use your room to talk to so-and-so?”

  “But no! I—I hadn’t seen her since before Nikos died in the Blue Lagoon.”

  “So any of those drunks in the next room could come in here without any problem. Weren’t you afraid someone might take something—jewelry, for example? I notice a case there on the bureau full of things that aren’t glass beads.”

  “The people at the party were my friends,” she said, as though that explained everything. “The jewelry—like they were all gifts from Nikos. Even if some of my friends are a little light-fingered, they wouldn’t take anything Nikos had given me. He would have been annoyed, and that could be dangerous.”

  Hardy looked at her as if she was slightly off her rocker. “But nobody asked to use your room for any reason at all?”

  “I keep telling you, Lieutenant, they didn’t have to ask. They could just like come in.”

  Chambrun gave Hardy a wry smile. “Being over twenty-five, Hardy, you’re probably not aware that in the new world everyone loves everyone. What’s mine is yours.”

  Hardy shook his head. “One thing seems fairly certain Miss Lewis came in here from the suite. And whoever came with her or joined her here also came that way. Someone must have seen.”

  “There’s been someone propped up on the bed in there for hours,” I said. “Suzie Sands and her boy friend.”

  Jan giggled, and for the first time she sounded like herself. “Don’t count on Suzie and Tommy to have seen anything,” she said. “Their eyes are like mirrors that only reflect one thing—like each other. That’s all they ever see is each other and how beautiful they are. When anyone mentions the Beautiful People, Suzie and Tommy think they’re being talked about. They don’t see or think about anything but themselves.”

  “Perhaps,” Hardy said, “we can prod them into a little reality. I’m sorry, Miss Morse, but I’m going to have to ask you to wait somewhere else. My men are going to have to go over this room and everything in it—top to bottom.”

  “I don’t want to go to the party!” Jan said.

  “The party is about to be over,” Hardy said, his mouth tightening.

  “You can take Miss Morse to my office,” Chambrun said. “And stay with her. You understand, Mark? She’s not to be left alone.”

  I understood.

  We walked down the corridor to the elevators, her arm tucked under mine, her sharp silver-tinted fingernails biting into my skin right through the jacket. Her long-legged stride matched mine. We didn’t talk because there were other people waiting for the elevator. Two elderly gents eyed Jan with a hungry gleam in their eyes.

  We got out at the second floor and went to Chambrun’s office. I started to use my key to get in and found the door wasn’t locked. Inside Miss Ruysdale was at her desk. She had been sent for by the Great Man to help hold the fort. He had evidently phoned her from upstairs, because she was expecting us. She gave me her Mona Lisa smile.

  “The main office is yours,” she said. “There’s coffee on the sideboard and liquor in it. If either of you would like something to eat, there are sandwich makings in the kitchenette.”

  I remembered I’d never gotten to my steak sandwich in the Trapeze. I hadn’t had anything since lunch, and it was now a few minutes past ten.

  “Mark seems to have forgotten his manners, Miss Morse,” the perfect secretary said. “I’m Miss Ruysdale. If there’s anything I can do for you, or get you—?”

  “I think I would like just a teeny-weeny drink,” Jan said.

  “Mark will take care of that for you. I was to tell you that it may be a long wait.”

  The lighting in Chambrun’s office was warm and soft. I went over
to the sideboard and made Jan a Scotch, her choice, and a Jack Daniels on the rocks for myself. Jan sat in one of the high-backed Florentine chairs, her long legs stretched out in front of her. In this room with its dark paneling, its deep, rich colors, its feeling of luxury, she reminded me, somehow, of a Matisse painting—the raspberry dress that clung to her lush figure, the soft gold of her hair, the honey shade of her skin, the wide brown eyes looking far away at something mysterious. I could feel a little pulse start to beat in my throat. Oh, I knew what I was refusing to think about, “You’re an old man of thirty-five,” I told myself. “You’re a bodyguard for a girl who might get herself killed. That’s all you are, chum.”

  I took her the Scotch. As she closed her fingers around the cold glass, her eyes contracted and she looked directly at me.

  “You hated me for what I suggested in the Trapeze Bar, didn’t you?” she said.

  I told myself I would now play this like an adult and not a hungry adolescent. “Of course I didn’t hate you,” I said. “I wasn’t exactly flattered by your offer. It was a form of apology, wasn’t it? You didn’t make me feel irresistible.”

  She sipped her Scotch, watching me. She was making some kind of assessment in her own terms. “You have a girl somewhere,” she said.

  “My dear child, I’m thirty-five years old. If I didn’t have a girl by this stage of the game, I’d be spending my spare time on a headshrinker’s couch.”

  “I mean an important girl,” Jan said. “Have I seen her around?”

  “She’s in Europe.”

  “Oh,” she said, and took another sip of her Scotch. “What’s she like?”

  “Shelda? She’s not unlike you in coloring, except her eyes are blue. She’s, I’d guess, five years older than you are. She’s my secretary here at the hotel. It’s no secret that we’ve been living together for two years, and that we’ll probably get married within the next two weeks.”

  I hoped my carelessness about it sounded sophisticated. I knew I was putting it out on the line as a kind of self-protective armor. In spite of it, the pulse in my throat was beating a little faster.

  “I never had any lasting relationship,” Jan said, looking into the mysterious distance again. “Except with Nikos—and that didn’t involve sex. Not like in the usual way.” She laughed softly. “I used to think of myself like a chicken on a rotisserie being watched by a hungry man who couldn’t eat me because he had an ulcer. I know just being around Nikos had sexual implications, but he was such a darling about it. He was never a lecherous old goat, pawing and touching and leering at me. He loved my being young because it reminded him of when he was young. Having me there helped him keep his dreams of the past alive.”

  “Of course you had your extracurricular activities,” I said, meaning to hurt.

  She turned her head to look at me. “I’m sorry you want me so much,” she said. “I mean I’m sorry there are things that stand in the way. I guess I have a kind of upside-down idea about sex.”

  “I’d love to hear what it is,” I said, feeling angry at her again.

  “The only thing there is between a man and a woman is sex,” she said. “They talk about books, and plays, and politics, and whatever, but all the time it’s a sex game. I’m not very bright, and I don’t really have like any small talk at all. So all the talk, and the dates, and the dinners and the drinks are just put-offs. I mean why go through all that before you come to the point? Because you will come to the point. So—so I come to the point. I knew what you wanted from me the first time you looked at me. Only things got in the way, like Nikos had his attack, and then I guessed about the pills, and then there was Mike—just at the wrong time. And then Rosey—”

  “But between rounds you managed to come to the point,” I said.

  “I don’t understand you,” she said. “Why are you outraged because an attractive girl says she’s willing to give you what you want?”

  “I’m not outraged,” I said, feeling outraged.

  She gave me a long, steady look. “The only other thing I can talk intelligently about is fashion—clothes. We can talk about high fashion, if you want, even if we’re thinking about sex.”

  I drew a deep breath and my mouth felt dry and that damn pulse was still beating in my throat. I walked away from her. “All right, let’s talk about fashion,” I said. “I don’t know anything about the person who’s in the center of this madhouse—Lazar. You’re all here because of him. You moved in to the Beaumont like an army—you, Nikos and all his satellites. Two people have been murdered and you’ll probably go right on, beating your drums, and laughing, and dancing. Lazar is what charges your batteries. What about him? All I’ve seen is a campy young man, propping himself up on the mantelpiece so that he won’t fall down from an overdose of martinis.”

  Jan laughed, as if she was enjoying herself. I was proving her point, of course. We would not talk about fashion and Max Lazar and we would continue to think about sex.

  “Don’t sell Maxie short,” she said. “You are the Wall Street–Madison Avenue kind of man, Mark. You are very male, and you wear nice conservative clothes, all gray, and brown, and blue. You are thirty-five. More than half the world is younger than you, Mark. So the young men let their hair grow long and turn peacock. That’s today, Mark. Nikos understood, and he was really old.”

  “Good for Nikos,” I said, feeling nasty. “He understood everything except that somebody was planning to kill him.”

  “Poor Nikos,” she said.

  “Lazar was his boy,” I said.

  “You are angry because Maxie is different from you,” Jan said. “You’re angry because I’m different from your girl in Europe. Do I have to like educate you, Mark?”

  She wasn’t as dumb as she pretended. “Go ahead, educate me,” I said.

  “Just because Maxie wears tight pants, and beads, and no socks on his feet doesn’t mean he’s a homo. He’s camp, not homo. You use both words to mean the same thing. Camp is taste; homosexuality is a sexual problem. Camp is against being serious; it likes being eccentric especially if it’s vulgar and banal; it likes old styles that are funny now, like feather boas and beaded dresses, and old movies. Batman in his Batman outfit is camp; Batman as the millionaire philanthropist is square—is you, Mark.”

  “Thanks for everything,” I said.

  “A lot of homosexuals are camps, but not all camps are homos. Maxie is camp, not homo.” She smiled faintly. “He’s all man, and don’t you forget it.”

  So little Jan had “come to the point” with Maxie, I thought.

  “You don’t just drape materials on a dressmaker’s dummy to come up with fashion,” Jan said. “A designer like Maxie has to understand today’s woman. He has to be a historian, and an economist, and a sociologist, and a psychologist. He doesn’t come up with what he wants; he comes up with what women want. Oh, they don’t know what they want till he comes up with it, but if he was wrong, they’d leave him and his ship to sink. Only Maxie is never wrong, because he’s all the things I said he had to be, plus he’s a man and he knows what women’s clothes have to do with what we’re not supposed to talk about.”

  “Sex.”

  “Yes, Mark.”

  “Go on about this superior male.”

  “Maxie comes up with a design and says ‘this is it.’ But then there has to be money to manufacture and promote; that’s where Nikos comes in. Then the clothes have to be properly shown. That’s where Monica Strong comes in. You watch on Friday. The clothes will come out, worn by Suzie Sands, and a girl who looks like Julie Christie, and a girl who looks like Audrey Hepburn, full of life and health and joy, and everyone in the room will begin to feel better, and their hearts will beat faster, and they’ll already feel ashamed at the idea of walking out on the street in anything but a Max Lazar creation. Monica knows how to stage it, and Suzie and the other girls know how to sell it. But if Maxie wasn’t right, if he wasn’t exactly Today, the show would flop.”

  “And is he Today?�
�

  “For certain,” Jan said. “Would Nikos invest a half million dollars in him if he wasn’t?”

  I looked at my glass. It was empty. I looked at Jan. We were going to have to find something else to talk about, and fast.

  I went over to the sideboard and poured myself another Jack Daniels. I looked at her glass and saw it was still three quarters full. I took two steps toward her. It was very mathematical. I mustn’t go too close.

  “I’ve heard a lot from Tim Gallivan and Rosey and you about Nikos’s private dislike for vulgarity,” I said. “You say camp likes vulgarity. Did Nikos and Lazar clash? Did Nikos censor his designs?”

  Jan laughed. “You don’t know Maxie,” she said. “He’d throw a million dollars in the wastebasket before he’d let anyone tell him how to create.”

  “But if Nikos was riding him, maybe he’d figure he could put up with it for awhile if he knew it was going to end; if he knew that the next time Nikos had an attack it would be all over. Then, no more censorship and another half a million dollars to go on with his business. According to Gallivan, that’s what’s in Nikos’s will for your Maxie.”

  Jan stared at me steadily.

  “The same idea occurred to Rosey,” I said. “She went back to the party and she told your Maxie that she wanted to talk to him, and they went to your room. Then she laid it on the line for him. Maybe she remembered something, like a time she saw him fooling with the pill bottle. And so your all-male Maxie heaved her out the window, and came back to his mantelpiece and his martini, and his admiring Scarsdale housewives.”

  Jan continued to stare at me, her eyes widening.

  “Your Maxie would throw a million dollars in the waste-basket if anyone interfered with him, you said. So what about a couple of lives? Would he hesitate?”

  She still didn’t speak. And then I did something I didn’t mean to do, not then, not ever. I went over to her chair, took both her hands in mine and pulled her up onto her feet. I pulled her hard against me and I kissed her. It was long, and sweet, and non-acrobatic. I felt as though I was drowning and enjoying it.

  I was aware of a loud voice out in Miss Ruysdale’s office. The hell with it. Miss Ruysdale could take care of any situation I could imagine. I wanted to whisper things to this astonishing girl, but I didn’t want to go away from her warm, soft mouth.