Nightmare Time (2 page)

THERE WAS NO SIGN
of the gun-toting priest in the lobby area. Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, hadn’t noticed him, but there was no particular reason he should have, what with people coming and going. Waters, the doorman on the Fifth Avenue side, thought he remembered seeing a priest leave the hotel.

“Short time ago,” Waters said. “I had no reason to pay special attention. He just walked away. A priest is a priest is a priest.” Waters grinned at me. “Plenty of people in the hotel who need to confess their sins. A priest wouldn’t be an attention-getter.”

Chambrun’s office on the second floor is more like an elegant living room than a place of business—Oriental rug, beautiful antiques, a blue Picasso on the wall opposite The Man’s carved Florentine desk, a gift of the artist himself. When I got there to report on the vanished priest, Chambrun’s key people were there with him and young Guy Willis. Jerry Dodd, dark, wiry former FBI agent who heads our security, was taking notes. Betsy Ruysdale, secretary extraordinary, lovely to look at with dark red hair, was sitting on the couch opposite Chambrun’s desk with the boy beside her. I happen to know that the number where I’d reached Chambrun earlier was Betsy’s unlisted phone in her apartment, just east of the hotel.

I reported that Waters had seen a priest leave the hotel. It could have been our man, it could have been some other priest.

“Guy is about to tell Jerry about his evening,” Chambrun said. His eyes narrowed against the smoke from one of his Egyptian cigarettes. At his elbow was a demitasse of Turkish coffee, always ready for him in a coffee maker on the sideboard.

“Where is your home, Guy?” Jerry asked the boy.

“It’s an apartment in Washington, D.C.,” The boy gave an address, which Jerry wrote down.

“This was a pleasure trip, coming to New York?”

“Partly,” the boy said. “It was a pleasure trip for me and for Rozzie, my mother. For Dad it was part of his job. Rozzie planned to do some lady-type shopping. I could go to a ballgame at Yankee Stadium. I have a seat for tomorrow’s doubleheader.”

“Do you know what your father was here to do?”

“His job,” the boy said.

“Which is—?”

“Dad’s in the Air Force Intelligence,” Guy said. “He doesn’t talk to Rozzie and me about it because it’s top-secret stuff. Star Wars, I think. ‘What you don’t know, no one can try to force you to tell them,’ Dad always tells us.”

“Last night they decided to go down to the Blue Lagoon to hear Duke Hines play the piano, leaving you in 17C?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And before they left they told you if you had any trouble you were to call Mr. Chambrun?”

“No, sir. I mean, not then. That was when we first checked in, a couple of days ago.” The boy glanced at Chambrun. “Dad told me about the thing with the people who attacked you out on the street, sir. He said he felt he could ask you for help if there was any trouble.”

“He was right,” Chambrun said.

“What kind of trouble did he expect?” Jerry asked the boy.

“I’m just eleven years old, sir,” Guy said. “I was going to be pretty much on my own in the daytime. Rozzie would be shopping, no way to reach her; Dad would be doing whatever he was scheduled to do, no way to reach him. I would be going to a ballgame, or the movies or something. I suppose there could be an accident on the street, or at the ballpark, or something. If I needed someone and I couldn’t reach Dad or Rozzie I should feel free to call Mr. Chambrun.”

“So last night they left you to go down to the Blue Lagoon?”

“Yes, sir. They said they’d be gone for just an hour or so.”

“But it was after one in the morning when you tried to find them,” Jerry said.

The boy gave him a sheepish look. “I was watching TV, an old Clint Eastwood western. I’d seen it before. I—I fell asleep.”

“When you woke up your parents weren’t there?”

“No, they weren’t, sir, and I was instantly very frightened. Dad had said they’d be back in an hour or so, give or take fifteen minutes. They’d been gone more than four hours when I woke up. Dad would never be that late and not call.”

“But you were asleep,” Jerry said.

“I was sitting right by the phone in the sitting room, sir. It would have waked me if it had rung. And if it didn’t wake me Dad and Rozzie would have come directly up to the suite from wherever they were to find out what was wrong, why I hadn’t answered.”

“They were having such a good time they didn’t notice the way time had passed,” Jerry suggested.

“No, sir—not if they were just having fun listening to Duke Hines. When an hour and fifteen minutes went by Dad would have called—if he could!”

Chambrun’s coffee cup made a clicking sound as he put it down in the saucer. “Why couldn’t he?” he asked.

“Trouble connected with his job,” young Guy said. The corner of his mouth twitched as he fought to keep his cool. “He couldn’t always tell us, Rozzie and me, when he was coming home. His job isn’t like an office job with regular hours. And it’s dangerous. That’s why he carries a gun. But he keeps in touch when he can, and if he can’t make it at a time he’s named, he calls—always! When I woke up and he hadn’t called, I knew there was some kind of big trouble.”

“Do you know who your father’s commanding officer is in Washington?” Chambrun asked.

“Steve Martin,” Guy said. “Colonel Steve Martin in the Pentagon.”

“Did your father have a private number for him?”

“I suppose he may have, sir.”

“Would it be up in 17C?”

“I doubt it, sir. It would be private, and it would probably be in his wallet, which he’s carrying.”

Chambrun pushed back his desk chair and stood up, “Ruysdale, take Guy up to my penthouse and stay there with him, will you?” When it’s business he neuters Betsy by calling her “Ruysdale.” “Jerry, take Ruysdale and the boy up there, then put penthouse security into effect. After that, a top-to-bottom search for Major and Mrs. Willis.”

“Penthouse security” meant that the two elevators that go to the roof would be cut off at the floor below. There are three penthouses on the roof, one occupied by Chambrun, one by a fabulous old lady in her eighties named Victoria Haven, and the third held in reserve for special diplomatic dignitaries or famous movie stars who want their stay at the Beaumont to go unpublicized. I happened to know that Penthouse Number Three was unoccupied that night. So the elevators would be stopped at the thirty-ninth floor, guards would be stationed on the fire stairs, and no one would be able to get up to the roof without an okay from Chambrun—or Jerry Dodd. A “top-to-bottom” meant a search of every inch of space in the hotel for Major Willis and his wife, no matter how irritating that might be for hundreds of guests who had already retired for the night.

Chambrun put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ll join you in my quarters when I’ve been able to contact your father’s boss,” he said. “You’re quite sure, Guy, that there wasn’t any misunderstanding between you and your folks?”

“Positive, sir. My dad would never leave me hanging out to dry.”

Chambrun patted his shoulder. “We’ll do everything we can to find him, Guy. Keep your chin up. And don’t let Ruysdale persuade you to play gin rummy with her. She’s unbeatable.”

“Yes, sir.”

LOCATING
Colonel Steve Martin in Washington was not easy. Whoever answered the telephone in the Pentagon didn’t choose to be cooperative at first. He wouldn’t give Chambrun a home phone for Colonel Martin. The next morning after ten o’clock would be the time to make a call. Chambrun could sound like a Good Samaritan or a hanging judge, and he chose to play the latter role. He wasn’t calling to ask the Colonel for a favor, rather to do him one. Major Willis, one of the Colonel’s men, was in big trouble. If that didn’t matter to the Colonel…

The man on the other end said he would contact Colonel Martin and if the Colonel chose, he would call Chambrun. Chambrun gave the man a number—his private phone, not the hotel switchboard.

“If you start waking people up in their rooms at two-thirty in the morning, there’s going to be hell to pay,” I said.

“You know how long it will take to search every room in this hotel, Mark? Too damn long, but it must be done. Security will go to sleeping quarters last of all.”

“You don’t think the boy is stirring up a tempest in a teapot?” I asked. “A message miscarried, the boy misunderstood what his father promised him as to a return time?”

“You heard his story. Did you think the boy was hysterical?”

I had to admit I didn’t.

“I’ve lived my professional life trusting my instincts about people,” Chambrun said.

“The kid’s eleven years old, probably with an eleven-year-old’s imagination,” I said, playing devil’s advocate.

“Ham Willis told his son he and the boy’s mother would be gone an hour—fifteen minutes one way or the other. The kid felt so safe he fell asleep. Four hours later Willis hadn’t appeared or checked with young Guy about a change in plans. Out of character, cause for alarm quite real.”

“All kinds of unexpected things can happen in a big city,” I said. “A mugger, a hit-and-run driver, a face-to-face with an old friend you haven’t seen for years.”

“But this is a special man,” Chambrun said. “Anyone can be a target for a mugger. I was, and Ham Willis saved my bacon. But that was outside the hotel. Willis and his wife didn’t plan to leave the hotel. Muggings don’t happen inside the Beaumont. Neither do hit-and-run drivers cruise through our lobby. Meet an old friend and the Willises decide to stay out longer, they call the boy. Willis is in Intelligence. The boy said ‘Star Wars.’ Doesn’t that raise a few prickles on the back of your neck, Mark? We are a headquarters for friends and foes of the United States, all under the umbrella of the United Nations. I’m suggesting that Major Willis came face-to-face, not with an old friend, but a dangerous enemy.”

“Just because he’s stayed out later than he originally planned?”

“Because he is what he is, he wouldn’t change his plans without notifying the boy.”

The private phone on Chambrun’s desk rang. It is connected to a squawk box which, when operating, makes the phone conversation audible to whoever else is in the office. Chambrun switched on the box and answered the phone.

“Pierre Chambrun here.”

A cold, impersonal voice came through the box. “This is Colonel Steve Martin, United States Air Force. You called me, Mr. Chambrun?”

“I did. Let me tell you, Colonel, before we talk, that one of my trusted people is listening in on this call.”

“Get him off,” the cold voice said.

“No point,” Chambrun said. “Whatever we discuss I will repeat to him later. He might as well hear it firsthand.”

“You talk, then,” Colonel Martin said.

Chambrun sketched out the story of Major Willis’s disappearance and young Guy Willis’s concern.

“So Willis was having a good time and forgot to call the boy,” Martin said.

“I don’t think so, Colonel. To begin with, the Major, wearing his Air Force uniform, never went to the Blue Lagoon, the nightclub he was supposed to be headed for. There was the gun-toting priest who stinks to high heaven. Willis is your man and your problem, Colonel. He happens, also, to be a friend to whom I owe a debt. I’m doing everything that can be done here to locate him. But I’m afraid it may all involve information about which I have no knowledge, dangers which are beyond my control.”

There was a moment of silence. Colonel Martin’s voice was a little less icy when he spoke again. “Thank you for alerting us, Mr. Chambrun. I’m sending a man to go into detail with you. He’s in New York and should be with you in a half hour, forty-five minutes. His name is Clinton Zachary. He is an Air Force officer and he will approach you as a civilian. I’m giving you a number where you can call me. You will be put through at any time. Thanks again for calling.”

He gave us a number in Washington and that was that.

R
EPORTS BEGAN
to trickle in from the hotel’s security people. No one had seen an Air Force major in uniform, accompanied by an attractive lady or anyone else, all evening. Willis and his wife appeared to have been the invisible couple. The elevators serving the seventeenth floor at nine o’clock that evening had not been on self-service. That meant the Willises could not have reached the lobby without being noticed by one of our employees. There must have been dozens and dozens of people milling through the lobby at that time of night who weren’t guests of the hotel and who had no way of knowing that we would be looking for someone wearing an Air Force uniform who might have been circulating when they were.

“But our people are always watching who comes and goes,” Chambrun said when I pointed that out to him. “And they knew what Ham Willis means to me. A special reason to notice him.”

Nothing came our way but negatives for the next thirty-five minutes, and then Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, appeared in the door to Chambrun’s office.

“A Captain Zachary to see you, Boss,” Mike said. “Jerry Dodd said to bring him straight to you.”

Zachary, wearing a plain gray tropical-worsted suit, was somehow impressive. His dark hair was crew cut, his gray-blue eyes narrowed and intense. He moved with the lithe grace of an athlete. I wouldn’t have wanted to be faced by him in a tight situation. I felt reassured. This man wasn’t any kind of stuffed-shirt brass.

“Colonel Martin told you to expect me,” Zachary said, his voice cold, clipped.

“Come in, Captain.”

“Let’s get out of the habit of calling me ‘Captain’ while I’m on this case,” Zachary said. “Colonel Martin gave me a sketchy account of what is supposed to have happened here. It isn’t much.”

“The Willises left their eleven-year-old son in their suite, 17C, to go down to our nightclub, the Blue Lagoon. The boy expected them back in an hour. He fell asleep watching television and when he woke at one o’clock his parents hadn’t returned. The boy had been told to call me if he found himself in any trouble.”

“I know about your experience with Willis and some Arab terrorists,” Zachary said. “It’s in his record file.”

“So you understand why I have taken an active role in this as soon as I was notified,” Chambrun said.