Random Killer

by Hugh Pentecost

  “It’s the third of May nineteen seventy-eight,” I said. “It’s the first time it’s ever been that.”

  “Ho, ho, ho!” Dick said. He is a pleasant-faced, sandy-haired guy with very direct grey eyes. “Kid me not, friend. I have an instinct for the offbeat.”

  “Oil prices are going up—or down,” I said.

  “Screw oil prices,” Dick said. “I see one of your security people report something to Atterbury on the front desk, and Mr. A promptly goes into shock. I see the same security man report to your bell captain, who passes it on to his boys, who all suddenly take on the look of CIA agents who have blown their cover.”

  “Tip on the feature race at Belmont,” I said. “They’re all anticipating making a fortune on a long shot. The security man is the hotel bookmaker.”

  Dick was looking past me across the lobby. “And I now see a well-known homicide detective wandering toward the elevators as though he was looking for the men’s room. What room is he really looking for, Mark?”

  “Keep those other guys distracted and I’ll give you the inside track,” I told him.

  He was watching Hardy disappear into an elevator. “I trust you with my life but not with my career,” he said. He was watching the floor indicator move upward outside the shaft of the elevator Hardy had taken. It would stop at thirty-four and that would be that. “Who collected what, Mark?”

  “We need a little time for Hardy to get plugged in,” I said.

  “Who?” Dick said, still watching the indicator.

  I had to play ball with him or have the whole army down on us. “Special to the Times,” I said, “in return for keeping it strictly to yourself.”

  The elevator indicator had stopped at thirty-four. Dick gave me a twisted little smile. “Scout’s honor,” he said.

  “Geoffrey Hammond,” I said.

  Dick shook his head. “I share nothing with that bastard,” he said.

  “You’re not listening,” I said. “Hardy is here to investigate Geoffrey Hammond’s murder.”

  Dick looked at me, his eyes widening. “You’re kidding!”

  “I wish I was,” I said. “Thirty-four-oh-six in fifteen minutes—if you keep the others off us.”

  Dick grinned. “Chambrun must be boiling,” he said. “No one that important has a right to get killed in his hotel.”

  Our Richard wasn’t far off the mark. But, I noticed, not shocked by the news. I was to realize before too much time had passed that Geoffrey Hammond was not loved by many people.

  A note about Betsy Ruysdale, who was my next port of call. She looks taller than she is because she carries herself so well, straight and lithe. I’m guessing that she is in her late thirties, but she could be more or less. Someone has said that the older a woman gets the better she gets—up to a point, I suppose. Betsy Ruysdale is well within that point, whatever it is. She is handsome, well groomed, her hair a reddish blond. She dresses conservatively in the office. Chambrun wouldn’t want messenger boys hanging around making eyes at some chick. I’ve seen her at a couple of swank evening functions in the hotel, dressed to kill, and she is gorgeous. I might have had dreams about her if I hadn’t been convinced that Chambrun was both her business and her private life.

  As a secretary she is fantastic. As far as Chambrun is concerned she reads his mind. He orders something done and it has been done before he mentions it. He wants something from the office files and Ruysdale already has it in her hands. She and Chambrun are tuned in on exactly the same wavelength. About a year ago Chambrun disappeared, without explanation, from the hotel for twenty-four hours. The. person who took charge in his absence was Betsy Ruysdale. No one debated it. Every detail that Chambrun had at his fingertips was also at hers.

  Betsy Ruysdale is a very special person and, secretly, I am quite mad for her. But that morning was not a time for daydreams.

  One of the girls from the stenographic pool was at Ruysdale’s desk in the outer office when I got there. Ruysdale was in Chambrun’s office, at the command post. Evidently orders were coming down from 3406.

  “We’d better try to locate Roy Conklin,” I said.

  “He’s on his way,” Ruysdale said.

  I should have known. I told her that I’d had to spill the beans to Dick Barrows in order to keep the other reporters out of our hair. She nodded approval, I thought.

  “Hammond evidently wasn’t popular with his peers,” I said.

  “To put it mildly,” Ruysdale said.

  “It would seem he was having breakfast with someone who didn’t like him,” I said.

  She gave me a thoughtful look. “Jerry doesn’t think we can assume that,” she said. “The person who had breakfast with him could have left before the killer appeared on the scene. Odd thing, Mark. Hammond was a very busy man, on the go every second—appointments, interviews—but Jerry hasn’t found any kind of appointment book, any addresses or telephone numbers. First thing he looked for, to see who was due for breakfast.”

  “Maybe Conklin handles all that for him.”

  Ruysdale tapped a green leather notebook on Chambrun’s desk. “Pierre keeps more in his head than any man I ever knew,” she said. “But appointments and special phone numbers are written down for him. I do it for him if he neglects to. Conklin isn’t around to do my kind of job.”

  “Jerry thinks somebody stole an appointment book?”

  “I’d steal it, wouldn’t you, if you didn’t want anyone to know you’d had breakfast with him?”

  “Sounds logical,” I said.

  “No other signs of robbery,” Ruysdale said. “Money, watch, jewelry like pearl dress studs, all untouched. But no record of any appointments.”

  “He must have had appointments lined up for the day,” I said. “He wouldn’t be sitting around playing solitaire in his room, even if he was keeping his presence here a secret. Where did you find Conklin?”

  “At his office, just a few blocks down Madison Avenue. He should be here any moment.”

  “I’d better get upstairs before Dick Barrows starts hammering on the door of thirty-four-oh-six,” I said.

  Ruysdale opened a drawer of the desk and produced a flat box of Egyptian cigarettes. “Better take these to Pierre,” she said. “In his present state of mind he should be just about out of them by now.”

  She knew his needs before he was aware of them himself.

  Lieutenant Hardy, a big, blond, rather clumsy-looking man, appears more like a slightly bewildered professional fullback than a very shrewd expert in the field of crime. Whatever he looks like, he is one of the very best at his job. He and Chambrun work well together because their approaches are so different. Chambrun is a hunch player whose hunches are almost always solid. He is mercurial, arriving at answers without bothering to gather facts that will prove out his instinctive processes. Hardy is an evidence gatherer, slow, plodding, but never leaving a single stone unturned until he has covered every inch of the territory. He knows he has to build a case for a district attorney. Chambrun only wants an answer for himself. Combining their talents they are a very tough team.

  One of Jerry Dodd’s security boys was on guard outside 3406, but I was ushered in without question. The living room was crowded. Evidently Hardy’s homicide crew, fingerprint boys, and police photographers, had come up by a service elevator and were hard at work. A young Chinese doctor from the medical examiner’s office was kneeling beside what was left of Geoffrey Hammond. Hardy didn’t waste time.

  The blond detective, Chambrun, and Jerry Dodd were in a huddle at the far end of the room. I joined them, weaving my way through the army of technicians. Hardy gave me a cheerful nod.

  “How come you cruised through the lobby instead of coming up the back way with your boys?” I asked him. “Dick Barrows of the Times spotted you and I had to fill him in to keep a whole army off our backs.”

  “I wanted to be seen,” Hardy said.

  “By whom?”

  “I wish I knew,” Hardy said.

 
I had to let that one lie where it was because Chambrun, cold as ice, was at me.

  “Roy Conklin is on his way,” he said. “Hardy doesn’t want him up here. He’s to be taken to my office. Hold his hand until Hardy and I can get there. You might ask him about women.”

  “What women?”

  “A woman spent a good part of the night here—may have breakfasted with Hammond.”

  “How do you know?”

  Jerry Dodd grinned at me. “Go smell the bedsheets and the pillowcase,” he said. “Unless Hammond wears Chanel Number Five, he had company.”

  “Now!” Chambrun said to me.

  Mine not to reason why. I made tracks for the second floor and Chambrun’s office.

  Roy Conklin was already there, storming up and down Chambrun’s office on his gimpy leg, shouting at Betsy Ruysdale and two security boys who were preventing him from taking off. I have described him as prematurely grey, bitter faced. He was in a rage now.

  “You can’t keep me here,” he was telling the world. “It’s false arrest. I’ll have you all and this hotel sued out of your socks before I’m done with you.”

  “Mr. Chambrun and Lieutenant Hardy will be here in a few minutes,” I told him. “I’m Mark Haskell, public relations for the hotel. Hammond’s room is full of technicians at the moment. No place to talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk! I want to see for myself!”

  “You wouldn’t like it,” I said.

  “Maybe you’d be good enough to tell me just what has happened,” Conklin said. “Nobody else has bothered.”

  I told him. Hammond strangled with picture wire from behind. An unknown breakfast guest. An unknown woman in his bed. As I talked, Conklin lowered himself into one of the office’s leather armchairs, as though his leg and a half wouldn’t hold him up any longer.

  “Where is Bobby?” he asked.

  “Bobby who?”

  “Geoff’s secretary.”

  “Does she wear Chanel Number Five?” I asked.

  “Bobby is a ‘he,’ for Christ sake,” Conklin said. “Bobby Bryan. He’s undoubtedly the one who had breakfast with Geoff. He usually had breakfast with him to set up the day.”

  “This Bryan scheduled the appointments? The cops wondered about not finding any appointment book, with addresses, telephone numbers, and like that.”

  “Geoff didn’t have one. Couldn’t be bothered. Bobby handles all that. He probably had breakfast and took off on errands.”

  “After strangling Hammond?” I suggested.

  “You goddamned imbecile!” Conklin shouted at me. “Bobby is Geoff’s closest and most trusted friend.”

  “Can you suggest who the woman might be who spent the night with Hammond?” I asked.

  Conklin gave me a twisted, sardonic smile. “I doubt if any woman spent the night with him. Oh, I’m not saying there wasn’t a woman. I’m saying that she did what she was paid to do and took off, long before breakfast. He couldn’t bear to have women around after—after the fact.”

  “Paid?” I said. “You mean he was partial to call girls?”

  “Romance wasn’t Geoff’s dish,” Conklin said. “He got what he wanted, paid the bill, and had no obligations. Place like this is always loaded with fancy tarts. Why don’t you ask the head of the union?”

  I hate to admit he was right. High-class call girls are always available in the best hotels. It goes with the territory. We police the situation pretty well but it exists.

  “Bobby can probably tell you when he turns up,” Conklin said. “He not only arranges Geoff’s business appointments but also his pleasures.”

  So where the hell was Mr. Bobby Bryan?

  “We thought you were the one who handled Hammond’s affairs,” I said. “Business manager, agent, public relations?”

  “I am all those things,” Conklin said, “which doesn’t include picking up women for him, or buying his razor blades, or keeping track of his nonbusiness dates.”

  “He’s registered here in your name,” I said.

  “With the full knowledge of Mr. Chambrun and your reservations department. There were business reasons for his wanting to stay obscure on this visit.”

  “Are those reasons a secret?”

  He pushed himself up out of his chair and limped toward me. I swear I thought he was going to take a swing at me. “What are you, Haskell, the cops or something? You can take your questions and stuff them!”

  “He’s not the cops,” Chambrun said from behind me. He and Hardy were in the doorway. “But he asks perfectly reasonable and intelligent questions.”

  Chambrun walked over to his desk and sat down. Miss Ruysdale pushed a memo pad in front of him on which she’d made notes.

  “Hammond’s secretary, one Robert Bryan, has a single room on the fourth floor,” Chambrun said. “He doesn’t answer his phone.”

  Ruysdale had been at work while I was talking to Conklin. She never misses.

  “So he’s out somewhere,” Conklin said. “Is he supposed to check with you on where he’s going or what he does?”

  “No,” Chambrun said. He looked a question at me.

  I brought him up to date on Bryan, his habit of breakfasting with Hammond, and his special job, which indicated that the lady who had been in Hammond’s bed wasn’t a lady.

  “So we come back to Mark’s last question,” Chambrun said. He fished in his pocket for a cigarette, came up empty, and I handed him the box Ruysdale had given me. She brought him a demitasse of Turkish coffee from the sideboard. He had everything he needed except answers.

  “What questions?” Conklin asked.

  “Why was he registered in your name?” Hardy asked, speaking for the first time.

  “He had the right to stay under cover if he wanted to, didn’t he?” Conklin was still burning.

  “We can go on with this at police headquarters if you like, Mr. Conklin,” Hardy said.

  “Don’t try to strong-arm me, Lieutenant!” Conklin said.

  “I can be patient for about two minutes,” Hardy said.

  Conklin seemed to make the intelligent assessment that he was up against someone he couldn’t bluff or browbeat. He retreated to his chair and sat down again. He raised his hands and pressed their palms against his eyes for a second.

  “This is a deep personal loss and a severe business crisis for me,” he said, lowering his hands. “I’m afraid I’m not thinking very clearly.”

  “Take your time,” Hardy said. He glanced at Ruysdale. “Perhaps Mr. Conklin won’t mind if you turn on the tape recorder, Miss Ruysdale.” Conklin looked up, his eyes narrowed. “Just so we don’t have to go over and over it, Mr. Conklin. If you don’t like it when it’s done, we’ll throw it out.”

  The tape recorder is kept in Chambrun’s desk drawer.

  Ruysdale turned it on. Believe it or not, I don’t know where the microphones are hidden in that office.

  “The question is,” Hardy said, “why was Hammond staying under cover, registered in your name, Mr. Conklin?”

  Conklin drew a deep breath. This was for the record. You could sense his need for care and caution. “The poor sonofabitch was famous,” he said. “You know that. Most of the time he enjoyed what that brought him, big shots fawning over him, women being quite open in their admiration, even autograph collectors. He liked being famous. But there were times in his business, in his profession, when privacy was important.”

  “His business, I understand, is interviewing important people for television,” Hardy said.

  Conklin hesitated. “That’s his business, his profession.”

  “But he uses his contacts for personal advantages?” Chambrun asked, his eyes narrowed against the smoke from his cigarette.

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Conklin said, his voice harsh.

  “We’re still at square one, Mr. Conklin,” Hardy said. “Why what Chambrun calls ‘the John Smith treatment’ this time?”

  “He is—or was—about to tape an interview,” Conklin said. “
Tomorrow—it was to have been. It was to be with one of the leaders of the Palestine Liberation group. It’s not a popular project in a Jew-ridden city like this. If some Zionist hoodlums got wind of it, Geoff might have been in physical danger.”

  Chambrun was suddenly sitting up very straight in his chair. He didn’t like what he’d heard.”

  “You are anti-Semitic, Mr. Conklin?” he asked, his voice cold.

  Conklin gave him a level stare. “How I feel isn’t important,” he said.

  “It’s important to me,” Chambrun said. “I won’t listen to that kind of garbage in this office.”

  Hardy ignored the exchange. “It seems he was in physical danger,” he said. “In spades.”

  “It’s a controversial subject,” Conklin said. “That stupid, gun-toting Arafat appears before the United Nations and creates a crazy image of the Palestinian people. They have a case, you know. Geoff was going to see to it that their story was properly told. There are certainly people who don’t want that to happen.” He glanced at Chambrun. “Prejudiced people.”

  “So help me—” Chambrun began.

  “Where was this interview, this taping, to take place?” Hardy interrupted smoothly.

  “A sound studio has been rented, over on Broadway,” Conklin said. “Our own technicians would have handled it. It’s been in the planning for about three months. I could have sworn not a word about it had leaked out. Silence was as important to Zadir as it was to us.”

  “Zadir?” Hardy asked.

  It was Chambrun who answered. “Rhaman Zadir, a Palestinian soldier of fortune. An artist at terrorism.”

  Conklin shrugged, as if to say there was no use fighting Chambrun’s prejudice.

  “If this Zadir was going to have his story told his way, he had no reason to want Hammond hurt,” Hardy said.

  “Of course not,” Conklin said. “But some hot-headed Zionist—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Chambrun said. “He invites someone who has it in for him for breakfast? Lets an enemy wander around behind him with a garroting wire?”

  “I still say it was Bobby Bryan who had breakfast with him, as he often did,” Conklin said. “You’ll see when he turns up.”