"No buts," Chambrun said harshly.
It was almost dark when Chambrun and I crossed the roof to Penthouse 3. Daylight saving makes the twilight last until after eight o'clock in August. But lights had popped up all over the city, and you could see marine lights on the boats and tugs moving down the East River. Curtains were drawn across the windows of Penthouse 3, but we could see lights from inside around the edges. Chambrun rang the front doorbell and we waited. Nothing happened. Another ring, and nothing! Chambrun looked at me.
"Go back to the roof car and have Johnny call him on that special phone,'' he said. He was standing with his finger on the door button. We could hear the buzzing sound inside. "If he doesn't answer, call Jory Dodd and have him bring the duplicate keys."
I turned to go, wondering how we'd blown it, when the door opened and there was Larry Welch, grinning at us. He was wearing a silk bathrobe, and he had a bath towel wrapped around his neck. His hair was damp, curly, uncombed.
"Sorry," Larry said. '*I was under the shower when you buzzed."
Reading back over this, I realize that must have been the week I was obsessed with movie stars. George Raft drinking alone in the Trapeze, probably murdering the unfortunate Bob Ballard on ten, and here was a man who looked so much like Burt Reynolds you'd have to know them well to tell them apart.
"I was expecting you/' Larry said, **but if s been a long day and I needed freshening up. Come in."
"Expecting us?" Chambrun said.
Larry's smile evaporated. **I heard the news on the radio—about your elevator operator."
The living room of Penthouse 3 is furnished in very modem stuff. It was occupied by so many different people from so many different countries that it had no nationality of its own. A big picture window at the far end of the room looked down over the river. The soft, flattering hght, coming from wall and ceiUng brackets, could have been planned by a skillful stage-hghting designer.
"There wasn't much detail in the news report," Larry said. "Just that he'd been found, shot to death, on one of the upper floors of the hotel." He glanced at me. "Did you know that when you were here earlier, Mark, asking about Martin Steams?"
"I knew he was missing, had deserted the car. I didn't know then what had happened to him."
"Were you able to locate Steams?"
"No," Chambmn said. "Now it's more important than ever. He may have been the last person to go down with our man from the roof."
"I'm sorry I can't help you to find him. They could tell you in Washington—at the State Department— where he's staying in town, if he is staying. I had the impression from him that he was heading back to Washington."
"He didn't mention any friends here in town?'*
"Look, Chambrun, I don't know the man," Larry said. '*He was someone I had to discuss my story with. He came to me because he's an expert on the background I'm involved with. It took him ahnost two and a half hours to go through the material I have. We didn't talk about anything except—what I had to show him."
"You say you didn't know him before today?" Chambrun's face was that gray rock again.
"We talked on the phone in Washington yesterday. I called him, told him what I wanted from him. He said he would meet me here at the Beaumont this afternoon."
"You weren't registered here at the Beaumont yesterday," Chambrun said.
Larry grinned. "But I was sure I would be. Your friend Claude Perrault said he had enough drag with you to insure it."
"You told us the material you have is very touchy," Chambrun said. "Something rather absurd, like it might be enough to start World War Three."
"That's not as absurd as it sounds," Larry said. "I needed Martin Stearns's judgment on how dangerous it would be for me to break my story."
"A man you didn't know?"
"A man whose knowledge of the people and the area involved made his opinion invaluable to me."
"You knew him by sight?"
Larry shook his head. '*It just happens I'd never seen him until today. He works pretty much under cover, so he doesn't invite photographers to take his picture."
"So he just knocks on your door, says, ^Fm Martin Steams,' and you show him material that could start a war?"
"I'm not a high school juvenile, Chambrun," Larry said. "Your man on the roof called me on the special phone. What's his name, Berger?"
"Dick Berger."
"He told me someone named Martin Steams was waiting to be brought up. I asked Berger to check him out. That's part of the routine you told me was possible."
"Of course," Chambrun said impatiently.
"Well, Berger called me back. Told me the caller's ID checked out and I told him to bring Steams up. When he arrived we chatted for a moment or two about our phone call of yesterday. He showed me credentials I guess he'd shown before—driver's license with a photograph, Social Security card, a passport. What more did I need?"
Chambmn reached in his pocket and brought out a folded sheet of paper. It was a copy of the artist's recreation of the man in the Trapeze. "Is this Martin Steams?" he asked.
Larry laughed. **Good God, no! Stearns is slim, about fifty, I'd guess, but with prematurely white hair. Rather elegant/'
That seemed to fit Mitchell Prescott's description of the man.
"You're not telling me everything, are you, Cham-brun?" Larry asked.
I held my breath.
"What you didn't hear on the radio," Chambrun said without a moment's hesitation, "is that a young woman, a guest of the hotel, registered in a room on the tenth floor, heard an argument in the corridor outside her room. That was about ten minutes or a quarter past five. She looked out into the corridor and saw our man Ballard and this fellow whose picture I just showed you. This dark man pushed Ballard into the service area. He must have shot him almost immediately."
"This woman heard the shots?"
"Soundproofing," Chambrun said. "Your man Steams, leaving, may have been Ballard's last official trip. I thought he could have been the man in this picture."
"He isn't."
"But it's important for us to talk to him, Welch," Chambrun said. "The time is so close. If Ballard took your man Steams down to the lobby. Steams may have seen this man with the black glasses waiting to take the car up."
"There's one other less pleasant possibility," Chambrun said. *'It is that Steams never made it down to the lobby."
That surprised Larry Welch as much as it did me.
"I don't understand," he said.
"Dick Berger brought your man Steams up here a little after two, right?"
Larry nodded.
"Berger checked out your man, brought him up. There was a shift change at three o'clock, Ballard taking over for Berger. Ballard didn't have to check out your man when he took him down. He wouldn't have to check out another passenger who might be waiting for the car. It could be someone visiting me, or you, or Mrs. Haven, taken up earlier by Dick Berger. The security system checks people going up, not people going down!''
"You're suggesting this black-glasses guy was up here waiting to go down when Steams left me?" Larry asked.
"And that Steams may have been stopped at the tenth floor, too, only we haven't found him yet," Chambmn said.
"You mean?..."
"Ild feel better if we could locate him and get his story," Chambmn said.
"How could this black-glasses guy get up here in the first place?"
"He couldn't—theoretically—unless I cleared him, or Mrs. Haven cleared him, or you cleared him,*' Chambrun said.
"Well, I certainly didn't," Larry said.
"Nor I, nor Mrs. Haven," Chambrun said.
"Then how-?"
"No matter how secure the fence, how foolproof the lock, there is always a way," Chambrun said, and let it hang there.
Larry glanced at his wristwatch. "There must be someone on duty at the State Department who can tell us where Steams stays in New York, or where he can be reached when he gets back to Washington—after working hours."
<
br /> "Fve got someone working on that for me right now," Chambrun said. "You know a man named Mitchell Prescott?"
"I've met him. Did a brief interview with him once," Larry said. "Big wheel in the CIA. How did he get into the act?"
"He called our attention to this man," Chambrun said, tapping the artist's drawing. "Saw him in the Trapeze Bar. Couldn't place him, but was certain he'd seen him somewhere—a mug shot, or a lineup of some kind. We were chewing that over when Hilda Harding—the lady I mentioned—identified this artist's drawing as someone she'd seen with Ballard on the tenth floor. Locating Steams seraied important and Prescott said he knew someone in Washington who would know where Steams was 'every hour of the day or night' He may know now. Do you mind if I in-voh^e him with you?"
"Why not, if he can help?'' Larry said.
Chambrun called his office. Prescott was still tlraie, waiting for him. Prescott evidently came on the line, and Chambrun asked him if he'd mind coming up to Penthouse 3. "The guest up here is someone you know. Larry Welch. Oh? You have to be kidding! I'll arrange for the roof car to bring you up."
Chambrun put down the house phone and picked up the special phone to the roof car. "Chambrun speaking. Who is this? Good. Lucky, Mitchell Prescott will be ringing for you on the second floor. You may know him by sight; big fellow, bald head, always smoking a pipe. You do know him? Well, bring him up to Penthouse Three."
Chambrun put down the phone and turned back to us. I thought I'd never seea him look so hard and cold.
"Prescott knows where Steams is," he said.
"That's great," Larry said.
"Not so great," Chambrun said. "You'd better fasten your seat belt, Mr. Welch. Martin Steams is somewhere overseas, has been for ten days. He couldn't possibly have been here with you this afternoon."
Larry looked stunned. "But he was here! I checked him out! Passport and driver's license with photographs, a Social Security card. More than that, he had
all the right answers for the questions I asked him. Prescott has to be wrong."
*'You better get some clothes on. After Prescott, there may be cops," Chambrun said.
The first thought I had when Larry Welch headed for his bedroom and clothes was that if Prescott and then cops started swarming over the roof, Betsy Ruysdale's kidnappers might decide Chambrun had broken their rules. If they had someone in the hotel watching, they'd have to know something was going on up here that wasn't ''regular routine." Whatever Chambrun was thinking, he kept it from me. He had moved over to the picture window at the far end of the room and was looking down at the river. He had to know that whatever he did in this situation might be putting Betsy Ruysdale's life on the line. The kidnappers had to know that Ballard had been murdered. It had been on the radio, probably television. They had somebody stationed in the hotel, they'd told Chambrun, and if that watcher wasn't deaf, the news was everywhere. They had to know there'd be a period of upheaval here on the roof. There was no way Chambrun could stop it. He had to hope, I thought, that if he could get things back to normal quickly, the kidnappers might decide he was playing ball with them. They probably knew, I told myself, who had murdered Ballard and why, and who the fake Martin Stearns was and what had become of him. I wondered if Chambrun was praying in his own special way.
Larry Welch had just come out of the bedroom, wearing a dark blue blazer, when the front doorbell sounded. I went to the door and let in Mitch Prescott, pipe gripped between his teeth, his eyes narrowed and colder than I remembered them being.
He nodded to me and said, ''Hello, Larry/'
Larry crossed and shook hands with him. **Long time no see, Mitch,'' he said.
*'So what the hell is all this?" Prescott asked.
**It seems one of us has been had," Larry said. "You say Martin Steams is out of the country and I say he was here for nearly three hours this afternoon."
Chambrun came over from the window. '*How good is your source, Mitch?" he asked.
*'How good is a ten-dollar gold piece?"
**Tell him your story, Welch, starting with yesto*-day," Chambrun said.
*'Yesterday, around two in the afternoon, I called a guy in the State Department I know and asked if he could put me in touch with Martin Steams." Larry gave Prescott his best Burt Reynolds smile. "I'm working on a story, Mitch. Steams was the man who could tell me how hot it was and how dangerous it would be for me to break it."
"You know Steams?" Prescott asked.
"Not personally, but I know his reputation. My story, which for the moment is off the record, is about someone Steams knows very well. My friend at the
State Department reported back that Steams wasn't available at the moment. I left a message for him with enough of a teaser in it to make certain he'd call me back when he was available."
''You were here?" Prescott asked.
''Not yesterday." The bright smile brightened. "I was—somewhere else. Anyway, about five in the afternoon Steams called me back. I told him I'd be here at the Beaumont today, and he said he'd be in New York himself and would come here to see me—and my material—around two o'clock. Around two-fifteen, two-thirty, the operator on the roof car called me and said Martin Steams was waiting to see me."
"Steams was in Tel Aviv yesterday, and he's somewhere in the Middle East today," Prescott said.
"The man on the roof car checked out his ID and brought him up," Larry said.
"A fake, a stand-in," Prescott said.
"I didn't know him by sight," Larry said, "so I checked him out too. There was a passport with photograph, a driver's license with photograph, a Social Security card. He was Steams."
"What did he look like?"
"Like a bank president," Larry said. "Slim, well tailored, about fifty years old, I'd say; prematurely white hair."
"That checks, but it couldn't have been Steams. I tell you, he's somewhere in the Middle East."
'*He knew too much about my material for him to have been anyone but Stearns," Larry insisted.
Chambrun spoke for the first time. '*There may be an answer to these contradictions," he said.
'*A man can't be in two places, thousands of miles apart, at the same time," Prescott said.
*'I think you should be able to guess better than most people how that could seem to be, Mitch," Chambrun said. **A big wheel in the CIA, you have to know how people work under cover. Martin Steams is a very hush-hush diplomat. Right?"
Prescott nodded.
*'So, let's say he's involved in something that requires him to stay out of sight. Officially, he's in the Middte East to anyone who tries to reach him. Larry's friend at the State Department told him Steams ^wasn't available.' Larry leaves a message. It is important enough, intriguing enough, for Steams to call him back. Stearns is available if you know how to reach him. He agrees to come here today. Now you, an important figure in the CIA, call Washington to find out where Steams may be. Important as you are, you get the official cover-up for Steams at the moment. He's in the Middle East and has been for ten days. Isn't it possible, Mitch, that if you get back to your people in Washington with your reason for needing to know where Steams is, they may break his cover and tell you?"
''It has to be that way," Larry said. **The man who was here was too savvy to be anyone but Martin Steams."
Prescott chewed down hard on his pipe stem. '*My sources wouldn't have given me a cover story," he said. "And yet—it's just possible they didn't know it was a cover story. In Washington the right hand often doesn't know what the left hand is doing."
''Can you get back to your sources, turn the screws a little tighter, and see if you can get the truth about Stearns's whereabouts? K we could know for sure that Steams left here in one piece, and is somewhere alive and well, it will keep the police from running down dead-end streets and keep this hotel from being turned upside down, unhappily concemed that there may have been a second violence."
"I can give it a try," Prescott said.
"Understand, Mitch, I don't need to kno
w where Steams is. I just need to know that he was here and that he left safely."
"He was here!" Larry Welch said stubbornly.
"I hope so, Larry," Prescott said. "I hope so, for Stearns's sake as well as yours. If someone stole his credentials, substituted photographs on his passport and his driver's license, then the chances are Steams is in big trouble somewhere. I hope for your sake he was here, because if he wasn't, you've blown your so-secret story to someone who shouldn't have it. I'll do
what I can to clear it up. Use your office phone again, Pierre?'*
'*Of course/' Chambrun said.
We watched Prescott go out and across the roof to the elevator. I saw him standing outside the car door, an overhead light shining on his bald head. Off in what was now darkness I heard a short, sharp barking. Toto had spotted a stranger on the roof.
*'I hope you're right about what may have happened, Chambrun," Larry Welch said. "Because if you aren't—well, Prescott is right, I will have blown my story."
"No World War Three?" Chambrun asked dryly.
"It depends on who saw my stuff," Larry said, and he was dead serious. "Understand, Chambrun, I don't blame you or your people for letting an impostor get up here to me—if that's what happened. I was taken in completely by his credentials, and I had twice the reason to make sure than your car operator had." He turned away toward the chromium-trimmed sideboard. "What I need now is a good slug of something. Drink, Chambrun? You, Mark?"
Chambrun shook his head, and, reluctantly, I had to play it his way. Larry opened the cabinet doors, revealing a well-stocked bar—provided by the management, incidentally. He poured himself a shot-glassful of bourbon, tossed it off, refilled the glass, and came back to us.
*'Unless Prescott comes up with a quick and satisfactory answer," he said, 'Tm going to have to leave here, Chambnin."
*'Why?"
*'If I showed my material to a fake, there are people who will want to see me down at the bottom of that river out there, wearing cement boots."
**You're not just being melodramatic, are you, Welch?" Chambrun asked in that strange, flat voice.
''It sounds like it, doesn't it? The research Fve beai doing for the last year will reveal treachery in very high places. It could topple governments and lead to a small war. In this day and age a small war could start the big one."
Murder in High Places Page 8
