Girl Watcher's Funeral

by Hugh Pentecost

  “What about Chambers? What was his relationship with Nikos?”

  Lazar’s smile was weary. “Zach is an unhappy fellow,” he said. “He’s a queer, you know. He’s getting along in years and he isn’t as attractive to the young fry as he used to be. It’s started him drinking pretty heavily. He’s also a compulsive gambler, which keeps him constantly broke. But he’s a genius at picking and schooling girls who can model. He gets along fine with girls, because he creates no problems for them outside his business dealings with them. He knows, instinctively, whether a girl can wear elegant clothes and not seem cheap. You saw Suzie Sands upstairs. That voice! I’d never in the world choose her to wear my designs, but Zach was right about her. On the runway, in the right clothes, she looks like a princess.”

  “You still haven’t told me how Chambers got along with Nikos,” Chambrun said.

  “Nikos had respect for talent. Zach wasn’t the kind of person Nikos would have for a friend, but Nikos respected him in a business way. Ever since Nikos became interested in fashion, Zach has provided models for him. Zach made a healthy package out of the deal. They only had one quarrel that I know of.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was about Jan,” Lazar said. “Zach thought she had the potential to be one of the great fashion models. She represented a gold mine to him. When Nikos picked her for his own private property, Zach was burned to a crisp. He made such a fuss he almost lost out with Nikos.”

  “But if Jan had friends before Nikos, Chambers might know about them?” Chambrun asked. “You see, if she’s hiding out somewhere, she could have gone into her past for help.”

  “Zach could be helpful—if you can sober him up,” Lazar said. “He was stoned to the gills the last I saw him.”

  The office door opened and Jerry Dodd came in. Lazar stood up.

  “I’ll need help,” the designer said. “With Rosey gone, I don’t quite know how to go about the business of releasing the word that my showing is canceled.”

  “Mark will help you in the morning,” Chambrun said.

  Jerry stood aside and watched Lazar leave. Then he joined us.

  “No sign of the girl,” he said.

  “I want a crash search, Jerry,” Chambrun said. “Maids are to go into every room they can with towels, whatever. Where that doesn’t work, I want a repair man to insist on being admitted—electrical short circuit, water leak, any excuse.”

  “There’ll be some loud howls from a couple of dozen illicit Romeos,” Jerry said.

  “Let ’em howl. I want every room in the hotel covered.”

  “Right.”

  “I want doormen, Maggio’s whole night crew, night watchmen, the whole staff alerted.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Couple of hours,” Jerry said.

  “Pressure it.”

  Jerry took off and Chambrun rose from his desk chair. “I’ve got a feeling we’re too damned late,” he said. “Our best hope is that phone call. If she got to some old friend’s place and called from there—” He shrugged as though he didn’t place much hope in the idea. “Let’s have a go at Zach Chambers.”

  2

  CHAMBERS HAD ROOM 1920, directly across the hall from Monica Strong’s room. There was no answer when we knocked on his door. Chambrun produced a pass key and we went in.

  I was almost knocked over by the sour, stale smell of liquor. All the lights in the room were blazing, and Zach was sprawled face down on his bed, out cold. I tried shaking him, and the only result was a low moan. Chambrun picked up the phone and called room service for hot coffee.

  I went into the bathroom and soaked a towel in cold water. Somehow I got Zach rolled over on his back and went to work on him, slapping his face, trying the wet towel at the back of his neck. He moaned and groaned, but he showed no signs of coming to. After a bit the room service waiter arrived with coffee. Between us we pulled Zach up into a sitting position and got some coffee into his mouth. It was scalding hot. His eyes rolled up into his head and he tried, feebly, to push us away.

  “Get him up on his feet and walking,” Chambrun said.

  The waiter and I struggled with him. He was dead weight between us, his feet dragging. I kept slapping him and talking to him. He began to protest now, trying for words.

  “Oh, please—for God sake!” I was able to distinguish.

  We kept at it, getting coffee down him after each lap up and down the room. Finally his eyes focused on me.

  “For God sake, go away!” he pleaded.

  “When you come around enough to answer some questions, Zach, we’ll let you go back to sleep.”

  “I’m sick!”

  “So come in the bathroom and be sick,” I said.

  “What do you want? What in the name of God do you want?” He began to cry.

  Chambrun slapped him so hard a red welt appeared on his flabby white cheek. “I want to ask you about Jan Morse, Chambers. We’ll keep at you until you’re ready to talk. You can save yourself a lot of discomfort if you’ll listen and answer.”

  “I’ll t-try,” Zach stammered. “Only please let me sit down. The whole damn place is spinning around.”

  “If you go to sleep, I’ll give you a real going-over, friend,” I said.

  “Look, man, I told you I’d try,” Zach said.

  The waiter and I eased him down into an armchair. His head lolled to one side. I slapped him.

  “Please! Please just ask me and go away,” Zach cried. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.

  “Jan is missing,” I said. “We’re trying to find her. We need your help.”

  “Look for Faraday,” he said. “Five to two, you’ll find Jan wherever Faraday is.”

  “Faraday is at police headquarters being questioned,” Chambrun said. “Jan’s not with him.”

  Zach’s eyes tried to focus. “Faraday killed Rosey? Oh, that sonofabitch. Rosey was my friend. I loved her. I—”

  “About Jan,” Chambrun said. “Who were Jan’s friends here in New York before she joined Nikos? Models she worked with. Boy friends.”

  “How would I know? How the hell would I know?”

  “She was a model client of yours.”

  “Business,” Zach wailed, “not social!”

  “Think hard!” Chambrun said.

  Zach rolled his head from side to side. “If you’ve got Faraday—he—he’s your man. He was trying to find out about her. He—he asked me the same things. Who were her friends? He wanted to get something on her.”

  “What do you mean, get something on her?” Chambrun asked.

  “He wanted her free of Nikos, don’t you see?”

  “No, I don’t see.”

  “Mike wanted to get Jan away from Nikos. He—he couldn’t just go to Nikos and say he was having a thing with Jan. Nikos would have clobbered him, man. So Mike was trying to find something in her past that would make Nikos get rid of her. Then Mike would have her to himself.”

  “What did he find?”

  “Nothing—at least as far as I know. I didn’t have anything to tell him. I wouldn’t, even if I had. Faraday is a mean sonofabitch. I wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire.” He took a deep swig of coffee. It seemed to be helping.

  “All she had to do was walk out on Nikos if she wanted to belong to Faraday,” I said.

  Zach indulged in a sickly laugh. “You didn’t just ‘walk out’ on Nikos, man. And anyway, I don’t think Jan wanted to leave him.”

  Chambrun nodded toward the door. He’d had enough of Zach.

  “Try and get sobered up,” I said. “We may be back.”

  In the corridor Chambrun stood scowling, tugging at his lower lip. “Faraday,” he said. “He is not the kind of man who lets his plans be sidetracked. We only have his word for it that he and Jan had a drink at some bar and then separated, he to go home, she to return here.”

  “We could do some checking at the local pubs,” I said.

  “There is on
e way a man like Faraday could have solved his lust problems,” Chambrun said.

  “Switching Nikos’s pills?”

  Chambrun nodded. “He could afford to wait for that plan to work. Miss Lewis was a smart woman. She probably knew he’d been playing games to get something on Jan so Nikos would dump her. She put it to him—and we know how violent his reactions can be.”

  “And Jan?”

  “She guessed and told him to go peddle his paper. God help her.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “Get Joe Cameron to take a quick skirmish around the neighborhood bars, Mark. I’ll call Hardy at headquarters. It may give him a new line of questioning before Faraday’s lawyer can spring him.”

  We started down the corridor just as the door to Jan’s room, 1907, opened and Sergeant Jansen came out.

  “Just starting out to look for you, Mr. Chambrun,” he said. “I’ve called the Lieutenant and he’s on his way back here.”

  “You’ve found some solid evidence?” Chambrun asked.

  “This is a no-evidence case,” Jansen said. “But we’re pretty damn sure of one thing. The Lewis Woman never went out the window in this room. Come on back in and I’ll show you.”

  We followed him into 1907. One of the technicians was still there packing up his gear.

  “Look over here,” Jansen said, and led us to the still open window. The little piece of tweed from Rosey’s smart suit was no longer attached to the air conditioner. Jansen pointed to the top of the air conditioner.

  “The window was always kept closed,” he said. “If you look at the top of the air conditioner, you can see three different accumulations of dust and dirt. Inside the window it’s relatively clean. I assume the hotel maids dusted each day. There’s some dust now, but the window’s been open for several hours. Then you can see the area where the window came down on the metal box. Two little ridges of dirt—like a railroad track—the one on the outside thicker than the one on the inside. Then the portion of the conditioner which was outside the building is thickly coated with grime and soot.”

  “They all seem like logically differing accumulations,” I said.

  “But except for a few little smears around the little projection where the cloth was caught, none of the dust layers have been disturbed.” Jansen took a cigar out of his pocket and chewed on it without lighting it. “It’s possible, if it was a suicide, that the Lewis girl could have taken a running swan dive out the window without touching the top of the air conditioner or the window frame on either side. It’s possible but it would have been a circus trick. If she was killed and shoved out the window, the top of that air conditioner would show it. And let’s forget the idea of a clean jump. We’re supposed to think her suit caught on the air conditioner and a piece was ripped off it. So she did touch the top of the air conditioner and a piece was ripped off it. So she did touch the top of the air conditioner. Only she didn’t. Dust and dirt undisturbed.”

  “Then this was a frame-up,” Chambrun said.

  “And a clumsy one,” Jansen said. He turned away from the window, teeth clamped down hard on his unlit cigar. “We have a collection of fingerprints in the room, mostly Jan Morse’s. There are some of Faraday’s. There’s another collection, but since they’re mostly around electrical connections and bathroom fixtures, I’m guessing the maid. There are some others we haven’t identified yet, but none of them near the window.” Jansen turned back to stare at the window. “Someone in a hurry wanted us to believe the Lewis girl went from here. Well, she didn’t. Now we’ve done some experting on the trajectory of the body’s fall. It was found almost directly under this window, but depending on how it was thrown—or how she took off—she could have fallen from the next room to the north—Monica Strong’s, Karados’s bedroom to the south, or just possibly Gallivan’s room, still further south.”

  “That would be stretching, wouldn’t it—Gallivan’s room?”

  “Yeah,” Jansen said. “But let me stretch, Mr. Chambrun. In Gallivan’s room there is an air conditioner in one window, nothing in the other. That second window is interesting. The window sill, inside and out, has been wiped clean. Dust evenly removed from one side of the sill to the other, both inside and out. No fingerprints, no nothing.”

  “Proving?”

  “That somebody cleaned the window sill,” Jansen said. “Who? Well, Tim Gallivan heads the list, only because it’s his room. But dozens of people milled in and out of all the rooms, especially his and Jan Morse’s, connected as they were to Karados’s. Nothing to really pin anything on anyone.”

  Chambrun nodded slowly. “A no-evidence case, as you said, Sergeant. We know Nikos died because someone played games with his pills. But no evidence as to who it was. We know Miss Lewis was thrown out a window in Gallivan’s room, but no evidence as to who did it. An endless number of people had the opportunity to do both things, and most of them may have had a motive. Jan Morse undoubtedly has guessed at the truth. Because she’s missing, she may actually have evidence. But she’s missing.”

  “If she has evidence, forget about her,” Jansen said. “The killer’s had a couple of hours to deal with her.”

  Chambrun’s narrowed eyes lifted. “Nikos checked into the Beaumont six days ago,” he said. “He got a fresh prescription from Dr. Partridge for nitro pills that first day. The shift was made after that; today, yesterday, six days ago. Someone not present today for the showing and the party could have done it. But Miss Lewis was murdered while the party was going on. To the best of my knowledge only two people who attended the party have been allowed to leave the hotel—Faraday and Jan Morse herself. If Faraday isn’t the villain of the piece, then Jan Morse is going to be found, alive or dead, somewhere in the hotel. We’ll know in a little while.”

  “We know she called from outside,” I said.

  “On an outside line, not necessarily from outside the hotel,” Chambrun said.

  “It seems to me we should begin with Gallivan,” Jansen said. “It was his room.” He shook his head. “The hell of it is that photographer had a picture of whoever it was! You think his memory could be jogged?”

  “I don’t think he saw anything in that room except the two people he was shooting,” I said. “He wouldn’t have been aware of anything else until he developed the films. They’re gone.”

  “No evidence again,” Jansen said. “Well, let’s pick up Gallivan. Even at a drunken binge a man is apt to notice who goes in and out of his room.”

  I felt as if some kind of time bomb was ticking away inside me, and I didn’t know what time it was set to go off. There was the dark possibility that it had already exploded; that it was too late to do anything for Jan. I kept telling myself we still had a chance, and I was damned if I wanted to hang around listening to Jansen’s no-evidence department, the exasperatingly slow, step-by-step approach to a blank wall. I took Chambrun aside.

  “Can I go out on the town with Joe Cameron?” I asked him. “Two of us can cover more territory than one. And I know some of these small bars. Shelda and I go to some of them when we need to get away for a little. I have friends.”

  “Go,” Chambrun said. I wasn’t sure he’d really heard me. He seemed lost in a thick fog.

  Joe Cameron and I started out together. It was agreed I’d take the crosstown streets, because that’s where the places I knew were located—between the hotel and Shelda’s apartment. Joe would take Madison and Lexington Avenues, a block or two in each direction.

  I struck gold the very first joint I hit. It was a crummy little joint called Mac’s Place, just down the block from the hotel. The owner, and usually the night bartender, was a jovial mick named Pat McNertney. He used to be a small-time heavyweight fighter, whose nose was crooked from poundings, and who sported a beautiful cauliflower ear. He used to buy Shelda and me a drink about once a month—after we’d bought about ten apiece. His place was almost empty and he looked glad to see me.

  “Jack Daniels?” he asked me cheerfully.

  “No time, Pat,” I
said. “I’m looking for someone who may have been in here a while back. Guy in a brown suit with a chocolate-colored turtle-neck shirt, and a girl in raspberry pink with a lot of blonde hair.”

  “Sure they were here,” Pat said, polishing a glass. “A lot earlier. They were having at each other—cat and dog.”

  “Quarreling?”

  “I’ll tell the world,” Pat said. “Guy shouting at the gal, and she talking low, but very tenselike.”

  “How long did they stay?”

  “Three double vodkas for him, one root beer for her. Pretty soon the gal charged out and left him behind. That’s when he ordered his third double.”

  “He didn’t follow her?”

  “Hell, no. He came over to the bar for his last drink. He was cooking over a hot flame, you know? Said all women were a pain in the you-know-what. I felt sorry for him, kind of. If he missed out with that pink lady, he missed out on a real package.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t follow her?”

  “Look, Mark, the way she tore out of here she could’ve been in Hoboken by the time he finished that last drink.” Pat poured me the Jack Daniels I’d refused. “What the hell’s going on at your place? I see a lot of police cars.”

  “Woman went out a window from high up,” I said.

  “Thank God they always go to the fancy places to die,” Pat said. “Anyone you knew?”

  “Someone I liked real well,” I said. I tossed off the drink, which I figured was less than an ounce and a half. The glass had a thick bottom. “If you see any sign of that raspberry kid again, give me a call. I need to find her, but bad.”

  “She won’t be back here,” Pat said. “She didn’t enjoy herself.”

  It was a thin trail, but a trail. Jan had had plenty of time to get away from Faraday. If he’d stayed for a drink, he’d have had just about time to go home, change into his white silk karate outfit, get warned by his wife, and been ready to receive Chambrun, Hardy, and me. There’d been no time for him to catch up with Jan, harm her, hide her, and get back to his Fifth Avenue mansion before we caught up with him.

  I hightailed it back to the Beaumont and up to Chambrun’s office. He wasn’t alone. Hardy and Jansen were with him along with Tim Gallivan. Gallivan looked stunned.