Girl Watcher's Funeral (2 page)

I knew it had not all been play. Nikos's friendship with my boss, Pierre Chambrun, dated back to a dark time when Chambrun was fighting in the French Resistance. Nikos, relaxing at his Swiss estate, had actually been pouring money into the Resistance, helping them to buy arms and munitions and explosives. He had, it seemed, a small but highly efficient espionage force at his command that kept Chambrun and his fighters constantly aware of the next Nazi move. Nikos, smiling his golden smile and passing out lollipops to Swiss children, had actually been a grim fighter in the cause of freedom. Chambrun would regret his passing.

The girl who still clung to my hand as the Blue Lagoon Room was cleared of fashion experts and Nikos's huge body, covered by a sheet, was lifted onto a hospital stretcher from our emergency room and wheeled away, wept unashamedly.

“He was so kind, so generous, so—so very compassionate,” she said.

“Obviously this wasn't his first attack,” I said.

“Oh, no,” Jan said. “There have been a half dozen others. He knew that someday the pills wouldn't work. He wasn't afraid to die.”

Except at the last moment, I thought. I had seen fear in his eyes, and yet his last words had been a wisecrack at Doc Partridge.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Jan?” I asked. “Can I take you up to your room? Because there are many things about this that involve my job. The news people must be notified. And I assume the whole business of Max Lazar's showing day after tomorrow will have to go down the drain.”

“Oh, no!” Jan said. “Nikos never left anything to chance—the chance that he would die before some project he was interested in was completed. You'll find that Tim has all the instructions for carrying on.”

“Tim?”

“Tim Gallivan, Nikos's lawyer. You'll see, Mark. Money will have been specially set aside to carry out everything.” She had managed to subdue the tears. “I'm all right. You don't have to worry about me. Except—”

“Except?”

“It's going to be awfully lonely later on. Perhaps, when you get untangled, you'd like to buy me a drink.”

“It's a date,” I said. “But it may be quite a while.”

“My room is nineteen hundred seven,” she said.

We started out toward the lobby together. Mr. Cardoza touched my arm.

“You're wanted in the Great Man's office,” he said.

Chambrun, it seemed, was already aware of his friend's passing. …

Pierre Chambrun is a small dark man, stockily built, with heavy pouches under bright black eyes that can freeze the blood in your veins if you're guilty of some stupidity, or can unexpectedly twinkle with a kind of contagious humor. Born in France, he came to this country as a small child. He has been in the hotel business all his life, beginning as a shoeshine boy in the barbershop of an unpretentious East Side hotel run by an uncle. He has risen to the top of the heap as resident manager of the Beaumont.

I think Chambrun's genius as an executive lies in his ability to delegate authority, while at the same time being always close at hand to take full responsibility for touchy decisions. Every employee of the hotel is aware that by some unexplained magic Chambrun knows what's going on in a hundred different places at the same time. “When I don't know what's going on in my own hotel, it will be time for me to retire,” he says. The Beaumont is his world. To him it is more than a highly efficient plant; it is a way of life.

Chambrun's private office on the second floor is not furnished like an office. The Oriental rug is priceless, a gift from an Indian maharaja who had been extricated from a romantic embarrassment by Chambrun. The flat-topped desk is Florentine, exquisitely carved. The high-backed chairs are also Florentine, beautiful to look at and unexpectedly comfortable. There is a sideboard by a far wall on which rests the paraphernalia of a coffee service and an ornate Turkish coffeemaker. There is a Blue Period Picasso on one wall, and a witty and impudent Chagall, replete with flying cows and a rooftop violinist, on another. There is no sign of office, no files, no visible safe; only the little intercom box on his desk which connects him with his secretary, Miss Ruysdale, in the outer office, and two telephones, one an unlisted private number and the other connected with the hotel switchboard.

Miss Ruysdale, smartly dressed, thirty-fiveish, a fabulous woman about whom a whole book should be written someday, was at her desk when I arrived. She gave me her cool, somewhat distant smile.

“Hold onto your hat,” she said.

“Now what?”

“Did he fall or was he pushed?” Miss Ruysdale said. “I think you'd better go in. I can hear his knuckles tapping the desk.”

I opened the door to the inner sanctum. Chambrun was at his desk, sunk deep in his big armchair, hooded lids narrowing his eyes to two slits. Sitting opposite him, looking his usual cantankerous self, was Dr. Partridge.

Chambrun pointed at a little green bottle sitting on the desk in front of him. “You've seen this before, Mark?” he asked.

“Or one like it,” I said. “Karados had it in his vest pocket.”

“What did you see done with it?”

“Karados had his attack,” I said. “I got to him with his secretary, a girl named Morse. He said something like ‘—in my vest pocket.' Jan found it, and—”

“Jan?”

“Miss Morse.”

“You know her well, then?”

“Just met her three minutes before it happened,” I said.

“I see. So Miss Morse found the bottle. What did she do?”

“Opened it, took out a pill, and slipped it under Karados's tongue.” I sensed trouble. “Something wrong with that?”

“Perfectly correct procedure,” Partridge said.

“So?”

“So Karados looked at me after a few seconds and said, ‘Dear God. It doesn't work!' Then I heard Cardoza suggest mouth-to-mouth. Before I could move, Jan—Miss Morse—was giving it to him. She fought like a madwoman for him. You saw that, Doctor.”

“Why are you defensive about her?” Chambrun asked.

“Look here, Mr. Chambrun, why don't you come clean with me?” I said. “You suspect something?”

Chambrun made a little gesture to Partridge.

The old doctor cleared his throat. “Karados had angina,” he said. “The pills he took when he had an attack were nitroglycerine. This particular supply I prescribed for him. Made up in the hotel drugstore.”

“So this time they didn't work,” I said.

“Damn right they didn't work,” Partridge said. “They didn't work because what's in that bottle now are soda mints—bicarbonate.”

“They would kill him?”

“Yes, they'd kill him,” Partridge said angrily, “because they wouldn't do anything for him. Harmless, but of no use whatever to a man in the throes of an angina attack. Whoever replaced those nitro tablets with soda mints might just as well have shot Karados through the heart.”

“You or the pharmacist made a mistake,” I suggested.

“Don't be an ass!” Partridge said.

“So you call the police,” I said.

Chambrun didn't answer at once. He'd taken his silver cigarette case out of the breast pocket of his coat and was tapping one of his flat Egyptian cigarettes on it. Finally he lit it.

“Between ourselves,” he said. “Nikos Karados was very close to me at a time when friendship and loyalty were at a premium. I would not like to let him down, even in death. Now there are two possibilities before us. Someone close to Nikos—close enough to have access to a bottle that would never be out of his reach— Am I right about that, Doctor?”

“A man with angina would carry those nitro pills on him wherever he went,” Partridge said. “At night they'd be no further from him than his bedside table.”

Chambrun nodded. “So someone very close to him managed to get hold of that bottle for long enough to flush the nitro pills down the john and replace them with soda mints. That's one possibility. The second is suicide. Nikos was ready to die; he made sure that when the moment came he couldn't change his mind.”

“You buy that?” Partridge asked.

“No,” Chambrun said. “I never knew a man who relished every moment of living, important or unimportant, as much as Nikos. He ran risks all his life. German intelligence tried to assassinate him half a dozen times during World War Two. Nikos fought to live. Suicide is unthinkable. He was always having too much fun.”

“So you call the police,” I said again.

Chambrun ignored me. He pressed the intercom button on his desk and Miss Ruysdale's voice came through, cool and clear.

“Yes, Mr. Chambrun?”

“Be good enough to bring me a chart of all the Karados accommodations as they stand at the moment, please.” Chambrun leaned back in his chair and looked at the curl of gray ash on the end of his cigarette. It reached the silver ash tray on his desk just as it was falling. “You know much about high fashion, Mark?” he asked.

“I read Marylin Bender's column in the
Times”
I said. “I glance at
Women's Wear Daily.
I know who Baby Jane Holzer is, thanks to Tom Wolfe. I mean, the fashion columnists have taken over from the society columnists.”

“Rather superficial, I'd say,” Chambrun said. “We are, for the moment, the fashion center of the world, thanks to Nikos. I had some misgivings about involving the Beaumont, but Nikos pointed out to me that if you can hold a fashion show in the Metropolitan Museum of Art twice a year, the Beaumont shouldn't flinch at the idea. And he was Nikos, my friend. The nineteenth floor is, at the moment, a pop-fashion jungle, as nearly as I can make out—designer, models, models' agents, photographers, columnists, stylists, public relations geniuses, the boy friends of beautiful girls, the girl friends of beautiful girls—God knows who else. Nikos was the center of it all, paying for it all, bent on turning Max Lazar from a comparatively unknown designer into the big guru of mod-fashion. These people are in and out of each other's rooms, including Nikos's suite, like one big, uninhibited family; incest to Beatle music. It is one long, swinging party planned to last until after Lazar's showing day after tomorrow. Only the models are kept on a leash. They must not have bloodshot eyes or that tired look when they come out on the runway wearing Lazar's concoctions.”

“You're saying too damn many people could have had access to that little green bottle,” Partridge said.

“Thanks for your concise brevity, Doctor,” Chambrun said.

Partridge stood up. “What you do about all this is your affair, Pierre. I have signed the death certificate. No medical hanky-panky. He died of angina pectoris. The fact that he didn't take a nitro pill has no medical significance as far as cause of death is concerned. He died of natural-unnatural causes. If you'll excuse me, I'm late for a game of cribbage in the Spartan Bar.”

“Thank you, Doctor—I think,” Chambrun said. “I'd be happier if you hadn't been so observant about the pills. As it is—” He lifted his shoulders in a Gallic shrug.

The doctor passed Miss Ruysdale in the office door. She came in as he went out and placed a sheet of paper on Chambrun's desk.

“Karados is in Suite Nineteen-A,” she said, pointing to the paper. “Adjoining it on the north is nineteen hundred one, occupied by Timothy Gallivan, Karados's lawyer and financial adviser. On the south is nineteen hundred seven, occupied by one Jan Morse, listed as Karados's secretary. There are connecting doors from both these rooms with Karados's suite—keys on the Karados side of the door. Down the hall are four models, most notably Suzie Sands, top high-fashion model in the business. There is Monica Strong, the stylist who will stage-manage Lazar's showing. There is Lazar himself. There is Michael Faraday, millionaire girl watcher, and his glamorous wife, known as Dodo.”

“Girl watching is everybody's thing,” I said. Nobody seemed to be listening.

“Suzie Sands is registered as Mrs. Thomas Tryon,” Miss Ruysdale said. “Tommy Tryon shares her room with her. Off the record, they are not married, Mr. Chambrun. Believe it or not, Suzie is putting Tommy through law school. At a hundred and fifty dollars an hour for her modeling talents she can well afford it.”

“You are a mine of information, Ruysdale,” Chambrun said.

“Any time, Mr. Chambrun. In passing, Mr. Timothy Gallivan is in my office waiting to see you. He is—”

“Nikos's lawyer,” Chambrun said. “Hang onto him till I buzz you. Get word to Jerry Dodd that I want to see him.”

Jerry Dodd is the hotel's security officer. We don't have a “house detective” at the Beaumont.

Miss Ruysdale went out, and Chambrun sat staring at the little green bottle. I thought for a moment he'd forgotten that I was still there. He hadn't.

“This bottle,” he said, “was certainly handled by Nikos when he put it in his vest pocket, by Miss Morse when she took it out, and by Partridge—before he knew there might be anything wrong with it. Therefore, no meaningful fingerprints.” He looked at me, his eyes narrowed. “If the police come into the picture, we lose the game before it starts. There is no physical evidence. The nitro pills are certainly gone. A five-year-old child could buy soda mints without question. Inject a cop into the picture and everyone sits tight and nothing happens. There is just one chance to get at the truth, Mark. We have two days in which to listen, circulate, and watch. It's just possible that someone a little high, a little overstimulated, may let something slip. I'll get in touch with our friend Lieutenant Hardy at Homicide and tell him the score. I think he'll agree that the best procedure is to let us handle it for the next couple of days.”

“It sounds reasonable,” I said. “If anybody can come up with anything, Jerry Dodd is the boy.”

“Not Jerry, Mark,” Chambrun said, shaking his head. “A security officer will arouse suspicions. The one person free to come and go without being at all obvious is the hotel's public relations man. They'll welcome you because they welcome every possible shred of publicity.”