Nightmare Time (7 page)

“You’re not to blame at all, boy,” Chambrun said. “You weren’t told to stay awake, were you? If anyone is to blame, I am. I let this happen to a cherished friend in my hotel!” Something of the enormous fatigue Chambrun must have felt showed in the deepening lines of his face. He had been on the go since seven-thirty the previous morning, his normal rising time. There had been the pressures of the regular daily routine, then the growing tragedies of this early morning—the murder of a trusted employee, the disappearance and the threat of terminal violence to a friend he owed, now this boy to protect and care for. He looked down at the boy now with something that looked like genuine affection. “I can’t promise you everything will turn out all right, boy,” he said, “but I can tell you that every resource I have, every bit of manpower, every ounce of special skills at my disposal will try to make it come out all right. Play it the way I am, Guy. Hope for the best. It can happen, and we’ll fight to make it happen.”

Guy still hung on to this man his father had told him to trust. “If Rozzie took that poison while I was sleeping—”

“If you had warned us at ten o’clock we might have had no better luck than we’ve had later,” Chambrun said. “I’ve got to check with our security people who are searching. Mark will stay with you. Try to get some sleep. Win or lose, it’s going to be a pretty hectic day coming up.”

“Sleep isn’t easy,” I said. “It’s nightmare time.” I gave Chambrun a brief sketch of Guy’s gory dream.

“Try thinking about all the good times you’ve had with your parents, Guy,” Chambrun said. “Perhaps that’ll help.”

A FEW MINUTES
after Chambrun left me alone with Guy in the penthouse, I began to be aware of how vital sleep was to all of us. The boy, in spite of what must have been a shattering anxiety for his parents, dozed off, twitching and turning on the bed where he lay. It must have been nightmare time again, I thought. I remembered leaning my head back against the chair where I sat and closing my eyes because they felt raw and tired from more than twenty hours without closing. The next thing I knew, early-morning sunshine was streaming through the bedroom window. I glanced at my wristwatch. It was almost quarter of eight. Betsy Ruysdale would be relieving me any minute now. I glanced at the boy. He seemed to be sleeping quietly now.

I tiptoed out into the kitchenette and got the Mr. Coffee machine going. There must not be any news, good or bad, I thought, or I would have heard from Chambrun.

I realized that one of the morning news shows must be showing on TV. I switched on the set in the kitchen, keeping the volume low with the hope it wouldn’t disturb Guy. I was suddenly in the lobby downstairs, where Rex Chandler, one of the top newsmen, was interviewing Eleanor Jacobs, the night clerk who had registered the man who called himself Henry Graves. Eleanor looked worn out, probably from answering the same questions dozens of times for dozens of reporters.

“Can you describe this man who called himself Henry Graves, Miss Jacobs?” Chandler was asking her.

“It was about eight o’clock in the evening,” Eleanor told him. “It was a hectic moment at the front desk. A bus had just come in from Kennedy with eight or ten people from the West Coast all trying to register and get to their rooms at one time. Mr. Henry Graves got to me to handle his problem. There was a note on his reservation card indicating that he was a friend of Major Willis’s and that Mr. Chambrun would want special care for him. Room 17E had been set aside for him.”

“But you had a reason to pay special attention to him, didn’t you?” Chandler asked.

“Yes and no,” Eleanor said. “He didn’t have any problems. He explained that he’d found himself in town unexpectedly, had no luggage, would borrow anything he needed from Major Willis. Asked where the drugstore was so he could buy himself a toothbrush.”

“His looks, Miss Jacobs? The police and we, the press, are all trying to find him.”

“A dark summer suit—dark gray or dark blue, I can’t be certain. A gray snap-brim hat with brim pulled down over his forehead. Black glasses—”

“At eight o’clock in the evening?”

“You’ve been in this business long enough to know, Mr. Chandler, that dark glasses these days are more often cosmetic than medical. Way of staying anonymous for movie stars and other important people.”

“Anything else distinctive about him?”

“Nothing. That was it, I guess—the only distinctive thing about him was that there was nothing distinctive! I couldn’t see the color of his hair, so it must have been worn short under that hat. Glasses concealed the color of his eyebrows—big round glasses. He was medium tall, just about six feet, I’d say. Not overweight or underweight.”

Eleanor had seen more than most people see in a stranger. I suppose it was part of the training for her job. The TV news went from the lobby of the Beaumont to riots in South Africa, and I turned it off. Enough coffee had come through the Mr. Coffee machine for me to pour myself a cup when I heard the front door open. It would be Betsy to relieve me, I thought, and I went out into the living room to greet her.

It wasn’t Betsy. It was Chambrun, accompanied by Jerry Dodd. Chambrun was almost unrecognizable. His face was the color of gray ashes in a fireplace. His mouth was a thin knife slit in his face. His eyes were clouded ice. I guessed there was news of the Willises—bad news. It was worse than that, from Chambrun’s point of view. He held out a folded sheet of white paper to me, not speaking.

“Came by special messenger,” Jerry Dodd said.

There was one sentence typewritten on the piece of paper. “IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR MISS RUYSDALE ALIVE AGAIN TURN THE BOY LOOSE.”

I
FELT MY LIPS MOVING
but no sound came.

“Betsy doesn’t answer her phone,” Jerry Dodd told me. “I’ve sent a couple of my men around the corner to her apartment to check it out.”

Chambrun sat down at his writing desk, pounding at its flat surface with his clenched fists. I slipped out into the kitchen and brought him a mug of coffee. He drinks it round the clock, and I guessed he could use it now. The phone was ringing as I brought it to him. Jerry answered. It was apparently one of Jerry’s men reporting to him. He shook his head as Chambrun stared at him.

“Talk to any people you can find in the building.” Jerry put down the phone. “She isn’t there, Boss. No sign of any violence. My man says it doesn’t look as though she slept there. Bed neatly made, just the way she might have left it when she went to work yesterday morning.” He turned to me. “What time did she leave you, Mark?”

“Around three-thirty, I think. I know she planned to leave a call for seven-thirty, and I figured she’d get about four hours sleep.”

“She may never have gotten home,” Jerry said. “Bastards picked her up out on the street.”

“So help me,” Chambrun said in a shaken voice, “if they have hurt her—!” And he pounded down the desk again with his fists, making the coffee mug I’d brought him bounce.

“You’re going to have to tell Lieutenant Hardy,” Jerry said.

“This isn’t a homicide yet,” Chambrun said. “I’ve got to think—”

“About turning the boy loose?” Jerry asked.

“You want to turn me loose?” It was Guy Willis, standing in the doorway, rubbing at his sleep-swollen eyes.

“Damn!” Chambrun muttered. He hadn’t wanted to tell the boy, not yet, at any rate. “He has to know, Mark.”

I picked up the threatening note from the desk where Chambrun had dropped it and carried it over to the boy. He read it, his eyes widening.

“They’ve hurt Betsy?” he asked.

“That’s all we know at the moment,” I said, indicating the note.

“I don’t understand,” Guy said.

Chambrun turned in his chair, fighting for control. His voice was almost gentle as he spoke to the boy. “It’s like an old joke, Guy—‘I have good news for you and bad news.’ The good news is that your father is still alive, still unwilling to tell them what they want to know. The bad news is that if they tried to use your mother to get him to talk, they failed. Their last chance is to get you to him, threaten you with bodily harm, in the hope that will break your father down. To prevent that is why you’re here, with Betsy and Mark to guard you along with Mr. Dodd’s security force.”

“So—so they’ve got Betsy and are threatening to harm her unless you surrender me to them?” Guy asked.

“Something like that,” Chambrun said.

“Well—of course, you have to,” the boy said.

Chambrun stared at him as though he couldn’t believe what he’d heard.

“You can’t let them use Betsy, who doesn’t even know my dad more than to say hello to, to force Dad to give them what they want. I’m the one that should have to face it—whatever it is.”

“Look, kiddo, I don’t think you quite understand—” Jerry began.

“Dad wouldn’t want me to hide behind a woman’s skirt,” Guy said.

“I think we all need to face the situation as it really is,” Chambrun said. He took a sip from the mug of coffee I’d brought him. “It’s very grim, Guy, and very black. You ready for it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your father has information these people have already committed one murder to try to get—Tim Sullivan. They hoped to use your mother as a means of making your father talk. It hasn’t worked, we can only hope not for the very worst reason. Then they tried to get you, using the priest. Now I’ve got you where they can’t get you. So they snatch Ruysdale to force my hand.”

“So let them have me, sir,” young Guy said. “It’s the Willises’ problem, not yours or Betsy’s.”

“But think in terms of the blackest kind of villainy, boy, if you can,” Chambrun said. “Your father and mother can identify these people if they ever get free. They’ll keep your father alive because only he can give them the information they want so badly. Your mother?” Chambrun’s shoulders moved in a little shrug. “Now they’ve got Betsy. Will they free her if I meet their demand and set you loose? She could identify some of them, so she can’t win. They’ll keep her alive as long as they think they can use her to make me give in, turn you over to them. After that they won’t dare let her go. Your father is alive, but he must know that whether he talks or not there’s no hope for him in the end. As long as I don’t set you free, Guy, there’s a chance that all of them—your dad, mother, and Betsy—will be kept alive. So we keep you safe here and we have just a little while in which we can hope to catch up with them.”

The boy’s lips trembled. “I thought you said the brooch meant that Rozzie had taken the poison.”

“Or been prevented from taking it,” Chambrun said. “If your father knew she’d killed herself, nothing on earth would persuade him to talk—unless it was you. If your mother is alive, and they start to torture you in front of her, she might persuade your father to talk.”

“And even if he did you’d all be dead ducks,” Jerry Dodd said. “None of you would ever be let go to identify them to the top brass.”

“That’s the way it is, boy,” Chambrun said. “They’ll give us a little time to figure out what our chances are, probably threaten us again, maybe put Betsy on the phone to ask me for help. Then, if I do turn you loose you’re all dead, and if I don’t all but you are dead.”

“I’d want to go with them,” Guy said.

“But if I keep you here, protected, it will give us some time—hours, a day—to find some answers and stage a rescue. Cooperate with us, boy. It’s the one chance there is for your parents and Betsy.”

The boy hesitated, drew a deep breath. “Yes sir. I’ll do whatever you say.”

IN RETROSPECT
it’s hard for me to remember the exact sequence of events in the next little stretch of time. Some of them I was in on, some of them I heard about later.

One of our basic problems, as Jerry Dodd pointed out to Chambrun, was manpower. Still playing with Chambrun’s theory that the Willises and, possibly now, Betsy were being cleverly hidden in the hotel, moved to safety areas after they’d been searched, Jerry pointed out that we’d need the National Guard to help keep those searched places covered so they couldn’t be used again. You could close the hotel, check everybody out, then send in the army. But that was a process that would take hours.

We probably didn’t have hours. In the course of such an elaborate move the people holding the Willises and Betsy would be alerted, move with the tide, and disappear. We needed every bit of possible help we could get, and that dictated the necessity of letting Hardy and Captain Zachary in on what had happened to Betsy. That would give us police help and the special knowledge of the armed services intelligence know-how. I was given the job of informing those two potential allies what was cooking while Chambrun and Jerry went around the corner to Betsy’s apartment to see for themselves if there was any sort of clue that might help. I don’t think Chambrun would have left the hotel in a crisis for any other reason in the world than to help someone as precious to him as Betsy. I didn’t believe there was any other such person.

Chambrun had one fresh piece of information before he and Jerry set out for Betsy’s apartment. Betsy had told me she was “going to leave a call” for seven-thirty so she could relieve me at eight. There was no special phone service in the little brownstone where she had her apartment, and so the call was left at the Beaumont’s switchboard. Ora Veach, the chief operator on duty in the early morning, called Betsy every workday at seven. This time there had been a message not to call her till seven-thirty. Ora Veach informed Chambrun that there’d been no answer when the switchboard called at seven-thirty.

“I figured her routine habits had wakened her before we called,” Ora told The Man. “Probably in the bathroom and didn’t hear the phone. We tried twice more in the next ten minutes. No luck. I’m sorry, Mr. Chambrun, but I didn’t think there was any reason to be alarmed. Habit had waked her ahead of time and she was probably on her way over here.”

If she was ever at home at all, Chambrun thought. Jerry Dodd’s notion that Betsy had been picked up on her way home was eating at him. It was less than a block from the hotel, a well-lighted street, but deserted at three-thirty in the morning.