With Intent to Kill

by Hugh Pentecost

  “Stan had signed an autograph for him,” Nora said. “He must have come here for the telethon.”

  “There was an autograph on a pledge card,” Chambrun said. “Nelson doesn’t ask for names of people for whom he signs an autograph, so the card didn’t help identify the boy.”

  “Nelson signed an autograph for him?” Thompson exploded. “He must have known who he was!”

  “He didn’t. Hundreds of kids crowding around him. They hand him a card, he signed. That was that.”

  “He knew, for Christ sake!”

  “He says he never saw the boy—ever.”

  “My foot! He had to be curious. He had to want to take a look at him sometime over the years. He knew he could be the boy’s father!”

  “Miss Sands says she doesn’t know.”

  “She couldn’t prove it, but she knows it!”

  “No, Zach!” Nora said.

  “She’s let him off the hook all these years because she is too damned decent!” Thompson said. “Maybe Eddie threatened to tell the world if Nelson didn’t come through. Eddie was dreaming of college—stuff like that. He had a right to hang it on Nelson! He’s Nelson’s kid!”

  “No, Zach!” Nora cried.

  “You want facts, Mr. Wallach?” Chambrun asked.

  “Please,” Wallach said.

  “There is no gun anywhere in the Health Club. There is no indication where the actual shooting took place. The boy obviously bled profusely—pints and pints. If he was shot in the water there’s no way to prove it out. The water circulates in the pool and if the bleeding took place there only a few streaks of blood are left. There is no sign of the bullet, which obviously exited from the back of the boy’s head. Those are facts, Mr. Wallach—or you might say those are facts we don’t have.”

  “He could have been shot somewhere else and taken to the pool later,” Wallach suggested.

  “The night shift gets rid of the customers at ten P.M.,” Chambrun said. “It takes about an hour or more for the crew to clean up, the keys deposited in the key safe in the main lobby office. All that happened. No body.”

  “So he was taken in later,” Thompson said impatiently.

  “Everything properly locked, no doors forced,” Chambrun said.

  “What are you, for God sake, trying to do? Tell us it didn’t happen?”

  “I’m telling you, Thompson, that there is no way it could have happened—but it did.”

  Thompson gave me a sardonic smile. “So Buster here can write another one of his crime stories. The murder that didn’t happen, but it did.”

  Wallach seemed not to be listening to the byplay. “The boy was obviously in the hotel during the evening, alive and well. The Nelson autograph proves that.”

  “Does it?” Chambrun asked, knocking the ash from his cigarette.

  “Well of course it does!” Thompson said.

  “Hundreds and hundreds of people got autographs from Nelson during the twenty-four hours of the telethon,” Chambrun said. “They’re all as alike as peas in a pod. No individual names on them. That autograph can have been signed for someone else and planted on the boy later. He could have been killed in his own apartment, the autograph planted on him, the body brought here.”

  “You some kind of a stand-up comic?” Thompson said. “A million people circulating in the lobby while the telethon was in progress. You can carry a dead man through that crowd? If I know how you run things, the service areas were pretty well policed by your security people during that time. You wouldn’t want strange geeks going up and down the back ways in your hotel. You carry a dead man that way? He was murdered in your plush whorehouse, Chambrun, and you know it! Bad publicity, but you can’t duck it.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Chambrun admitted, “but tell me how the body was gotten into the pool after the Health Club was closed and locked.”

  “That’s your problem, not mine,” Thompson said. “But I can make a guess where the murder happened, and I’ll bet you haven’t even bothered to look.”

  “I’m listening,” Chambrun said.

  “The kid came here to put the heat on his old man, Stan Nelson,” Thompson said. “Nelson, I suppose, has a suite here. No? The kid had something he could make stick, and that Warner Brothers’ gangster-type who acts as a bodyguard for Nelson shot him. He had the rest of the night to get the body down to the Health Club.”

  Chambrun turned his cold eyes to Nora. “When was the last time you saw your boy alive, Miss Sands?”

  She hesitated a moment. “Breakfast yesterday morning, Friday morning,” she said. “I was just coming from—from work, and he was taking off for school.”

  “He didn’t come home before you went to work on Friday night? Didn’t come home for supper?”

  “I told you, he’s stickball crazy,” Nora said. “On Fridays, when he doesn’t have homework to do, they play after school—till the daylight gives out. That’s around eight-thirty, daylight time, these days. If he stops for a hamburger, or just to chew the rag with his friends, he wouldn’t get home before I go to work. It’s nothing unusual on Friday nights.”

  Chambrun looked back at Thompson. “The telethon started the preceding midnight,” he said. “It had been going on a little over eight hours when Miss Sands last saw her son. Nelson was in the ballroom all that time and for sixteen hours after that. So was Mancuso, the bodyguard. So was Floyd, the other man sharing the suite with Nelson. They had their own dressing room and john down there. They never left the ballroom area.”

  “So it happened after the telethon was over. The kid waited, went up to Nelson’s suite, and got it between the eyes! They’ve had plenty of time to clean up any mess, get rid of the missing bullet, clean Mancuso’s gun so it won’t seem to have been fired recently. You wait long enough and they’ll all be back in California, safe and sound.”

  It was farfetched, but it couldn’t be ignored. In addition to Zach Thompson and Wallach there was a Mr. Anonymous, pushing us in Stan Nelson’s direction. We didn’t know it, but while we were talking in Chambrun’s office, Lieutenant Hardy had received another call from our anonymous informant.

  “Don’t let Stan Nelson go till he tells you when and where he talked with his son.”

  Our switchboard had been alerted to try to trace the call the next time Mr. Anonymous got in touch. Hardy tried to keep him talking to give them a chance, but he spoke just the one sentence and hung up before there was any time for a trace.

  Hardy was not a man to avoid going down any side street, no matter how unlikely. So it was that after listening to Thompson’s nonsense—nonsense was my word for it—Chambrun, Hardy, and I went up to the thirty-fifth floor, with a plain-clothes cop in tow.

  It was obvious when we reached 35C that Stan and his two aides were preparing to leave. Bags had been packed and were standing near the front door. Stan was sitting in a chair by the windows overlooking Central Park, sipping coffee resting on a tray that had obviously been brought to him by room service. Butch Mancuso was across the room, reading the sports pages of the Daily News.

  “I was beginning to wonder if you were going to get here in time, Lieutenant,” Stan said. “Johnny Floyd’s trying to settle our bill down in the lobby.”

  “Time for what?” Hardy asked.

  “We have flight reservations for Vegas at five o’clock,” Stan said. “I’m supposed to open out there tomorrow night. The Oasis.”

  “We’ve had another call from our anonymous friend,” Hardy said. “Don’t let Stan Nelson go till he tells you when and where he talked with his son.”

  “Oh for God sake, who is this freak who keeps trying to involve me?” Stan asked.

  “I wish we knew,” Hardy said. “No luck trying to trace his calls.”

  “Shall I say it all once more for you, Lieutenant?” Stan sounded like a man whose patience was running out, not a tense or a nervous man. “I have never to my knowledge laid eyes on Nora’s son since the day he was born.”

  “But you
knew he existed? You knew that fourteen years ago when she sued you for a property settlement.”

  “Yes.”

  “You read the newspapers at the time, didn’t you? You knew there was gossip that you might be the child’s father?”

  “Of course I knew,” Stan said. “I even thought I might be. Nora and I had lived together for two years.”

  “You weren’t interested enough to try to see him?”

  Stan put down his coffee cup hard in its saucer. “It came up, in a pretrial hearing,” he said. “I offered to take whatever the tests are that might prove or disprove my involvement. Nora’s lawyer turned down the offer. Presumably she knew I wasn’t the father. I think she and her lawyer preferred to have the rumor stay alive than to have evidence that I was not involved. Can you understand? I never wanted to see the boy. He was the result of her messing around with other men when I thought she was mine. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to see her. I never have seen him, and I haven’t seen her since the trial until this morning, down there by the pool. I don’t want to see her again now, unless I have to.”

  “You know Zach Thompson?” Hardy asked.

  “That bastard! Yes, I know him. Nora was working for him when I first met her.”

  “At this Hollywood club?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were a customer. She was a girl you picked out, however those choices were made?”

  Stan’s mouth turned down at the corners in an expression of distaste. “I don’t like to remember how I was living in those days,” he said. “That was seventeen years ago. I was twenty-five. Scrambling to make a living in a town full of wolves. I hadn’t made it then. Johnny Floyd took me to that Private Lives Club. Just something to do. They showed you pictures of girls, dressed and undressed. You made your choice. The girl I chose was Nora. I—I fell in love with her.”

  “You persuaded her to quit her job and settle in with you?”

  “Yes. I struck it big just about then, in a film. I suddenly had the money to keep a woman in luxury.”

  “I’d like to ask a question if I may, Walter,” Chambrun said.

  “Go,” Hardy said.

  “How much damage can it do your career, Nelson—this reviving of the rumor that Eddie Sands was your son?”

  “This is not 1930,” Stan said. “The big studios guarded the reputations of their stars in those days like it was gold in Fort Knox. You didn’t hear any scandal about a Joan Crawford until she was dead! It’s different today. The woods are full of kids out there whose parents aren’t married. The Census Bureau even has a name for them—POSSLQs. People of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters. Today a fifteen-year-old-kid from a live-together wouldn’t raise a ripple. But a murder is something else!”

  “Our anonymous friend isn’t just calling the police, you know,” Chambrun said. “He’s throwing his curveball to the press, radio, TV. It sets them all free to report his call, spread the gossip, without claiming it’s a fact.”

  “The more they spread it the more customers they’ll turn away at the Oasis in Vegas tomorrow night,” Butch Mancuso said. “People thrive on dirt these days.”

  “So you’re not disturbed by the talk?” Hardy asked Stan.

  “I’m disturbed by the murder,” Stan said. “I’m disturbed that some freak is trying to point at me. I’m disturbed for Nora, whatever our past may be. It’s her son, her kid. I’m disturbed that some crazy is floating around with a gun who may have another target in mind. This anonymous creep may be that killer. That disturbs me.”

  “Would it disturb you to know that it’s been suggested that the boy came up here to this suite after the telethon was over, accused you of something, threatened you with something, and that he was shot by Mancuso, or Johnny Floyd—or you, Nelson?”

  Stan just stared at Hardy, apparently not believing what he heard.

  “What bullshit!” Mancuso exploded.

  “You carry a gun, Mancuso?” Hardy said.

  Mancuso flipped open his jacket. “Sure I do,” he said. “And I’ve got a license to carry it.”

  “In my city?”

  “Your city, any city we go to. I got a dozen licenses.”

  “Mind if I look at it?”

  Mancuso yanked the gun out of its holster and handed it to Hardy. It looked like a .38 police special, not big enough to blow the kind of hole we’d seen in Eddie Sands’ face. Hardy sniffed at the barrel of the gun, checking its loading.

  “I haven’t had to use it to protect Stan for a long time,” Mancuso said. “I practice with it to keep my hand in.”

  “Let me see your license for New York City,” Hardy said.

  Mancuso took a wallet from an inner pocket, fumbled around in it and came up with what Hardy wanted. After a moment Hardy handed back the gun.

  “At least this one is legal,” he said.

  “What do you mean ‘this one’?”

  “You could have another gun, not licensed,” Hardy said. “It could be in your luggage, or you can have gotten rid of it after you used it.”

  “I think that’s going just a little too far, Lieutenant,” Stan said. “No one came up here after the telethon. That is, no one came in here. There were people out in the hall, trying to get a last-minute autograph, or grab off a handkerchief or a piece of my clothing. Butch and Johnny kept them out. That’s par for the course.”

  The front door to the suite opened and Johnny Floyd came in. He was a man burning with anger. When he saw Chambrun he waggled a finger at him.

  “Why aren’t you downstairs managing this lousy fleabag of yours, Chambrun? There’s a million reporters down there and that jerk, Zach Thompson, holding court! He’s told everybody this side of China that the dead boy is probably Stan’s kid. I had to fight my way to the desk to get a bill and pay it!”

  Butch Mancuso started for the door, but Sergeant Lawson, Hardy’s man, blocked the way.

  “You want to have big trouble, Buster, just keep standing there,” Mancuso said.

  “Keep it down, Butch,” Stan Nelson said.

  “I just want to hear that Thompson smear you once, Stan!” Mancuso said. “After that they can run a picture of what’s left of him in his stinking magazine.”

  “Just take it easy,” Stan said. He turned to Hardy. “You haven’t asked yet, Lieutenant, but I suggest you came up here to search the suite and our belongings.”

  “He better keep his sticky fingers off my stuff!” Mancuso said.

  “Let’s get it over with, Butch. We have a plane to catch,” Stan said.

  The search began, slow and methodical. Sergeant Lawson went down the corridor to the bedrooms. Hardy had Stan, Johnny Floyd, and Mancuso each open their bags and stand by as he went through the contents.

  Chambrun stood by, silent, frowning. When Stan Nelson’s personal belongings had been checked out, the bags repacked and closed up, he beckoned to the singer and they stood together over by the windows. I maneuvered myself close enough to listen.

  “Hardy is a very thorough man,” Chambrun said. “You did the right thing turning him loose. He could have kept you tied up forever while he got a court order, search warrants. If there’s anything to hide, it will be over quickly this way.”

  “Did Nora have anything to offer? She was down in your office, wasn’t she?”

  “Nothing that took us anywhere,” Chambrun said. “Then Zach Thompson appeared with his lawyer and that was that.”

  “It was Thompson who suggested the boy came up here—that one of us killed him?”

  “Wild talk,” Chambrun said.

  “For fifteen years that sonofabitch has been nipping at my heels,” Stan said. A little nerve twitched high up on his cheek. “The whole damned world, thanks to him at the time, knew what happened between me and Nora. The film critic in his stinking magazine always blasts my performance in a film. His music critic pans my records.”

  “And yet you are a very, very rich man,” Chambrun said.

  There was a sa
rdonic twist to Stan’s smile. “I’ve come to think that praise for me in Private Lives would be bad luck. I don’t think Thompson’s ever forgiven me for defeating Nora’s property suit against me. I suspect he looked forward to taking a slice of the proceeds for the rest of time if she’d won.”

  “What would have been a lot of money?”

  Stan gave Chambrun the kind of weary smile that goes with answering a question for the umpteenth time. “Would you believe, Mr. Chambrun, that I can’t estimate how much? You must have wondered, earlier down in the Health Club, how it was that Johnny Floyd knew where Nora was living, and that he’d apparently taken care of her financial needs to keep me from being worried. He took care of her with my money, Mr. Chambrun. Would you believe that a street kid, who started life playing piano in a local house of ill repute, turned out to be a financial wizard? I am an innocent musician who hears the melody of a tune, the romance or humor of a lyric and not much else. Johnny Floyd played for me in the beginning, and he also handled my money. It used to be fifty bucks a night for both of us at the start. It’s more than a hundred times that now. Johnny took care of the dough, then and now, and he’s invested in oil, in real estate. It’s multiplied and multiplied, thanks to Johnny. If Nora had won her suit against me and been awarded a percentage of my income for the rest of my life, she would have been a very rich woman.”

  “Johnny has access to your funds so he could take care of her when she was in trouble?” Chambrun asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You trust him with what is obviously a substantial fortune?”

  Stan smiled across the room at his bald-headed friend. “With my life,” he said. “A friend is a friend is a friend is a friend. That’s Johnny.”

  Chambrun’s voice was cold. “Would he kill the boy if he thought Eddie was threatening you with harm?”

  Stan actually laughed. “Johnny has a temper,” he said, “but he isn’t, for Christ sake, a killer. And what harm could the boy have threatened?”