Bargain with Death

by Hugh Pentecost

  She actually laughed. “Perhaps the only certain friend I have in the world,” she said.

  Emory Clarke was, as I have said, almost a ringer for the late Charles Laughton. He was a big man with thick iron-gray hair, carelessly brushed, heavy black eyebrows that curled and twisted and moved expressively when he spoke. His eyes were a pale blue, twinkling with humor and yet almost painfully penetrating when he looked at you. He made you feel revealed. His rather thick lips trembled with an anticipated grin which never quite developed. He was evidently a chain cigarette smoker, and ashes dribbled down the front of the three-hundred-dollar tropical worsted gray suit that looked as if he’d slept in it. This was a man who, in his political career, must have made many speeches and he used his voice like an actor. He made you listen.

  He turned away from Chambrun as Valerie and I came into the office, and his tanned face—sunlamp-induced, I thought—lit up with genuine pleasure.

  “My dear child! My dear Valerie!” he said.

  She went quickly to him and he put his arm around her in a sort of paternal bear hug.

  “Emory!” she said, and for a moment her red head rested against his shoulder.

  They evidently had things to say to each other and I went into a brief huddle with Chambrun and Hardy. The Lieutenant looked worn.

  “I’ve put out an APB on Johnny Sassoon,” he told me. “Half the world seems to be looking for him. Heir to a huge fortune, controls of a complex business in his hands. Where do you think the sonofabitch can have got to?”

  “No idea.”

  “Mrs. Brent knows what’s up?” Chambrun asked.

  “She didn’t till I told her,” I said. “Clarke is a good friend, she says.”

  She had turned away from Clarke and she was looking straight at Hardy. “Good afternoon, Lieutenant,” she said.

  “It would be nice to see you under pleasanter circumstances,” Hardy said.

  She turned away from him. “We met several years ago, Mr. Chambrun, when my husband and I stayed here,” she said.

  “One doesn’t forget meeting you, Mrs. Brent.”

  “Let’s not dwell on politeness,” Valerie said. “I take it I’m a suspect.”

  “What nonsense!” Emory Clarke said.

  “You’re not suspected of physically smothering Sassoon,” Hardy said.

  “But?” Her eyes were fixed steadily on the detective.

  “Just now I’m playing with any kind of loose ends I can find,” Hardy said. “I know your history with Sassoon, Mrs. Brent. I know how certainly you believed he was responsible for your husband’s death. I heard you threaten to keep after him if it took a lifetime. So you are here in this hotel he owns, your reservation made by him. It doesn’t quite add up, Mrs. Brent.”

  Clarke’s eyebrows arched. “I don’t think you’re required to answer questions, Val, without your lawyer present.”

  She stood so straight, her head held so high, like a heroine in a romantic novel. “I think perhaps I should explain now instead of later,” she said. “I’d like to tell it when you’re here, Emory, so that you’ll understand.”

  “Let me guess,” Clarke said, with that never-materializing smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “‘If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.’ It just happens that I spent a couple of hours with J.W. only yesterday. We have—had—a mutual interest in certain matters connected with the so-called energy crisis. Oil. I am supposed to be a political expert in such matters. J.W. was somewhere near the top of the power structure. It so happened that when we came to the end of our business talk, he mentioned you, Val.”

  “Oh?”

  “With pleasure.” The smile almost arrived. “I suspect all men think of you with pleasure, my dear.”

  Old-world courtier, I thought.

  “I doubt that I would think of Mrs. Brent with pleasure if she were out to get me,” Chambrun said, his voice flat and cold.

  “Ah, but that’s just the point,” Clarke said. “J.W. was pleased because Val had stopped being ‘out to get him.’”

  “Had she, now!” Chambrun said.

  “He believed she had,” Clarke said. “J.W. told me how fond he had been of both Val and Michael; how shocked and angered he had been by Michael’s murder. He had put his own police force to work on the case.”

  “His own police force?” Hardy asked.

  “He has a small squad of men who make the CIA and the FBI look like amateurs,” Clarke said. “Not hampered by the law of the land or international treaties. Their techniques might make your blood run cold, Lieutenant. They did not, however, come up with Michael Brent’s killer, J.W. told me. His other unhappiness was Val’s conviction that he, J. W. Sassoon, was the villain of the piece. Imagine his delight, he told me, when he ran into Val at some sort of charity affair in London and he found that she had become convinced that she’d been wrong. The hatchet was buried. He’d always felt that he owed Michael money for the work he’d done on the book, and that now it was due Val. She’d refused from the beginning and still refused. But she had graciously allowed him to make her travel plans for her, her booking here at the Beaumont. He was like a kid with a new toy. Most charming woman, he called you, Val. A great pleasure not to have you on his enemies list.”

  “He had an ‘enemies list’?” Hardy asked.

  “I’m afraid I borrowed the phrase from our recent political scandals,” Clarke said. He looked at Valerie, his eyes dancing. “But you were playing him for the big fall, weren’t you, my dear?”

  Valerie was looking straight at Clarke. “Yes,” she said.

  “A dangerous game,” Clarke said, his eyebrows drawing together in a frown. “J.W. was a very tough cookie. You may have dazzled him for a bit with your charm, but very soon I think he’d have seen through you. Right about then I think you’d have wished you’d never been born. He’d have turned you over to the Wolves—my name for his army. He wasn’t a forgiving man.”

  “He chose violent punishment?” Chambrun asked.

  “I could give you a list of people I suspect displeased him,” Clarke said. “They died in very unpleasant ways. A car accident, a hanging, a fire, shootings; all with an additional trademark—mutilation after death, or perhaps before death.”

  “Like Michael,” Valerie said. It was almost a whisper.

  “I always suspected,” Clarke said.

  “You knew these things and you didn’t go to the police?” Hardy asked.

  “I didn’t know anything, Lieutenant. I suspected. And I very much enjoy living, my friend. I respect you and your brothers in the law, but I may have even a deeper respect for the Wolves. The police of ten countries have never been able to lay a finger on them.”

  “Having told us this much, can you give us names?” Chambrun asked.

  Clarke shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t know any names, but I promise you, Mr. Chambrun, if I did I wouldn’t tell you. A Turkish diplomat who considered talking, one guesses, wound up without his tongue.”

  “Does the name Mark Zorich mean anything to you?”

  “A name only,” Clarke said. “He sometimes conveyed messages for J.W. by phone. If he is one of the Wolves, Zorich is not really his name.”

  “You don’t know him by sight?”

  “No.”

  Chambrun shifted in his chair. “Who else has a private army, Mr. Clarke? It seems unlikely that Sassoon was murdered by his own troops.”

  Clarke took a crumpled package of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one. “We live in a violent world, Mr. Chambrun,” he said. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and let the smoke out in a curling spiral. “I’m not talking about burglaries, and rapes, and muggings, or even terrorist activities. There are power structures around the world bigger than governments. They take what they want by force. There is no such thing as privacy any longer. Phones are bugged, electronic listening devices are everywhere. People are spied on—their sex lives, their drinking habits, their tax returns, their medical histories. Th
ey are spied on by governments, by the military, by industrial espionage agents. Somewhere, in some complex computer, everything there is to know about you, Mr. Chambrun, is available, simply by pressing a series of buttons. We live in a society of bribery and blackmail.” Clarke took another drag on his cigarette. “When bribery or blackmail doesn’t work, then the secret agents of the power structures turn to physical violence. Who else has a private army like the Wolves? There are dozens of them around the globe, Mr. Chambrun. J. W. Sassoon was on a collision course with most of them. Dog eat dog, man eat man. J.W. must have been living in a very rare moment for him, a moment—and I’m guessing it could only have been a matter of moments—when he was left unprotected.”

  We were all silent for a moment, trying to take it in. Then Chambrun had another question.

  “Do you know a man named Gamayel, Mr. Clarke?”

  “Yes. He’s an Iraqi diplomat. Staying here at the hotel.”

  “He claims he was trying to negotiate a deal with Sassoon. That some top secret papers he left with Sassoon are missing.”

  Clarke pursed his thick lips. “He could be talking about the biggest oil deal of our time. It could shift the balances of power in a startling fashion.”

  The office door opened and Miss Ruysdale stepped in. “Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Chambrun,” she said. “Mr. Carlson is here and he says it’s urgent.”

  Carlson hadn’t waited. He was right behind her in the doorway. He looked ghastly. He didn’t wait for an invitation.

  “I must talk to you and Lieutenant Hardy alone,” he said to Chambrun. He turned. “I’m sorry, Emory—Val.”

  Clarke looked at Valerie. “I’ll buy you a drink in the Trapeze Bar,” he said.

  “I’ll still want to talk to you, Mrs. Brent,” Hardy said.

  “Of course.”

  I watched her go with Clarke. It was as if someone had turned off a light in the room.

  Carlson’s hands were shaking as he tried to light a cigarette. “I had a phone call at the office,” he said. “Johnny Sassoon has been kidnapped. They’re asking for a half million in cash. Instructions will come on how to deliver it. Police not to be involved.”

  “I am the police,” Hardy said.

  “You were excepted, Lieutenant. You are instructed to call off your search for Johnny if we expect to see him alive.”

  “You can raise the money?” Hardy asked.

  “No problem. You will back off, Lieutenant?”

  Hardy brought his fist down on the arm of his chair. “Listening to you and Clarke, Mr. Carlson, I get the feeling you think a police officer is some kind of a midget!”

  “What can we do except follow instructions?” Carlson asked. “I don’t mind telling you that if anything happens to Johnny before he gets straightened away in his new responsibilities, you may see the biggest financial disaster of this or any other time.”

  “The boy himself doesn’t matter?” Chambrun asked, his tone cold.

  “Of course he matters,” Carlson said.

  “Where and when are you to receive your instructions?” Chambrun asked.

  “Here at the hotel—in Johnny’s room. I’m to be there at seven o’clock with the money and wait.”

  Chambrun reached out for the house phone on his desk and told the switchboard to locate Jerry Dodd and get him up here on the double. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the contact should be made here?” he asked Carlson after he’d put down the phone.

  “I hadn’t thought,” Carlson said. “I suppose—”

  “I suppose Jerry Dodd, our security man, is going to find another bug in that room,” Chambrun interrupted. I’d seldom seen him so angry. “They’ve turned this hotel into a crime center! You’re to use that room so that they can overhear what you may say to me, or the police, or anyone else who might be with you while you wait for their call.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s five o’clock. Do you have to go back downtown for the money?”

  “Don Webster, with a couple of our men to guard him, is supposed to bring it to me here, in your office. They should be arriving soon.” Carlson pressed the tips of his fingers against his eyes for a moment. “How much chance do you think there is of getting Johnny back, Mr. Chambrun?”

  “I couldn’t begin to guess,” Chambrun said. “Why was he snatched in the first place? The people who are bugging my hotel, the big-time enemies of J. W. Sassoon, don’t need money.”

  “Who doesn’t need a half million dollars?” Hardy muttered.

  “It’s a respectable-sounding figure to make it seem real,” Chambrun said. “My guess is they’ve threatened Johnny, told him what it is he must do for them. Are there decisions he can make, Carlson, in spite of advice from you, or from trustees or boards of directors?”

  “J.W. had absolute control of all that matters,” Carlson said. “He could overrule anyone in his enormous complex of businesses. He was the final word. Quite simply, Johnny has inherited that control.”

  “Strange that J.W. would leave that power in the hands of someone he knew was totally incompetent,” Chambrun said.

  “I pleaded with him for the last year or more to set up some kind of a control board to handle things till Johnny was equipped,” Carlson said.

  “He refused?”

  “He laughed at me,” Carlson said. “He told me the only thing he regretted was that he wasn’t going to be around to enjoy the kind of madhouse Johnny was certain to put in motion. He thought of it as a big joke.”

  Chambrun took a cigarette from his silver case. He turned it round and round in his stubby fingers, making no move to light it.

  “What happens to the business structure if Johnny should turn up dead—say tonight or tomorrow?” he asked.

  Carlson moistened his lips. “Then there is a control board that would take over—consisting of the heads of the ten biggest companies under the conglomerate umbrella. I am the legal counsel to that board as I was to J.W.”

  “The chairman of that board?” Chambrun asked.

  “He will be elected at their first meeting—if they meet,” Carlson said.

  “It’s an interesting situation,” Chambrun said. He paused to light his cigarette. “J. W. Sassoon is murdered. Johnny Sassoon is, perhaps kidnapped, perhaps also murdered. Vast power passes into other hands. How hungry have the members of this control board been to take over from J. W. Sassoon?”

  Carlson reached out to the back of a chair to steady himself. “He was King. He was a despot,” Carlson said. “These other men are big fish in their fields, Mr. Chambrun. There has been jealousy. There has been outright conflict. But the simple truth is that J. W. Sassoon never made a mistake that I know of, never made a wrong judgment. Under his control they all grew richer and more powerful, year after year. They may have hated his guts personally, but they had to recognize his genius.”

  “But one or all of them could have decided that the time had come for power to change hands. What I’m saying is that Sassoon could have been killed by his own associates.” Chambrun watched the pale blue smoke curl up from the end of his cigarette. “What role does Emory Clarke play in this power structure, Mr. Carlson?”

  Carlson’s knuckles showed white as he gripped the back of the chair. “He knows more about the political setups in the oil countries around the world than any other man alive. He is the adviser on such matters to the conglomerate, paid a very high retainer. A brilliant man.”

  “With Sassoon dead he might become even more valuable, might he not? Command an even higher retainer?”

  “I suppose that could be,” Carlson said. “He advised J.W., but J.W. didn’t always follow his advice. J.W. was smarter than anyone else, including Emory. Johnny would certainly have to lean heavily on Emory.”

  “And so would the control board—if Johnny doesn’t get back into the picture.” Chambrun put down his cigarette in the silver ash tray beside him. “You asked me a question a while back, Mr. Carlson; how much chance do I think there is of getting Johnny back ali
ve? I would say a very small chance.”

  Jerry Dodd turned up then, before the full implication of what Chambrun had been saying had really begun to percolate. Chambrun brought Jerry up to date.

  “My feeling is that the reason they’ve chosen Johnny’s room as the place for the contact to be made is that it’s bugged,” Chambrun said.

  “Sonofabitch!” Jerry said. He started for the door.

  “Hold it, Jerry. If it’s the same little transistor gimmick, located in the phone, if you monkey around with it, won’t they be aware of it if they’re listening?”

  “Yes, they would.”

  “Isn’t there another way to check?” Chambrun asked. “Didn’t the switchboard hear something odd on Sassoon’s line?”

  “True.”

  “Then let’s alert Mrs. Veach, and then call Johnny’s room. The Woodson girl is waiting for him there. When she talks into the phone, Mrs. Veach will pick up the sound, if there is a sound.”

  Jerry called the switchboard and laid it out for Mrs. Veach. While he was waiting for her to set up, Jerry turned to Chambrun. “What do I say to the Woodson girl, in case they’re listening?”

  “Play it straight,” Chambrun said. “Tell her Johnny’s been kidnapped and that Mr. Carlson is coming to the room to wait for a call with instructions on how to deliver the ransom. If she mentions police, say they’ve been called off.”

  It was all clear enough, except that when Mrs. Veach rang Johnny’s room, Trudy Woodson didn’t answer.

  “She doesn’t stay put anywhere very long,” Jerry said.

  I reminded him that she hadn’t answered the phone the last time we’d called, but we’d found her hiding under a sheet on Johnny’s bed when we went down there. “She doesn’t answer the phone unless she feels like it.”

  “Go up and let yourself in the room, Jerry,” Chambrun said. “If she’s there, give it to her straight—remembering that you’re probably being heard. Then call me from the room and Mrs. Veach can check out the line.”

  Jerry had only just left when Webster, the Ivy League character from Carlson’s office, turned up with a large black suitcase and two men who were bodyguards from a special security service. Being in the same room with half a million dollars in cash gave me an odd feeling. Webster and the guards left, and Chambrun began discussing a game plan with Carlson and Hardy.