Girl Watcher's Funeral

by Hugh Pentecost

  And then the office door burst open and I had to disengage, reluctantly.

  Standing there, face as white as chalk, wearing his chocolate-brown ensemble, was Michael Faraday. His eyes were red with rage. His lithe, graceful, powerful body was balanced on the balls of his feet. And then he came at us, jet-propelled. It was so fast I was only just able to push Jan away toward her chair.

  He never spoke a word. He just came at me, swinging both murderous fists. I remember raising my hands in an absurd attempt to ward off that first punch. It smashed through my guard as though it was a paper doily. I caught it flush on the chin, and I had no legs. I sat down on the Oriental rug, hard. I heard Jan scream.

  I said something meaningless like, “Now, wait a minute!”

  I was on my feet because he pulled me up. I tried to clinch, looking over at his shoulder. Miss Ruysdale must be getting help. I hoped she wouldn’t stop for a short beer, because I knew, instinctively, that Faraday was going to kill me. He had blown his stack so far that nothing would stop him. I kicked at his shins, but they might have been encased in armor for all the good it did. I tasted blood that was filling my mouth, and he was out of the clinch and beating me down to the floor like a man armed with iron maces. I think I screamed, because I was completely helpless in the path of a murder machine. Roman candles went off in front of my eyes; I felt an agonizing succession of blows at my ribs and stomach.

  And then, mercifully, the lights went out.

  2

  I SMELLED DRUGSTORE SMELLS, antiseptic smells. Someone was touching my cheekbone with something, gently, but there was the stinging pain of something put on a cut.

  “I think he’s coming around,” I heard Doc Partridge say. You’d know his voice anywhere. He always sounds angry with the patient, as though he had no right to be hurt or sick.

  I tried moving, and it was unpleasant. It was all coming back. I saw Faraday’s murderous red eyes bearing down on me. I tried opening my own eyes, but only one of them seemed to work. The room came into a kind of blurred focus.

  I was stretched out on the daybed in Chambrun’s dressing room, just off the office. I saw Chambrun, his face looking as if it was carved out of stone, with Jerry Dodd just behind him. I tried to grin. My lips felt thick and swollen.

  “Thanks for getting here,” I said.

  Doc Partridge, who had been bent close to me, straightened up. “Nothing too serious—unless there are internal injuries,” he said. “Bruises, cuts—maybe a slight concussion.”

  “What happened, Mark?” Chambrun asked in a cold, hard voice.

  “It—it was all so quick,” I said. “Miss Ruysdale can tell you better than I can,” I said. “He came barging in here and it was all so quick—”

  “Ruysdale can’t tell us anything,” Chambrun interrupted. “She’s in the ICU at the hospital with a possible fractured skull. I found her—and you. We have no idea what happened.”

  He never called her “Miss” Ruysdale—just “Ruysdale,” and yet I knew she was closer to him than anyone on the staff. There were rumors in the back pantries that if there was a woman in Chambrun’s life, it was Ruysdale. Don’t get me wrong. I know he was concerned about me, but Ruysdale was much more intimately close.

  “Let’s have it quickly, Mark, without frills,” Jerry Dodd said.

  “I was in here with Jan Morse. We were—having a drink.” No reason to tell them any more than that. Faraday hadn’t exploded when he saw me kissing Jan. He’d been under a full head of steam long before that. “I heard someone shouting at Miss Ruysdale in the outer office, and then the door burst open and Faraday came charging in. He never even said a word. He just ran at me like a runaway tank. I never really had a chance to get my hands up before he was destroying me.

  The minute I mentioned Faraday’s name, Jerry was gone, without waiting to hear the rest.

  “What about Miss Morse?” Chambrun asked.

  “She’s gone?”

  “There was no one here but Ruysdale and you.”

  “I was out like a light almost before I knew what was happening,” I said.

  “Looks like he was stomped on after he was down,” the old doctor said. “We better have X-rays of your insides, Mark.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “I feel great.”

  I tried sitting up, and every inch of me hurt. But I made it. I remember fumbling in my pocket for a cigarette. It seemed the nonchalant thing to do. Chambrun took a step toward me and flicked on his lighter.

  “I’d appreciate it if you could go to the hospital, Doctor,” he said. “I’d feel better if I knew I wasn’t getting any double-talk about Ruysdale’s condition.”

  “Sure, Pierre, I’ll go at once,” Partridge said. He glared at me. “You ought to come along with me.”

  “I’ll ride it out till morning, Doc,” I said. “It doesn’t feel like anything’s broken. Just a little bent. Mr. Chambrun may need me.”

  “Your funeral,” Partridge said, and stalked away.

  “You think you can make it into the next room?” Chambrun asked when we were alone.

  “Why not? I’m really fine,” I said.

  I stood up, and the room started to revolve. I thought my knees were going to buckle and I hung onto the back of a chair. I stood there for a moment, with Chambrun watching me closely, and then the room leveled off and stayed put. I followed him, gingerly, into the office. One of the big Florentine chairs was overturned. Aside from that there was no sign of the fight. Chambrun went over to the sideboard and made me a Jack Daniels on the rocks and poured himself a cup of Turkish coffee. He brought the drink and his coffee back to the desk and sat down in his deep armchair. His eyes were little black slits in their pouches.

  “What the hell were you doing with Miss Morse?” he asked in an unfriendly voice.

  For him, the truth. “I was kissing her when he smashed in here,” I said. “But that isn’t what set him off. I heard him yelling at Miss Ruysdale before he ever came in here.”

  “That bastard!” Chambrun said, his voice suddenly unsteady with anger. “Her jaw is broken, Mark. He evidently knocked her over backwards and she struck her head on the corner of the desk. So help me God—” He let it ride there, his face working.

  “It was like something you wouldn’t believe,” I said. “The door nearly came off its hinges when he smashed his way in. He never stopped moving. Just came right at me.”

  “What do you know about him and the Morse girl?”

  “They’re a thing,” I said. “How did he know she was here?”

  “It was no secret,” Chambrun said. “He might have asked one of Hardy’s men. We didn’t make a public point of the fact that she might be in danger. You brought her down here while the cops were going over her room. Was it enough of a ‘thing’ for him to go berserk when he heard she was alone with another man?”

  “Something set him off in a big way,” I said.

  The house phone rang on Chambrun’s desk and he picked it up and answered. He listened, frowning, and then said, “Thanks, Jerry.” He replaced the receiver.

  “Faraday left the hotel with the Morse girl half an hour ago. Mike Maggio and Waters both saw them go.”

  Maggio is the night bell captain, and Waters is the doorman.

  “The last time I was at the party in nineteen-A, Mrs. Faraday was there,” I said. “She’s obviously not unaware. She might know where he hides out with his extra women.”

  “Can you make it?” Chambrun asked.

  “Sure,” I said. The Jack Daniels seemed to have worked a small miracle on my tender insides.

  Chambrun stood up. “When I come face to face with that sonofabitch, he’s going to discover there are ways to be crushed that don’t involve muscle!”

  The party was dead, a corpse. Hardy’s men had put a blight on it with the word about Rosey Lewis. The red drums and the steel guitar were on chairs in the corner, but no musicians. The green walls with their Flemish paintings looked mournful. The Scarsdale housewives ha
d evaporated. I learned later that all the names and addresses had been carefully noted, that no one was supposed to leave the hotel, but that they’d been given permission to go somewhere for food—which I suspected everyone needed to combat martini anesthesia.

  There were still two people in the room, standing over by the bar. I had been wrong about Max Lazar. He could still navigate and he was making himself a fresh martini on the rocks. Monica Strong was with him. Monica’s eyes widened when she saw me.

  “What on earth happened to you?” she asked.

  I hadn’t taken time to look at myself in the mirror. I discovered later I looked like Kirk Douglas after his last beating in The Champion—swollen eye, cut cheekbone, thick lip.

  “I got mixed up with a stone-crusher,” I said. “We’re looking for Dodo Faraday.”

  “Oh,” Monica said, as though that explained everything. “She was here. She may have joined some of the others in a search for something more nourishing than caviar.” Her eyes narrowed. “Did Mike do that to you?”

  “Mike—and six other guys, naturally,” I said.

  “You should learn to stay away from rabbit women,” Monica said. She turned to Chambrun. “There seems to be some sort of conspiracy against our getting our show on the road, Mr. Chambrun. How much more can happen?”

  He looked at her as though he didn’t quite believe what he’d heard.

  Max Lazar had joined us. He held a glass in one hand, and with the other he stroked the rich fur of his cowboy vest. I thought he must be very drunk, but he was quite steady on his pins.

  “I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Chambrun,” he said. It was Oxford English with a slight accent which I took to be French. He spoke carefully, as if to make certain he didn’t slur the words. “This is all a disaster beyond belief. Poor Rosey. She was a doll.”

  “You plan to go ahead with Friday’s event?” Chambrun asked.

  Lazar raised a hand to stroke his long, curly hair. “It’s hard to think of going on,” he said. “I remember, when President Kennedy was assassinated, I thought it was the end of the world. But after a day of mourning it was business as usual. The investment is enormous. We have models under contract who will not be available at another time. Nikos would have wanted us to go ahead. He planned for it in case anything happened to him. Rosey would feel the same way, I think.”

  “It’s nice for you that you can justify,” Chambrun said. “You think Mrs. Faraday is somewhere else in the hotel?”

  “I don’t know who’s left in the bedroom,” Monica said.

  Chambrun made a little gesture with his hand and I went to see. The look-alikes were still on the bed, both of them asleep now. On a chair in the corner, his gray head bent, was Zach Chambers. He had forgotten about Merle Oberon. He was crying like a small child, tears streaming down his face, his whole body convulsed with sobs. Kneeling beside him was a gorgeous girl who must be, I thought, the one Jan had referred to as looking like Julie Christie.

  “Zach, you mustn’t!” she kept saying over and over.

  “She was so special,” Chambers choked out. “So not bitchy. She was so clean and healthy, so attractive and sporty—like a—like a Cristina Ford or a Happy Rockefeller. Not all bedroomy and sexy—but blooming. Oh, God, Laura, I loved her so much—in a very special way. I’d have let a truck run over me if she’d asked. She never treated me as though I was some kind of faggoty worm from under a rock. She treated me like I was just like anyone else. Oh, God!”

  “You mustn’t cry, Zach,” Laura pleaded.

  There was no one else in the room. I tried the john to be sure. Dodo was among the missing. I went back to report.

  Chambrun was still standing with Monica and Max Lazar. I told him Dodo was gone.

  “You’ll probably find her in the Blue Lagoon,” Lazar said. “It’s her favorite place to dine. She’s asked me many times, but unfortunately I have never been able to accept—thanks to you, Mr. Chambrun.”

  Chambrun’s eyebrows rose.

  “Silly rule about neckties,” Lazar said. “To me neckties are an abortion. That Spanish grandee who presides over the Blue Lagoon stands guard over your Victorian tastes, Mr. Chambrun.”

  “There has to be someplace in the hotel where gentlemen won’t be embarrassed because they’re not wearing beads,” Chambrun said. He looked at me. “Miss Strong tells me that outbursts of maniacal rage are part of Faraday’s history. It seems his custom is to buy his way out of trouble when the storm clears.”

  “There was a waiter in a Paris restaurant,”‘ Lazar said. “A wheelchair case as a result. Mike settled a huge sum on him to avoid criminal prosecution.” He gave me a tired smile. “You may have found a way to get rich, Haskell.”

  “Faraday is headed for a new experience,” Chambrun said, his face grim. “I think we should find Mrs. Faraday, Mark. She may save us time.”

  We left the dead party and whooshed down in an express elevator to the lobby. Chambrun wasn’t in a mood for conversation. As we walked away from the elevator and started toward the Blue Lagoon, Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, waylaid us. Mike has the old-young face of a Sicilian bandit.

  “Been trying to find you, Mr. Chambrun,” he said. “Jerry says to tell you he’s got the Faraday dame in the front office.”

  As usual, Jerry wasn’t behind the times. There is a small office back of the reception desk in the main lobby. It isn’t used by anyone in particular. It’s a place to take a guest who has a complaint or wants a check cashed, or to interview the banquet manager about a party. It’s simply furnished with a flat-topped desk, several small upholstered armchairs, the wall decorated with photographs of famous persons and parties dating back over the years.

  Dodo Faraday was sitting in one of the chairs, her hands locked tightly together in her lap. That odd, hazy, drunken look had left her. She was staring straight ahead at the wall. Jerry was sitting on the edge of the desk fiddling with a cigarette. He glanced up as we came in.

  “I thought Mrs. Faraday might cut some corners for us,” he said, “but she’s not being very cooperative.”

  “I was taken away from my dinner, like a criminal,” Dodo said, “brought in here, and—” She stopped. I had come into her line of vision. “Oh, my God!” she said. “Mike did that to you?”

  “And my secretary—a woman—is in the hospital with a broken jaw and a possible fractured skull,” Chambrun said. “I recommend to you that you help, Mrs. Faraday.”

  “Please,” she said. “I’ve been so angry I haven’t really been listening to what he’s been saying.” She nodded toward Jerry. “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Gloves off, Mrs. Faraday,” Chambrun said. “We understand your husband’s having an affair with a girl named Jan Morse.”

  Her voice turned bitter. “Oh, it’s on the electric sign around the Times Building every night,” she said. “The whole world knows. Except Nikos. Poor Nikos. They managed to keep it from him.”

  “The police discovered that Rosemary Lewis jumped or was thrown from the window in Jan Morse’s room,” Chambrun said. “Mark took Miss Morse down to my office to wait while the police went over her room on the nineteenth floor. Your husband appeared there, Mrs. Faraday, slugged my secretary, who tried to intercept him, broke into my office and beat Mark into unconsciousness. Then he left the hotel—with Jan Morse. Where would he be likely to take her?”

  “Oh, God,” she said, and lowered her eyes.

  “Apparently the girl went with him willingly. She wasn’t dragged out by the hair of her head, Mrs. Faraday. Where would they be likely to go?”

  Dodo looked up slowly, and two great tears rolled down her cheeks. “You’d think I’d be ready to help to get back at him,” she said. “You’re wondering why I didn’t tell Nikos, who could have destroyed them both. You’re wondering why Jan went off with him, not protesting, leaving two badly hurt people behind.”

  “I just want to find him, Mrs. Faraday,” Chambrun said.

&nbs
p; “Because I’m afraid for my life—and so is Jan,” Dodo said. She looked at me. “Maybe Mr. Haskell can tell you what he’s like. Mike is an unbelievable sadist, Mr. Chambrun. If I told you the things he’s done to me, you wouldn’t believe me. I’ve wanted to run, to leave him, to go to the other side of the world. It wouldn’t be any use. He’d follow me, he’d find me, and in the end he’d kill me. If I wasn’t afraid to die, I’d run the risk. That’s why Jan went with him, in the face of everything. She knew if she didn’t, she’d be confronted with—with God knows what.”

  “That makes it all the more urgent for us to find him,” Chambrun said.

  “I can only tell you what you’d find out without my help,” she said. “We have a house at Fifth Avenue and Ninetieth Street.”

  “He’d take another woman there?”

  Her laughter had a jangling sound to it. “The house has been full of women for all of our married lives!” she said. “I meet them in the hallways. I find them in my breakfast room. They don’t laugh at me. They’ve found out that Mike is no laughing matter.”

  “Did you ever see Jan there?” I asked.

  “No, Mike had to play it cautiously with her because of Nikos.”

  “Does Jan Morse have a place in town of her own?”

  “Didn’t you know, Mr. Chambrun? Jan Morse was Nikos’s property. Where he lived, she lived. If there was anyplace she’d call home, it would be Nikos’s yacht, which is anchored somewhere in the Hudson.”

  “Would they go there?”

  Dodo shook her head. “She was Nikos’s girl. The Greek pirates who run the yacht for Nikos would tear Mike apart if they found him fooling with Nikos’s girl.”

  “Even after Nikos was dead?”

  “Nikos is not dead to the people who loved him, Mr. Chambrun,” Dodo said. “I wasn’t one of his favorites or I might have gone to him for help. He was a man you could count on in trouble. I’ve heard you know that, Mr. Chambrun.”