"You didn't have to be in touch with him again?"
"No. I'm sorry, Mark. I can't help you and I've got to get back to my caller."
"There's been nobody else? Just Steams and the person who's with you now?"
"Nobody. And now—see you later."
One small fact clicked into place as I walked back across the roof to Chambrun's penthouse. If this Martin Steams had arrived a little before two, Dick Berger had been operating the roof car, would have had to clear him with Welch before he took him up. But at three o'clock Bob Ballard relieved Dick, so Bob would have been on the down trip a little after five. I didn't think that added up to much of anything at the time. But I filed it away.
Just as I was approaching Chambmn's place the roof elevator disgorged some passengers—Cham-bmn, Mrs. Haven, and Jericho. Johnny Thacker was still running the car and it wasn't until he headed down that I realized Chambmn hadn't as yet told Mrs. Haven and Jericho what had happened.
"I just don't believe it!" I heard Mrs. Haven say.
We all trooped into Chambrun's living room. Everyone seemed to want to talk at once, but Chambrun kept command of the moment.
'Tolice are going to be here any minute," he said.
''And you don't want them told about Miss Ruys-dale?" Jericho asked.
"Until I know more, John,'' Chambrun said. His voice sounded hoarse. ''There's an outside chance this violence has nothing to do with the kidnapping. It could be something in Ballard's hfe, something to-taUy unrelated. Until Fm sure, I can't risk blowing the ball game."
"You know you don't beUeve it's unrelated," Jericho said. "You don't believe in coincidences any more than I do."
"Why would he leave the car at the tenth floor?" Mrs. Haven asked.
"Someone blew his head off with a gun," Chambrun said. "That was enough weapon to get him to stop the car and get off at ten."
"But why?'' Mrs. Haven persisted.
"That, my dear Victoria, is the jackpot question," Chambrun said.
Mrs. Haven bent down and set Toto loose. The little spaniel gave us a nasty look, went over to the screen door to the terrace, and waited for someone to open it for him. Jericho obliged him and got a small snarl for his pains. They were going to be interesting companions in Penthouse 2,1 thought.
"'Ballard was such a nice young man," Mrs. Haven was saying to Chambrun. *'Always courteous, always helpful. He and the other two, Lucky and Dick, have helped to make me feel as safe as an old lady with a trunkful of jewelry in her bedroom can feel in this vicious city.''
"A wife and two young kids," Chambrun said. He glanced at me. "Someone's going to have to tell them." He turned to Victoria Haven. "I asked you and Jericho to help me in a very difficult situation, Victoria. In view of what's happened, if you don't want to go on with it..."
"You don't think young Mr. Welch is still in danger?" Mrs. Haven asked him.
"I have no way of knowing whether anything has changed," Chambrun said. "Danger to Welch, I mean. But police are going to be crawling all over the place unless there's a quick solution to Ballard's murder. That will surely interfere with the kidnappers' plans, whatever they are."
"We have to do what we can for Ruysdale," Mrs. Haven said. "She's our friend, our cherished friend. K you still want Jericho up here to watch things, I'm quite willing to provide him with an excuse." She gave Jericho a dazzHng smile. "Besides, he says he's really going to paint me, in case someone should look over his shoulder. I can't resist that, Pierre."
"Things have been moving so fast," I heard myself say, "I've never gotten around to asking you a question, boss. Larry Welch is in danger. You can't tell him how you know because it might scare him off and that could cost Betsy Ruysdale. So you dream up a scheme to plant Jericho here on the roof to protect Welch if necessary. If it becomes necessary, and Jericho fouls up whatever these creeps have in mind for Welch, won't that be just as bad for Ruysdale?'*
"If they beheve Fm up here to paint Mrs. Havra," Jericho said, "then if and when I get in the act I will just have been standing on the street comer, minding my own business, waiting for a bus, when I spotted some kind of trouble." He gave me a sardonic little smile. "And Pierre's conscience will be clear. He will have protected a hotel guest he knew was in danger without putting Ruysdale on the spot."
"And you'ie willing to be a sitting duck for a guy armed with a magnum handgun who's now demonstrated he's willing and able to use it? Why?" I asked.
Jericho's face hardened under his bright red beard. "Because Betsy Ruysdale is an old friend, a friend of friends, and because I hate violence and I hope to get the sonofabitch who's responsible for harming ha:."
"Violently?" I said.
He grinned at me. "When I'm violent if s justice. When someone else is violent it's a crime against society."
"Getting Ruysdale back safe is all that matters at the moment," Chambrun said.
"But you'll Still protect Larry Welch, which is the one thing Ruysdale's kidnapper told you you mustn't do?''I asked-
Chambrun never got to answer that question. The phone on his desk rang and he reached for it and answered. He listened for a moment and then said, '*On my way."
He put down the phone. **That was Jerry Dodd," he said. '*The police are on the tenth floor. Fm needed there. You, too, Mark; decisions will have to be made about what the press are to be told.''
"Don't worry about up hare, Pierre," Jericho said. "Mrs. Haven and Toto and I will keep an eye on Wekh."
"Don't joke about Toto," Chambrun said. "That little pooch may be more valuable than you think. He doesn't like strangers and he'll let you know, loud and clear."
The BEAUMONT is like a dty within a city. We have our own mayor, Chambrun; our own police force, headed by Jerry Dodd; restaurants, bars, shops, the branch office of a big bank; a hospital, headed by Dr. Partridge, our house physician. Like any big city, our population ranges from decent, honest, hard-working citizens, to crooks and con men, whores and pimps, pickpockets, thieves, and big-time criminals. Chambrun and his staff manage this variety better than most city governments, but you can't totally eliminate human impulses toward greed, revenge, and violence. They are unhappy components of what I've come to believe is a sick society.
Bob Ballard's death is not the first murder that has happened in the Beaumont. I remember Chambrun saying once that the Lord seems to lean just a httle on the side of *'the good guys." There was, he thought, always a piece of luck that went his way. That early August evening the first piece of good luck came our way. The Homicide man sent from police headquarters to handle the Ballard case was Lieutenant Walter Hardy. You could say Hardy is an old friend. He's been involved in crimes at the Beaumont before this. Hardy works in the precinct in which the Beaumont is located, so it isn't pure chance that we got him this time. He could have been involved on another case, but he wasn't.
This was good luck because Hardy and Chambrun trust each other. Chambrun works with a kind of intuitive brilliance on a case; Hardy is a slow, plodding, check-every-detail kind of a cop. A big blond man, he looks more like a professional football linebacker than a skilled, expertly trained detective. He and Chambrun make a great team; Chambrun comes up with a magical guess, and Hardy puts together the puzzle, piece by piece, so that the district attorney will have a case in court. In the tricky situation in which Chambrun found himself at the moment, Hardy could be a blessing.
Johnny Thacker was still running the roof car when we went down to ten. He wasn't the same young man who'd brought me up a Uttle while ago.
"God, I grew up with Bob," he told us. *Tlayed on the same stickball team with him when we were six! Look, Mr. Chambrun, when I can get off Fd like to go be with Bob's wife, Anne, and their kids."
"You know of any personal problems he had?" Chambrun asked. * Trouble with anyone on the staff?"
"One of the most popular guys working here," Johnny said. **You know that, Mr. Chambrun."
"I know," Chambrun said.
The car stopped at te
n.
"I figure he must have seen someone on our blacklist snooping around where he shouldn't be," Johnny said. **Get my hands on him, and so help me..."
Johnny opened the car door.
"As soon as Hardy's talked to you, Johnny, get someone else to take over the car till Lucky gets here, and go to Anne. Tell her I'll see her as soon as I can get free. She's not to worry—about money, or arrangements, or anything." Chambrun's mouth was a thin slit. "What else can I say to her?"
There were cops everywhere on ten, knocking on room doors trying to find guests who might have seen or heard something. Chambrun and I walked down the hall to the rear service area. There was really a crowd there: police photographers, men dusting for fingerprints. There was also Lieutenant Hardy.
'"Ild like to meet you sometime, Pierre, just for a drink and maybe talk about baseball," the lieutenant said to Chambrun. He glanced at the iron trash barrel. "He's still there, but you don't have to look. Spoil your appetite for dinner. He's been officially identified by the man who found him."
I saw Earnhardt, Jerry Dodd's man, standing off to one side looking as though he were seasick.
"Weapon?" Chambrun asked.
"'Is there ever one when you want it?" Hardy said. ''We won't have a ballistics report until the medical examiner gets here and lets us move him. At least three shots to the head. Looks like some kind of a magnum gun. We don't have to talk here, Pierre, but I need facts about him from you—or someone."
"Ask me," Chambrun said in the flat, dead voice he'd acquired since that morning, when Betsy Ruys-dale didn't come to work. "You're needed here. I've been around dead people before. I run a hotel. People live here and die here."
''But not so often with three slugs right through the forehead," Hardy said. He took a notebook out of his pocket. "I got some kind of a poop sheet on him from Jerry Dodd. 'Robert Alden Ballard, aged twenty-nine; married to Anne Gerber Ballard; two kids, Richard five, Marilyn three. Born and raised in the Bronx. High school, college, army, honorable discharge, and a job in Washington, D.C. Came to work for you about two years ago/ I see he's been getting five hundred bucks a week. That's pretty good for an elevator operator, isn't it?"
"Special job, special pay," Chambrun said. ''The three men who run that roof car are really part of our security force. They help protect important diplomats from all over the world."
"Just Mrs. Haven and you," Hardy said.
''Coincidentally," Chambrun said.
"So how does he quaUfy for that job? You'd think it would go to someone who'd been with you a long time, earned your trust. Been here only two years, according to my notes."
"Combination of circumstances, as I recall," Chambrun said. "A regular guest here at the Beaumont is Mike Dent. United States Secret Service, travels with and guards important foreign dignitaries. Just in passing one day he told me about a young man in Washington, army-intelligence background, anxious to get back to New York, where his roots were. Jobs were hard to come by. Could I use him? As a favor to a friend, I interviewed him, had him checked out, hired him. It so happened we needed a man for roof security, rather special job. He qualified. There was no one waiting in line for the job. One other thing that helped me make up my mind—he'd grown up with Johimy Thacker, my day bell captain. Johnny couldn't say enough for him. That did it."
"I understand you have three men on that job in eight-hour shifts," Hardy said. **Ballard's shift was from three in the afternoon to eleven at night. He*d only been on two, three hours today when this happened.''
"This much I can tell you,'' Chambrun said. ''Shortly before five o'clock he took Mrs. Haven and John Jericho, who was with her, down to the lobby. No problems. Not too long after that he took down a guest who was visiting the occupant of Penthouse Three."
"And no problems?"
"I can't answer that with the facts at hand," Chambrun said. "The guest was Martin Steams, State Dqjartment, I understand. He was taken up to call on Larry Welch, who's in Penthouse Three, by Dick Berger, who has the shift before Ballard. Mark here tried to find out how he could locate Steams to ask him if anything unusual had happened on his down trip, if Bob Ballard had acted sick or strange in any way."
"That was the last trip you know of?"
"If there was anything else, it will be on Ballard's record sheet."
"What record sheet?"
"The operators of that roof car keep a record sheet: who goes up, who cleared them, when they went up, and when they came down. At the end of his shift the
Operator turns in his sheet to the front desk. It's filed there/'
''You see them?"
"Not unless the operator or the man at the front desk thinks there's something I should see. I can't look at every bar or restaurant check or other written record all day long, Walter. I trusted people."
''Can you get Ballard's file from the front desk for me?"
"It won't be there. He hadn't finished his tour of duty. He wouldn't have turned it in."
"Where is it, then?"
"Probably in the car," Chambrun said.
"Not in the car," Hardy said. "We've been over it from top to bottom for prints."
Chambrun glanced at the trash can, covered by a police tarpaulin. "On him," he said.
For the second time that afternoon I heard Hilda Harding's voice call my name from some distance away.
"Mark! Oh, Mark!"
She was standing in the doorway to the public corridor, accompanied by a uniformed cop. She came running toward me and, whether I liked it or not—and I Uked it—she was in my arms, clinging to me.
"Oh, Mark! How awful! How terrible!"
"Lady thinks she saw something, heard something," the cop told Hardy. "She's Hilda Harding, a singer, filling a two-week engagement in the Blue Lagoon downstairs. She has a room on this floor— 1006.'
Hardy smiled at me. "I guess you can vaify that, Mark." he said.
I guess, the way Hilda was hanging on to me, that was a logical conclusion. Ild forgotten she had a room on top. The intimate time we'd spent together had been in my apartment on two.
"Im Lieutenant Hardy, in charge of this investigation. Miss Harding,'' the lieutenant said.
"Hardy—Harding," she said, blinking her bright blue ^es at him. **We could almost be related!"
"I suppose."
"Except my real name isn't Harding," Hilda said. "I invented it for the stage. I was bom Wolenski, Hilda Wolenski. My parents are Polish."
"You saw something, heard something. Miss Wolenski?"
"You better stick to the 'Harding,'" she said. "I don't really answer to 'Wolenski' anymore. But I thought, if I was under arrest, I had to tell you my right name."
"You're not under arrest. Miss Harding. Just tell me what it is you think you saw, or heard, or both."
Hilda looked toward the trash can. "He—he's in that?" she asked.
"You don't have to look, Miss Harding. Now, if you'd be good enough to..."
Her story was scattered, but in the end it led to something that mattered. She might never have gotten there if Hardy hadn't exhibited a patience I wouldn't have believed possible.
"I had a lunch date with Mark—which he forgot!" Hilda b^an. She wagged a finger at me and gave me a theatrical scowl. 'Tirst time anyone has stood me up for years! I caught up with him in the lobby about three o'clock, and for punishment I made him buy me a drink in the Trapeze. I had a rehearsal in the Blue Lagoon at a quarter to four. While I was scolding him, John Joicho, the artist, came in. I knew him by sight. He'd been in the audience at a night-club in Cairo wha:e I was singing—oh, a year and a half ago. I know his paintings. It was exciting to meet him. Then, just as I was leaving, Mr. Chambrun came into the bar. Jericho joined him. I went on to my rehearsal with my piano boy, Billy Chard, in the Blue Lagoon. A little before five we broke, and I did some shopping in the boutique in the lobby. I came out of there loaded down with half a dozen small packages. It was just five o'dock. I know because I looked at the lobby clock— the b
ig one over the front desk." She drew a deep breath, like a winded runn^.
"So it was five o'clock," Hardy said.
"I went over to the bank of elevators and there wasn't a single one at the lobby level, except the private one that goes to the roof." She pointed toward the trash can. "He—he was standing in the open door."
"How do you know it was him?'*
"It was the same young man I've seen every afternoon and early evening running that elevator," she said. *'It was the regular operator, not a stranger. I asked him if he'd take me up to ten. He said he couldn't. 'I'm sorry, but this car is reserved for people who Uve on the roof and VIPs who visit them,' he told me. I told him I was a very important person, tried flirting with him a little. It didn't work, rules were rules. At that moment one of the regular elevators opened up and I had a way to get up to this floor, loaded down with my packages. I had some trouble getting my room key out of my purse—with all those packages, you see. But I managed. I went into my room, put down the packages, and started opening than to look at what I'd bought." She glanced at me. "A new negligee, stockings, some underthings. Suddenly I heard someone shouting out in the hall, like an argument—"
"You'd left your room door open," Chambnm said.
"I—I don't know. I don't remember," Hilda said.
"You must have left it open," Chambrun said. "Evay room in this hotel is soundproof. You couldn't hear voices in the hall if the door was properly closed."
"With all those packages, I may have just tried to kick the door shut—and didn't make it," Hilda said.
"An argument, you said," Hardy prompted.
""More like a threat than an argument. One man was saying to the other that he'd *better move, or Fll spread you out right here in the corridor/ I got to the door just in time to see him—*' She pointed at the covered trash can. **You know, his uniform—and the door to the private elevator open. He'd just finished telling me, not ten minutes before, that he couldn't bring me to ten, but he'd brought someone else to ten. I called out to them to ask if there was something wrong. They both turned. My friend, the elevator man, looked white as death. I think he started to say something to me when the other man gave him a violent shove through the door to—to this place, and charged in after him."
Murder in High Places Page 6
