Evil That Men Do (14 page)

“Tell Pierre he is, as usual, a genius,” she said. “He thinks of me as belonging to today.”

Gail Miller had gone into the bedroom section beyond with the bell boys and the luggage.

Veronica—I call her that because she insisted on it later—looked at me, her eyes still brimming with amusement. “I want to thank you for your flattery, Mr. Haskell.”

“Flattery?” I sounded like an oaf.

“The look on your face in the lobby—a look of pleasure, I think—when you saw that I wasn’t a decaying fossil.”

The Miller girl came out of the bedroom quarters with Johnny Thacker and his crew. I could tell the tipping had been highly satisfactory. But Johnny hesitated, looking fussed.

“I wonder if you’d give me your autograph, Miss Trask?” he asked. He’s not a shy kid, but he was just then.

“Love to,” Veronica said.

Johnny looked around and picked up a room-service menu from the little table by the front door. He handed it to Veronica with his pen.

“My mother will be thrilled to get this,” Johnny said.

“I ought to put the slug on you, young man,” Veronica said. She signed the menu and handed it to Johnny, who was blushing scarlet.

“That will be all,” Gail Miller said, in a brisk, cool voice. I think she meant to include me.

“Anything at all I can do—” I said.

“You can come back when you have a free moment and tell us about your excitement,” Veronica said. A faint shadow crossed her face for an instant. “I had my moment with Doris Standing and Emlyn Teague some years ago. I knew both the men who’ve been killed in a casual way. I learned a major lesson about personal vanity from Emlyn Teague.”

“He’s here in the hotel,” I said.

“So I understand,” Veronica said. The shadow passed. “My curiosity is naturally enormous, but Gail and I are in New York for fun, and fun we mean to have, Teague notwithstanding.”

“Be sure to call my office if there’s anything I can do to contribute toward the fun,” I said.

Her smile melted me. “Pierre never makes a mistake about his staff,” she said. “I shall be depending on you—Mark.”

Gail Miller was holding the door open for me. She certainly wanted me to go.

I don’t suppose that by noon that day there was anyone in New York who didn’t know that the Beaumont had supplied the scenery for a drama of violence. Hotel men will always turn green at the thought of scandal, but they take the long-range view. A year from now it was conceivable we’d feel some business repercussions, but on the day after, we were crowded with the curious. The Trapeze, the Spartan Bar, the Grill Room, and the main dining room bulged at the seams. The staff was being driven mildly insane by endless questions. People whose business it was to ask questions—members of the communications media—were nearly trampled to death by those who had no right to ask them. In my office we were prepared for cancellations. There were six private luncheon parties scheduled for the day, plus the weekly lunch party for the buffoons, a club of writers, actors, artists, musicians, architects and what have you. Instead of cancellations we got requests for extra reservations. When the books closed that night we were to have done the biggest single day’s business in the hotel’s history.

An ordinary day is busy. This day was madhouse.

While waiters and busboys and bellhops ran their legs off, and the girls on the telephone switchboard paled with exhaustion, the grim hunt for evidence that would nail down the lid on a murderer’s coffin went on. The homicide crew had come and gone from Jerningham’s room. Hardy and Naylor, the assistant D. A., seemed to be aiming the full load of their ammunition at Gary Craig. They’d taken him out of my quarters, having found no gun or any other clue there, and up to Chambrun’s penthouse. There, I gathered, the heat was on both Craig and Doris Standing. I caught a brief glimpse in the lobby of T. J. Madison heading for the penthouse elevator.

Chambrun was riveted to his office desk. Reports from the switchboard and every other department in the hotel came in a steady stream. We knew that, shortly after Teague left us, a breakfast for four was ordered from room service to be served in Bobby Towers’ room. Teague, Maxwell, and Delaney were reported joining the lady at a few minutes before ten, when the meal was served. Teague made a call from the room at ten-thirty to a well-known New York lawyer with a large criminal practice. The lawyer, one Wallace Harmon, made an appointment to meet Teague at the hotel at eleven o’clock, in Miss Towers’ room.

No gun was found.

No one on the night staff had seen anyone prowling around the tenth floor in the early hours of the morning. There is a night maid on duty, but she usually catnaps in a linen room at the end of the hall, waiting for emergency calls from guests. It isn’t her job to spy on comings and goings. The night elevator men had taken hundreds of people up and down in the hours after midnight. No one remembered anything significant about the tenth floor. They did remember taking Teague and his friends to their rooms. The flurry in the Blue Lagoon accounted for that. One of the penthouse operators remembered taking Doris Standing down, a little after midnight. He also remembered taking her back, a few minutes after Chambrun had gone up for the night. He was very clear that he’d taken her directly from the lobby to the roof—not from the tenth floor.

Karl Nevers, the night reservation clerk, had seen Craig go out after the row—I with him as far as the street door. He’d seen him come back at four. Again, because of the flurry, he was remembered. Another elevator man recalled taking him up to my floor at four. He remembered Craig’s swollen face. Nothing to connect him with the tenth floor and Ivor Jerningham.

On the surface, all this would seem to back up Craig’s and Doris’ stories. The simple fact is that it proved nothing at all. Enclosed fire stairs run from bottom to top of the hotel, which exits at each floor. You could go from floor to floor on foot and never be seen at all. There could be no such thing as an alibi, but there wasn’t a hint of anything to place Doris or Craig on the tenth floor at any time.

At eleven o’clock, Wallace Harmon, a tall, gangling man with iron-gray hair, built along the lines of the late Clarence Darrow, presented himself at Bobby Towers’ room on the sixteenth floor.

About twelve-thirty, Teague, Maxwell, Delaney, and Harmon went down to the Spartan Bar for a drink and lunch.

At twenty minutes to one, a call went through from Miss Powers to Mr. Atterbury on the front desk. She wanted to locate Mr. Madison, Miss Standing’s lawyer. She understood he was somewhere in the hotel. She’d been so informed by his office, she said.

Mr. Atterbury put Miss Towers through to my office. Shelda took the call. She knew that Doris was in Chambrun’s penthouse and she put through a call. Madison was there, along with Lieutenant Hardy, Naylor, the D.A., and the two suspects.

At a quarter to one, Madison called Bobby Towers from the penthouse. She asked if he would come to see her. She thought she had information that might be helpful to Doris.

At about eight minutes to one, Madison knocked on the door of Room 1612 and was admitted by Miss Towers, wearing, the hall maid said, something rather sheer and flimsy.

At one o’clock, all this was a matter of record in Chambrun’s office. At one o’clock, Teague and his friends were on their second cocktail in the Spartan Bar.

At seventeen minutes past one, the door to Room 1612 burst open and Bobby Towers ran out into the hall, screaming. The filmy negligee was torn and ripped off one gleaming shoulder. She clung to the extra maid stationed in the hall by Chambrun. She turned and pointed a shaking finger at the door of her room.

T. J. Madison was there, looking dazed. His face might have been clawed by a tiger.

“That black bastard tried to rape me!” Bobby Towers shouted at the top of her shrill voice.

According to the maid, Madison ran for the fire stairs.

T
. J. MADISON DIDN’T
run very far. He appeared in Chambrun’s office, breathless, his face bleeding. He couldn’t know that Miss Ruysdale had already had the report from the sixteenth floor. All he knew was that he was ushered without ceremony into Chambrun’s office.

Chambrun was on the telephone. It must have puzzled Madison to see not the smallest flicker of surprise on Chambrun’s face.

Chambrun ended a conversation in midstream and put down the phone. He flicked a switch on the intercom.

“Ruysdale. See if you can locate Mark and tell him to hop it up here.” He flipped off the switch. “You better pour yourself a drink, friend,” he said.

“You know what’s happened?” Madison asked.

“I always know what’s happened in my hotel,” Chambrun said, “down to the smallest untruth.”

“It was a cold-blooded frameup,” Madison said.

“Naturally.”

“You believe me?” Madison sounded stunned.

“Of course I believe you,” Chambrun said. “You better help yourself to that drink.”

“I think I better not,” Madison said. “One whiff of liquor on my breath when the cops come charging in here, and I’ve had it.”

“That Turkish coffee has some body to it,” Chambrun said.

Madison went over to the sideboard. He drank a demitasse of scalding hot coffee down in one, gasping swallow. He turned back to Chambrun, lifting big fingers to his torn face.

“Fingernails like a bird’s claws,” he said.

“You’re in trouble,” Chambrun said.

“Why? That’s what I don’t understand,” Madison said. He sounded desperate. “Why?”

“
Vive le sport
,” Chambrun said. “You got in with the game players, friend. You and I would find much simpler ways to do things. They want you disconnected from Miss Doris Standing and her problems.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know for sure. But you’re about to be pretty thoroughly destroyed unless we come up with the answer. While we have time, you’d better tell me exactly what happened.”

It was just then that I came barging in. I hadn’t gotten Chambrun’s call, but I’d gotten the word from Johnny Thacker in the lobby and came flying for orders.

“You can depend on Mark,” Chambrun said. “Let’s get to the facts before the roof caves in.”

I watched Madison, a giant of a man with a magnificent physique, sink into one of the big armchairs. He seemed to shrivel inside his charcoal-gray suit. I thought if it had been me, they’d make jokes about my yearning for a sexy broad. This one they might try to hang from the nearest lamppost. He was black.

Chambrun tapped the papers on his desk. “I know that she called you in the penthouse and what she said. I have listening ears at work. So begin with what happened when she let you into her room.”

“She might almost as well have been naked,” Madison said. He moistened his lips. “The negligee was next to transparent and she didn’t have anything on under it.” He shook his head. “I should have told her then, I’d come back when she was decent. When you’re a Negro in this world, Chambrun, you don’t take any risks at all. It could have been bad if a bellboy had come in with a lunch tray. The girl, dressed like that, and me what I am. But she’d said on the phone that she had something that would help Doris.” He hesitated. “Do you know how I happened to be Doris’ lawyer?”

“Is it important for me to know? We haven’t much time.”

“God knows what’s important,” Madison said. “You want the facts, quick. They’re simple enough. I went in, a little shocked that she’d receive me with so little on. She offered me a drink. I refused. She made herself about a triple martini. I told her I had to get back to Doris quickly. Right there she got off base, and I should have run. She said something about how lucky Doris was to have such a fine-looking guy for a lawyer. I urged her to tell me what it was she knew that would help Doris. She sat down on the arm of my chair. I began to sweat, Chambrun, but I wasn’t smart enough to hightail it out of there. Instead of telling me anything, she started to ask me how tough the spot was Doris was in; what had Doris told me about Teague and the rest of them; and had Doris told me where she’d been for the last two weeks. I thought she was trying to make up her mind about telling me something she knew, so I answered the best I could. Then all of a sudden she bent down and kissed me right on the mouth, and I could feel her hand inside my shirt. I pushed her away. Then she clawed me. It wasn’t an angry thing. It was quite deliberate. And then she said: ‘Sorry, buster.’ She ran for the door tearing the negligee off her shoulder—and out into the hall, screaming.” His eyelids twitched as they closed over his eyes. “Those are the facts, Chambrun.”

I saw a little trickle of sweat run down his cheek. He was scared, and I didn’t blame him.

“So how do you happen to be Doris Standing’s lawyer?” Chambrun asked, after a moment.

Madison opened his eyes. The pain in them somehow seemed to hurt me. “We just sit here and wait for them to come for me?” he asked.

“But we don’t waste time, while we’re waiting,” Chambrun said. “A kind of pattern is starting to take shape, Mr. Madison, but so far I haven’t been able to make it come clear. What seems unimportant may help. One thing we don’t waste time with are any doubts in your mind that I question a single detail of your story. You were framed, and the reason is pretty clear.”

“Clear?”

“Emlyn Teague wants you removed as Doris’ lawyer and helper. He’s already engaged a man named Wallace Harmon to take your place. They’re waiting for you to be tarred and feathered, and then Harmon will take over as Doris’ legal representative.”

“Why? Miss Standing is satisfied with me,” Madison said.

Chambrun’s eyes squinted against the pale smoke from his Egyptian cigarette. “Think it through, Mr. Madison,” he said. “For the moment, we have to choose to believe someone. I go along with what we’ve learned from Doris and Craig. This is the way it goes. Two months ago Doris Standing ran out on one of Teague’s games. She’d had enough. She wanted to be free of them. Her boat was wrecked in a storm and she was picked up on a beach by Craig. They spent three days together. They fell in love. In the process she made something of a clean breast to Craig. She didn’t tell him the details of all the games she’d played with Teague, but she made it clear to him that they’d been bad. He offered to help her to cut loose and they went back to Beverly Hills to face Teague. Teague played his trump suit. He evidently convinced Doris that she could be prosecuted for criminal acts, but worse than that, from her point of view, he made it clear what he could do to Craig, and what a detailed picture of the past would do to Craig’s love for her. She couldn’t face it. She gave Craig his walking papers.