Something wasn’t right. Quimper reportedly always scored a groupie or agent at one of these conferences. I bet the bastard is planning on slipping out. Would he be crazy enough to try to avoid his watchdogs? He called Karen Porcelli.
“Is there any way Sebastian can get by your man upstairs?”
“Not a chance. Why?”
He told her what he was worried about. She laughed.
“Maybe he forgot to bring his Viagra.”
“From what I’ve seen, he doesn’t need any,” Scarne said, and related how Quimper had left a meeting for a “quickie” in the next room at his mansion.
“The son of a bitch,” Porcelli said. “I hope his dick falls off. But he’s still in his room. I’m at the bar. Why don’t you come down? Meanwhile, I’ll call my guys on Quimper’s floor and tell them to be extra vigilant.”
When Scarne got to the bar he found Karen sitting at a table with one of her crew. The one named Mike, Scarne recalled. They were drinking club soda. He ordered a coffee. It was just after midnight and the place was almost deserted.
“Mike just finished his shift,” Porcelli said. “He says Quimper hasn’t budged from his room all night. I told his replacement to make sure he doesn’t.” She pointed at his coffee. “Won’t that keep you up?”
“One cup doesn’t seem to bother me.” He yawned, and laughed. “See. I won’t have any trouble sleeping.”
“I doubt if Quimper is having any trouble sleeping,” the other man said. “He looked beat when I saw him.”
Scarne and Porcelli looked at him.
“I thought you said he didn’t come out of his room,” Porcelli said.
“He didn’t. I saw him when the room service waiter brought in the food.” He saw their expressions. “Don’t worry. I recognized the waiter and I watched him the whole time. Quimper looked like he had been through the wash cycle at the laundromat. That woman must have been something else.”
Scarne put down his coffee.
“What woman?”
“The good-looking blond he was talking with here after the reception. You saw her, Karen. She was wearing a blue dress that you said must have cost a grand.”
“Silk chiffon dress, ruched bodice with crisscross detailing?”
“If you say so. All I know was that she looked hot in it. I don’t blame Quimper from zeroing in on her. Scarne, you must have seen her, too. She was one of the groupies who went over to talk to him and the other writers. He must have met her earlier, maybe at the dinner or something, because he obviously knew her.”
“I remember him talking to a blond. I even followed her out of the hotel. She caught a cab.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “He probably set something up for later. She showed up around 9 P.M. upstairs. Had a key to the Penthouse floor. Said Quimper gave it to her.”
“And you let her in,” Scarne said.
“Sure. I called him first, of course. Told him her name. Eleanora something. He confirmed that he’d slipped her one of his keys. But I still kept her at the elevator until he stuck his head out the door. You should have seen the smile on his face. I mean, she was one good-looking woman.”
“You should have called me,” Porcelli said.
“Why? You said Quimper liked the ladies and always had one stay over at these things.” Mike became defensive. “All she was carrying was a small purse. And I asked to check it. Felt dumb about that. Said it was a house rule or some such bullshit. She didn’t mind, even though I could tell that Quimper was pissed.”
Porcelli relaxed. Scarne still felt uneasy. The fact that the woman was a blond bothered him. Of course, there had been dozens of blond women at the conference.
“Do you think she’s a hooker, Mike,” he asked. That would ease his mind somewhat.
“Nah. I doubt it. Like I said. I saw her at the conference a couple of times. That’s not how hookers operate. And she spoke too well for a hooker. Slight accent. German, I’d guess. But you could tell she had class.”
“Some of the top call girls are putting themselves through graduate school,” Scarne said. “And many of them are over here on green cards.”
“What’s bothering you,” Karen asked.
“Let’s give him a call,” Scarne said.
“And interrupt him in the middle of something?”
“You’ll probably wake him up,” Mike interjected. “The woman left a while ago.”
Scarne was on his feet and moving quickly toward the elevators, Karen Porcelli not far behind, punching a number into her cell phone. Mike caught up to them just as they got into the elevator.
“What the hell is the matter?”
“He’s not answering,” Porcelli said, her voice constricted. “Maybe he’s asleep.”
“Call your man,” Scarne ordered. “Tell him to go in.”
“Shit! I can’t get him. Reception in these elevators sucks.”
“Never mind. We’re almost there.”
The three of them piled out of the elevator, startling the guard on duty. He followed them as they ran to the door of Quimper’s suite. Scarne started pounding. Nothing.
“Open it!”
Down the hall, the door to the suite where the rest of the Safeguard team was staying flew open. Nick Dennen looked out. Mike produced a key card and the door to Quimper’s suite clicked open. Scarne led the way into the living area, which was deserted. The other man headed toward the bedroom.
“Oh, Jesus!”
Scarne and Porcelli pushed past him. He was looking at the bed. He had drawn his gun. After they saw what he was staring at, they also drew theirs.
“Check the bathroom,” Karen Porcelli snapped.
Mike kicked the door to the bathroom open.
“Bathroom’s clear,” he shouted.
The other Safeguard agents, in various stages of undress but with their weapons in their hands, piled into the suite.
There was a food cart next to the window a few feet from the king-sized bed. A note of some sort was leaning up against a covered platter. A bottle of champaign was sweating in a frosted silver bucket. But all eyes were on the bed and the wall behind it. Someone had scrawled “Allah Akbar” in red above the headboard. No one thought it was red ink. A comforter on the bed covered a mound. No one was under any illusions what the mound was. And no one seemed anxious to pull back the spread. So Scarne did.
“Holy Mother of God!”
It was Mike. Karen Porcelli merely gasped.
A naked man was splayed on his back. There was so much blood it reminded Scarne of the famous horse-head scene in The Godfather. But this tableau went the movie one better. Quimper’s neck ended not with his head but with what appeared to be a Crown Roast.
As if in slow motion everyone’s eyes turned to the big platter on the food cart. Scarne slowly moved toward it. He could hear Karen trying to take in enough air to remain calm. He bent to read the note:
“HE QUIT WHEN HE WAS A HEAD”
Scarne grabbed the handle of the platter’s cover, his gorge rising in his throat.
“Oh, God, don’t,” Karen said in a strangled voice.
He lifted the top.
CHAPTER 20 - SUNDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKS
“I have to give Porcelli credit,” Scarne said. “She didn’t faint. Threw up on the back of my pants. But didn’t faint.”
“Probably not the first time a woman has done that,” Richard Condon said. “Although I’d bet it’s usually on the front of your pants.”
Scarne and Noah Sealth were sitting across from the N.Y.P.D. Commissioner in a conference room provided by the Bascombe for the use of law enforcement officials. The remainder of the Killerfest conference had, of course, been canceled and the hotel was now swarming with police and media. Condon looked at Sealth.
“You are seriously considering going in business with this walking cluster fuck?”
It was 6 A.M. and Scarne had been interviewed by every city, state and Federal cop within a hundred miles of Manhattan.
&
nbsp; “I accepted the job offer before his client was beheaded,” Noah replied.
“Timing is everything,” Condon said. “I guess this is quite a change from Seattle.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sealth said. “I had to deal with the Vietnamese mobs. Intact bodies were a rarity.”
A police captain walked in the room. He looked at Scarne and Sealth.
“We’re from CNN,” Scarne said.
“Shut up, Jake,” Condon said. “He thinks he’s funny, Pete. But they’re OK. You can speak freely.”
“The M.E. says Quimper was probably dead when she cut his head off, Dick. He was stabbed in the heart first.”
“There was an awful lot of blood,” Scarne said.
“Heart probably kept beating anyway,” the captain said. “Besides, a lot of blood can drain out of a head.”
Scarne recalled the pasty white face with the startled eyes, one of which had a rivulet of blood running from it like an accusing tear.
“Yeah,” he said.
“What else do you have, Pete?”
“There were blond hairs on the body and the sheets, some obviously pubic. We presume they came from the killer. Just for the record, she apparently was a natural blond.”
“Semen?”
“Plenty. When we blue lighted the bed, there were come stains all over it.”
“Why would she screw him before killing him,” Sealth asked.
“She’s a pro,” Scarne said. “Probably wanted to be naked when she offed him, so as not to mess up her clothes. Quimper was a ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am’ kind of guy who probably jumped her bones soon as she arrived. She went along and showed him enough tricks to make him ask her to stay long enough to order room service. A real pro.”
“There’s something else,” the captain said. “The M.E. is pretty sure she gave him a blow job before she killed him.”
“Give me a fucking break,” Condon said. “How the hell would he know that?”
“Said there were traces of saliva and some small bruises consistent with a bite mark on his pecker. He’s seen it before apparently.”
“Makes me wonder about our M.E.,” Condon said.
“She gave him head before he gave her his head,” Sealth said.
They all looked at him.
“Hey, I’m just saying. That’s definitely something we don’t see in Seattle.”
“Thanks, Pete,” Condon said, and the captain left.
“I guess you feel pretty shitty about this, Jake,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t know what else you could have done,” Condon said. “Quimper served himself up on a silver platter, so to speak.”
He walked over to a banquet that been set up by the hotel. The hotel manager had made it clear that whatever the N.Y.P.D. needed, it could have. The Bascombe was in full damage-control mode. Having one of the world’s most famous authors dismembered in a luxury suite was not the kind of publicity that a new hotel relished. The Police Commissioner poured himself a cup of coffee from one of several large brewers. There were also bottles of orange, apple, grapefruit and tomato juices set in ice bowls, and carafes of milk, cream and sugar. Donuts, pastries and bagels, of course. Some of the pastries had come under a large glass dome. Every time Scarne looked at it he expected to see Quimper staring out at him.
“Have you heard from Shields yet,” Condon asked.
“No. But I spoke to his chief of staff, Nigel Blue. Randolph is in Bermuda playing golf with the Mayor. Or was. They’re flying back.”
“I wonder on whose plane,” Condon said.
The city’s billionaire mayor usually jetted off somewhere every weekend on his private aircraft.
The police captain named “Pete” came back into the room.
“We may have a lead on the woman, Dick.”
He picked up a remote from a ledge under a flat-screen television on the wall behind Condon.
“The hotel security cameras recorded everyone walking in all the common areas and the elevator banks,” he said. “We had the Safeguard agents watch the feeds for the last couple of hours. They’re pretty sure they’ve spotted the woman. We’ve spliced a few of the best views together. They are from two days.” He turned on the TV and a moment later their was a video of a blond woman came on. She was shown walking to and from an elevator, in the lobby, and in the Grand Salon. “She must have known there would be cameras but it appears that she made no effort to hide her face.”
“That’s the woman from the bar, the one I followed outside,” Scarne said. “She didn’t care if we knew what she looked like. She knew that the guards at the elevator could come up with a good sketch of her, anyway. She was obviously sure she could get away.”
The woman they were looking at was undoubtedly beautiful and confident. At one point she seemed to be looking directly up at a security camera.
“That’s the outfit she was wearing when she left Quimper’s room,” the captain said. “That video was only a few minutes later.”
“Son of a bitch,” Sealth said. “She’s smiling for the fucking camera.”
“She’s gone,” Scarne said sourly.
“Probably,” Condon said. “But circulate her photo at the airports and bus and train stations”
“Already on the way, Commissioner. And since nobody on the front desk remembers her we don’t think she was staying here. We’ll circulate the photo at all the hotels in the city.”
“It won’t matter,” Scarne said. “She could be next door. A woman can easily change her appearance with a wig, some makeup, falsies, whatever. It’s tougher for a man. Most wigs make them look like Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.”
“Do it anyway, Pete.”
“She’s probably halfway across the country,” Sealth said. “Or the Atlantic.”
***
Noah Sealth was mistaken. Vendela Noss was in Philadelphia, preparing to board the 8 A.M. Southwest Airlines flight to Fort Lauderdale, the first leg on her trip to the Cayman Islands, where she planned to spend a few days scuba diving and relaxation before heading back to Europe.
She had checked out her room at the Hilton before heading to the Bascombe for the assignation with Quimper. She left her luggage with the driver, telling him to return in two hours and wait. After leaving Quimper’s room, she climbed into the waiting Town Car and napped during the two hour drive to Philadelphia International Airport. She was fully asleep in her room at the airport Marriott by 2 A.M. Her unfortunate driver was now crumpled in the trunk of his Lincoln. It had been simple enough to plunge the ice pick into the base of his neck when he bent over to get her luggage. The long-term parking lot was deserted and she doubted that his body would be discovered in less than a week. Even if the police figured out what she’d done, which was unlikely, she would be thousands of miles away. Vendela could never understand all the jokes about Philadelphia. She liked the city and found it very convenient when covering her trail.
“The plane is only half full, Miss Maldanado. Not too many people heading south this time of year. I think I can upgrade you to first class.”
“Why, that would be wonderful,” Vendela said, smiling at the woman gate attendant. “This business travel is a real killer.”
CHAPTER 21 - HEADLINES
Quimper’s spectacular murder was an international media sensation and, of course, catnip to tabloid newspapers and magazines. The headline in the New York Post on Monday morning achieved instant infamy: QUIMPER ENDS WITH A BANG.
“It’s almost as good as “HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR,” Scarne muttered as he passed the newspaper across to Noah Sealth.
“What was that?”
Scarne explained the classic Post headline from the 1980’s.
“Some lunatic shot a bar owner in the head and then forced a woman hostage, who happened to be a mortician, to dig the bullet out and then cut off the guy’s head with a steak knife. He thought it would make it hard to link his gun to the killing. Then he went on the r
un with the head in a box.”
“I think I’m going to like this town,” Sealth said.
Scarne tilted his chair back and put his hands behind his head.
“What do you think of the terrorist angle, Noah?”
“I think it’s bullshit,” Sealth said. “And so do you.”
“Yeah. Too complicated, too blatant and too perfect. Islamic fanatics don’t use women except as suicide bombers, and those women usually have a personal grudge. Someone they want to avenge. A dead son, husband. Where are they going to find a beautiful blond who speaks almost perfect English and can pass as a cultured literati? Besides, the Feds have infiltrated most of the terrorist cells and Dick Condon says nobody has heard of this Arm of Allah group.”
“Juliette said the same thing. Neither the Sûreté or Interpol have a file on them.”
Juliette Loudin, a detective with France’s Sûreté Nationale now assigned to the United Nations, was the woman Sealth had recently moved in with in Manhattan.
“Has Juliette kept up with her contacts in Interpol?”
“Sure. What are you thinking?”
“That maybe I can get a lead on the woman. Her accent most likely places her in Europe. How many beautiful blond assassins can there be running around?”
“Don’t you think the Feds will try that angle?”
Scarne saw a blinking light on his phone console. Evelyn Warr picked up the call. He could hear her murmured voice.
“Only when they give up on the terrorist angle, if ever,” Scarne said. “And even if they do try to find the woman, it will be a half-hearted attempt. I’ve been down this road before. The last thing they want to do is uncover some deep-cover assassin who probably has done contract work for the C.I.A. or some other sister agency.”
Scarne tilted his chair upright.
“Noah, do you think Juliette will make a few calls for me?”
Before Sealth could answer, Evelyn stuck her head in the door.
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