“We still have no idea how things are set up here in the hotel,” Chambrun said. “These bugging devices indicate they’ve had a pretty free hand for some time. God knows how many people are hanging around the hallways, watching. I think you ought to appear to pull out of this, Hardy. You’ve got to call off your APB on Johnny. I don’t think you should be seen going to Johnny’s room with Carlson and me.”
Hardy nodded slowly. He had that kind of stupid look on his broad face that I knew was a mask. “If they’ve done in that boy, so help me God—”
“Let’s face the facts of life,” Chambrun said. “You take one step inside the circle they’ve drawn around themselves—Sassoon’s people or some other group—you’re facing power that can send you to pounding a beat on Staten Island! I think there are just two possibilities. Sassoon’s own people are grabbing for control, or another adversary group sees a chance to deal if Sassoon and his son are out of the way. Either way there are two ways of handling Johnny. Dead, there are new leaders to deal with, a new set of values. Alive, if he has been sufficiently terrorized, he will do what they tell him—an extra advantage, since he has the power of absolute decisions. Right, Carlson?”
Carlson nodded.
“So if Johnny has been properly scared, we’ll see him alive, but under someone’s thumb. If he’s tried to play the hero, we’re not likely to be able to do much more than go to his funeral.” Chambrun’s bright eyes fixed on Carlson. “You know Johnny. Can you make a guess about him?”
Carlson shook his head. “The silly young bastard is a born hero without the equipment to make it stick,” he said.
The phone rang. It was Jerry Dodd calling from Johnny-baby’s room. Trudy Woodson had not waited for her boy friend. I imagined she’d found someone else to take care of her late afternoon sex needs. As soon as Jerry cut off, Chambrun checked with Mrs. Veach. The phone in Johnny’s room was probably bugged. There were the strange noises on the line she’d heard from J. W. Sassoon’s room.
Chambrun glanced at his watch. “We might as well go up there and wait,” he said.
It was six-thirty.
Hardy pulled himself wearily up out of his chair. “Don’t keep it a secret when it happens,” he said. “I’ll be around. There are a few things I can check.”
Chambrun, Carlson and I went up to the twelfth floor, Carlson carrying the bag with the money.
“Once in the room, we don’t speculate,” Chambrun said. “We’re waiting for the call, we’re anxious for Johnny. Period. Just bear in mind someone is hearing every damn thing we say.”
It was spooky waiting in Johnny’s room, knowing that someone could hear you if you hiccoughed. Chambrun talked a little—about how we could count on Hardy pulling out, and how we must follow instructions to the letter if we hoped to get Johnny back.
At precisely seven o’clock the phone rang. That was it. Carlson answered.
I could only hear his end of the conversation, but we got it from him afterwards. Did he have the money? He did. Was Trudy Woodson with us? She was not. She, Carlson was told, would be the messenger. She was to take the money and go to a public phone booth at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. She would answer the phone when it rang—which would be at exactly eight o’clock. Carlson said if we couldn’t find Trudy, he would bring the money himself. That wouldn’t do, he was told. Trudy must bring it. Trudy was Johnny’s girl. She would follow instructions without hesitation because Johnny mattered to her. But if she couldn’t be found? Tough luck. Would they call back if she couldn’t be found to go to the phone booth? They would have to regroup, reconsider. Carlson had better damn well find her.
When Carlson put down the phone, he looked sick. He told us the orders, gasping for breath like a fish out of water.
“How do we find her?” he asked.
“She’s in and out of your office, according to you,” Chambrun said. “Where does she live?”
“No idea,” Carlson said.
“Phone book,” Chambrun said. And while I looked in the directory, he was on the phone, giving orders to have the hotel searched for Trudy. She could be in one of the bars, one of the restaurants.
She wasn’t listed in the Manhattan telephone book. Carlson said he thought she’d once dated the Ivy League character, Don Webster, but Webster didn’t answer his home phone and he hadn’t gone back to the office after delivering the money.
There was a bottle of bourbon, half full, on Johnny-baby’s bureau. Carlson went over and poured some in a water tumbler. He looked as if he needed it. He tasted it, made a face, and crossed the room to the bathroom door, obviously to dilute it. He opened the door and went in.
If you have ever heard a grown man scream, you know what a shattering sound it is. Carlson screamed—and screamed again. Chambrun beat me to the bathroom door, but I was directly behind him and I could see over his shoulder.
I remember I staggered away, not wanting to look a second longer than I had to. Trudy Woodson was lying, naked, in the bathtub. There was a round, black hole between her eyes, obviously a gunshot wound. And her naked body, her breasts and her stomach, had been slashed and gouged at by some kind of knife. The tub was red with her blood.
Carlson was on his hands and knees in front of the toilet bowl, throwing up his guts.
Part Two
1
TRUDY WOODSON HAD, ACCORDING to the Medical Examiner, been dead for several hours. The last time we had seen her alive was when she’d barged into Chambrun’s office a little after three that afternoon, approximately four hours before we found her in that bloody bathtub. Just when she had gone to Johnny-baby’s room after she’d left Chambrun’s office we were trying to check out. There had been no signs of any struggle in the room. An educated guess was that someone had been waiting for her and shot her between the eyes when she let herself into the room. She had then been carried into the bathroom, her dress removed, and her naked body lowered into the tub. Trudy hadn’t worn anything under her dress. The poor little idiot had been always ready for action. The dress, her sandals, and her handbag had been found under the washbasin. Once she had been lowered into the tub, she had been methodically butchered.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As I’ve said, I got away from the sight of it as quickly as I could, leaving Chambrun and the retching Carlson in the bathroom. My first impulse was to call Jerry Dodd, try to locate Lieutenant Hardy. I reached for the phone beside the bed, and then drew back my hand. The tiny transistor we thought was there must have conveyed plenty to listening ears. Carlson’s screaming could have shattered eardrums. I realized I was in shock. I couldn’t make myself think clearly how to handle things.
Chambrun came out of the bathroom, the awful sound of Carlson’s vomiting behind him. Chambrun’s face looked gray, set in hard, angular lines like a marble mask. His eyes glittered with a kind of fury I don’t think I’d ever seen before. He walked stiffly toward the phone as if his knee joints were half locked. I don’t think he knew I was there.
He picked up the phone and, in a strange voice I’d never heard before, he asked Mrs. Veach to find Jerry Dodd and Hardy. Then he spoke as if someone else had come on the phone. I realized he was talking to whoever was tuned in on the transistor.
“The Woodson girl can’t deliver the money,” he said. “She’s been murdered. You sonofabitches will have to come up with another plan.” He jammed down the receiver on its cradle. He turned to me. He was breathing hard, as if he couldn’t get air into his lungs. “I think you’d better go down to that phone booth on Fifty-ninth Street, Mark. When it rings, you answer it and tell them what’s happened. You’ve got about thirty-five minutes.”
“What’s the point? You just told them,” I said.
“We can’t be certain that the kidnappers are on the other end of that transistor,” he said. “If they are, they’ll know you’re heading for the booth. If they aren’t and there’s nobody to answer when they call, we may be placing Johnny in danger. We c
an’t risk that. Give them my private unlisted number. This room is going to be no place to talk to them from.”
“And if they’re listening right now?” I asked.
Chambrun looked at the phone. “My private number is 232-6668,” he said, loud and clear. Then: “Get going, Mark.”
I was glad to go. It may have been imagination, but I thought I was aware of the sick, sweet smell of blood. I took an elevator down to the lobby. I had the cockeyed notion that anyone who looked at me could see what I knew reflected in my face.
I was almost at the Fifth Avenue entrance when I saw Hardy come through the revolving door. There was a smart-looking woman with him. He stopped, but he didn’t introduce me.
“You make contact?” he asked.
I nodded.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he asked.
“Trudy Woodson was supposed to deliver the money,” I said. “She can’t. Somebody shot her between the eyes, dumped her in the bathtub in Johnny’s room, and cut her to pieces. I’m going to an outside phone where they said they’d call.”
Hardy’s pale blue eyes were cold as two newly minted dimes. “Michael Brent!” he said, almost inaudible.
For the first time it penetrated. Trudy had been killed in much the same way I’d heard Michael Brent’s murder described.
“Chambrun’s up there,” I said. “He’s sent out a call for you. I’ve got to hurry.”
I don’t think the woman with Hardy had heard much of what we’d said. She’d moved away when she saw Hardy wasn’t going to introduce us. Hardy just nodded. He headed quickly toward the elevators. He seemed to have forgotten the woman. She watched him go, looking puzzled.
I went out onto the street. It was just five blocks to the phone booth the kidnappers had mentioned. It was easier to walk it, or jog it, than to try to get a cab in the early evening traffic.
People on the street looked so normal! Couples walked together in the twilight along the edge of the park across the way. I wondered how they’d have looked if they’d been aware of that bloody tragedy in a hotel room just a few yards away. I wondered how I looked. Like something out of a horror novel?
I saw the glass booth long before I reached it. I began to run toward it. I didn’t want someone else to take it over. I saw a man pause outside it and I almost shouted at him not to use it. He evidently changed his mind and strolled away.
I got to it and went in, closing the door. It was six minutes to eight. I lifted the receiver but kept my finger on the hook, holding it down. I meant it to look as though I was talking in case someone wanted to use it.
Sweat was running down inside my clothes. I couldn’t shake the picture of Trudy, so full of life and energy only a few hours ago. I found it difficult to concentrate on Johnny Sassoon and his problem. “Poison,” Chambrun had called Trudy. Whatever she was, no one rated that kind of violence. As I watched the minute hand on my watch creep toward the hour, I could feel the sensations of shock and daze slowly fading, and in their place there was anger. I wanted to help square Trudy’s account, but how could you square it without becoming the same kind of uncivilized bastard yourself? Going to prison for Murder-one was too good for the monster who’d carved up Trudy’s lovely young body. There must be some kind of exquisite torture you could inflict on that kind of creep.
The phone rang.
I took my finger off the hook and spoke quickly. “I’m here in place of Trudy Woodson,” I said.
There was a kind of mumbling sound on the other end.
“Listen to me while I explain why—in case you don’t already know. Trudy Woodson is dead. Somebody knocked her off. I’m Mark Haskell, one of Pierre Chambrun’s people. Do you hear me? Do you understand?”
No one spoke, but I could hear a kind of heavy, labored breathing on the other end.
“Trudy is dead,” I repeated. “I came for new instructions.”
Only the breathing, sounding like an old, old man fighting for survival.
“I have a telephone number for you,” I said. “It’s Chambrun’s private, unlisted number. Someone will be waiting for you to call if you can’t give me instructions now. It’s a clear line, not bugged. Are you listening?”
There was a kind of strangling cough at the other end, no more.
“The number is 232-6668.” I said it slowly and then repeated it.
The breathing stopped. The dial tone buzzed in my ear. That was all. The man on the other end hadn’t uttered a single word. I stepped out of the phone booth which had become an oven while I waited in it. My shirt and undershirt were ringing wet.
It occurred to me that I might not have been talking to the kidnapper at all. Someone unconnected might have called that number expecting to reach someone else, and listened, without comment, to my story. The kidnapper could have called and gotten a busy signal. I waited a good five minutes for the phone to ring again, but it didn’t.
I headed back for the Beaumont.
The moment I stepped into the hotel’s air-conditioned lobby, I sensed something abnormal. Have you ever walked into your home and been instantly aware that something was wrong, a piece of furniture out of place, even a stranger in your kitchen—who turns out to be a repair man let in by your landlord? There was something wrong with the Beaumont, which was my home. It took me a moment to realize what it was.
There were people in the lobby who didn’t belong there. What made them look out of place? It was a kind of instinct, I guess. Something I did almost every night of my life was to cruise around the hotel, into the bars and restaurants and the Blue Lagoon night club. I was looking for people who might have some publicity value for us or who might need special attention from the management. Shelda, my sometime girl, used to say I was like Marshal Dillon putting Dodge City to bed every night. I guess the marshal would have had an eye for strangers in town. I had the same instinct for out-of-place people in the Beaumont. We had over fifteen hundred guests in residence most of the time and I didn’t know them all by sight; couldn’t possibly. But they are all rich, they all have a certain style. Some of them are for real and some of them fake it, but none of them wear fifty-dollar suits out of a factory warehouse. Tonight there were eight or ten out-of-place guys in the lobby. They had cop written all over them.
I spotted Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, and flagged him.
“Any luck?” he asked. Mike is a dark, curly-haired Italian with mischief written all over him under normal circumstances. Tonight he was almost comically serious.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’m not dead sure.”
“The boss cut me in on what’s happening, or I’d have been trying to give all these cops the bum’s rush.” His normally smiling mouth tightened. “I guess she was a little bit of a tramp,” he said. “She was Johnny-baby’s girl, but she had an eye for anyone else who might be available. Me, for instance. Not screwing the hotel guests is a rule I don’t break. I wish I had. And I hope I get my hands on the sonofabitch who did it to her. We Sicilians know how to handle a knife, too.” He drew a deep breath. “The boss is still up on the twelfth floor. You’re to report to him there.”
I started for the elevators and found myself confronted by the woman who’d come into the hotel earlier with Hardy.
“Forgive me for stopping you,” she said. “Do you remember? I came into the hotel a little while ago with Lieutenant Hardy.”
“I remember,” I said.
“Do you expect to see him? I think he may have forgotten about me.”
“I may see him.”
“He wanted me to identify someone for him,” the woman said. I spotted her for a genuine lady who’d come on hard times. “I work in Charlene’s Boutique on Park Avenue. My name is Emily Wilson. I was to look at a woman who may have bought some things there yesterday.”
“I’ll tell him you’re still here,” I said.
“I saw the woman,” she said. “She just went into the main dining room with an elderly gentleman.”
The s
weat on my body felt suddenly clammy. A boutique, the black underthings in J. W. Sassoon’s room, a woman in the company of an elderly gentleman. “I have to get back to my family,” the woman said. “My children will be wondering what on earth’s happened to me.”
“The things the woman bought—black lace negligee, bra, panties, slippers?” I asked. My mouth felt dry.
“You know about it?”
“Will you point your customer out to me?” I asked. “I may know her and it will save your having to wait for Hardy.”
We went across the lobby to the main dining room. I told the headwaiter I was just looking for someone, didn’t want a table. The room was pretty well thinned out; theater-goers were long gone, the people who wanted entertainment would have chosen the Blue Lagoon.
I saw them at once—Valerie Brent and Emory Clarke. Clarke was studying the menu. Valerie, smiling, was illustrating some anecdote with eloquent hands. I let the lady from the boutique do her own looking, but I knew it was as inevitable as a Greek tragedy.
“The one with the dark red hair; the older man giving his order to the waiter,” the boutique lady said.
“I know her,” I said. “I’ll tell Lieutenant Hardy. He’ll let you know in case he needs you for an official identification.”
The lady thanked me and left. I stood there looking across the room at Valerie, still involved with her animated story. She would never have considered a sexual romp with a gross old bastard like J. W. Sassoon. Or would she? Would she have gone that far as part of a plan to “get” him?
Johnny-baby’s room on the twelfth floor was crowded with people, all official except Chambrun and an ashen-faced Raymond Carlson. There were fingerprint men and photographers and people from the Medical Examiner’s office. There was Hardy and his man Kramer. There were two white-coated young men with a stretcher. They hadn’t taken Trudy away yet.
Bargain with Death Page 6