Girl Watcher's Funeral (8 page)

“She never in God's world jumped!” I said.

“I'm inclined to agree. I don't think anything at all happened in this room. Wherever she went out, it wasn't here.”

I turned to Jerry. “You—you had no problem identifying her?” I wanted him to tell me she hadn't been totally destroyed, I think.

“Room key in her handbag,” Jerry said.

“Then can you be absolutely sure—?”

“Pull yourself together, Mark,” Chambrun said. “It was Miss Lewis.”

“She was going back to the party,” I said.

Chambrun nodded and turned to Joe Cameron. “You wait here, Joe, for the homicide people,” he said. “You two come with me.” He headed briskly for the corridor with Jerry and me at his heels.

Nobody answered our doorbell ring at 19A. Chambrun tried the door and found it on the latch. He opened it and we were blasted by sound. The drummer and guitar player were ear-splitting. Half a dozen people were dancing the frug or what have you in the center, surrounded by a score of others who were stomping and clapping to the rhythm. One of the dancers was Dodo Faraday, in her snowflake decorated brocade. She seemed to have come very much alive. Zach Chambers, the beaded camp agent, was her partner. I saw Max Lazar by the fireplace. I don't think he'd moved since I'd first come to the party. I wondered if he took his elbows off the mantel if he wouldn't fall flat on his face. Standing in the center of a stretcher table against the far wall was Morrie Stein, snapping pictures of the dancers. He must have used eight miles of film since I'd seen him last. The red-haired girl with the stay-put lipstick was bearing down on Chambrun. I had an idea she might be in for a surprise.

And then Monica Strong was with us, intercepting the redhead with an impatient gesture.

“Good evening, Mr. Chambrun,” she said in her low, throaty voice. “I'm afraid you'll never catch up with this mob. Can I start you trying? Martini? Scotch?”

“This isn't a social call, Miss Strong,” Chambrun said. His narrowed black eyes darted around the room. “Do you know where I can find Timothy Gallivan?”

“By this time I should imagine in his room—with company,” she said dryly.

“Would you have someone get him for me?”

She nodded and turned to the red-haired tootsie. “Will you tell Tim he's wanted? Urgent, I imagine.”

The redhead giggled. “He won't like my barging in.”

“So barge, darling,” Monica said. She turned back to Chambrun. “I understood these rooms were soundproofed.”

“They are.”

“Then you're not here to complain about the noise?”

“I'm not,” Chambrun said. “Have you seen Rosemary Lewis anywhere about?”

“Rosey?” Not a thing about the lovely face suggested any concern. “The last I remember was seeing her leave the party with Mr. Haskell,” she said.

“Since then?”

“I don't recall. The traffic's pretty heavy here. She could have come back and gone again. I didn't notice. She doesn't seem to be here now. Unless—”

“Unless what, Miss Strong?”

“She might be with Tim,” she said.

“It's like that?”

“It's like anyone might be with Tim,” she said dryly.

“She's not with Gallivan,” Chambrun said. “She's dead.”

The gray-green eyes widened. “I don't think I understand.”

“She's dead,” Chambrun said.

“We scraped her up off the sidewalk,” Jerry Dodd said in his cold, flat voice.

A hand went up to Monica's lips. “Oh, my God!” she whispered.

“The last we know about her was that she was headed back up here to the party,” Chambrun said. “Half an hour or so later she fell—or something—to the street.”

“How perfectly ghastly!”

“We need to know where and how it happened,” Jerry said.

“Surely not here,” Monica said. “You see how crowded it is. There'd be no chance—I mean, with all these kooks!”

The two-man musical horror was shouting at the top of its lungs. Monica turned toward them as though she intended to stop all the noise.

“Let things go on,” Chambrun said. “I don't want this news spread until the police get here. There'll be questions. We can't have people leaving.”

“Why? Why did she do it?” Monica asked. “Things were so right for her just now. All the things she'd wanted for herself—her career—were just around the corner.”

I was looking around for Jan's sex king. He didn't seem to be there to watch his wife cavort.

“Both of them on the same day!” Monica said. “Both so alive, so keen about everything.”

Chambrun faced her. “Who didn't like Miss Lewis?” he asked.

The gray-green eyes narrowed. “Are you saying she didn't—it wasn't suicide, Mr. Chambrun?”

“It could very well not have been,” he said. “I'd swear the thought hadn't crossed her mind half an hour before it happened. I could be wrong. Some people act out a kind of gaiety till the very last moment.”

“There's been a lot of crazy talk here all afternoon about Nikos,” Monica said. “That he was poisoned. I laughed it off. You know how people are. But my God, could they both—is it possible they were
both
—helped along?”

“It's possible, Miss Strong.” He shuddered as the drummer beat out something on his bongos. “Our problem here is to talk to someone who's stayed reasonably sober. You may be elected by default. How do they stand that noise?”

“Each generation to its own thing,” Monica said. “My mother was frowned on for doing the Charleston.”

I saw Tim Gallivan emerge from the bedroom. He had on the blue chino slacks and the turtle-neck sweater, but he'd left his brown loafers behind. He was barefoot. He looked a little flushed and annoyed, but when he saw Chambrun, a kind of toothpaste smile moved his Irish face.

“You changed your mind,” he said. “I'm afraid the evening has gone by the point when there'd be any sense in trying to introduce you to these fun-lovers.”

“It's not a social visit,” Chambrun said. “Where can we talk quietly? Your room?”

Gallivan's smile turned mischievous. “I regret to say I can't offer you my personal hospitality at the moment.” He put a hand on Chambrun's sleeve. “If it's something important, can't it wait till morning? I'm neither in the mood nor the right shape for seriousness, Dad. To be honest with you, I'm royally stoned.”

“You can use my room if it will help,” Monica said.

“Oh, goody!” Gallivan said. “I've been trying to get into a whole series of rooms belonging to you, Monica, for the last ten years. At last I'm going to make it!”

“It's nineteen hundred twenty-one,” Monica said. “Right next to—to Rosey's.”

Gallivan's grin slowly faded. “It is something serious,” he said.

“You mind walking down the hall in your bare feet?” Chambrun asked.

Gallivan's grin re-formed as he looked down at his naked toes. “I was caught, you might say, with my shoes off,” he said. “Perhaps I'd better get them and, at the same time, make my apologies. There is a little girl who was about to have a brand-new experience who isn't going to thank you for this, Dad. Back in a trivet.”

He weaved his way through the dancers and into Nikos's bedroom, where I assumed Suzie and her law student were still holding court.

The drummer seemed to be beating on some raw, exposed nerves of mine.

“What can I do to help?” I heard Monica asking.

“Keep the party going,” Chambrun said. “The police will be on the scene at any moment now. Then what happens is up to them.”

It was at that moment that the beaded Zach Chambers gave his dancing partner a particularly vigorous twirl and she seemed to lose her balance and I found myself, unexpectedly, holding the famous Dodo Faraday in my arms. She looked up at me, laughing breathlessly, her dark eyes wide and blurred as though she'd just had belladonna drops in them.

“Home safe!” she said.

She clung very tightly to me, warm, her body still moving slightly to the rhythm of the drums, smelling wonderfully like some exotic florist's shop.

“You're cute,” she said. “Unfortunately I don't know you.” She twisted away from me. Zach Chambers had her by the wrist again and pulled her back into the vortex of the dancers.

“Poor Dodo,” Monica said. “There's no longer any reason for Mike to play it safe with his little blond tart—now that Nikos is gone.”

Gallivan reappeared. He had put on his loafers and had added a loose-fitting corduroy jacket, with a white scarf knotted casually at his neck. There was a smear of lipstick near the corner of his mouth. The lady in the bedroom had evidently not been wearing that special new product from Lazar House.

Monica produced a room key from her bag and we went down the hall to 1921—Jerry and I following Chambrun and Gallivan.

The room was in a rather pleasant state of disorder. There were a pair of panty-stockings and a bra lying on the bed, along with a flimsy white dressing gown of sorts. The dressing table was loaded with little jars and bottles, some of them left carelessly open.

Gallivan walked over to the bed and picked up the bra. He grinned at us. “Fellow rarely gets a chance to get turned loose in a woman's room. You get to see how much is real and how much is a put-on.” He waved the bra at the dressing table. “Monica has reached the age when an awful lot has to be done to her face and hair. You wonder if she's wearing a padded bra. I'm happy to report she is not. They are real.” He tossed the bra back on the bed. “Okay, Chambrun, you've dragged me away from the delights of the flesh. It better be good.” He looked at Jerry. “I don't think I know you, chum.”

“Mr. Dodd, the hotel's security officer,” Chambrun said.

“Well, well,” Gallivan said, “has someone stolen the crown jewels? Which reminds me we're going to need extra help from you on Lazar Day. Suzie will be wearing a quarter of a million in real diamonds, loaned by Larry Winsted, the jeweler. He'll have his private fuzz on hand to watch over the beads, but the hotel had better have its eyes open, too. If someone snatched them, the publicity would be bad. Well, what's the big mystery, Chambrun?”

“We are confronted,” Chambrun said quietly, “with two murders.”

Gallivan laughed and sat down on the edge of the bed. He picked up Monica's dressing gown and sniffed it, like a wine fancier. “Anyone I know?” he asked.

“Quite well,” Chambrun said. “Nikos and Rosemary Lewis.”

Gallivan stared at him, and the dressing gown slipped out of his fingers to the floor. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

What happened was rather extraordinary. The half-potted gent interrupted in the middle of a dalliance, grinning and joking, was turned off like a light switch. The blue eyes, fixed on Chambrun, were cold and calculating. He was suddenly Nikos Karados's lawyer. He listened intently while Chambrun laid it on the line for him—the pills, the terrible plunge to destruction by Rosey.

“If I can put my hands on the sonofabitch who played games with Nikos's pills, you won't need the cops,” he said when Chambrun had finished. He took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “You don't know that Rosey didn't jump of her own free will.”

“Evidence, no,” Chambrun said. “Convictions, yes.”

Gallivan took a deep drag on his cigarette. “I'm inclined to agree,” he said. “Lazar's success or failure day after tomorrow was to be her success or failure. She had everything going for her right now.” He looked up. “There's an old-fashioned word for Rosey. Gallant. She's been in the front-line trenches all her life, bloody but unbowed. And she was about to win the war, for God sake.” He shook his head from side to side. “Maybe she had a terminal cancer; maybe she couldn't stand the pain. But knowing her, I'd bet a hundred to one she'd have borne anything until after the verdict was in on Friday. My convictions are the same as yours, Chambrun. She didn't jump.”

“We don't know yet where it happened,” Chambrun said. “In a few minutes Homicide will be in charge. There are a hundred people down the hall. Every one of them will be questioned. Every room on this floor—in the whole hotel, if necessary—will be searched. I choose to think, at the moment, that after Miss Lewis left my office, in possession of all the facts about Nikos, she hit on the truth about it. Instead of keeping it to herself and bringing it to me, she faced someone with it in her forthright fashion. It cost her her life.”

“Possible,” Gallivan said, staring at a pattern in the center of the rug.

“So my primary concern, Gallivan, and yours is who wanted Nikos dead and why. Sooner or later we'll find out from which window Miss Lewis was thrown. It may not tell us anything. There's been time for the killer to cover all traces. Privacy is not the name of the game up here on the nineteenth floor. You're all in and out of everybody's rooms. No one is going to remember who was in what room or what bed at any given time. The quickest way for us to get at the core of this is to identify the person who wanted Nikos dead, and you, his closest associate, should be able to provide us with short cuts.”

Gallivan didn't answer. He sat, turning his cigarette around in his fingers, staring at the rug pattern.

“You know all about Nikos's private plans and projects,” Chambrun said. “You know the contents of his will, as his lawyer. You know who stands to benefit by Nikos's death.”

Gallivan lifted his head and his smile was wry. “So let us begin with Timothy Joseph Gallivan,” he said. “When the will is probated, I will come into a cool two and a half million dollars in tax-exempt government bonds. How do you like that for a motive? I will also collect executor's fees which won't be hay. I am a director on the boards of a dozen businesses that will continue to operate, and I won't just get a five-dollar gold piece for attending an annual stockholders' meeting. I am at this moment, Chambrun, as a result of Nikos's death, a very rich man with power in a very considerable business empire.”