Golden Trap (7 page)

“I remember the day he came to our headquarters, his right shoulder soaked with blood, his arm hanging useless. The Germans had finally guessed that he was double-crossing them. They were hot after him. I remember his showing me the little green and white capsule he had. He showed it to me to reassure me that he’d never talk to the enemy about the Resistance.

“We patched him up and, by some miracle, we got him out and across the channel to England. He must have saved a (thousand Allied lives—including mine on several occasions. I owe him a debt that has to be repaid, whatever the consequences.”

“But why, after all this time, is someone out to get him?” Jerry Dodd asked.

“He was active until just about a year ago,” Chambrun said. He flicked the ash off his cigarette into the china ashtray at his elbow. “In a normal world we have our dislikes, our hatreds, our jealousies, our grudges. But the worse that can ordinarily happen to us is the loss of a job, the cheating us out of money, the stealing of a girl or a wife. We think of getting even, but we don’t think of murder. But Lovelace hasn’t lived a normal life, nor have the people against whom he’s operated. The stakes he’s played for have been human lives, political power, national security. His enemies have suffered losses at his hands that you and I can’t begin to measure. It sounds like cloak-and-dagger melodrama, but none of it can be evaluated in normal terms. Violence breeds violence.” Chambrun crushed out his cigarette with unusual emphasis. “There are one or two men I remember from those underground days—Nazis who tortured and murdered friends of mine; if one of them should walk into this hotel today I would have to fight to keep from thinking in the old terms of an eye for an eye. I, by God, would be tempted to square accounts. There are men and women who still burn with that desire for revenge, and Lovelace is their target.”

“Let’s face it,” Jerry Dodd said. “I’d guess that about a third of our customers are connected with foreign missions, consulates, the United Nations delegations. The Beaumont is about as unsafe a place as he could choose if he wants to avoid enemies from other countries. This is their natural gathering place in this country.”

“The energy to fight and to run gives out after a while,” Chambrun said. “A strong swimmer will give up and let himself drown with the shore in sight. There comes a moment when you just say ‘to hell with it.’ Lovelace came here because he thinks he would prefer to die close to someone he trusts and loves. He hasn’t got what it takes to fight anymore or to run anymore.”

“You spoke earlier of using him as bait,” Jerry Dodd said.

“We could hide him,” Chambrun said, “which would be the same thing as police protection. He couldn’t stay hidden forever, and his enemy can wait. My theory is that we let him move freely around the hotel. The whole staff will be alerted and we will watch him like hawks. We should have a fifty-fifty chance of anticipating any move that’s made against him.”

“Is fifty-fifty good enough?” Jerry asked.

“He has no chance if he waits until he’s tired of hiding or the police give up guarding him and he comes out in the open, unprotected.”

“What about quarters for him?” Atterbury asked.

“He can continue to stay with me if he wants,” I said.

“That would be good if you care to risk it, Mark,” Chambrun said. “I think he needs someone with him; someone he can get to trust. I’m afraid he’s very near the cracking point.”

“You want me to alert the staff?” Jerry asked. “I can work out a system so we’ll know exactly where he is every second of the day and if anyone seems to be continually in the picture.”

“Please,” Chambrun said.

The red button on his phone blinked. Ruysdale answered.

“Lieutenant Hardy’s in the outer office,” she said.

“Bring him in,” Chambrun said. Lieutenant Hardy is not impressive on first sight. He’s a big, broad-shouldered blond who looks like a somewhat dim-witted Notre Dame fullback. His grin is sheepish, as though he was always apologizing for a blunder. He makes almost none.

Hardy looked tired and a little exasperated as he came into the office. We all knew him and he was aware that he was among friends.

“You never set ’em up without elaborate curlicues,” he said to Chambrun. “This one would make a good movie—spies, dames, a mysterious dead man. Why don’t you have a nice, clean Stanford White shooting in the lobby sometime?”

“Nice to see you, Hardy,” Chambrun said.

“I’d like it better if you’d buy me a drink off duty someday,” Hardy said. He took a small notebook out of his pocket. “You told me you vouch for Lovelace. All this jazz about the CIA? You know they won’t acknowledge it. An agent for them is on his own when he gets in trouble.”

“I vouch for him,” Chambrun said.

“And Smith means nothing to you?”

“Nothing. But Atterbury tells me he had a note from Senator Maxim which is how he happened to get a room. We’re full up.”

“The Senator’s office never heard of him,” Hardy said, “and the Senator is—”

“—somewhere between here and Honolulu.”

“How do you know the note was really from the Senator?” Hardy asked.

“His stationery. His signature is familiar,” Atterbury said. “Of course I suppose it could be forged, but—”

“We’ve sent his fingerprints to the FBI,” Hardy said. “We’ve done a ballistics test on his gun. It may match up with some unfinished business somewhere. Likewise Lovelace’s gun—which he wants back! You planning to turn this place into a shooting gallery?”

“I don’t plan to turn him out onto the street,” Chambrun said. “He’s a friend.”

Hardy nodded. “Well, I’ve got a nice little chore for someone. I understand you’ve got about a thousand guests in the hotel. I want Lovelace to go over the entire list and check off anyone or everyone he knows or has ever heard of. There must be a few people we can write off as probable killers. I remember a few permanents from other days that must be on the safe list.”

Chambrun glanced at Atterbury who went silently across the thick rug and out of the office.

“What are you going to do for Lovelace?” Chambrun asked.

Hardy made a wry mouth. “I’ve got a man outside Haskell’s apartment. Lovelace isn’t to leave those rooms till I say so.”

“But tomorrow—and the next day and the next day?”

“There are things we don’t know yet,” Hardy said. “The medical examiner hasn’t pried the bullet out of Smith’s skull. We have to make sure this friend you vouch for didn’t shoot Smith, clean his gun, and walk away from the crime with his fancy story. Oh—I know. He’s an old buddy-buddy. But we check out bullet against gun before we let him loose.”

Chambrun’s smile was thin. “I approve of anything that keeps him protected. But after you know that isn’t the answer?”

“Then I have a murder to solve, and when I solve it he may be safe. Let’s not borrow trouble and assume there are half a dozen killers running around loose. But I must admit I don’t have one single damn lead at the moment. No gun, if it isn’t Lovelace’s; no witness who saw anyone come or go; no motive until I know who the hell Smith really is. We just wait and hope to God we come up with an identification quick.”

“And Lovelace?”

“Knowing you, I know you have ideas,” Hardy said.

“Complete surveillance by my staff,” Chambrun said. “We monitor his phone. We grab any messenger who delivers a letter or a package for him. We let him circulate and hope somebody makes a misstep.”

Hardy nodded slowly. “I see your point,” he said. “Open protection and the killer just waits. I’d like to add a couple guests to your list. The Commissioner wouldn’t like it if I left the entire protection job to you.”

“Can do,” Chambrun said. “Only your men will have to be pointed out to my staff or they might get a water bottle over the back of the head if they seem too interested in Lovelace.”

“We got a couple of guys who know how to wear a dinner jacket,” Hardy said. “As soon as I have a report from ballistics that Lovelace is in the clear and he’s gone down your guest list for old friends—or enemies—you can turn him loose” …

It was nearly five o’clock when I got back to my office on the fourth floor. My gal Shelda was putting the place to bed for the night. Shelda is disconcerting because she is so damned beautiful. She belongs on a magazine cover and not shut away in a fourth-floor office. She is highly efficient, but she disrupts my life because she knows how to make me constantly unsure that she really belongs to me.

I should have tried to explain about the lipstick smear on my collar long before this, but there hadn’t been time. She gave me a hostile look as I came in.

“Closing up pretty promptly, aren’t you?” I said.

“You have had three telephone calls from Marilyn VanZandt,” she said.

“About that lipstick smear—” I said.

“She’s reserved a table in the Blue Lagoon for dinner. You’re to be sure to check in with her. I have a date with Curtis Dark in the Trapeze in ten minutes—unless there is an emergency.”

“There is no emergency involving you,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of making you late for a date with Dark. As for the lipstick, it isn’t really important you should know—”

“You bastard!” she said.

“The woman was crying—right in the lobby,” I said. “She put her head on my shoulder and her mouth came off on my collar. I brought her up here to get over the weeps!”

“Who cares about your collar?” she said. “What’s going on in this place, Mark? Half the police force has been coming and going. Who’s the man in your apartment?”

“It’s too complicated to tell you in ten minutes,” I said, suddenly enjoying myself. “I wouldn’t have you keep Mr. Dark waiting.”

“Damn Mr. Dark!” she said.

“You threw him at me,” I said.

“Oh, Mark, don’t be a miserable jealous jerk! I did tell Curtis we’d have a drink with him, but—”

“We?”

“You and I, you stinker. You always take the wrong things seriously.”

“Like you—the lipstick on my collar?”

“All right!” She took her bag out of the desk drawer and slammed it shut.

“Let’s start over again,” I said. “I come into your office after an exhausting day and I say, ‘Hi, darling!’ And you say—”

“Hi, darling,” she said meekly.

“And I say, ‘Come into my office, my sweet, and I’ll you about a murder.’”

So we went into my office, and after a while I told her about the murder…

Hardy’s routine with the Beaumont’s guest list struck gold of a kind. I was still telling Shelda, between moments of delightful intimacy, about the murder of John Smith and Lovelace’s problems, when I got a call from Ruysdale asking me to go to my apartment on the double. Shelda went off to keep her date with young Dark, but that was no longer a source of worry to me.

I found Chambrun and Hardy with Lovelace, who seemed almost glassy-eyed with fatigue. He was coat-less, his tie loosened, and the ashtray on my living-room table was spilling over. He’d been going through a massive card-index file that I recognized as the property of Atterbury. It was the constantly changing list of hotel guests. A stack of some fifteen or twenty cards had been removed from the box. Lovelace’s blank eyes stared at me as if I was a complete stranger.

“There are twenty-two people registered in the hotel whom George knows,” Chambrun said. “Five of them may deserve our special attention.” He took the top five cards off the little stack and handed them to me.

There is a code system used by the Beaumont on these cards which tells a great deal more than the name, address, and banking references of the customer. The code-letter A means that the subject is an alcoholic; W on a man’s card means that he is a woman-chaser, possibly a customer for the expensive call girls who appear from time to time in the Trapeze; M on a woman’s card means a man-hunter; O arbitrarily stands for “over his head,” meaning that particular guest can’t afford the Beaumont’s prices and shouldn’t be allowed to get in too deep; MX on a married man’s card means he’s double-crossing his wife, and WX means the wife is playing around. The small letter “d” means diplomatic connections. We have a lot of them at the hotel. If there is special information, it is written out in the form of a memo on the card, and if this information is not to be public knowledge in the front office, the card is marked with Chambrun’s initials, meaning the information is in his private file.

I looked at the cards Chambrun had handed me. The top one bore the name of Louis Martine; credit unlimited, the small “d” for diplomat, and a note indicating he was head of the French delegation to the UN. I knew Monsieur Martine casually. I’d done a press release on him when he’d registered with his wife, onetime film star Collette Cardone. I was too young to remember Miss Cardone’s starring years in prewar films, but she was still quite something to look at, and she had that husky low voice typical of so many French women. The Martines were a very elegant, very distinguished couple. I’d been instructed to give them the red-carpet treatment when they registered.

“Louis Martin was in the Resistance with George and me,” Chambrun said. “He has every reason to remember George with gratitude and affection. Madame Martine may be something else again.”

There was nothing on Collette Martine’s card to indicate she was of special interest. I looked up at Lovelace.

“Collette Cardone was a collaborator with the Nazis in Paris,” he said in a flat, toneless voice. “She had no connection with Louis Martine in those days. I don’t think he met her until after the war. Collette was wined and dined by the Nazis. She made propaganda films for them. There were many French people caught one way or another in that trap and they were forgiven for it later. Collette was obviously forgiven by Louis Martine, who did not offer forgiveness easily. But Collette’s father, also a collaborator, was something else again. He was a part of the German secret police, betraying his supposed friends right and left.” Lovelace drew a deep breath. “I killed him. I caught him delivering secrets about the Resistance to a German official. I killed them both.”

My mouth felt dry. He said it so casually, as though it had been part of the day’s routine.

“I don’t imagine Collette has ever forgiven me,” Lovelace said.