Scimitar

by Ed McBain

  At four o’clock that afternoon, Sammy Leone backed the truck into the Hilton’s loading dock on West Fifty-third Street, climbed down from behind the wheel, walked directly to the steps leading up to the platform, and rang the bell set in the metal jamb that framed the service doors. A uniformed security guard opened one of the doors, recognized Sammy, said, “Hot enough for you?” and beckoned him in.

  It was cooler inside, but not much. The service doors were in constant use, and each time one of them was opened, a blast of hot air rushed in to dilute the effects of the air-conditioning. Most of the hotel’s soiled linens had already been separated into rolling canvas bins provided by Advance, separately brimming with towels and washcloths, sheets and pillow cases, tablecloths and napkins. The laundry from the Hilton alone would fill the entire back of Sammy’s truck; it was straight back to the Bronx when he finished here. He wheeled the first of the bins out onto the loading platform, opened the truck doors, and rolled the bin deep into the truck. This is pneumonia weather, he was thinking. You go from air-conditioning to heat and then back to air-conditioning again. He was starting to wheel the second of the bins out to the truck when he noticed a Hilton laundry cart sitting near the elevator doors.

  “What’s that?” he asked the security guard.

  “Just came down,” the guard said.

  “Anybody separated it yet?”

  “Don’t look that way.”

  “Shit,” Leone said, and tried to remember what he’d just wheeled outside. Towels? Sheets? “This stuff’s supposed to be separated before I get here,” he said.

  “They usually do that over by the chutes,” the security guard said, and gestured vaguely toward some inner recess of the service level.

  Leone wheeled the cart over to where the company bins were standing. Wearily, he began separating the laundry, sheets here, towels there, muttering about people not doing the goddamn jobs they were supposed to do, napkins in this one, washcloths over there, sheets here, reaching blindly into the cart behind him, identifying whatever he pulled out, and tossing it into its appropriate bin. He reached into the cart again, touched something sticky, and yanked his hand back.

  It was covered with blood.

  He looked into the cart.

  A man was lying on top of the remaining laundry.

  An icepick was sticking out of his left eye.

  From the bedroom window of the beach house she’d received in settlement from The Late Colonel, Carolyn Fremont looked down at the rear of the house next door. The man she’d seen on the deck not an hour ago was out back there, examining the potting table under the deck. Late afternoon sunlight struck his dark hair, glanced off the high cheekbones and smooth planes of his face. How on earth could any of Martin Hackett’s friends be quite so attractive?

  Hackett himself was a crashing uneducated bore, a man who’d made his fortune selling live Maine lobsters to restaurants and fish markets. Whenever he discussed lobsters, and he did so with the fervor of a true believer, he reminded you that the lobsters were live, as if anyone would want to buy a dead Maine lobster. The people he invited as house guests were either restaurateurs or somehow connected otherwise to fish and other types of seafood. A total lot of bores.

  The dark stranger turned away from the potting table, his brow furrowed. Was he going to pot some growing things? Did he have a green thumb, the little darling? She was suddenly glad her daughter hadn’t joined her here in Westhampton. Being alone here would be a definite advantage should Martin’s guest decide to stay awhile. Crony of the Lobster King, here are the keys, pal, enjoy yourself. But where was Martin when a person needed him? Carolyn, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, he’s …

  Yes, what? Another restaurant owner, another big fisherman?

  He’ll be here for …

  How long? A week, ten days, the entire summer, oh God, wouldn’t that be wonderful!

  His name is …

  What? Who?

  The way he’d stared at her. Eyes devouring her. She’d stared right back at him, daring him. You want to look at me? Fine, go right ahead. How do you like it? Want some of it? Fat chance. Eat your heart out.

  She looked at the clock.

  Almost four-thirty.

  The cocktail party at the Cabots was supposed to begin at six. Nobody in the Hamptons was ever on time, especially to a cocktail party, but she hadn’t even showered yet.

  She took one last look at him …

  He was heading back into the house now …

  … and wondered what his favorite color was.

  Ozzie Carruthers was supposed to be relieved at five o’clock, and he did not particularly welcome a visit from the Secret Service at fifteen minutes before quitting time. The two men resembled lean bookends. Both of them wearing blue suits that looked entirely too heavy for this weather. White shirts. Dark ties. As somber a pair as he’d ever met. One of them introduced himself as Agent Dobbs, the other as Agent Dawson. The men shook hands all around, and then Carruthers asked how he could help them. He could not resist looking up at the wall clock, a covert glance that was not wasted on Dobbs, who had been trained to detect the slightest suspicious movement in a crowd.

  “Miss Lubenthal in the Catering Department told us you’d be in charge of hotel security on the night of the party,” Dobbs said.

  “The Canada Day affair,” Dawson said.

  “That’s right,” Carruthers said.

  He was a former Marine who kept himself in shape with thrice-weekly visits to Nautilus, where he worked out on the machines and with free weights as well. Carruthers gauged a man’s worth by his muscles, and these guys looked entirely too flimsy for the job; these guys could press twenty pounds between them, he’d be surprised.

  “The Canadian Consulate has provided us with a seating arrangement,” Dobbs said, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket. “What we’d like to …”

  “They sent me one, too,” Carruthers said, and unrolled a larger plan than the reduced Xerox copy Dobbs took from his pocket.

  “What we’d like to do,” Dobbs said, unintimidated, “is check the room the function’ll be in, see where we can put our people for the best possible security.”

  “Happy to show it to you,” Carruthers said.

  He was thinking this was a case of overload, pure and simple. Security for the Canadian Prime Minister, security for the Mexican President and the former British P.M. and now Secret Service protection for …

  “Our regular people here in New York’ll be carrying the brunt of it,” Dobbs said, as if reading his mind. “We’re just a team of six, lend them a hand.”

  “Big affair like this one,” Dawson said, “lots of people, lots of opportunity for mischief.”

  “Well, we don’t get too much mischief here at the Plaza,” Carruthers said, sounding miffed.

  “’Specially when there’ll be such big guns here,” Dawson said, totally oblivious.

  “Come on, I’ll show you the room,” Carruthers said.

  She was writing him a long letter when the telephone rang. She was telling him that if he didn’t appreciate her as a person, if he thought all he could do was walk out whenever he felt like it, disappear into thin air like a ghost or something, then she wanted nothing further to do with him. Her concentration was intense; when the phone rang, she almost jumped out of her skin. She went from her desk to the bedside table, and picked up the receiver. On the wall alongside her desk, there was a poster of Boy George, a holdover from her teeny-bopper days. Sonny made her feel like a damn teeny-bopper all over again.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “I know it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other …”

  Geoffrey Turner.

  “… and I must apologize for not having called sooner …”

  Little touch of humor there; she’d left him at the consulate not four hours ago.

  “… but what are you doing tonight?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “I’d like
to see you,” he said.

  “You just saw me,” she said.

  “I know.”

  A long silence.

  “Elita …”

  The first time he’d said her name.

  It sounded very British on his tongue.

  Elita.

  “May I see you tonight?”

  But suppose Sonny calls? she thought.

  “Elita?”

  “What time?” she asked.

  The first thing Dobbs noticed were the steps in the alcove off the far corner of the room.

  “Where do they go?” he asked.

  “Upstairs,” Carruthers said.

  “What’s up there?”

  “Business offices.”

  “Any access to other parts of the hotel?”

  “Sure.”

  “What kind?”

  “An elevator. And fire stairs down the hall.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Dobbs said.

  Sonny had spread the various ID cards on the dining room table, where they could catch the late afternoon sun streaming through the windows. Live at Five had just come on. A black woman named Sue Simmons seemed to be running the show, never mind the blond guy with her. Telling all about the detective who’d been found in a laundry basket at the Hilton Hotel this afternoon. Sonny kept studying the fake ID cards.

  The one for the Plaza was particularly good. So were the two Detective Division cards. He’d never seen an FBI card, but the seal looked legit and McDermott undoubtedly had copied it from a real one.

  A young woman named Perri Peltz was now doing a remote outside the loading platform at the Hilton. She was here with Lieutenant Hogan, she was saying, of Homicide North. Hogan was a short man with a face reddened by the heat. His shirt collar looked too tight. He was wearing a hat, Sonny couldn’t believe it. He was telling Perri Peltz that Allan Santorini had been with Homicide North for twelve years. Good detective, good man.

  “Any idea what he was doing here at the Hilton?” Perri Peltz asked.

  “None at all.”

  “Was he conducting an investigation that might have brought him here?”

  “I have no idea. The manager tells me Santorini spoke to him earlier today, but …”

  Uh-oh, Sonny thought.

  “What about?”

  “He wanted to know who was in room 2312.”

  “Have you learned anything about that?”

  “The room was registered to a man named Albert Gomez.”

  Goodbye, Albert, Sonny thought.

  “Hispanic?” Perri Peltz asked.

  “Possibly. The bellhop who carried his bag up described a man some five feet ten inches tall …”

  Eleven, Sonny thought.

  “… weighing about a hundred and seventy pounds …”

  Sixty-five.

  “… with light eyes and dark hair.”

  “Was Detective Santorini armed?” Perri Peltz asked.

  “He was.”

  “But as I understand it, when his body was found, the gun was still holstered, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, it was,” Hogan said, and shook his head. “Santorini was an experienced detective. How anyone could have taken him so completely by surprise …” He shook his head again.

  Sonny grinned.

  He had stabbed him in the eye the moment he’d entered the room.

  “Is it your opinion that the murder took place where the body was found?” Perri Peltz asked.

  “I would rather not comment on that,” Hogan said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Perri Peltz said, and turned away from him to look directly into the camera. “This is Perri Peltz, News Four, New York,” she said, “reporting from outside the Hilton Hotel on Fifty-third Street and Sixth Avenue. Back to you, Chuck.”

  Chuck was the blond guy—Chuck Scarborough, a good code name for a Scimitar agent. He began talking about New York City’s deficit. Sonny watched Sue Simmons trying to look solemn about it all, but managing only to look cute as hell. He reached over to snap off the set, gathered up the cards, and returned them to the leather Mark Cross portfolio. He was carrying it toward the steps leading upstairs to the bedroom when a knock sounded at the front door.

  “Who is it?” he called.

  “Carolyn,” a woman answered.

  “Just a moment, please,” Sonny said. He dropped the portfolio on the lowermost step, where he’d remember it later, went to the door, unlocked it, and opened it wide.

  The woman he’d seen naked on the deck earlier today was standing there.

  Wearing a white dress.

  High-heeled, ankle-strapped white sandals.

  Blond and tanned and blue-eyed.

  “Hi,” she said, sounding surprised. “Is Martin home?”

  “I’m sorry, no, he isn’t,” Sonny said.

  She was trying to peer into the house, past his shoulder. Blue eyes looking faintly suspicious. Was it possible she didn’t recognize him as the same man who’d …?

  “I’m Scott Hamilton,” he said. “Martin’s house guest.”

  “Carolyn Fremont,” she said.

  “How do you do?” he said, and extended his hand. She took it. Their eyes met. Locked.

  “I live right next door,” she said. “I was on my way to a party …”

  He was still holding her hand. Eyes sweeping her body. Lingering on the swell of her breasts in the low-cut white dress.

  “… at the Cabots, and I thought Martin might have been invited, too. He knows them …”

  Still holding her hand.

  “I thought we could walk over …”

  His hand warm around hers.

  “… together.”

  Her sentence trailed.

  She shrugged like a little girl.

  Retrieved her hand.

  Shrugged again.

  “Well,” she said.

  “Won’t I do?” he said.

  They had come back down to the Baroque Room again.

  “We’ll want to put one of our men at the bottom of those steps and another one at the top,” Dobbs told Carruthers.

  “Block access in and out of the room that way,” Dawson said.

  Carruthers was thinking they’d only be doing what ten thousand security people had done before them.

  “You might want to think about putting somebody at that door coming from the pantry, too,” he suggested.

  This had also been done ten thousand times before.

  “Good idea,” Dawson said.

  “Way I’ve got it,” Carruthers said, “cocktails’ll be served at seven, dinner at eight, dancing afterwards. What time do you expect …?”

  “Around six-thirty,” Dobbs said. “Check out the room and anything leading into it.”

  “I was asking about him. What time do you think he’ll be getting here?”

  “Our New York people’ll have that information. I’ll let you know sometime tomorrow.”

  “I want to make sure he gets a nice welcome,” Carruthers said, and smiled. “Lots of people are mighty fond of that man.”

  “I’ll bet,” Dobbs said.

  Sunset was expected at seven thirty-three.

  In the Hamptons, a cocktail party invitation for six P.M. was usually honored at seven. People drifted in and out in a variety of costumes. Those who planned to go home after the drinks and finger food generally arrived in casual beachwear ranging from jeans to shorts to—on one memorable occasion in Easthampton—a woman wearing only high heels, a bikini bottom, and a gold chainlink top she’d purchased in the city of Rome. Those who planned to go on to dinner at one of the local eateries came dressed in what some of the hostesses called Casual Elegant. For the men, this usually meant blue blazer, pale slacks, and white shirt open at the throat, with or without a colorful ascot. Some women actually managed to look both casual and elegant. Others, loaded for bear the way Carolyn was tonight, arrived in more blatantly seductive outfits; the white dress was recklessly low-cut, tight across the behind, and high on the leg.
Sonny was wearing white slacks and a purple, crew-necked Ralph Lauren shirt.

  On the deck of the Cabot house tonight—while the assembled guests, some fifty in all, waited to “ooh” and “ahh” yet another magnificent sunset, ho-hum—the talk was mostly about the murder that had taken place at the Hilton Hotel.

  A woman who introduced herself as Dr. Sylvia Hirsch—who Sonny later learned from Carolyn was a noted psychiatrist—was holding forth on the theory that the murder had been homosexually motivated, an icepick being the weapon of choice in such murders, although she was surprised the victim’s hands hadn’t been tied behind his back with a wire hanger.

  “Mr. Gomez?” he’d said.

  “Yes, come in, won’t you, please?” Sonny said.

  The icepick behind his back. From the refrigerator bar. The door to the room closing. The detective turning toward him.

  “It’s very nice of you to …”

  The icepick thrusting.

  “Because an icepick is a phallic weapon,” Dr. Hirsch said.

  “I thought a knife was supposed to be phallic,” someone said.

  “Also,” Dr. Hirsch said, with a curt nod. She had a faint German accent. The word came out “Ahlzo.”

  A man whom Carolyn introduced as Buddy Johnson of CBS News told Dr. Hirsch—and the several other people who were now gathered to hear the inside story—that his people had come up with some particularly grisly footage that the police wouldn’t allow them to show because …

  There had been a lot of blood, Sonny recalled.

  … only the killer would know all the details of the crime.

  Wrapping him in the quilted bedspread, checking the hallway to make sure it was empty, hearing the chambermaids chattering in Spanish down at the far end. Dragging the body down the hall and dumping it into a wheeled laundry cart standing alongside a service elevator. Scooping up a handful of dirty towels and sheets lying on the service alcove floor, tossing them in over the body. Making sure the body would not be linked to room 2312. And buying time as well. The longer it took them to discover the corpse, the further away he’d be.