Remember to Kill Me (The Pierre Chambrun Mysteries, 19)

by Hugh Pentecost

  Yardley and Guardino were both at phones, one at Chambrun’s desk and the other in the dressing room adjoining the main office. I was alone with Betsy, and to my surprise she was suddenly standing close to me, her hands gripping my arms.

  ‘I am so damn scared, Mark,’ she said. ‘Pierre would never …’

  ‘I know.’

  Now her face was buried against my shoulder and she was fighting tears.

  ‘He’s a survivor,’ I said, trying to comfort her.

  She leaned back and looked up at me. ‘You know why?’ she asked. ‘Because he’s never taken by surprise.’

  ‘What could have changed his mind after he started out to see Mrs. Haven?’ I asked.

  ‘A man with a gun in his back,’ she said, and lowered her head against my shoulder again.

  Where and how could this have happened? He had been in the lobby, surrounded by a mob of people. The elevator operator he’d told to take a break for a cup of coffee had seen him about to take a car to the roof. He hadn’t ever got to the roof. Our security up there was good and trustworthy. Had he stopped the car, for some reason, on the way up? He should have been seen if he’d gotten off the car at any floor. Since all this security had been hastily improvised, it was possible, only just possible, that he could have stopped at a floor somewhere and not been seen. Of course he could have stopped at Twenty-two, but that didn’t make sense. He had every reason to believe that would be walking straight into disaster.

  Mullins, the elevator man, hadn’t actually seen him get on the car. What could have changed his mind? Had he seen some person or some action that he thought required his instant attention? Could someone stick a gun in his back in that mob of people and go unnoticed? I realized that of course that could happen. With people shoving and elbowing each other Chambrun would know, if he was suddenly threatened, felt a gun barrel stuck in his ribs, that he’d better obey the orders he was given or he could be shot dead and the killer would have an excellent chance of evaporating in the crowd.

  But he hadn’t been shot dead, not there in the lobby. Where could he have been taken without security spotting him? He was as well-known as a movie star to most of them.

  I put an arm around Betsy to encourage her to get over her momentary crack-up. I knew that danger to Chambrun meant a great deal more to her than her boss-secretary relationship would occasion. They were very circumspect about whatever their real relationship was, but no one who knew them doubted for a minute that it was far more intimate than anything that had to do with work.

  ‘He tells you things that he might not tell anyone else,’ I said to Betsy. ‘Was there anything before he left for Mrs. Haven’s place that suggested he had some other project on his mind?’

  Betsy shook her head. ‘He—he seemed to think that the attack on Mrs. Haven wasn’t just a casual part of the raid on the hotel. Someone had gone after her very deliberately. He thought Mrs. Haven had seen something, or might see something, that was dangerous to the attackers.’

  I had one of the first bright ideas I’d had in the last few hours. ‘Sir George Brooks was one of the key people they wanted as hostage,’ I suggested to Betsy. ‘Someone came up there to get him, and there was Lady Victoria sitting in her garden, out in the open. The attacker thought she might see him, could identify him.’

  ‘But she didn’t see anyone!’ Betsy said.

  ‘I know. But she didn’t have on her glasses! The attacker didn’t know that she couldn’t see anything ten feet away from her without them.’

  ‘“Remember to kill me,”’ Betsy said.

  ‘That was forty-five years ago, love,’ I said. ‘Anyone from back then would have had to be in a wheelchair.’

  ‘Mrs. Haven isn’t in a wheelchair,’ Betsy said. ‘Neither is the Avilla man’s grandson.’

  ‘I’ve got to find Ricardo Avilla, Betsy,’ I said.

  ‘He isn’t going to be anywhere around here, Mark. The security, the police—everyone is looking for him. They have his picture.’

  ‘If he’s the outside contact for the people in Twenty-two B he’s got to be around here,’ I said.

  ‘What could he tell them that isn’t on television?’ Betsy asked. ‘He hasn’t any way of knowing what Pierre is thinking, or Yardley, or Guardino. He can’t know what Jerry Dodd may be thinking and planning. All he has to do is stay out of sight.’

  ‘There’s a chance he can be hanging around,’ I said. ‘How could he know we’re looking for him? I’m going to check out Lois Tranter. She’s probably still circulating down in the lobby.’

  Betsy’s fingers tightened on my arms. ‘Stay looking for Pierre, Mark. He’s all that matters!’

  ‘Locating Avilla may be the way to find him,’ I said.

  I didn’t go directly down to the lobby to check with Lois Tranter. As I was leaving the office I glanced at my watch and saw that it was nearly five-thirty. If Victoria Haven had carried out her plans, she would be across the mezzanine in the Trapeze Bar, holding court. Having come up with a new idea about the reason for someone shooting at her, I wanted to ask her about the incident again.

  I walked across the mezzanine gallery toward the Trapeze. Nothing had changed down in the lobby. It was still a madhouse of people. The Trapeze is one of the favorite gathering places for the Beaumont’s regular customers, particularly on an ordinary business day. It was a looked-forward-to stopover for men on the way home from work. Some years ago an artist of the Calder school had fashioned a collection of mobiles in the image of trapeze artists. These little figures moved gracefully in the breeze circulated by the air conditioning and had given the bar its name.

  Mrs. Haven was at her usual corner table with Toto sitting sullenly on his red satin cushion on the chair beside her. She was surrounded by eight or ten friends and admirers, who were flooding her with questions. After all, she was a key figure in the excitement of this day, having been marked for murder.

  As I walked in the side door I found myself confronted by Mr. Del Greco, the captain.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Mark,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to keep the curious out of here and cater only to our regulars. Hell to pay, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I see Mrs. Haven in here as usual.’

  ‘Queen of the ball,’ Del Greco said. ‘Some old lady!’

  I looked across at the bar. Eddie Walsh, the head bartender, looked as though he’d just been through a Waring mixer. There was a patch of adhesive tape over his right eye. His left eye squinted through a beautiful purple shiner. I saw he had a bandage around his right forearm.

  ‘What happened to Eddie?’ I asked. Del Greco’s smile tightened. ‘Fighting off some of the bums who raided us last night,’ he said. ‘He was pretty badly beaten up and carted off to our emergency hospital. They thought he might have a concussion. Apparently not, and they just let him out. He insisted on coming back to work. Another star of the evening! It was hell in here for a while, Mark.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Is there any inside dope on what’s going on upstairs?’

  ‘You know as much as I do if you’ve been watching TV,’ I said.

  I made my way over to Mrs. Haven’s table. She had promised to wear her glasses, but they were sitting on the table beside her. I was close enough to touch her before she recognized me.

  ‘Mark! Welcome to our city. Any news?’

  ‘Nothing that you don’t know,’ I said. Obviously she hadn’t told her friends that Chambrun was missing or I’d have been bombarded with questions. There was no way to talk to her privately, so I took it out in the open.

  ‘There’s a theory about why you were shot at,’ I told her, and outlined my idea.

  ‘If you knew what was going on in the hotel, you’d have been expecting trouble, wouldn’t you, Victoria?’ one of her friends asked.

  ‘But I didn’t know what was going on in the hotel,’ she said. ‘It was all in the lobby on the lower floors. The noise didn’t carry up to the roof. I didn’t dream anyt
hing was happening till I heard the shot and felt the pain in my arm.’

  ‘You hear anyone come up to the roof?’ I asked her. ‘The elevator?’

  ‘I did hear the elevator door open and close,’ she said. ‘I didn’t pay any attention, because I didn’t know I should have paid any attention. I thought it was probably Pierre going to his place, or Sir George Brooks going to his.’

  ‘You didn’t see anyone?’

  She gave me a dazzling smile and pointed to her glasses.

  ‘You weren’t curious?’

  ‘Why should I have been? Pierre comes and goes. Whoever’s in Penthouse Three comes and goes. I don’t keep tabs on them. After that first shot I was ducking for my life.’

  ‘Smart girl,’ somebody said.

  That was that. I went over to the bar to talk to Eddie Walsh. ‘You bumped into a door, I take it,’ I said.

  Eddie grinned at me. ‘You ought to see the other guy,’ he said.

  ‘We’re looking for someone you may know by sight,’ I said. ‘Fellow named Ricardo Avilla.’

  ‘Sure I know him. Nice-looking middle-aged guy with a tin hand. He’s been a regular recently.’

  ‘Night before last he was here,’ I said.

  ‘Oh brother, night before last is like ten years ago today,’ Eddie said.

  ‘Sheldon Tranter and his daughter were here and saw Avilla at the bar.’

  ‘That beautiful chick is Tranter’s daughter?’ Eddie asked. ‘I thought he’d picked himself up something very special!’

  ‘His daughter,’ I said.

  ‘I remember seeing them together,’ Eddie said. ‘Night before last? I guess that was when it was. But Avilla wasn’t here that night.’

  ‘The girl mentioned seeing him. Her father gave her a rundown on Avilla. Some kind of Central American terrorist.’

  ‘He’s a fast man with a five-buck tip,’ Eddie said. ‘But he wasn’t here night before last.’

  ‘How can you be sure? I mean, people coming and going, you busy.’

  ‘I know because I had a message for Avilla and he never turned up to get it.’

  ‘Message?’

  ‘Just a phone number for him to call. I never saw him to give it to him.’

  ‘I guess, in the excitement, somebody remembered wrong,’ I said. ‘Could have been the night before that, I suppose.’

  ‘Avilla could have been here then,’ Eddie said. ‘But Tranter and that girl—his daughter you say—were only here the once, night before last.’ Eddie’s grin widened. ‘You don’t forget when you saw a sexy chick like that. Second time I saw her, but the other time wasn’t in here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You’re asking me the same questions Chambrun asked me,’ Eddie said.

  ‘Chambrun? When?’ I asked.

  ‘Couple of hours or so ago. He came to the hospital to see me. Told me to go home and rest up. I told him I wouldn’t miss what was going on around here for anything.’

  ‘Where did you see Lois Tranter before?’

  ‘Like I told Chambrun, it was a couple of days before the raid. She was coming out of the Annex Building. I wondered at the time if she was staying there alone. That kind of a girl might be worth looking up in my spare time. But then I saw her with Tranter night before last, and not knowing she was his daughter, I figured the competition was a little too high-class for me. Tranter is a big shot with money!’

  ‘You’re sure she wasn’t here some other time with Tranter when Avilla was here?’

  ‘Look, Mark, you don’t forget a girl like that when you see her.’

  ‘What did Chambrun say when you told him this?’ I asked.

  ‘He said it was interesting,’ Eddie said.

  ‘How did he happen to come to see you? He was supposed to be heading up to the roof to see Mrs. Haven.’

  ‘He told me that,’ Eddie said. ‘He was just starting up, he told me, when he ran into Mike Maggio. Mike told him I was in the hospital and, being the kind of guy he is, he came to see me.’

  ‘You got that phone number someone left for Avilla?’

  ‘I gave it to Chambrun,’ Eddie said.

  ‘You remember it?’

  ‘Hell, no, Mark! I had it written on a piece of paper in my wallet. I gave it to The Man. Is something wrong with Chambrun? Jerry Dodd was just here asking if I’d seen him.’

  I hesitated. ‘He’s been out of touch for a couple of hours,’ I said. ‘We’ve been wondering what he’s up to. You tell Jerry what you’ve just been telling me?’

  ‘No reason to. He didn’t ask. What does it mean?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ I said. ‘One more question, Eddie. What is your off day?’

  ‘Sundays,’ Eddie said. That’s our light night. Joe Basilio takes over for me on Sundays.’

  ‘That could have been when Tranter and his daughter saw Avilla here.’

  ‘Five days ago is not night before last,’ Eddie said.

  Lois Tranter had been very specific about when it was she and her father had seen Ricardo Avilla in the Trapeze. Night before last she had told us, and Eddie Walsh now agreed that she and her father had been there, but not Avilla. Somebody, in view of the upheaval in the Beaumont, could have been confused about the day. But I found it difficult to put that confusion on Eddie Walsh. He is a sharp, observant, totally reliable guy in my book. He had reason to remember that Avilla hadn’t been in the Trapeze night before last. ‘A fast man with a five-buck tip’ isn’t easily forgotten, especially when you have a message for him that would probably produce another five-buck tip.

  Lois had been very certain about when she and her father had seen Avilla in the bar. She hadn’t said ‘a few days ago.’ It was night before last, and yet Eddie had reason to be certain it hadn’t been. Lois had been there with her father, but not Avilla. I tried to make it work out so that both sides were telling the truth. Lois hadn’t known Avilla by sight; he was pointed out to her by her father. How well did Sheldon Tranter know Ricardo Avilla? He could know Avilla’s history and not know the man well by sight. He could have seen him in some large gathering in Central America, known that he was presently in New York, seen someone he thought was Avilla and delivered his speech about Avilla to his daughter. It could be that both Lois and Eddie Walsh were telling the exact truth as they knew it.

  What didn’t make sense to me was that Eddie had seen Lois, some days ago, coming out of the Annex Building, which is next door to the Beaumont. Some years ago when extensive alterations were taking place in the hotel, the Beaumont Corporation had bought an old brownstone house next door to the hotel and moved some of the business-office functions there. When that time was over, they had remodeled four apartments on the four floors of the brownstone for overflow use. They were rarely used because there was no way to supply room service or bar service to them. On rare occasions when there were big doings at the United Nations or some convention in the city, the hotel let the space be occupied. I wasn’t aware that it was in use at the moment, certainly not by someone who had been called to my attention as a VIP. Sheldon Tranter had had a room in the hotel. There was no ready explanation for Lois’s coming out of the Annex. She would probably have one, and another that would clear up the confusion about the ‘night before last’ in the Trapeze.

  I went looking for her.

  It seemed to me when I reached the lobby level that the crowd had thinned a little. I think the rush of guests to check out had subsided. I saw Lois Tranter standing at the far end, and started toward her. She made a gesture to me, waving a hand across her face, to indicate that she hadn’t seen Avilla anywhere.

  I changed my mind and headed for the front desk. Atterbury, the head clerk there, looked out on his feet.

  ‘Like to ask you a question,’ I said.

  Atterbury gave me a deadpan look. ‘Don’t ask me what day it is, or what time it is, or what my name is,’ he said.

  ‘Rough going?’ I asked.

  ‘Rough is a minor-league word for it,’ he said. />
  ‘I need to know if anybody is staying in the Annex,’ I said.

  ‘Not registered in—that I know of,’ Atterbury said.

  ‘A few days ago?’

  ‘Some people from one of the Central American countries had the ground-floor apartment for a couple of days. We moved them back in here when we had room. It’s empty at the moment.’

  ‘Some particular Central American?’ I asked.

  Atterbury shrugged. ‘Not on the registry book,’ he said. ‘A delegation to the UN needed office space. Some kind of peace conference business. Chambrun okayed letting them have an Annex apartment. Raul Ortiz, in Twenty-two B, was to be billed for it.’ Atterbury looked suddenly stunned. ‘He’s one of the hostages, isn’t he?’

  ‘He sure as hell is,’ I said.

  ‘Well, anyway, they used the space for a few days, and then we moved ’em into one of the private meeting rooms in here.’ He gestured toward the far end of the lobby. ‘You want a name for them?’

  I did. Atterbury went to the registry and came back with it. ‘Organization of American States,’ he told me. ‘Man in charge is one Luis Sanchez.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Meeting Room Number Four,’ Atterbury told me.

  I felt a little treacherous not going to Lois Tranter for answers, but I remembered an old adage of Chambrun’s: ‘Don’t start asking someone questions unless you’re equipped to tell a lie from the truth.’

  There are six private meeting rooms off the south end of the lobby. They are used for business meetings, private luncheons, or dinners. They are almost always in use. When I reached the door of Number Four I found it locked. I knocked and waited. After a moment the lock clicked and the door was opened a few inches. I found myself facing a dark-skinned young man who was pointing a handgun right at my chest. I don’t remember anyone pointing a gun at me before. It’s not a pleasant experience.

  ‘Yes?’ the young man asked.

  ‘I’m Mark Haskell, public relations man for the hotel. I’d like to talk with Mr. Sanchez.’

  ‘Wait, please.’ The door closed, the lock clicked.