The other part of what you might call Stan Nelson’s shadow was Johnny Floyd. Johnny’s whole life, until Stan came into the picture, had been at a piano, playing in cheap saloons and nightclubs, and in second-rate jazz bands. He is egg-bald, perpetually angry, chain-smoking cigarettes. A hacking cough suggested that emphysema is in his not-too-distant future. Somewhere, early on, he had become the then unknown Stan Nelson’s accompanist. He knew the ropes in the second-rate music world and he became a sort of manager for Stan, getting him jobs so they could both keep eating. Then, overnight, Stan was a big success and he didn’t need Johnny anymore. But Mr. Nice Guy never turned away from this first good friend. Johnny still worked out new numbers with Stan, wrote his arrangements, and advised him on his career whether or not he needed advice. Butch Mancuso would have shot you between the eyes if you’d threatened Stan, Johnny Floyd would have torn you to pieces with his bare hands.
These two permanent fixtures were, I knew, sharing suite 35C with Stan while he caught up on sleep after his cancer show. I didn’t think there was the slightest chance that Stan or Butch or Johnny would be any use to Lieutenant Hardy, but checking out on that autograph, written on the back of a green pledge card, was the kind of detail Hardy would never bypass.
It was going on ten-thirty in the morning when I rang the doorbell at 35C. Butch Mancuso, who could have had no more sleep than Stan, opened the door before I could ring a second time. He was sleek, shaved, dressed, ready for another day. It is true he hadn’t sung thirty-five or forty numbers during the marathon, answered telephone calls from donors, signed autographs. He had just stood by, occasionally stroking the butt of the gun he carried in a holster under his left arm, his dark eyes searching a thousand faces for trouble.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “The boss is sacked out, as if you didn’t know.”
“We’ve got trouble downstairs in the Health Club,” I said. I told him what the trouble was.
“Stan can’t help them,” Butch said. “He must have signed a thousand autographs during the show. He wouldn’t know one from another.”
“Lieutenant Hardy needs him to say that he doesn’t know this one,” I said. “Chambrun persuaded him to let me come after Stan, so he wouldn’t be dragged out of bed by some cop and taken down there before he was decently awake.”
“Let ’em try,” Butch said.
“You can’t stop them, Butch, if that’s the way they want it,” I said.
Johnny Floyd joined us at that point. He was naked except for a pair of pajama pants. His pale blue eyes looked as if they were still half glued together, but the first cigarette of the day was already bobbing up and down between his thin lips.
“You guys got to shout?” he asked Butch and me.
I told him what was cooking.
“Christ Almighty!” Johnny said. “Stan will have to face cameras, reporters.”
“I can take him down in the service elevator,” I said. “He won’t have to see anyone but the cops—and the body.”
“It can’t wait?”
“I’m afraid not, Johnny.”
“Okay. I’ll get him.” He turned and disappeared down the corridor to the suite’s bedrooms.
“A guy tries to do something good for people and they won’t even let him have his sleep,” Butch said. “This dead guy doesn’t have any I.D.?”
“No. Only a green pledge card on which Stan signed his name.”
“That had to be before midnight,” Butch said. “That’s damn near eleven hours ago. How did this kid get into the Health Club? They don’t leave it open, do they?”
“They may have found that out by the time we get down there,” I said.
The operation of a complex business like the Beaumont involves a mass of detailed routines that are not allowed to vary by so much as a hair. People work in shifts, and you do not miss your appointed time by even a matter of seconds. There are shifts of maids, of housekeepers, of maintenance people, bellhops, the front desk, bartenders, waiters, cooks and kitchen help, maitre d’s, the business office, the telephone switchboards, the clean-up people, the security staff—and on and on. Chambrun and Miss Ruysdale, Jerry Dodd and I, are the only people who are available at any time of the day or night. Sometimes I wonder if I can remember what New York looks like I get out into the outer city so infrequently.
The Health Club operates with only two shifts. Carl Hulman comes in at just before nine with his crew of massage people, gym crew, squash professional, and a swimming instructor and lifeguard for the pool. At five o’clock the second shift headed by Tony Camargo, a bright young Italian, takes over. The beginning of that shift, next to the lunch hour, is the busiest time in the club; men headed home from work go through the exercises routines for the benefit of their health, and usually end up in one of the bars undoing it all with a few martinis.
Tony Camargo started out in the Beaumont as a bellboy on the night shift. Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, is some kind of distant relative and he brought Tony into the fold about ten years ago. The move to the Health Club was a step up the ladder that I suspect Tony wished that morning he hadn’t taken.
Lieutenant Hardy wasn’t tough with Tony, but he was persistent. The body of the murdered boy was covered with a tarpaulin now, still at the edge of the pool, and Tony couldn’t take his eyes off it as Hardy went about his interrogation.
“Let’s go over your routine, Camargo, from top to bottom,” the detective said.
Tony was still in shock from having been asked to look at the blown away face of the dead boy. He moistened his lips as though they wouldn’t work without help.
“I come in about a quarter to five,” he said, his voice unsteady. “I check out with Carl Hulman here. There may be special instructions. It’s all written down on the clipboard he carries. Someone may be asleep in the rest room and needs to be called at a certain time; a telephone message for someone we expect will be in later. Stuff like that.”
“Was there anything special last night?”
“No. Regular routine stuff. The sheet’s still on the clipboard. You can see for yourself.”
“Your regular customers—your shift—start to come in just after five o’clock?”
“That’s right. Lot of the Madison Avenue advertising people.”
“Can anyone come in and make use of the facilities?”
“No, sir. You have to be registered in the hotel, or you have to be a member.”
“Member?”
“A lot of people are regular customers of the hotel who aren’t living here,” Tony explained. “They use the bars and the restaurants and things like that. They pay a hundred bucks to be a Health Club member. You can’t just walk in off the street, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s what I’m asking,” Hardy glanced down at the covered body. “He got in.”
“Not while I was on!” Tony said. “We don’t have any kid members. Oh, sometimes a boy like that might be registered in the hotel with his parents and he might be here to work out in the gym or swim in the pool. But not yesterday. There wasn’t any kid like that in here during my shift last night.”
“You’re positive?”
“Positive. Whoever was here is listed on the clipboard. You can see for yourself everyone who checked in last night.”
“You could slip up if the place was real busy.”
Tony glanced at Chambrun who was standing a little way off. “You only slip up once when you’re working for Mr. Chambrun,” he said. “I’ve been working in the hotel for ten years, six years at this job. No slip-ups or I wouldn’t be here.”
“Take me to the end of your shift—when you close up,” Hardy said.
“At nine-thirty there’s a bell that sounds everywhere on this floor,” Tony said. “That warns the customers that they have a half an hour to shower, get dressed, and get out.”
“So everybody is gone by ten o’clock?”
“Or a minute or two after. Some of the older customers may d
awdle a little.”
“Last night?”
“Right on the button,” Tony said. “I know, because I—I had a date later on and I was watching the clock.”
“So at ten o’clock you went home?”
“Oh, gee, no, Lieutenant,” Tony said. “Getting rid of the people is only the beginning of closing up. Me and my crew have to pick up—discarded towels, sheets from the massage room and rest rooms—all that kind of stuff has to go into the big laundry hampers and out into the service area. A special clean-up gang comes in and the whole place is scrubbed down from top to bottom. The pool is drained, and—”
“The pool is drained?” Hardy interrupted.
“Yes, sir. Drained, washed down with a high-powered hose, scrubbed out with power brushes. Then it’s refilled, with the chlorine stuff they use added.”
“You stayed for all that last night?”
“Every night, Lieutenant. It’s damn near midnight before I get to leave. After all that cleanup is done we set up for Carl in the morning; clean towels in all the places they’re supposed to go, clean sheets in the massage and rest rooms, gym equipment all in place. All Carl has to do in the morning is open the door and let the people in.”
“After we’ve checked out to make sure the night crew has done everything they’re supposed to do,” Carl Hulman said. “Everything was in order this morning, except for that.” He gestured toward the tarpaulin without looking.
“So you checked out last night, Camargo,” Hardy said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You checked out the pool?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re telling me this dead boy wasn’t floating in the water then?”
“Of course he wasn’t! I’d have been screaming for help if he was, wouldn’t I?”
“You do this final checkout by yourself?”
“As a matter of fact Jimmy Heath, my assistant, usually walks the rounds with me.”
“But last night—?”
“Jimmy was with me.”
“So you’ve checked out, everything is done. What then?”
“There are five fire exits out of this place,” Tony said. “I make sure all those are locked.”
“The fire doors are all locked with iron bars,” Jerry Dodd interrupted. “No way to open them from the outside when the bars are in place.”
“I unlock them when I make my first round in the morning,” Carl Hulman said.
“So you’ve locked the fire doors. What next?” Hardy asked.
“I go out the front,” Tony said. “We’ve got a little short-order kitchen out there where we make coffee and stuff. Jimmy Heath and I go there to make sure all the electric appliances are turned off. That’s the short-order cook’s job before he leaves, but we check him out.”
“Then?”
“Then we go to the front door, set the locks, pull ’em closed—and that’s that.”
“Set the locks?”
“They’re Yale-type locks. You release them, pull the doors closed, and they’re locked. Jimmy and I test the doors from the outside to make sure the locks have caught—and then we go.”
“And they were locked when you left last night?”
“Yes, sir. That’s for sure.”
“You haven’t mentioned turning off any lights.”
“Oh! Well, when Jimmy and I make our last round we turn off the lights in each area as we leave it. The last light switches are just by the front door.”
“You don’t have keys in case you needed to get back in? Like you forgot something?”
“Oh, there are keys, Lieutenant. Two, for those two locks on the front door. They’re on a wire ring with a big plastic tag on it. Carl Hulman leaves them for me in our little office. I take them when I leave and drop them with Mr. Nevers at the front desk in the lobby.”
“Where they’re locked up in a special key safe in the office,” Jerry Dodd said. “Hulman gets them there in the morning when he comes in. And just so you don’t waste time with it, Lieutenant, those front doors weren’t forced. First thing I checked.”
Hardy was silent for a moment. “So obviously this kid was hiding somewhere when you closed up,” he said, finally.
“No way, Lieutenant,” Camargo said.
“If there was no way he could get in after you locked up he must have been inside when you left. Could he hide in one of the lockers where your customers hang their clothes when they undress to exercise?”
“There aren’t lockers in the real sense,” Tony said. “Just little cubicles with coat hooks and hangers. They’re wide open. Jimmy and I checked as usual, in case some customer went off and left his watch, or wallet, or a ring or something.”
“And you did that last night?”
“Sure. Clean as a whistle last night.”
“Linen closets?”
“No, sir. There are just open shelves for the clean stuff.”
Chambrun spoke for the first time. “And two people had to hide, Walter. The boy didn’t shoot himself, you know. No gun. You’ve looked everywhere. What we’ve got here, friend, is a classic locked-room mystery.”
“To which there is always a perfectly simple answer if you look for it,” Hardy said.
It was then that Stan Nelson and I came in, with Butch Mancuso and Johnny Floyd behind us.
Mr. Nice Guy hadn’t made any complaint about answering the summons from Lieutenant Hardy. He could always go back to bed, he told me. But he took his time getting ready. It was a professional axiom that Stan Nelson didn’t appear anywhere looking less than all put together. He shaved and showered and then put in a long distance call to his home in Beverly Hills. It must have been about eight o’clock in the morning out there. Then he dressed, casual but perfect; pale blue summer-weight slacks, a navy blue sports shirt, a seersucker jacket, navy blue socks and tan loafers. What the well-dressed gentleman wears on a casual summer Saturday.
We ducked running into the public, as I’d promised, by using the service elevator which took us down to fourteen without encountering anyone but the cop guarding the rear entrance of the club.
“Seen you often, enjoyed your work,” Lieutenant Hardy said when I introduced them.
Butch Mancuso and Johnny Floyd had to be explained and Stan stepped over to speak to Chambrun while that was going on.
“Not a pleasant sight, Mr. Nelson,” Hardy said. He bent down and pulled the tarpaulin back from the dead boy.
“Jesus!” I heard Butch Mancuso say.
Stan Nelson looked down steadily for a moment and then turned away. “Some kind of expanding bullet?” he asked Hardy.
“Heavy caliber at least,” Hardy said. “We haven’t found the bullet so we have no ballistics report.”
“Still in his skull?” Stan suggested.
“If I turned him over you’d see why I know it isn’t,” Hardy said. “Exit wound you could drive a truck through. You don’t know him, Mr. Nelson?”
Stan shook his head, slowly. “Hard to be positive, with that wound, wouldn’t you say?”
“About fourteen or fifteen years old.”
“You might say I know thousands of fourteen-, fifteen-year-old kids,” Stan said. “But I don’t really know them. There were hundreds of them at the cancer telethon last night.”
Hardy took a green pledge card out of his wallet and handed it to Stan. “This one was evidently there.”
Stan nodded but made no comment.
“‘With best wishes and lots of good luck. Stan Nelson.’ You wrote that, Mr. Nelson?”
“I’d have to say so. It gets to be almost like a rubber stamp after you’ve written thousands of them.”
“You didn’t write his name on it. ‘For so-and-so.’”
“I gave that up long ago,” Stan said. “Italian names, Polish names, even Chinese and Russian. I’d have to stop and get them to spell it out for me, and even then I’d botch it up. So I just write the same thing on every card—‘With best wishes and lots of good luck.’”
/> “He didn’t pledge anything, write his own name on it,” Hardy said.
“If he pledged anything he’d have to turn the card in,” Stan said. “Kids pick up a second card if they’re looking for an autograph.”
Hardy recovered the body and straightened up. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Nelson. I had to be sure.”
Just then one of his plainclothes cops came up and took the lieutenant aside.
“How did the boy get in here?” Stan asked Chambrun.
“That’s the jackpot question at the moment,” Chambrun said. “How did the telethon do last night?”
“Nearly a million and a quarter,” Stan said. “Best ever. I wanted to thank you for seeing to it that everything ran so smoothly. I’d have looked you up later to say so.”
“My job,” Chambrun said.
I could tell his mind wasn’t on pleasantries or courtesies.
Hardy and his plainclothesman rejoined us. The lieutenant’s face had a curious, tight look to it that hadn’t been there before. “This is Sergeant Schroeder, Mr. Nelson,” he said, introducing the other cop. “The sergeant’s been monitoring the phone for us in the front office. This is going to be a jolt or a bad joke for you, Mr. Nelson. An anonymous caller, male, informed Sergeant Schroeder that the dead boy we found in the pool is your son.”
Stan gave the lieutenant a blank, unresponsive look. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“That’s exactly what he said, Mr. Nelson,” Schroeder said. “‘The dead boy you found in the pool is Stan Nelson’s son.’”
“Well, it’s a bad joke, Lieutenant,” Stan said. “I do have a son. His name is Bobby. He’s eight years old. He’s in California. I spoke to him on the phone five minutes before I came down here.”
“Some coked-up freak trying to get in the act,” Johnny Floyd said, his eyes narrowed against the smoke from his cigarette. “Happens to us all the time.”
“The thing about this is that we haven’t given out a word about this yet to the press or the media. There isn’t any way for anyone on the outside to know what’s happened here.”
“Except someone who knows,” Chambrun said. “There is someone who knows, Walter. The man who fired the shot.”
With Intent to Kill Page 2
