Bargain with Death

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by Hugh Pentecost


  “Hardy isn’t here to pay a social call,” he said.

  “Sassoon?” I asked.

  “The Medical Examiner found pieces of lint in Sassoon’s nasal passages and his bronchial tubes,” Hardy said. “We think he was smothered with a pillow.”

  “Not a heart attack?”

  “Possibly—brought on by his struggle with someone who was trying to kill him,” Hardy said. He blew through the stem of his pipe and seemed disappointed with the result. He put the pipe in his pocket. “So far nothing to go on.”

  I thought about Gamayel and his top-secret documents. I didn’t blurt it out to Hardy. I wanted to talk to Chambrun first, just in case Gamayel had told me something like the truth.

  Hardy sighed. “A man with a thousand enemies,” he said. “Not just people, but governments and combines and God knows what else. Hard to know where to start.”

  “You start with his lawyer, his son, his business associates,” Chambrun said. “He was covered by those damned listening devices. Someone was very close by, watching him, listening to him. He must have been involved in some kind of big deal that someone was trying to mess up for him.”

  I couldn’t hold it in. “There’s someone in the outer office who may know something about it,” I said. I told them about Mr. Gamayel and his needs. I saw Chambrun press the button on his desk and Miss Ruysdale appeared and was asked to send in Gamayel. Hardy looked almost cheerful.

  Gamayel was all smiles for a moment. Then I told him.

  “They think Sassoon was murdered,” I said. I introduced Hardy. “I’m sorry, but I had to tell them about you.”

  I thought Gamayel was going to burst into tears. “Someone’s got them,” he said. “Someone’s taken my documents. They killed him when he tried to stop them!”

  “Let’s go see,” Hardy said.

  We went out to the bank of elevators on the second floor. While we waited for a car, Hardy turned his blue eyes on the little Arab diplomat. “You understand, Mr. Gamayel, if we find your papers, we won’t be able to turn them over to you.”

  I thought Gamayel’s eyes were going to pop out of his head. “But they belong to me! No one else must see them.”

  “Everything in Sassoon’s room will remain in police custody until we’re sure there isn’t a lead there, and until we know for certain to whom they belong.”

  “But they belong to me—the documents,” Gamayel said.

  Hardy smiled at him. “If we simply take your word for that, Mr. Gamayel, we might be turning over those papers to someone who isn’t entitled to them. Claiming them isn’t proof of the right to take possession.”

  Gamayel looked stunned.

  The elevator door opened and the operator gave Chambrun a broad grin. “Nice to have you back, Mr. Chambrun,” the boy said.

  “Thank you, Emil.” Chambrun knew the first name of every one of several hundred employees in the hotel.

  We were whisked up to the ninth floor. One of Hardy’s men was stationed outside the door of 912. “Sergeant Kramer’s still inside, Lieutenant,” the man said.

  Kramer, owlish behind shell-rimmed glasses, looked more like a college professor than a cop. He glanced at a notebook he was holding. “Half a dozen sets of prints, Lieutenant,” he said. “The maid, the housekeeper, Sassoon himself. Three other sets we haven’t identified; one set on the woman’s clothing and the lipstick-stained cigarette butt. Another on the headboard of the bed, high up, as if a man had braced himself there. A third all over the desk here in the sitting room.”

  Gamayel was staring at the desk, which looked as if it had never been used, just as it might have been when a guest first checked in.

  “The maid remembers that the desk had been loaded with papers and a briefcase,” Kramer said. “She remembers because Sassoon had told her not to touch anything there if she didn’t want to be fired.”

  “No papers or briefcase anywhere else?” Hardy asked.

  Kramer shook his head. Gamayel groaned.

  “Looks like the killer cleaned him out,” Hardy said.

  Chambrun had walked across to the door of the bedroom and was looking in. I gathered the body was no longer there. He turned his head.

  “It’s just possible Johnny took his father’s things,” he said. “He doesn’t seem to have understood just how he should behave in the situation. See if you can reach him at Raymond Carlson’s office, Mark.”

  I asked Kramer if it was all right to use the phone there. He said it was okay, they’d been over it. Mrs. Veach looked up the number for me and put me through. I had some trouble with a protective secretary getting through to Carlson, but I finally made it.

  “Johnny started back to the hotel a few minutes ago, Mr. Haskell,” Carlson said. “By the way, would you give a message to Mr. Chambrun for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “My associate here in the office, Donald Webster, tells me he got the news of J.W.’s death and the details from a man named Mark Zorich who works for J.W. and who’s registered there at the Beaumont. Don didn’t have any reason to ask Zorich how he knew. No reason why he should.”

  “Thanks. I’ll pass it on,” I said, and I did.

  “I think we better talk with Mr. Zorich,” Chambrun said.

  I called Mrs. Veach on the switchboard again and asked for Zorich’s room number. Such an inquiry is usually a matter of seconds. Mrs. Veach took longer on this and finally came back with the word that she had no record of anyone named Zorich being registered. I checked with Mr. Atterbury at the front desk. No one named Zorich was registered or had been registered according to his records.

  Chambrun looked irritated. Under his management daily registration cards were delivered to him. Hotel guests might have been surprised or even outraged if they could have seen those cards. In addition to a name and address, there were code markings on them. If a guest was an alcoholic, it showed there. If he was a woman chaser, a husband cheating on his wife or a wife cheating on her husband, it showed. Credit ratings showed. If there was any other special knowledge about the guest, like his business, his diplomatic connections if he had any, his personal connections with anyone we knew, it showed. Chambrun hadn’t seen any of those cards for a month. He had no way, at that moment, of knowing whether the system had been continued under Johnny-baby’s eccentric management.

  “Ask Atterbury to check and provide me with a list of everyone who had reservations made for them by J. W. Sassoon or Johnny,” Chambrun said.

  I called Atterbury back and relayed the message. I noticed while I talked that Gamayel was jittering around like Mr. Coffee-Nerves. He kept blotting at his face with that yellow silk handkerchief.

  “I protest your right to take possession of my documents, Lieutenant,” he said, “but I’d be a great deal happier to know that they were in your hands than someone else’s. Since young Mr. Sassoon isn’t here, would it be possible to look in his rooms, just to make sure?”

  “He started up from Wall Street a few minutes ago,” Chambrun said. “It shouldn’t take him too long.”

  I was already late in preparing a statement for the news people and I went back down to my office. Two or three reporters were already clamoring. It was, of course, a big story. J. W. Sassoon was a world figure. We weren’t telling it all; nothing about the black lace frills, nothing about the certainty that Sassoon’s death, while it may technically have been a heart attack, was in Hardy’s opinion a murder. Everyone wanted to talk to Johnny-baby. The King was dead, long live the King.

  I guess that first assault on me must have lasted nearly an hour. Sooner or later the news boys would get to Johnny-baby, like it or not. I had a feeling he ought to be briefed by Chambrun and Hardy before he came out on center stage. I kept calling his room, but got no answer. I alerted Johnny Thacker, the day bell captain, to have Johnny call me the minute he showed up in the lobby. Miss Ruysdale assured me he hadn’t turned up at the boss’s office. I had a picture of him sitting in the park and feeding the pigeons while he
tried to pull himself together. Finally I headed for Chambrun’s office to express my concern that the news boys might get to him before we could tell him what to say.

  Mr. Gamayel was still with Chambrun, still sweating and blotting with his yellow handkerchief. Hardy had gone somewhere. Chambrun looked dark as a thundercloud. Before I could say anything, he handed me three registration cards.

  “Reservations made by J. W. Sassoon,” he said.

  I gave them a quick look. The first was for a James Olin. There was nothing on the card, not even an address, to indicate anything except that Sassoon had asked for a room for him. The second was for a Mrs. Valerie Brent, address London, England, reservation made by Sassoon. The code indicated that she was a widow, not grass, with an A-l credit rating, who had stayed with us once before some five years ago. The information on her dated back to that time and wasn’t necessarily current. The third card was for Emory Clarke, address Boston, Massachusetts. I didn’t really have to read the dope sheet on this man. He was a millionaire oil man, his main interests in Central and South America. He had been an adviser to Presidents, served as a special consultant to the State Department during one administration, turned down the ambassadorship to Great Britain. He had stayed at the Beaumont many times in the past and he wouldn’t have had to ask J. W. Sassoon to get him a suite. I had talked to him several times and thought of him as a shaggy replica of that late, great actor, Charles Laughton. There was, I noticed, no Mark Zorich.

  I was just handing the cards back to Chambrun when Hardy reappeared.

  “No sign of young Sassoon?” he asked.

  I told him I’d been trying to locate Johnny and had people alerted to let me know the moment he showed.

  “I think I’d like to have a look in his room,” Hardy said. “If he cleaned off his father’s desk and took the stuff to his room, we’ll know we aren’t looking for a thief as well as a killer.” He smiled at Gamayel. “It might also make our friend feel a little easier.”

  Chambrun picked up his phone and asked Jerry Dodd to meet us on the twelfth floor with a passkey. The four of us went up to twelve and arrived at the same time as Jerry. We knocked on the door, got no answer, and Jerry opened it with his key.

  So help me, I had completely forgotten about Miss Trudy Woodson. She was sitting up in Johnny’s bed, a sheet pulled around her, quite obviously hiding her delightful nakedness. Her clothes were draped neatly over the back of a chair.

  Her eyes were blazing. “What the hell do you creeps mean by barging in here?” she wanted to know.

  “We knocked,” Hardy said, undisturbed. “No one answered.”

  “So no one answered, so nobody wanted you in, so get out!”

  Hardy showed his police shield. “We’re looking for some papers and a briefcase young Mr. Sassoon may have brought here from his father’s room.”

  “So ask Johnny when he gets here—if he ever gets here!”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to look for them now,” Hardy said. “If you’d like to put on some clothes—?”

  “I’m quite content the way I am,” Trudy said. She sat there, defiant, the sheet pulled up around her chin.

  Johnny-baby had just a large single room and bath. He hadn’t gone for a suite for himself. Hardy went methodically through the desk, the bureau, the two closets, the bathroom. He came back from that last place and stood looking down at the little blonde time bomb on the bed.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to look under and in the bed.”

  “I do mind.”

  “Then you’ll have to forgive me,” Hardy said, and reached for the sheet.

  She was out of bed in a flash, the sheet clutched around her, screaming unprintable obscenities at him. She had a vocabulary that would have put a longshoreman to shame. Hardy went methodically about the business of searching and found nothing.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said cheerfully.

  “You bastard!” she said, using her least offensive language.

  “Looks like your documents aren’t here, Mr. Gamayel,” Hardy said.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Miss Woodson,” Chambrun said.

  We all started for the door. I was last.

  “Haskell!” Trudy called out to me.

  I went back into the room.

  “You’re cute,” she said. She was back on the bed. The sheet was now revealing golden shoulders.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I’m never really myself,” she said, “unless I’ve had my ration of sex before lunch. Would you care to oblige?”

  I just stared at her, my mouth going dry as she slowly lowered the sheet. “Johnny wouldn’t like it,” I said.

  “He knew I was waiting for him,” Trudy said. “If he didn’t want it, to hell with him.”

  I stared at what was there to see. “I’m afraid I’m involved in investigating a murder,” I said, like an ass.

  “So somebody did kill the old poop,” she said. Her smile was dazzling. “You may regret this all the rest of your life, Haskell. But just so that you’ll know what you’ve missed, I’ll give you a rain check.”

  Somehow I got out of there and down the hall to join the others by the elevators. Chambrun gave me a wry smile, and I realized I’d joined Mr. Gamayel in the sweat department.

  “So you got away,” Chambrun said. I muttered something.

  “I don’t suppose it will stop you if I tell you that young lady is poison,” he said.

  “You’re just jealous,” I managed to say.

  3

  BY TWO-THIRTY THAT AFTERNOON Johnny-baby had still not reappeared at the Beaumont. I was in and out of Chambrun’s office during that gap in time, and I could sense a kind of tension beginning to mount. Hardy had been in touch with Chambrun, and there was no longer any question in the Lieutenant’s mind that someone had tried to smother J. W. Sassoon with his bed pillow, bringing on a fatal heart attack. Murder-one.

  Hardy, in his methodical fashion, had questioned the floor maid, Mrs. Kniffin, the housekeeper, bellhops, elevator operators, Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, and God knows who else. There had been no noticed comings and goings from J. W. Sassoon’s suite the night of his death. The list of out-going phone calls was minimal. Sassoon had called his broker just after the close of the market that afternoon—a routine daily call. He had called his office twice, checked out as routine business calls. Room Service had provided him with a steak dinner for one, a mixed green salad, and a bottle of champagne at eight o’clock in the evening. So far, the Room Service waiter was one of the last persons to report having seen J. W. Sassoon alive. Gamayel, delivering his documents, may have been later. Alive, eager for his dinner, generous with his tip. But, of course, there had been others, or at least one other, later. There had been someone who had forced a pillow down on J. W. Sassoon’s face—J. W. Sassoon stark naked—bracing himself against the headboard of the bed. There had been the lady who’d left her black underwear by the bed. There had been a third set of prints in the desk.

  “Unless the killer left those unworn garments as a decoy,” Chambrun pointed out.

  Check, and check, and keep checking is Hardy’s game plan always. There were labels in the black underwear which led the detective to a fashionable Park Avenue boutique. Brassiere, panties, negligee and slippers, a complete enough order for a salesgirl to remember. Remember only that the things had been purchased by a stylish-looking woman, probably about thirty, who had paid for them with cash. No charge account, nothing to lead to the buyer. The salesgirl might just remember her if she saw her again, only because she had been particularly courteous and considerate, evidently a rarity.

  So much for careful police work. The three sets of unidentified fingerprints had been forwarded to the FBI for examination. Hardy guessed one of them might belong, innocently enough, to Johnny-baby. It would save some time if Johnny-baby would just show up. It began to look as though feeding the pigeons in the park wouldn’t hold water.

  Chambr
un suggested I inquire of Trudy Woodson if she knew where Johnny-baby could be. I tried on the phone. No answer. I had Mrs. Kniffin, the housekeeper, send a floor maid to Johnny’s room with clean towels. Trudy had, to use a colloquialism, split.

  Chambrun has a way of getting things done, orders obeyed, that another man couldn’t. Things must have been even more tangled and tense at the offices of J. W. Sassoon than they were at the Beaumont. A huge segment of wealth and power was about to change hands. The enemy must be out in full cry, trying to rip off a share for themselves. And yet, at Chambrun’s request, Raymond Carlson, the dead man’s counsel, left what must have been a whirlpool of activity to come to the Beaumont, bringing with him a junior associate named Donald Webster. Webster, an Ivy League type, was the one who had gotten the word from the man named Mark Zorich that J. W. Sassoon was dead and that there had been a woman in the old man’s room.

  Carlson looked five years older than he had that morning. He was still amiably polite, but harried. He was shocked by the news that we were dealing with a homicide. It added to the complications in his life.

  “It means holding up a great many important decisions,” he said. “If J.W. was murdered, we have to be sure that nobody gains by it.”

  We were in Chambrun’s office with Hardy.

  “A simple-minded question, Mr. Carlson,” the Lieutenant said. “Who might gain?”

  Carlson shook his head wearily. “It’s so complex, Lieutenant, it’s almost impossible to answer. There’s Johnny, of course. But after that—?” He shrugged his sagging shoulders. “It’s like a chess game, with the players thinking half a dozen moves ahead. There are so many irons in the fire, so many possibilities. Only the players know who might gain by the old man’s death tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Or even next year. The moves are thought of that far in advance.”

 

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