Murder in Luxury

by Hugh Pentecost

  "A man who wants the star billing, your Keegan," Chambrun said.

  "He's a good cop, Pierre," Hardy said, "but pride does get in his way a little. His father, Jerry Keegan, was a captain and top man in Homicide when I came on the force. His older brother, Marty, retired, disabled after he was shot up in a gang war in Chinatown. Tough cop. Matt married Polly Malone, daughter of Pat Malone, the deputy commissioner, who's my boss. Police on both sides. Fine records. I went to that wedding. Matt announced he was going to have five sons and that they'd all be cops, carry on the Keegan name." Hardy's smile faded. "Polly had a miscarriage trying to bring the first one into the world. No more kids. Matt changed into a hard-driving bastard after that. He's going to be king of the hill, with Pat Malone's help. His record is tops, but he can't afford to mess up a case like this that makes all the headlines. It may make him work a little too hard, a little too eager to come up with the answer in a hurry. He may trip a few times, but he'll make it. You'll see."

  "I hope you're right," Chambrun said.

  "The Polansky thing bothers me," Hardy said. "He wasn't just a dumb flatfoot, who would let himself be distracted by a pretty maid. He was a detective on a murder case. Nothing was going to take his mind off his business."

  Chambrun glanced at me. "I said something like that earlier on to Mark."

  "Tell me what your people know, Pierre," Hardy asked.

  Chambrun shrugged his expressive shoulders. "Mrs. Valerie Summers is a client of Gardner Fails, who is on my board of directors. He brought the lady here after Carl Rogers, a drug pusher, was shot to death in her West Tenth Street apartment. We put her up here, and the first evening she's here a sex peddler is shot to death in her suite. Your man Keegan is convinced the lady is some kind of drug-sex nut, involved in a war with suppliers who know she's a very rich woman and are trying to rip her off. Could be the way Keegan thinks, not the way Mark thinks." He gave me a tight little smile. "The lady has beautiful blonde hair and dark, mysterious, and possibly passionate violet eyes. She has to be innocent from Mark's perspective. So—we move her out of the second murder spot, and after the passage of some twelve or fourteen hours—the lady was given sedatives to get her some sleep—we come up with a third murder, this time your Sergeant Polansky. But this time, no matter what the color of her hair or eyes, Mrs. Summers is, whether Keegan likes it or not, innocent. She had slept out her sedation, dressed, and gone up to my penthouse with her lawyers. Miss Ruysdale had spent the night with her. When the room was empty she called maid service and suggested that was a good time to do up the room. The housekeeper sent the floor maid at once to do the job. Polansky let her in to 1216."

  "Joe identified her? She couldn't have been a fake?" Hardy asked.

  "No fake. With us some twelve years," Chambrun said.

  "She had the right kind of mops, Polansky told me," I said.

  "Told^ow?" Hardy looked surprised.

  "Mark is the key witness who clears Mrs. Summers," Chambrun said. "A little after noon he went up to the twelfth floor hoping to get a glimpse of those violet eyes. The maid was in the room. Polansky was at his post in the hall. Everything serene. About an hour later Mrs. Summers, her lawyers, a couple of Keegan's men, and Jerry Dodd and one of his security men came down from the penthouse. Polansky wasn't at his post in the hall. Jerry Dodd and one of the cops went into the room and found him there, the side of his head blown off."

  "Damn!" Hardy said softly.

  "Keegan is summoned, the homicide crew goes to work. A cop named Dawson finds the murder weapon, a small, pearl-handled gun, tucked away in Mrs. Summers' lingerie in a bureau drawer. Ballistics says that gun killed all three victims. Mrs. Summers say she doesn't, never has, had or owned a gun. True or false, she did not fire the shot that killed Polansky. At that time she was up in the penthouse, surrounded by her two lawyers, two cops, and two of our security people."

  Hardy was scowling down at his big hands, closed into fists on his knees. "Dawson is a good man, solid detective," he said. "I've talked to him. I suggested Joe Polansky could have been shot out in the hall, dragged into the room. No chance, Dawson says. There was so much blood Joe couldn't have been moved anywhere without leaving a trail. It happened in the room, nowhere else. Joe dropped where he was shot. His own gun was in its holster. He never got it out. That suggests to me he went into the room with someone he thought had a right to be there. He was relaxed, unprepared for trouble."

  "Who?" Chambrun asked.

  "That's why I'm here, Pierre—to ask you that. Housekeeper? A maintenance man?" His brief smile was tight-lipped. "You? Mark, who says he was there and chatted with Joe? You could have asked to go into the room to get something for the lady. Joe would have let you in, followed you, totally unprepared for trouble. You shoot him, plant the gun on the lady, and saunter off."

  "You are, of course, not serious," I said. "If I thought you were I'd ask why I'd be planting the gun on Valerie?"

  Hardy shrugged. "Maybe she said no when you wanted her to say yes."

  "And killed three guys I never saw before just to annoy her?" I asked. "Incidentally, I never laid eyes on Valerie until she checked in here yesterday. I don't take a no so seriously so soon, Walter."

  "Of course I'm not serious," Hardy said. "I was only trying to make the point that Joe Polansky could only have been in that room, relaxed and off guard, with someone he thought had a right to be there."

  "How about you, or Keegan?" I said.

  "Sure. But let me tell you, Mark, if either Keegan or I wanted to plant a gun on the lady we'd have told Joe to stay out in the hall. Being a good cop he'd have obeyed orders from a superior."

  "If you children are through playing 'Let's suppose,'" Chambrun said, sounding impatient. "You may, quite innocently have been right on target, Walter. I've been suggesting all along that the killer may have been some man to whom the lady gave a casual no sometime in the past. A no to sex or a no to money. But that doesn't answer your question about Polan-sky, does it? I think you should consider the possibility, Walter, that no one's perfect."

  "Meaning?"

  "I keep repeating myself but nobody listens," Chambrun said. "Polansky had to go to the bathroom, and rather than leave his post he went into 1216. He saw something he thought should be reported to Keegan, and rather than leave his post he went into 1216 to use the phone. Not being perfect, he didn't lock the door behind him. Somebody watching, took the opportunity to follow him in. Polansky may never have seen who it was, it could have been that quick."

  Hardy sat silent, trying to put it together that way. Chambrun glanced at him.

  "There is a lady up in the penthouse, Mark, whose memory needs cultivating," he said. "If that doesn't work there are six hundred letters that may give us a clue!"

  It was about seven o'clock when I left Chambrun's office and headed down the second-floor corridor to the private elevator. I wanted to avoid the lobby, because I knew the joint would be jumping down there, reporters still hungry for any kind of handout, guests and friends eager for something to add spice to the gossip. I didn't have any spice to offer.

  I didn't know it then, had no way of knowing, that the three brutal and cold-blooded murders that had turned our lives upside down were just a prelude to a lesson in terror I wouldn't have believed possible. If I had chosen to go down the hall to my office to pick up any messages my secretary might have left for me before she called it quits for the day I might have avoided what lay ahead. There was a message from Derek Newton, my crippled friend, asking me to call him. He had said it wasn't urgent so my girl hadn't tried to track me down to give it to me. If I had happened to call Derek at that point in time, the whole story might have had a different ending. I didn't know that, of course, and Derek didn't know that he had in his hands the control of a ticking bomb.

  Keegan's rules were in effect. When I rang the private elevator bell on the second floor the car came up, occupied by two men. One of them was a strange cop, in uniform; the other was one of J
erry Dodd's security boys who knew me well. I had to satisfy the cop that I was on Keegan's "free list." It wasn't enough for the cop that Jerry's man identified me. I had to produce my wallet with my driver's license and credit cards. He was finally satisfied that I wasn't a phoney and they took me up to the roof. I asked them if anyone else had gone up to the penthouse. No one had.

  On the roof there was another strange cop who insisted on going through the same routine. Across the roof I heard a sound like a tiny buzzsaw at work. I realized it was Toto, Mrs. Haven's little spaniel, snarling at us from inside her garden fence. In the twilight I could see a couple of plainclothes cops, pacing slowly up and down. Toto resented them. I didn't. Keegan had the whole place tightly covered. No mad killer was going to find his way up here to get at Valerie. It was a comforting thought.

  The cop outside Chambrun's penthouse opened the door for me and I went into the vestibule.

  "Paul! Is that you?" Valerie called out from the living room.

  I went in and found her standing by Chambrun's piano, leaning on it for a prop.

  "Oh, Mark!" she said. "I'm so glad it's you."

  "I thought Spector was here with you," I said. I glanced at the chair where he'd tossed his Stetson hat when he'd come in. It was gone.

  I crossed over to Val and to my surprise she was suddenly in my arms, clinging to me. That didn't make me unhappy.

  "Easy does it," I said. Her blonde hair smelled like honey.

  "I... I can't bear to be alone," she said.

  "I thought the cowboy would never let you out of his sight," I said.

  Her laugh was a little hysterical. "He rolls his own cigarettes," she said. "He ran out of the little papers he uses."

  "End of the world," I said.

  "For him," Val said. "He had to go get some. The policeman outside told him he couldn't get back up without permission from Keegan. He wasn't on Kee-gan's list. Paul shouted at him that no cop was going to keep him from coming back. That was about an hour ago."

  "If he couldn't find Keegan he couldn't get up here with a bulldozer," I said. "Come on, love, sit down. We've got things to think about, like dinner, and your glamorous past. Chambrun still wants to know where you were a week ago last Thursday."

  I led her around to the couch and sat down beside her, one of her cold hands in mine.

  "Paul is—is something!" she said, turning her head from side to side. "It goes way, way back to when he was—was interested in me."

  " 'Hungry for you,' is the way he put it to me," I said.

  "His idea of how to get me through this difficult time was to... to make love to me!''

  I laughed. "But he ran out of cigarette papers?''

  "He could be patient, he said, but not without something to smoke."

  She laughed too, and I was holding her hand, her head on my shoulder.

  "I thought I was going to be raped!" she said.

  "His way to make you feel safe," I said. "You say the word, when he comes back I won't leave you alone with him. Meanwhile, if you can trust me..."

  "Oh, Mark!"

  "There's all kinds of liquor in the cabinet over there if you want a drink. There's certainly something in Chambrun's refrigerator if you're hungry. Most important of all, we have to talk. Somewhere, if we can dig it out, there must be a clue to all this horror. If we just keep talking it may pop out in the open. I saw an old friend of yours earlier today."

  "I keep telling you, Mark, I have no friends."

  "Derek Newton," I said.

  "Oh my God, poor Derek. You know him? You saw him?"

  "Your cowboy may have strange ideas about how to provide you with peace of mind," I said, "but I think he's really fond of you. He mentioned Derek,

  and by a coincidence he is an old friend of mine. I went to see him—looking for a week ago Thursday/'

  "How is he?"

  "He's made a way of life for himself," I said.

  "You know that he was in love with my friend Eleanor Payson?"

  "He told me."

  "I've always thought it was Eleanor's man who beat him up so dreadfully. I tried to see him after she died, but he wouldn't do more than talk on the telephone."

  "He told me about you, too," I said.

  She lifted her head and looked at me, a faint color mounting in her cheeks. "You mean... ?"

  "Yes, love. Your Eleanor must have been really something for Derek to turn you off," I said.

  "I was twenty years old and still a child," she said. "It was the most shameful moment of my life. To ask him—when I knew so little. Knew nothing] 99

  "He remembers it with tenderness and regret," I said. "It was a lovely thing to happen to a nice man. If he hadn't been a nice man he'd have taken you up on it. If he had, who knows, you both might have lived entirely different lives. I can't imagine making love to you and then going somewhere else."

  "That's the way it is with me now," she said. "After five years with Dick Summers I can't imagine turning anywhere else."

  "That town in Ohio where you and Dick lived. Surely you had friends there, Val."

  "We had friends," she said. "It was Dick's town. They were his friends and they accepted me. I think I fitted in pretty well. I interested myself in community things. There was a theater, and an art gallery, and a hospital. There was always the damned money that I had to find a way to use without their knowing it was mine. That was Dick's big hang-up. They mustn't know I was a McCandless, or we'd be surrounded by people with their hands out. After Dick died, and who I was became known, they reacted as though I'd cheated them!"

  "How did you work it—before they knew?"

  "Oh, I said I had a friend who worked for a foundation. I got them grants for various things. Of course it was my money. Afterward they thought they should have had twice as much twice as often."

  "Was there a foundation?"

  "Was and is," Valerie said. "The Hanson Foundation, named after my mother. But it's actually my money. I am it,' you could say."

  "The Hanson Foundation had to have said no sometimes. Was there somebody deeply disappointed? Did some project collapse without your help? Was there anger somewhere along the way?"

  "Something that would lead to three murders and an effort to scare me out of my life and destroy me? Nothing remotely that important to anyone. Honestly, Mark."

  "Since you've been living here in New York, has anyone tried to con you out of money? Tried to blackmail you?"

  "Blackmail suggests I have something to hide. I don't, Mark! Nothing. And nobody has tried to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, if that's what the word con means."

  "So let's let the money go for now," I said. I'd never really seen it as the motive. Killing people wasn't going to get anyone money they wanted. I knew, though, that I wasn't keeping Chambrun's theory quite in focus. A psychotic looney was trying to punish Val, involve her in murder, watch her go through the torture of arrest, conviction, and prison for life. The motive could seem inconsequential to sane people, like no to money or no to sex. What else was there that Val could have refused someone?

  I looked at her, lovely, almost relaxed, a look of childlike puzzlement on her face. Was it possible she was a fine actress? Could Keegan have been right from the start, and was she the one who was off balance? Not possible, because she hadn't killed Polansky. Or could there be what Keegan called a 'partner in crime'? Was it possible she could be involved with drugs and Willie Bloomfield's perverted kind of sex? Every instinct I had refused to accept those possibilities. I wanted to say, "Oh, hell, let's forget it and have a drink, and let someone else look for answers." But Chambrun was counting on me.

  I did suggest a drink, however, and she chose to have a little white wine and I made myself a Jack Daniels. It was pleasant being there with her. Daylight was almost gone and I could see the lights at the top of the Empire State Building as I made the drinks. We were safe, surrounded by the law. No homicidal maniac was going to find his way to us.

  I took the drinks back to the
couch and sat down beside her again. I almost had to bite off my tongue to keep from starting on a new tack which could lead to—What the hell, I was no better than the Tucson cowboy. I was telling myself that making love to this beautiful girl was the best way to solve her anxieties.

  "Your cowboy told me quite a lot about you," I said.

  "I suppose you could say he watched me grow up. Except that I didn't. Not till I was twenty-two years old and I met Dick Summers."

  "Your father kept you out of touch with the world, Spector says."

  She nodded. "I can't really blame Daddy, when I look back on it," she said. "His wasn't a real world either; not one that you, or I, or anyone else I know knows—unless I were to count in Gardner Fails. He was Daddy's lawyer, you know."

  "I know. Spector says he had quite a yen for you when you were a little girl."

  She actually giggled. "I wondered why he was always pinching me, touching me. I didn't know the facts of life in those days, Mark. I.. .1 was ten, eleven, twelve."

  "After that?"

  "A little too overboard with a hello and goodbye embrace when he came to Tucson. Beyond that, a perfect gentleman."

  "He never made an outright pass at you?"

  "Good Lord, no! And yet..."

  "Yes?"

  "I've come to realize, as I look back, how close he must have come to risking his life, his future, his fortunes with Daddy. Daddy would have killed him if he'd guessed that Gardner had any sort of romantic interest in me."

  "Your father seems to have kept you away from the facts of life," I said, "and yet he'd had no scruples living it up himself. Four wives, God knows how many side bets. Would you believe that just across the roof from here in Penthouse C there is a fabulous old lady who was his mistress sixty years ago?"

  "Mark!"

  "She has over six hundred letters from him to prove it," I said.

  "Who is she?" The violet eyes were very bright.

  "Victoria Haven. I don't know what her name was when your old man picked her out of a nightclub chorus."