Bargain with Death

by Hugh Pentecost

  “Just dropped them and ran when something happened,” Jerry said.

  “But what happened?” Johnny asked.

  “I rather think that’s my ball game,” Chambrun said.

  2

  ELDERLY GENTLEMEN HAVE DIED of heart failure in the wrong rooms with the wrong companions many times before J. W. Sassoon breathed his last. As I have said, the Beaumont is like a small city. It has its incidence of crime, of sudden death from natural causes, of suicides, and even murder. I suppose, percentagewise, we have more suicides than the average. Lonely, desperate people come to the plush Beaumont, buy themselves a gourmet dinner, drink our fabulous wines, enjoy our nightclubs in one last splurge, often with their last dollars, and then they hang themselves from a shower rod or swallow a bottle of pills. The natural-unnatural deaths of older men is probably higher than the general average. You have to be rich to spend a day at the Beaumont. Older men are more apt to be that kind of rich and hungry for some last indulgence of the flesh. A young secretary, a greedy young mistress, also has a room nearby and the older man goes there and dies of overexercise. What often follows is cover-up—a popular word in Washington these days.

  What advantage could there be in insisting that the dead man’s indiscretion be made public? It could hurt a wife, a family, and do no one any good. More often than not Chambrun has acted to protect the innocent in such cases. He would probably have acted, unhesitatingly, to cover-up J. W. Sassoon’s last indiscretion on earth except for the tiny little transistor placed in the telephone in Sassoon’s bedroom. I don’t suppose Chambrun gave a damn about what went on in J. W. Sassoon’s business or personal life, but he could be a tiger when someone interfered with the Beaumont’s routines. Any hotel guest was guaranteed privacy and security from outside intrusions. The Beaumont is located only a few blocks from the United Nations Building on the east side of town and dozens of foreign diplomats made the hotel their home away from home. If phones could be bugged, the promise of privacy and security broke down. Before Chambrun did any covering-up for J. W. Sassoon, he meant to find out who had bugged the telephone and who had left a lady’s unworn black lace underthings to compromise the old man’s dying.

  I have to admit that I didn’t really give a hoot about the Sassoons and their problems. I spent the next hour or so after we left 912 emulating Paul Revere, “Chambrun is back!” The gloomy climate which had engulfed the hotel for the last month evaporated like a morning mist. I ran into Mr. Novotny, who is the maitre d’ in the Spartan Bar, and he was literally weeping with joy. The nightmare prospect of topless cigarette girls was banished forever.

  Chambrun may have been on the trail of an electronics expert, but in the process he had performed another kind of miracle. When I went up to the second floor about two hours after I’d started my Paul Revere routine, I found things changed. Johnny-baby’s miniskirted tootsie was gone, replaced by Miss Ruysdale in her simple little four-hundred-dollar black dress, smiling her Cheshire cat smile. She gestured toward the holy-of-holies and I went in. The Persian rug was back on the floor, the blue-period Picasso on the wall facing the reemerged Florentine desk. The Turkish coffee maker was gurgling on the sideboard, and Chambrun sat behind the desk, his black eyes hooded, watching the smoke curl upward from one of his flat Egyptian cigarettes. In the twinkling of an eye God was back in his heaven and all was right with the world.

  Standing over by the window was Johnny-baby, looking as though he was waiting for the trash collector to come back for the last memento of a bad dream.

  “I take it you have been notifying the staff that I am back here,” Chambrun said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So it’s time to start running a hotel,” Chambrun said. “You will issue a release to the effect that J. W. Sassoon died of a heart attack in the night. No details. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “If there is any rumor of a bugged telephone, I’ll know that it came from you.”

  “Or you, or Jerry, or Johnny-baby,” I said.

  “Don’t let your high spirits lead you to impertinence, Mark.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Jerry and I will obviously protect the story,” Chambrun said. “Mr. Sassoon has his own reasons for keeping it quiet.”

  Johnny-baby, in defeat, had become “Mr. Sassoon.” He turned from the window, his round face haggard.

  “You are both unhappily aware that I didn’t have what it takes to run a hotel,” he said. “I admit it freely. Now a huge financial empire has been dropped in my lap, and I am even less well equipped to deal with it.” A little nerve twitched on his cheek. “My father always planned to give me a crash course on the Sassoon empire, but he never got around to it. I don’t suppose, even with his heart condition, that he really believed he could ever die. When I walk out of here, I’ll be surrounded by business associates, and lawyers, and competitors, and enemies. And, God help me, I don’t know which end is up!”

  “It could not have been a friend who arranged to have his phone bugged,” Chambrun said. “Popular as electronic surveillance has become in business and in government, it isn’t used against a man by his friends.”

  “But who were his enemies?” It was like a cry of pain.

  Whoever Johnny-baby’s enemies were, we suddenly got a view of his friends. The office door opened and Miss Ruysdale stood there, giving Chambrun a little helpless shrug. A small tornado swept past her. It was a female tornado. At first I thought she was a twelve-year-old child. Long blonde hair swept out behind her like Alice in Wonderland in flight. Her face was plain, without makeup, ornamented by gold-rimmed granny glasses. She had on open-toed sandals and a simple, summer print dress that revealed rather nice thighs and knees. As I’ve said, there was no makeup on her face, but her toenails were painted a bright scarlet. I don’t think she was over five feet tall. She had to reach up on tiptoe to get her arms around Johnny-baby’s neck and pull his head down so she could kiss him smack on the mouth.

  “Sweetie pie!” she said, just before she made contact. Then, breathless: “How awful for you, pet.”

  “Miss Woodson—Mr. Chambrun, Mr. Haskell,” Johnny-baby said. He touched his lips as if they’d been bruised.

  “I’m Trudy Woodson,” the girl said, as though we should know there were other Woodsons. She focused on Chambrun. “So you finally had your way!” She looked around the elegant office. “I liked it better the way you had it, sweetie.” This to Johnny-baby.

  I’d had time now to notice that the simple summer print probably covered a body that belonged in Johnny-baby’s collection of center-fold girls from Playboy.

  “I’ve brought Mr. Carlson, sweetie,” Trudy told Johnny-baby.

  We looked toward the door and saw a rather handsome man in his fifties standing next to Miss Ruysdale. Dark curly hair was graying at the temples—the man-of-distinction touch. The crow’s-feet at the corners of level gray eyes indicated this was a man not unaccustomed to laughter. He had a wide, generous mouth, and his tall, lean body suggested a regular program of exercise.

  “Mr. Raymond Carlson is my father’s lawyer,” Johnny-baby said.

  “‘Counsel’ is the fancy word,” Carlson said, smiling. Then he turned grave. “I’m most desperately sorry about things, Johnny,” he said. “Rest assured I don’t believe the story about a woman in your father’s room.”

  “Why not?” Chambrun asked sharply.

  “Out of character,” Carlson said. “Is it true his telephone was being monitored?”

  Chambrun’s face had turned rock-hard. Someone had leaked what was meant to be a secret. “How did you hear about it, Mr. Carlson?” he asked.

  “One of my assistants brought me the news,” Carlson said. “Trudy happened to be in my office and we came as quickly as we could.”

  “Assistant?”

  “A young lawyer on my staff,” Carlson said.

  “Where did he get the information?”

  Carlson shrugged. “I didn’t stop to ask him.�
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  Chambrun glanced at Miss Ruysdale. “Get Jerry Dodd up here on the double,” he said. He crushed out his cigarette and then took a fresh one from his silver case. He seemed to have lost interest in Carlson. He was staring down at the four telephone instruments on his desk.

  “I suppose all hell has broken loose in father’s office,” Johnny-baby said.

  Carlson nodded. “The stock market is already doing some surprising things.” His smile was wry. “There are a lot of decisions you’re going to have to make, Johnny. You’re aware that the whole situation is now in your hands?”

  “What situation?” Johnny-baby said. “Jesus, Ray, you know I don’t know which end is up.”

  “We’ll give you plenty of help, boy.”

  “He doesn’t need help!” Trudy announced. She had planted herself in front of Johnny-baby, her gold head not coming up to his chin, her legs spread apart, hands on her hips. “It’s time you ran your own life, Johnny. It’s time you grew up!”

  “Oh, God!” he said.

  Well, anyway, he had five feet of towering support, I thought.

  “What arrangements have you made for your father?” Carlson asked.

  “Arrangements?” Johnny-baby sounded as if he’d been asked to explain the Einstein theory.

  “The police are in charge at the moment,” Chambrun said. “It’s routine. The Medical Examiner’s office has to determine cause of death—just in case.”

  “No doubt about its being his heart,” Carlson said. “He’s had three attacks of varying severity. Dr. Millhouse has warned him there could be another one at any moment. Any sudden excitement, overexertion—” Carlson shrugged. “If he discovered his phone was bugged, or someone tried to pull the old badger game on him, he could have gone like—that!”

  “Badger game?” Johnny-baby asked.

  “Some woman trying to frame him on a morals charge,” Carlson said.

  “But that’s absurd,” Johnny-baby said.

  “Not in the public prints,” Carlson said. “People might believe—”

  Chambrun lifted his heavy eyelids. “I take it criminal law isn’t your specialty, Mr. Carlson.”

  “Lord, no,” Carlson said. “Corporation stuff is my thing.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have an opinion about how often a perfect murder is committed?”

  “Is there such a thing as a perfect murder?” Carlson asked, not very interested, I thought.

  “We’ll see,” Chambrun said.

  At that point Jerry Dodd appeared—on the double.

  “This place is bugged,” Chambrun said, gesturing toward the four telephone instruments.

  Without a word Jerry went to work on the phone. We all watched, fascinated. He took each instrument apart, one after the other, and put them together again.

  “Clean,” he said finally.

  “The place is still bugged,” Chambrun said.

  Jerry began to go over the room. He looked behind the pictures, under the edges of Chambrun’s desk and the sideboard. In the corner of the room he stopped, knelt down by the baseboard.

  “Jackpot,” he said.

  It looked like the same little transistor device we’d found in J. W. Sassoon’s phone. Jerry examined it closely. “It’s been there for quite a while,” he said. “Covered by the edge of the rug.”

  “But this rug just went down!” Johnny-baby said.

  “You had a rug of your own down there, didn’t you?” Chambrun asked.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Someone on the listening end knew enough to call your assistant, Mr. Carlson. Bugging phones or installing other kinds of listening devices is a corporate specialty these days, isn’t it? It’s called, politely, industrial espionage.”

  “But why Johnny’s office?” Carlson asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “But there was a pipeline to your office, Carlson. Your assistant knew things that were being very carefully kept secret here.”

  “So we’ll ask him how he knew,” Carlson said.

  “I urge it,” Chambrun said. “By the way, who benefits from J. W. Sassoon’s death beside his son and heir?”

  “Oh, Lord, big business interests, competitors. Why do you ask?”

  “A listening device in a man’s bedroom, another in his son’s office, don’t suggest fun and games,” Chambrun said. “Did your father use this office, Johnny?”

  “I don’t think he came in here twice,” Johnny said.

  “You weren’t involved in his business affairs at all?”

  “Lord, no, sir.”

  Chambrun’s eyes” were narrowed. “There may be other electric ears around the place, Jerry,” he said. “Your job is to find out.”

  “Right.”

  Chambrun turned to Carlson. “I’d like to talk to your associate, Mr. Carlson, who told you there’d been a woman in Sassoon’s room. If someone in the hotel leaked that news, there’s going to be a lynching.”

  The formal announcement of J. W. Sassoon’s death, it was decided, would be made by Raymond Carlson, his lawyer. It was important, Carlson thought, for Johnny-baby to go down to Wall Street to the dead man’s offices. There would be a flood of questions coming in which, officially, only the new head of the empire could answer. Johnny, in a sweat of panic at the prospect, was assured by the amiable Mr. Carlson that the right answers would be provided for him.

  The small blonde tornado held out an imperious hand to her young man. “The key to your room, Johnny,” she said. “I’ll wait for you there.”

  He gave her the key and he and Carlson took off.

  I went down the hall to my office. I would have to prepare a statement for the hotel. We’d be swamped with news people when the story broke.

  The girl in my outer office told me there was someone waiting to see me. She’d written down the name.

  “Mr. A. Gamayel,” she said.

  “I can’t see him now.”

  “He said he would wait until you could see him.” She giggled. “He said it was a matter of life and death.”

  For a moment I couldn’t think who Mr. A. Gamayel was. Then my mental card index file of names relating to the hotel flipped over. Mr. A. Gamayel was part of the United Nations list of diplomats and officials. I recalled a small, dark, lithe little man, olive-skinned, with a toothpaste ad smile and shiny black eyes. I couldn’t remember which of the Arab countries he came from at that moment.

  Gamayel was standing by my office windows, looking out toward the East River. My office smelled as if I’d had a woman visitor who wore a musky perfume. Gamayel spun around from the window when I closed the office door as though he expected to be attacked. He was youngish, not more than thirty, I thought. He was wearing a black silk suit and a flamboyant yellow tie.

  “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Haskell,” he said. His voice was soft, almost musical.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have time for you at the moment,” I said. “There’s an emergency I have to handle.”

  “Sassoon?” he asked.

  The word was evidently out.

  “My problem is simple,” Gamayel said. “I must get into Sassoon’s room. I went up to 912 as soon as I heard, but the police were in charge and they wouldn’t let me in.”

  He took a yellow silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket and touched it to his forehead. In spite of my air-conditioning there was a fine film of sweat there.

  “There’s no way I can let you into the room,” I said.

  “You must!” he said. “Let me explain. Last night after dinner I gave Sassoon some documents to look at. They are very secret documents, Mr. Haskell. How do you call them—top secret, classified? If they get into the wrong hands or are made public, God help us all.”

  “I still can’t get you into the room if the police say no,” I said. “Whatever Sassoon had in his possession will probably be turned over to his lawyer or his son.”

  “Impossible!” Gamayel said.

 
; “I don’t know what I can do for you, Mr. Gamayel.”

  “You have heard of something called the energy crisis?” Gamayel asked. “Gas and crude oil shortages?”

  “Yes.”

  “My part of the world holds the answers in the palms of its hands, so to speak.” Gamayel refolded the yellow handkerchief and replaced it in his breast pocket. “The great powers are all trying to deal with us, or to be more exact, trying to force us to deal with them. Sassoon was the head man of one of the biggest oil conglomerates in the Western world. I—I was authorized to make him a secret offer. The outlines of that offer were in the documents I gave him to study. If they are made public, my government may well be overthrown and the Communist world come into possession of oil supplies that your world can’t do without, Mr. Haskell. I must retrieve those documents.”

  It sounded like Sherlock Holmes or James Bond, but Gamayel was so intense I halfway believed his melodrama.

  “It would be an act of patriotism if you would help me get into that room,” Gamayel said.

  “There’s only one person who might be able to help you,” I said. “If you can convince Mr. Chambrun.”

  “I thought he was no longer connected with the hotel.”

  “He is back in charge,” I said.

  Gamayel flashed his bright smile. He seemed to grow younger. “How marvelous,” he said. “He was once a great friend of my father’s. He will understand the urgency of this situation.”

  “So let’s go ask him,” I said.

  We set off down the hall together. He was bouncy with enthusiasm. I found the perfume almost overpowering. Miss Ruysdale, looking oddly tense, was in her office. I told her Mr. Gamayel needed to see the boss.

  “Perhaps you should go in and ask him,” she said. I saw by her manner that something unusual was up. Gamayel reluctantly took a chair she offered him and I went into the inner sanctum.

  Chambrun wasn’t alone. With him was an old friend of the hotel’s, Lieutenant Hardy of the Manhattan Homicide Squad. Hardy is a big, blond man who looks like a slightly thickheaded professional football player rather than the extremely shrewd investigator he is. He was sitting in a chair beside Chambrun’s desk, fumbling with a charred black briar pipe. Chambrun looked at me from under his heavy lids.