Bargain with Death

by Hugh Pentecost

  “One of my boys found this in a trash can outside the fire exit on the twelfth floor, not far from Johnny Sassoon’s room,” Jerry said.

  Olin and I moved in closer to look at it. It wasn’t any kid’s Halloween kit. The wig was beautifully made and obviously very expensive.

  “That’s a voice changer,” Olin said, pointing to what I’d taken for dentures.

  “Voice changer?” Chambrun asked.

  “You probably read about one in the Ellsberg case,” Olin said. “The White House plumbers? The CIA supplied them with one when they were planning to break into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. Wear it and it changes your speech patterns. I saw dozens of them when I worked for the CIA. That wig is a beauty.”

  “Someone on the twelfth floor wanted to change his appearance in a hurry,” Hardy said.

  “From man-of-distinction to—what?” Chambrun asked.

  3

  IT WAS AFTER ELEVEN o’clock in the evening of The Day. Our first contact with Johnny-baby’s kidnappers had been at seven. Our second had been my conversation with the breather in the telephone booth at 59th Street. That had been at exactly eight o’clock. Since then, nothing. Three hours of nothing. Carlson was waiting in Chambrun’s penthouse, knocked out by sleeping pills Ruysdale had persuaded him to take. In her office Ruysdale waited for someone to call in on 232-6668. Chambrun, Hardy, and Jerry Dodd were all making inquiries about a distinguished-looking gray-haired man with a neatly trimmed gray military mustache who might have been seen loitering on the twelfth floor or anywhere else in the hotel. Handling this situation was like a juggler keeping an assortment of balls in the air—the Sassoon murder, the Trudy murder, the kidnapping, a dozen lesser leads to be followed up.

  But as Chambrun pointed out—was always pointing out—we still had a hotel to run. It was almost certain that with so many obvious policemen in the lobby and circulating in the halls and in the public rooms some of our regular guests must be beginning to sense that there was something far from ordinary in the wind. I was instructed to do my nightly circulating. If I was asked questions, I was to do what I could to reassure. I didn’t ask Chambrun how that was to be accomplished. Did I say, “Don’t be nervous. Only three people have met with violence in the last twelve hours or so. Nothing to worry about.”

  I stopped off at my rooms, which are on the same floor as my office and Chambrun’s, to freshen up a little. I found myself thinking about James Olin as I got into a clean shirt and an unwrinkled suit. Movies and suspense novels and the revelations of the Watergate case have given us a pretty frightening picture of men who work for government espionage organizations and for unofficial groups like the White House plumbers. I remembered reading the dossier of one agent who had been involved in political assassinations, the torture of civilians in Vietnam, burglaries, break-ins. All in the day’s work. Olin seemed to fit that picture to a T. I wondered how much he’d told us was the truth? I wondered if, when he showed surprise, he was surprised at all. I suspected he was a master actor in whatever situation he found himself. One thing I was sure of. The gun he’d taken out of his shoulder holster and handed over to Hardy before that session in Chambrun’s office broke up would not prove to be the one that killed Trudy Woodson. Olin would never have let himself be caught with a murder weapon in his possession.

  I don’t have a police mind. I don’t have Chambrun’s flair for solving abstruse puzzles. But it seemed to me that there was something we couldn’t be certain of; on which side was Olin really playing? He said he had been working for J. W. Sassoon for six years, a trusted operative. If that was true, it was certain that he’d had nothing to do with the murder of J.W. or the kidnapping of J.W.’s son. It was unlikely he’d had anything to do with Trudy’s murder, unless he’d found out that Trudy was working on some other team. But in the world of espionage and spying we hear constantly about what is called the “double agent.” That cold man with the green glasses could have worked for J. W. Sassoon for six years while he was, at the same time, taking pay from Sassoon’s enemies. The double agent plays both sides of the street and then, in a crisis moment, acts for the highest bidder, for the side that offers him the best future. Olin struck me as a man who would act, without loyalties or conscience, only for his own advantage. I wondered if Chambrun and Hardy had read him that way, too.

  When I’d finished dressing, my first stop was the Trapeze Bar. The Trapeze is quite literally suspended in space over the foyer to the Grand Ballroom. The walls are iron grillwork, and some artist of the Calder school has decorated it with a collection of mobiles of circus performers operating on trapezes. The faint circulation of air from a conditioner keeps those little figures in constant motion.

  Early curtains at the Broadway theaters mean that by eleven people are already out, and the Trapeze is one of the more popular nightcap places. Of course if you want more entertainment, you go to the Blue Lagoon downstairs where there are music, dancing, and performers. Customers in the Trapeze are usually on the elegant side—quite a lot of dinner jackets and gals wearing long skirts and jewelry that made you wonder where all the money came from. From people connected with the world of giant finance, I told myself; in climates created by people like the late J. W. Sassoon.

  I stood in the entrance looking around for people who needed “reassuring.” I knew quite a few of the customers and I was nodded at and waved at, but no one seemed frantically in need of being calmed. I was about to turn away when Mr. Del Greco, captain in the Trapeze, joined me.

  “I hear things,” he said,

  “So put cotton in your ears,” I said.

  “It’ll all blow with the morning news,” Del Greco said. “Leaks all over the place.”

  “National pastime,” I said.

  “There’s a gentleman over there at a corner table who wants to talk to you,” Del Greco said.

  I hadn’t noticed Mr. Gamayel in my first survey of the room. He was sitting in the farthest corner, partially screened from view by a party of six sitting directly in front of him. When he caught my eye, he beckoned to me urgently.

  I eased my way between tables and joined him. He was wearing an expensively tailored dinner jacket with matching batik cummerbund and tie. A handkerchief of the same colorful material peeped out of his breast pocket.

  “I’m grateful to you for joining me, Mr. Haskell,” he said.

  A waiter was at my elbow almost before I could get seated. Service in the Trapeze is rather special. “Tell Eddie a double usual,” I told the waiter. Eddie is the head bartender.

  Gamayel’s white smile looked pasted on his face. “It has been a black day and night,” he said.

  I wondered how much he knew. “We’ve had our troubles,” I said.

  “Do not play games with me, Mr. Haskell,” he said. “The hotel is crawling with spies.”

  I tried to keep it light. “We’re going to recommend to the Police Commissioner that his plainclothes men go to a better tailor,” I said.

  “I’m not talking about the police,” Gamayel said. “Don’t look up at once, but directly across the room from you is a dark-haired man wearing a white dinner jacket. He is a member of the Egyptian secret police. His real name is Cecil Treadway, an Englishman, but he works for hire. His hands are bloody.”

  I couldn’t keep from looking up and found myself the object of study by a pair of bright black eyes belonging to the man in the white dinner jacket. I would have spotted him for high society, maybe a member of the international polo set. His mahogany tan suggested outdoor sports. He didn’t look away and I was the one who broke off the exchange.

  “How do you mean his ‘hands are bloody’?” I asked.

  The tip of Gamayel’s tongue appeared to moisten his lips. “He was a professional assassin for Nasser,” he said. “He still works for the Egyptian inner circle. I should not be telling you this, but I must.” A little shudder shook his whole body. “It is just possible I may not live out the night, Mr. Haskell.”

  T
hat jolted me. Melodrama was this little man’s dish, but he managed to make it sound believable. He was really scared.

  “Why shouldn’t you live out the night?” I asked him. I was grateful for the double Jack Daniels the waiter brought.

  “I tried to tell you earlier that I came here to attempt to negotiate a deal,” Gamayel said. “Treadway’s job, obviously, is to stop me. He doesn’t know whether I got to Sassoon or not before Sassoon was killed.”

  “Sassoon died of a heart attack,” I said.

  Gamayel shook his head. “We are not all children, Mr. Haskell. Treadway will approach me sooner or later and demand the documents I gave to Sassoon. When I cannot produce them, he will assume I made the deal and he will eliminate me.”

  “So get yourself protection,” I said. “The police will protect you.”

  “For how long? A few days, a few weeks? Treadway will be patient.”

  “What good will it do him to kill you if you haven’t got the documents?” I asked.

  “It will be a lesson to other people who may be working against him,” Gamayel said. “And Treadway is not the only one. Earlier tonight I saw a man in the lobby I’m certain is a secret agent for the Israelis. They, too, want what I was carrying and what was stolen from Sassoon’s room. And there is a killer who works for Sassoon who may think I double-crossed J.W. I am a target. I am caught in a crossfire. I doubt I will see the light of another morning.”

  “Who is the man who worked for Sassoon?” I asked.

  “I do not know his name,” Gamayel said. “It could be Zorich, it could be something else.”

  “A tall, sandy-haired man who wears green-tinted glasses?”

  Gamayel’s eyes widened. “He is the one.”

  “And why are you telling me all this, Mr. Gamayel?”

  He made a flamboyant little gesture of despair. “I am not afraid to die, Mr. Haskell. But I am human. I would like the man who kills me to pay a price for it.”

  “But why me—what do you think I can do for you?”

  “The police would listen to me and write me off as some kind of paranoid,” Gamayel said. “My own government cannot protect me. They cannot own me. They cannot admit I was here to make a deal with Sassoon. I am alone. But I have told you this because I think there is something a little inhuman about you and your Mr. Chambrun.”

  I think my jaw dropped open. “Inhuman? What the hell are you talking about?”

  For the first time he smiled—a sort of thin, conspiratorial smile. “I don’t think you or Mr. Chambrun would care two figs whether I died or not. But I do think you would care where I die. I think Mr. Chambrun would do anything in his power to prevent there being another murder in his beloved hotel. As I have no intention of leaving your hotel as long as my documents may be found here, and since almost certainly someone will attempt to kill me before the night is out, I assume it would be to Mr. Chambrun’s interest—and yours—to see to it that nothing happens to me while I am a guest here.”

  The little sonofabitch was right, of course. Chambrun would do anything in his power to put a stop to any more violence in the Beaumont. I only half believed him, you understand. His story was so far out! For certain, however, it would have to be Chambrun who passed judgment on it.

  “Finish your drink and we’ll go talk to Chambrun,” I said.

  I swallowed the balance of my Jack Daniels and stood up. I couldn’t help looking at Cecil Treadway. The Englishman gave me a broad, almost sympathetic grin, as though he knew what I’d been listening to and knew that Gamayel had put me in a bind. That smile almost made a believer of me.

  Gamayel and I walked down the circular staircase to the lobby. The little Iraqi managed to walk just behind me, as if he expected any attack that might come would be frontal. My last glimpse of Cecil Treadway had caught him in the act of ordering another drink from the waiter. He wasn’t in a hurry—if he actually had any interest in Gamayel.

  I stopped at the front desk and asked Karl Nevers if Treadway was registered. He was. I asked for his card so that Chambrun could look at it. As Gamayel and I headed for an elevator, I glanced at the card. Cecil Treadway’s home base was London, England. A-l credit rating, his bank Lloyd’s of London. He had stayed at the Beaumont twice before, once five years ago, once two years ago. There was nothing else on the card to indicate any eccentricities that bore watching. He had been a model guest on his previous visits.

  Miss Ruysdale was standing guard in the outer office. It had been a long day for her, but she looked completely fresh, untroubled, the ultimate in late-thirties glamor. She smiled at Gamayel as though he was an old and affectionately regarded friend, and then she shut the door on him.

  Chambrun had been asking for me. He was occupied at the moment with other people. She thought it would be quite some time before he could see Mr. Gamayel.

  Gamayel blotted at his face with the batik handkerchief. Perhaps if Miss Ruysdale were to tell Chambrun that it was a matter of life and death—?

  “We’ve been dealing with life-and-death matters all day, Mr. Gamayel,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait your turn.”

  He looked at me, his eyes wide. “I have been staying in public places because an attack seemed less likely if I was surrounded by people. But I am exhausted from watching, waiting!”

  Miss Ruysdale looked at me. “Your apartment?” she suggested.

  As I’ve said, my apartment is just down the hall. I took Gamayel there, making quite certain that there was no one in the hall watching us.

  “There’s liquor. You can make yourself coffee,” I told him. “There’s a double lock and chain on the door. Don’t let anyone in except me. As soon as Chambrun’s free, I’ll come and get you.”

  I swear he was really afraid, and before he’d let me go he insisted on covering every inch of the apartment—in case someone might be hiding there, for God sake. In the end he was satisfied and when I stepped out into the hall, I heard both locks snap to and the chain being hooked in place.

  Back in the outer office Ruysdale told me that Valerie Brent and Emory Clarke were in with the boss.

  “I’m surprised at you, Mark,” Ruysdale said, smiling at me. “Is she that attractive? Of course I see her with the supercritical female eye.”

  I was going to be given the business for the rest of time for having forewarned Valerie.

  It looked like a pleasant social evening in Chambrun’s office. He sat at his desk with the inevitable Turkish coffee. Valerie and Clarke were in comfortable leather armchairs, each with a drink.

  Chambrun raised his hooded eyes to me. “Ruysdale informs me that Gamayel is in some kind of a sweat,” he said.

  “He’s on ice in my apartment,” I said. “He doesn’t expect to live out the night, he says. There’s an Englishman named Treadway who is an assassin for the Egyptian government. There’s an undercover agent for the Israelis. There’s whoever stole his documents. He hopes you will protect him because you won’t want someone else killed in your hotel.”

  “He’s quite right,” Chambrun said.

  “You don’t take him seriously?” Clarke asked.

  “He lives in a world of melodrama,” I said. “He’s scared, but how serious his trouble is, I doubt a little.” Valerie was looking at me and her lovely eyes were saying “Thank you” and I was starting to feel giddy again. I put Treadway’s registration card down on Chambrun’s desk. He looked at it, scowling.

  “Cecil Treadway, London-based,” he said. “You don’t happen to know him, do you, Mrs. Brent?”

  Valerie shook her head, frowning slightly.

  “He’s dark, handsome, athletic-looking,” I said. “Perfectly tailored. Gamayel pointed him out to me in the Trapeze.”

  “A coincidence of sorts,” Chambrun said. He looked straight at Valerie. “He has stayed with us twice before. Once five years ago. That’s when you and your husband stayed with us, Mrs. Brent. Once two years ago. That’s when your husband was killed.”

 
Clarke was spilling ashes down his front as usual. “I’ve heard some things about Treadway,” he said. “As a matter of fact I recognized him in the lobby the other day. There are two areas in which I’m supposed to be something of a political expert: South America and the Middle East. Those worlds are full of people working for different power groups, some openly, some under cover, some both ways. Treadway was living in Cairo the last time I spent any time out there. He was very popular with the international set. The extra man for dinner parties par excellence. There were rumors about him—what wives he had seduced, how much money he’d won at cards from some rich innocent. But mostly what I heard was that he was a dangerous man to cross. It was hinted he had something to do with some rather gruesome killings. No proof, of course. But it was the talk. If he really is after Gamayel, the little man has a right to be frightened.”

  “I gather, from what you told us earlier,” Chambrun said, “that the stakes in the game Gamayel is playing are high.”

  “High. Extra high,” Clarke said.

  “Just exactly what is the game?” Chambrun asked. “Someone involved in it is turning my world here into a slaughterhouse. They must be stopped.”

  Clarke held his glass up, studying the amber liquid in it against the light from the windows. “I know a thing or two about you, Mr. Chambrun,” he said, smiling that amiable smile of his. “Thirty years ago you were a super-hero, fighting in the French Resistance movement against the Nazis.”

  “That is ancient history and beside the point,” Chambrun said. He occasionally mentioned what he called “the dark days” of the Resistance, but even after all this time I could sense that the memory caused him pain.

  “I mention it only because the political ramifications of any underground movement are so tremendously varied; you must be aware of that from that past time. You hear a thousand rumors, all coming from what the press calls ‘reliable sources.’ Not a tenth of them are true.”

  “How much more reliable than you could any source be?” Chambrun said. He sounded sharp. “You told us that you consulted with J. W. Sassoon in the last day or two. What is the game? What, precisely, are the stakes?”