Shape of Fear (15 page)

“I can’t tell you any more than you already know,” I said after I got them quiet.

“Did Girard find his wife in your office with Sullivan?”

“Let’s say they were all three here,” I said.

“Was the fight over her?”

“It was a private fight,” I said. “If you want statements, you’ll have to get them from the Girards or Sullivan.”

“That bruise on your jaw makes it look as though you were in the middle of it, Haskell.”

I grinned at them. “I forgot to duck,” I said.

“The Girards won’t see us. We haven’t been able to locate Sullivan. Come on, Haskell. There are ways and ways of writing this story. You want it bad for the hotel, we can dish it out that way.”

“Have a heart,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “We’ve got enough trouble with a murder on our hands. Two men had a quarrel. It was for obvious reasons, not the heavyweight championship. Obviously, even if I knew the reasons, I couldn’t talk about them to you. We weren’t the promoters, you understand.”

It went on like that for a bit until they decided I couldn’t or wouldn’t be any help. I must admit I didn’t make any new friends.

As soon as they were gone, I asked Miss Quigley when Shelda had gone home and when she had called. Miss Quigley had missed the fight. She’d been delivering some mimeographed programs to the Chartreuse Room for the fashion show that afternoon. She’d stopped off for a coffee in the drugstore. When she got back, the porter’s crew were cleaning up the wreckage and both Shelda and I were missing. Shelda had called about five minutes before I’d come back and found the reporters.

I went into my private office and dialed Shelda’s apartment on the outside line. She answered after one ring.

“Mark?”

“What the hell are you doing there?” I said. “This place is like the inside of a Waring Mixer.”

“Can you come over here, Mark?” She sounded like a small, frightened child.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s Mrs. Girard, Mark. She’s here. We—we don’t know what happened. Her husband—Mr. Sullivan …”

“What’s Mrs. Girard doing there?”

“She asked me if there was some place she could be alone. She needed help, Mark. I gave her my keys. What—what did happen?”

“Everybody’s all right. So she wants to be alone, so come back here and help me.”

“Please, Mark. She wants to talk to you.”

“Put her on the phone.”

“She’s not up to it, Mark. Not yet. Please come.”

“As soon as I can—if I can,” I said. “I’ll have to talk to Chambrun.”

“But not her husband!” Shelda said sharply.

The surest way to get your head chopped off is to try to referee a misunderstanding between a husband and wife. I didn’t need Chambrun to tell me that. But he agreed with me that one of the best ways to keep the storm from breaking out again was to get Juliet Girard together with her husband. It would at least end Girard’s anxiety as to where she was and what had happened to her. As far as my job was concerned, it might be just as well if I wasn’t around as a target for persistent reporters.

Shelda’s apartment, in the East Seventies, is one of those little gems in a remodeled brownstone you come upon once in a while in the city. It’s the ground floor apartment; actually a couple of steps below street level, with its own private entrance. It had probably been the kitchen in the original private house, and there was a beautiful little garden at the back, soot-stained but brave. Shelda had a bright awning out there, some evergreens growing in wooden tubs, and even some flowers in season. She lays claim to a green thumb. But the garden hadn’t been much use the past months because of riveters working on a new apartment house going up next door. Inside, there was a cool, large living room, a kitchenette, bedroom and bath. It was an ideal setup for a bachelor girl. Shelda announced smugly that the apartment was all that kept her from marrying me—though I’d never asked her.

Shelda greeted me at the front door. There’s a little foyer inside, and she kept me there for a moment. There’s something small child and winning about Shelda when she is worried or very earnest about something.

“I don’t know how much you know about Juliet,” she said.

“Pretty much,” I said.

“It was a terrible thing for her to see, Mark—the fight.”

“You might try limiting your sympathy to me,” I said, touching the tender spot on my chin.

“Idiot! Listen, Mark. She’s being pulled to pieces in two directions. Her husband and Digger Sullivan.”

“It’s her problem, not ours,” I said. “I’m not sure it was wise of you to bring her here.”

“I couldn’t just let her wander around in the streets, Mark!”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Help her!”

“Well, let’s find out how she wants to be helped,” I said.

Juliet had the same curious magical excitement for me when I walked into the living room. She was sitting in the corner of the big overstuffed couch. Shelda had made coffee for her, and there was a decanter of brandy and a pony glass on the low table in front of her.

“It was very kind of you to come, Mr. Haskell,” she said in her low, husky voice. “Charles doesn’t know that I’m here or that you’ve come to see me?”

“Not from me,” I said.

She leaned forward. “Everything I told you in your office is true, Mr. Haskell. I’m committed to Charles. But before I go back to him—before I talk to him—I must see Digger.”

“Then see him, Mrs. Girard,” I said. “Or are you asking for advice?”

“No,” she said. “No.”

“I’m glad. Because I can’t give you advice.”

“But you are Digger’s friend?”

“I think you’ve jumped at some conclusions about me, Mrs. Girard,” I said. “I never met Digger until yesterday morning. The drink I had with him in the Trapeze when I first saw you was the first time I’d ever been alone with him. I’ve heard his story, and just a short time ago I heard your husband’s story, in great detail. You might say I know all three of you equally well—which is really not at all.”

“You know about my father then? What he was fighting for? The reason for his death?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever met Paul Bernardel?”

“I left him half an hour ago.”

“He’s a most dangerous man, Mr. Haskell.” She lowered her head. “It’s hard for you, I’m sure, living here in America, safe and secure, going about your business, having drinks with your friends, free to love and laugh without constantly looking over your shoulder—hard for you to comprehend the undercurrents of violence in our lives in France. We—my husband and I, my father, Digger—have lived with the threat of violent death hovering over us for a long time. My father was dent travels the length and breadth of your country—violent men. But they’re in a class; they’re recognizable. In our world it’s very different. Both sides in the struggle would claim to be patriots, men of honor with honorable motives. Both sides have the same battle cry, Mr. Haskell: ‘France must be saved!’ Your President travels the length and breadth of your country and even into foreign places. He’s protected by your Secret Service. What they are protecting him from is attack by some crackpot or mentally disturbed person. Our President’s life maybe threatened by the man who sat at his right hand at dinner—an important industrialist, a famous poet or writer, a distinguished scientist. And so determined is each side to win that there are no rules, no holds barred, as you say here. No extremes too unthinkable. The men who spread terror to defeat France’s Algerian policy were men of honor, fine officers in the French army, business men struggling to revive France’s dead economy. They are men, Mr. Haskell, who in normal circumstances would be revolted by the traffic in drugs, who would turn away in loathing from the idea of contributing to the misery of thousands of desperate people who must have drugs to survive. Men who would lend their power and influence, in normal circumstances, to smashing such a criminal activity. But the circumstances aren’t normal. They must have money to go on with their fight. They must have the weapons, arms, munitions that only money can buy. They do it for France, they think. They force themselves to become callous to the methods. They force themselves to become callous to the idea of murder. It is for France!”

“You make a pretty good case for them,” I said.

“No! It’s only to make you understand, Mr. Haskell. When I told you in your office that Digger must be persuaded to go away, to give up his search for my father’s murderer, I could almost sense what you felt. Melodrama! A romantic-minded woman, off-balance because of what happened to her father. Nothing like that will happen in America, in the elegant surroundings of the Beaumont.”

“It already has happened,” I said. “Murray Cardew.”

She looked up at me quickly. “There is some connection?”

“We think there may be,” I said.

“Then you do understand me? You do believe me?”

“I think perhaps I do.”

“Then you will help,” she said, the wide eyes very bright “Digger has no cause except me! He has no real concern for the outcome of things in France. But the longer he keeps probing, investigating, the closer he comes to a point where there is no turning back. If he should stumble on evidence that would reveal Paul Bernardel’s real position in the scheme of things, they will kill him as unhesitatingly as they’d slap at a wasp on the window sill. He’s got to understand that I believe in him. That there’s nothing he needs to prove to me. He’s got to pull out before it’s too late.”

“Your husband thinks he may be working the other side of the street,” I said.

“Poor Charles. He can’t see through the fog of his jealousy.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Bring Digger here. Let me have a chance to convince him, to persuade him. After that, I’ll go back—to Charles.”

“Of course he’ll do it, won’t you, Mark?” Shelda said.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “All you have to do, Mrs. Girard, is pick up the phone over there, call the Beaumont, ask for Digger and do your own inviting.”

“But will he come without your persuasion?”

“He’s not in love with me, Mrs. Girard,” I said. “I don’t think Shelda and I should be involved in this. As it is, I’ll be avoiding your husband until you come back to the hotel in case he should ask me if I know where you are. I don’t want to be in the middle, and I don’t want Shelda to be any more in the middle than she already is.”

“I’ll stay here with you, Juliet,” Shelda said.

“You’ll come with me,” I said. “This is a private thing that Mrs. Girard and Sullivan have to settle between themselves. You already know too much, Shelda,”

“Know too much?”

“Doesn’t it occur to you that we’ve already gotten so far into this thing that here are people who may decide we’re not good risks?”

It was a beautiful day and Shelda and I walked back to the hotel, she still protesting.

Juliet shouldn’t be left alone, she insisted.

“She’s a big girl,” I said.

“You talk about knowing too much,” Shelda said. “She knows a great deal more. She must know everything that her father knew.”

“And has stayed alive for three years,” I said. “Look, honey, nobody knows where she is, thanks to your turning Mata Hari. If she can’t trust Digger, she can’t trust anyone.”

“Of course, she can trust him!” Shelda said, indignant

“Her husband doesn’t think so.”

“Her husband is a—a monster!”

“He’s a man in love with a woman who’s in love with somebody else,” I said. “It hurts. But I have the feeling he’s a pretty decent guy. It’s too bad he and Digger can’t work together. They’d make a tough team. Now you get back on the job, cover that fashion show in the Chartreuse Room this afternoon as you’re supposed to, and let fifty million Frenchmen work out their own problems.”

We walked a little way in silence. Then she said, “Mark?”

“Yes.”

“You surprise me sometimes.”

“Nothing up my sleeves,” I said.

“You make more sense than I expect you to,” she said. “Which is a good thing for our future.”

“What future?”

“Don’t always pretend to be so obtuse,” she said. “You know perfectly well what our future is going to be.”

I grinned at her. “Are you proposing to me?”

“When I do, you’ll know,” she said. “I won’t come at it sideways like you.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said.

“You may regret saying that,” she said.

Oddly enough, I think that was the first time it occurred to me that there really was something inevitable about Shelda and me. I mean, when I stopped to think what it would be like without her around. It would be like waking up in a strange place and not knowing how you got there.

Chambrun was not alone when I got back to his office. Lieutenant Hardy was there and a strange man who was introduced to me as Harry Clark, an agent of the
U.S.
Narcotics Bureau. From the quick, guarded look Chambrun gave me, I gathered he didn’t want a public report on my visit to Juliet Girard. I waited for a cue from him.

Clark was a pleasant-looking, sandy-haired gent with an easy smile. He had come here to meet Sam Loring, the Bureau’s Rome agent, the one who had taken Digger into his confidence a couple of years ago. Loring, it seemed, had followed the Bernardel party from France.

“We think we’re at the climax of a three-year chase,” Clark said. “A big deal is about to be consummated between the Secret Army boys and the narcotics boys in this country. The main trouble is we have to cover too many manholes. We still aren’t positive about who’s who. Bernardel is our prime pigeon, but he’s as hard to get hold of as an eel. Loring has thought he had him a dozen times, and each time he’s slipped away. You set a trap for him, and he doesn’t walk into it. If he is our man, he’s one of slickest operators we’ve ever come up against. We think several million dollars and a few kilos of heroin may change hands here—in your hotel, Mr. Chambrun—in the next few days. We can cover Bernardel like a tent, and he’ll just laugh at us and the exchange will take place somewhere behind our backs. Maybe Kroll, maybe LaCoste, maybe the Ambassador himself, maybe Charles Girard, maybe someone we haven’t even thought of.”

“And you can’t cover them all?” I asked naively.