Walking Dead Man (18 page)

“She’s on her way to Kansas,” I said.

“I don’t care where she is,” Maxie said. “We wouldn’t get to film her sequence for months. But will she do it?”

I felt sorry for him. “I don’t think she will, Maxie, and I don’t think Battle cares. He was just trying to do her a favor, and if she doesn’t want it, that isn’t going to stand in your way. What he wants, I gather, is control of the script.”

“Why?” Maxie wailed. “He’s not a writer! He mentioned this to me a while back and I thought Cleaves was going to have apoplexy. It’s no secret Cleaves hates Battle’s guts. Something about his father got killed in the big war by friends of Battle’s. Cleaves has final say-so on the script. That’s in my contract with him.”

“Maybe what Battle wants wouldn’t be objectionable to Cleaves,” I said.

“Anything Battle wants would be objectionable to Cleaves. He’s tried to find other money for me because he didn’t want Battle involved—right from the beginning. Somehow or other Battle’s got other doors shut on us.”

“Maybe he can’t keep ’em shut forever,” I said.

“Long enough so I lose David,” Maxie said. “The people who put up money put it up for the star, not for the story. Try and get through to Battle for me, will you, Haskell? I know you better than to offer you bread. But I might be able to do you a return favor sometime. You might not want to spend the rest of your life in this hotel. You might make it big doing
P.R.
work in films.”

“I’ll try to get to him because I feel sorry for you. What’s going on around here shouldn’t happen to a dog,” I said.

My phone rang and I picked it up. It was Miss Ruysdale.

“Glad I found you, Mark,” she said. “Mr. Chambrun wants you.”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Dr. Cobb,” she said.

“What about him?”

“He’s dead, Mark.”

“God. Less than an hour ago—! How did it happen?”

“He seems simply to have stopped breathing,” Ruysdale said.

W
HEN YOU HAVE BEEN
surrounded by violence as we had been for the last twenty-four hours, a natural death seemed like adding insult to injury. George Battle put it in a rather apt way.

“Even God seems to be against me,” he said. “In the midst of all this hell I lose an old and trusted friend.”

There wasn’t much to the story I heard when I joined Chambrun up in 17B, Battle’s suite. Dr. Cobb, it seemed, had returned from his visit to Chambrun’s office in pretty bad shape. Doc Partridge, our house physician, had been there when he got back. Jerry Dodd had produced the doc to stand by Battle while Cobb was out of the suite. Doc is old, cantankerous, with bushy black eyebrows contrasting with his silvery hair.

“Damned old fool,” he said to Chambrun and the rest of us. Hardy was there, too. The Lieutenant had to be certain he didn’t have another homicide on his hands. “He had no business being up and around. Do an autopsy on him and you’ll find he doesn’t have anything but torn rags for lungs. But he went on smoking and drinking and trying to live a normal life.”

“Perhaps that was the best way to see it through,” Chambrun said.

“And shorten the process,” Doc Partridge said. “When he got back here, I didn’t think he’d make it to his room. Strangling, he was; gasping for breath. I figured if he didn’t get to his oxygen supply in a hurry, he’d had it. I helped him into his room and got him down on the bed and got the oxygen cylinder where he could use it, the mask over his nose and mouth. He waved a sort of thanks at me and I left him. Then he lifted the mask off his face and managed to say something about ‘sleeves.’ I didn’t get it, but I went back to him. He was sucking in oxygen from the tank. He knew how bad it was, he was a doctor.”

Chambrun was frowning. “What did he mean, ‘sleeves’?”

“I couldn’t figure it,” Doc said. “I’d helped him off with his suit jacket. I looked at his shirt sleeves. They were fairly tight around his wrists, so I unbuttoned them. They could have caused him some discomfort. He shook his head as if he was trying to tell me that wasn’t it, but he was too busy trying to breath to go any further with it.”

“Wasn’t there anything you could do to help him, Doc?”

“Oxygen was the only thing that would help him,” Doc said. “Best thing was to leave him quietly alone with it. So I came back out here and reported the state of things to Mr. Battle. Half an hour later I went back into the bedroom to see how he was doing. He was gone. Dead.”

“Shouldn’t you have stayed with him?” Chambrun asked.

“No reason to. He knew exactly how to handle things. Lie perfectly still and get some oxygen down into what was left of his lungs.”

“Why didn’t it work?”

Doc shrugged. “You come to the end of a dead-end street. There comes a last time when nothing works.”

Battle was huddled in a big armchair, looking woebegone. Butler, the bodyguard, and Gaston, the chef, were hovering in the background.

“I was wrong to come here, Pierre,” Battle said. “My impulse is to arrange to head back for home tonight, at once. But to go back to the villa without Allerton—without Cobb—”

“I’d like to have a look at him,” Chambrun said to Doc, as if he hadn’t heard Battle.

Partridge led the way into the bedroom. What was left of Dr. Cobb wasn’t a pleasant sight. He’d worn dentures and he’d taken them out and put them on the bedside table. His jaw, slack, hung open, revealing an ugly black hole. The oxygen tank and mask were on a chair several feet away from the bed. Partridge saw Chambrun looking at them.

“I put them there,” he said. “The mask was on his face and the cylinder lying beside him on the bed when I found him.”

Chambrun went over and picked up the cylinder. I saw his frown deepen.

“Poor bastard,” he said. “The damned thing is empty.”

“Impossible!” Doc said.

Chambrun turned. “What do you mean, ‘impossible’? See for yourself.” He held out the cylinder to Doc.

Partridge took it, examined it. “You’re right, but it’s still impossible.”

“Why?”

“It was brand-new,” Doc said. “I got it for him late this afternoon. You don’t carry extras around in your luggage. Too bulky. He called my office and asked me to get him a fresh one. There’s a regular supply service for them and I had this one delivered.”

“How do you know it was that one?”

“Tag on it. Name of the supplier on it. My supplier. I brought this up to him myself. He used it just before he went down to see you. It was full.”

“Maybe he forgot to turn it off.”

“When your life depends on something, you don’t forget simple routines,” Partridge said.

“Maybe the cylinder is faulty—has a leak in it.”

“Be a damn good idea to find out,” Doc said. “Because if it isn’t—”

“Just what I was thinking, Doc,” Chambrun said. “You take charge of it, Doc. Get someone here to check it out.” He glanced toward the door to the living room. “For now, just between us. Right?”

Doc took the cylinder and went out. Chambrun and Hardy and I stood looking down at the dead Cobb.

“You trying to make something out of nothing?” Hardy asked.

“I hope so,” Chambrun said. He turned to me. “I haven’t seen Shelda around.”

“She’s gone,” I said.

“Gone?”

“Home. To beautiful downtown Topeka, Kansas,” I said.

“What are you talking, about?”

“Her family,” I said. “She hasn’t seen them for more than a year. This all got a little too rough for her. Battle gave her some free time, so she took off.”

“When?” Chambrun sounded sharper than the subject required.

I glanced at my watch. “Her plane must have left LaGuardia sometime in the last half hour,” I said.

“You know the flight number?”

“No.”

“Find out.”

“How?”

“The chances are ten to one she made her reservation through the travel service downstairs. Find out what it is.”

“Why are you so interested? I don’t get it,” I said.

“That’s because you are an idiot,” Chambrun said, and sounded like he meant it. “Just what did she tell you? You
did
see her?”

“Sure I saw her. In the Trapeze. She was pretty badly shaken up. She felt somehow responsible for what happened to Allerton. If he hadn’t taken the letters in for her—Nonsense, of course. So she wanted to get out.”

His eyes were, those narrowed slits that told of anger. “Find out the number of her flight if you can,” he said. “And then check at the airport to see if she actually took it.”

“Of course she took it,” I said.

“Listen,” Chambrun said. “That girl is in love with you. She wouldn’t take off to see her family when you haven’t had ten minutes together. She wouldn’t be shaken up by what’s happened. She has the guts of a burglar. You don’t know your own woman. Just find out about the flight and if she took it. If she didn’t, God help her.”

“Would you mind telling me what you’re hinting at?” I asked, feeling a knot tightening in my stomach.

“I’m not hinting,” he said. “I’m telling you she may be in serious trouble. There isn’t time to draw you pictures. Find out what we have to know, and don’t stop on the way to pass the time of day with anyone.”

It wasn’t like him to be mysterious. His concern for Shelda just didn’t make any sense. Yet he always made sense. I tried to remember everything she’d said, exactly how she’d looked. There wasn’t anything, except that she had certainly cracked up.

Chambrun was right about the travel service. They had made the reservation for Shelda. Flight 074 to Topeka, leaving LaGuardia at 7:10
P.M.
I called the airport. Shelda hadn’t picked up the reservation. I felt a sudden chill running along my spine as I headed back upstairs to find Chambrun.

He and Hardy had left 17B when I got there. Jerry Dodd, who was still standing guard, didn’t know where they’d gone.

“Battle has given orders for his yachts to be ready to take him back to France by midnight,” Jerry said. “Hardy has told him he couldn’t go while he was needed here as a material witness. Would you believe there has been a direct call to the State Department and that Hardy has been advised not to be sticky?”

“Our Mr. Battle has friends in high places,” I said. “Would you have any idea what’s bugging Chambrun about Shelda?”

He grinned at me. “Shelda who?” he said.

I wasn’t in the mood for jokes, but I didn’t have the chance to tell Jerry so because Battle came out of the bedroom.

“I’m glad I have a chance to talk to you, Haskell,” he said. He walked over to the big armchair and sat down. Almost instantly Gaston, the chef, appeared carrying a tray with two cups and a pot of tea. He went through the same routine I’d seen Allerton handle up in the penthouse. He poured tea into both cups, took one himself, tasted, waited a moment till it cooled a little, drank more heartily. Then he handed the second cup to Battle.

“Thank you, Gaston,” Battle said. He sipped his tea with apparent relish. Then he remembered me. “I know you have done what you can, Haskell, to keep the buzzards of the press off my back. I appreciate your efforts.”

“My job,” I said.

“There will be a little more to it,” he said. “In spite of the objections of your police lieutenant I will be setting out for the marina where my yachts are anchored a little after eleven o’clock. It’s going to be very difficult to get out of the hotel without being swamped by those reporters, in spite of what Pierre and his people can do.”

“They’re hungry to talk to you,” I said. I wanted out. I wanted to find Chambrun with my news about Shelda.

“I would like you to call a formal press conference for eleven o’clock in one of your special reception rooms downstairs,” Battle said. “I will give you a statement for them.”

“And while I’m talking to them, you slip out of the hotel,” I said.

He smiled that smile that must have been so attractive years ago. “Exactly right,” he said.

“And then I had better look for a job in another field,” I said. “The minute I play tricks on the reporters my usefulness as a public relations man for the hotel is finished.”

“Your first loyalty is to Pierre,” he said. “I’m sure he will approve.”

“When he says so, I’ll arrange it,” I said.

The phone rang and Jerry answered it. “For you,” he said to me. “Message for you. The boss wants you in his office.”

“Then you can arrange things with Pierre at once,” Battle said, “and let the press know that you’ll have a statement from me for them at eleven o’clock.”

“If Mr. Chambrun says so.”

Battle’s smile widened. “You can count on it that he will.”

Chambrun, Hardy, and Miss Ruysdale were in the boss’s office when I got there. I sensed a kind of special tension between them that I didn’t understand. Chambrun turned on me, sounding angry.

“I told you not to hang around talking to people,” he said.

“Not people,” I said. “The Great Man himself. In a way I work for him, you know.”

“You work for me,” Chambrun said, “and don’t forget it, Mark. What did George want?”

“I’m to call a fake press conference while he and his army slip out of the hotel and head for his yacht, or yachts. You, he says, will authorize it.”

Chambrun and Hardy exchanged glances.

“For what time?” Chambrun asked.

“Eleven o’clock, on the button.”

The corner of Chambrun’s mouth twitched. “I authorize it,” he said. He turned to Miss Ruysdale. “Will you get word to the reporters downstairs that Mark will have a statement for them at eleven? In the Crystal Dining Room.” Ruysdale took off for her office and Chambrun was back at me. “Shelda?” he asked.

“She didn’t make the plane or didn’t take it,” I said. “The reservation was made by our people, but she didn’t pick it up.”

“Jesus!” Hardy said, under his breath.

Something exploded inside me. “Will you tell me what this Shelda business is about?” I shouted at Chambrun. “Do you have to treat me like some goddam retarded child?”

I might as well not have spoken. “Did the taxi Shelda took come out of the line waiting in front of the hotel, or did you flag down a cruiser?” Chambrun asked.

“It came out of the line—I think,” I said. Mike Maggio had her bags and the cab slid up to us the minute he appeared.”