Birthday, Deathday

by Hugh Pentecost

  “You phoned her room?” Chambrun asked on the way down to the lobby. We used the stairway, not waiting for an elevator. Peter was walking beside me, his hand gripping my arm.

  “Phoned,” Mike said. “When she didn’t answer, I had the housekeeper go in with a passkey. She wasn’t there; nothing upset.”

  When we reached the lobby Johnny Thacker joined us. As I’ve explained, he was doing an extra duty.

  “Nothing so far,” he reported. “She isn’t in any of the bars, the private dining rooms, the ballroom. The drugstore is the only shop open. Not there. One thing is certain, nobody dragged her out of the Trapeze by force. She’d have yelled, wouldn’t she?”

  “She might, she might not,” Chambrun said.

  “She knew the hotel was filled with people who’d help her if she lifted a finger,” I said.

  Chambrun looked at me, his eyes two glittering little slits. “Would she lift a finger if she spotted Drury?” he asked. “She knew there were people around who would help her, but she also knew that there was someone—or maybe several someones—working for Chang who would also be watching. She wouldn’t want to give Drury away to them.”

  “If she spotted Neil,” Peter said, his voice harsh, “she’d try to get to talk to him alone, no matter what the risk. You’re right, Mr. Chambrun, she wouldn’t want to betray him to Chang’s people.”

  We stood there, looking around the lobby, as if, somehow, it would provide us with answers. The traffic was reasonably light. I spotted at least eight people I knew belonged to Wexler and Larch.

  “What happened after we came upstairs, Mike?” I asked.

  “She came out of the grill,” Mike said. “She’d been there quite a while. I took her on a brief tour of the places that were busy—back to the Blue Lagoon where she’d been earlier, a brief look into the Spartan Bar, which had its usual quota of old gents playing cards and backgammon, to the Grand Ballroom where there’s a coming-out party in progress, mostly young people. Finally I told her the Trapeze would begin to fill up when people started coming back from the theater. So we went up there and Del Greco got her a table facing the entrance. She ordered a vermouth on crushed ice. ‘I’ll stay here for a while,’ she told me. So—so I had to go to the john and I went.”

  “How long were you gone?” Chambrun asked.

  “Not five minutes,” Mike said. “When I came back she was gone. She hadn’t touched her drink, according to Del Greco. She called him, said she’d changed her mind, signed her check and went out.”

  The Trapeze is at the mezzanine level. There are two ways to get to it or leave it. You can go up in an elevator to the mezzanine. Cars in the north bank of elevators open up right opposite the entrance to the Trapeze. You can also use a wide flight of stairs that come straight down into the lobby, open stairs that are visible from top to bottom. If she’d used the elevator she could go up or down. If she used the stairway she could only have gone down into the lobby where a dozen people would have been instantly aware of any trouble. The elevators have operators on them till midnight. After that they go on to a self-service system. There had been operators on them when Laura left the Trapeze. Mike had already questioned them.

  “She’s a nice-looking chick,” Mike said, “but she wasn’t wearing anything flashy; a plain black dress and a black patent-leather handbag, gloves. Her blonde hair was pretty outstanding. But with heavy traffic on the elevators she wouldn’t have attracted any particular attention. Still, that blonde hair is noticeable. None of the operators on the north cars remembered seeing her.”

  I found myself wondering how anyone could see her and not remember.

  Chambrun gave orders. A general alarm was to be spread, Wexler and Larch notified; there should be a search of the hotel from penthouses to the basement. Doormen should be questioned hard. If she had left the hotel one of them might have gotten her a taxi.

  “I want all of you to keep in touch with me each step of the way,” Chambrun said. “Don’t save it up for a surprise.”

  He and Peter and I went up to the Trapeze. Everything looked perfectly normal there—normal for the Trapeze, that is. As I’ve said, you’ll see more famous and notorious people there than most places, mainly because there is no gawking public to interfere with them. They can be unselfconscious there. They seem to wear sort of social masks without any cracks in them. The women tend to be expensively put together, dressed, jeweled. You’ll see more different hair colors than God ever invented.

  No one, except Mr. Del Greco, seemed to be aware of us when we arrived and stood at the entrance. The patrons of the Trapeze are exempt from any such vulgarity as curiosity.

  “No news, sir?” Del Greco asked.

  Chambrun shook his head. “Tell me about her leaving here.”

  “There was nothing odd about it,” Del Greco said. “She’d ordered a drink and then she changed her mind. Like someone who’d forgotten an appointment and suddenly remembered it.”

  “She seem nervous—frightened?”

  “Nothing like that. She beckoned to me and I came over. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said. At that moment the waiter produced her drink. She said she’d sign for it. I said it wasn’t necessary if she wasn’t going to drink it. She said she’d ordered it and she’d sign for it. The waiter handed her the check and she signed—Laura Malone, room seven-o-seven.”

  “Did she seem in a hurry?”

  “Not exactly,” Del Greco said. “She’d decided not to stay. She paid her bill—tip added, by the way. She said thank you and walked out.”

  “Did she seem anxious to get out of here before Mike came back from the men’s room?”

  “It didn’t occur to me at the time. It was no kind of a scrambling exit.”

  “How closely were you watching her after she came in?”

  “Not closely,” Del Greco said. “I watched everybody, as you know.” An explanation of why the service was so expert in the Trapeze. “Mike hadn’t gotten around to telling me who she was then. ‘Look out for the lady,’ was all he said. ‘She’s a friend of the Great Man’s.’ ” Del Greco’s mouth repressed a smile. “Meaning you, sir. She asked for a table facing the door and I managed to find her one. She ordered a drink. Mike went to the men’s room. Then she changed her mind.”

  “Did you have the impression she’d seen someone here she knew, perhaps wanted to get away from?”

  “I had no reason to think that. As I said, she’d made up her mind to go, but there was nothing hysterical or panicky about it.”

  “No one spoke to her or signaled to her?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “If she should come back, report to me at once.”

  “Of course.”

  A feeling of cold anxiety was creeping over me. I’d been so sure she’d get to me if anything special happened. Yet Del Greco made it seem that nothing had happened to disturb her or frighten her. She’d play it cool, I thought. If she’d seen someone here in the Trapeze, if she’d persuaded herself that someone was Drury, she’d play it very cool. But why not get in touch with me or Peter at once? Why disappear?

  Chambrun, and Peter and I, Peter’s arm on mine, walked down the stairs to the lobby. I think we all felt a little lost. A search was under way, but what did we do next? Just sit and wait for someone to report something positive?

  Johnny Thacker joined us. “No telephone calls in or out of her room,” he said. “Neither doorman remembers seeing her. Lots of people come and go, of course, and they had no reason to be watching for her.”

  I felt Peter’s fingers tighten on my arm. “Chang,” he said, in a very low voice.

  “She can’t have been spirited up there,” Chambrun said. “They’d have to get her by Larch’s and Wexler’s people.”

  “They wouldn’t have to take her there,” Peter said. “You said you thought Chang had people in other places in the hotel.”

  “She seemed to leave the Trapeze of her own volition,” Chambrun said. “Nobody spoke to her or
signaled to her, according to Del Greco.”

  “He could have missed it,” Peter said. “Someone could have walked by her table and dropped a note. It could have happened. It could have happened earlier in the Blue Lagoon.”

  “Why would she walk, wide-eyed, into a trap?” Chambrun said. “She isn’t a fool. She was aware of the danger.”

  “If she was told where she could find Neil—that Neil was in trouble,” Peter said. “Chang will know, if they used that to trap her.”

  “And Chang will not tell us,” Chambrun said. He started toward the elevators.

  “Where to?” I asked.

  “Chang,” he said. “It’s worth a try.”

  We went up in the isolated elevator to the twelfth floor. Chambrun had ordered Peter to wait in my rooms, with one of Jerry Dodd’s men to protect him. Peter, his hand shaking on my arm, insisted he be allowed to go with us.

  “Nothing can happen to me with you there,” he said. “Chang knows I’m in the hotel. I want to hear him speak!”

  It made sense. The old question, denied by the General, as to whether he had commanded the butchers in South America might be answered.

  Submachine guns were pointed at us from the mouth of the corridor on twelve. The man with the lapel mike reported us and Wexler came out of the first room. He needed a shave.

  “You crazy?” he said, looking at Peter.

  “It’s worth a try,” Chambrun said.

  “He can refuse to see you,” Wexler said. “All or one of you.”

  “I don’t think hell refuse to see Williams,” Chambrun said. “That’s why I let him come. Chang will be too curious.”

  “I’ll try him, but I doubt if hell agree,” Wexler said.

  “Tell him if he says ‘No’ there’ll be no room service,” Chambrun said. There was a tiny smile at the corners of his mouth.

  “You couldn’t do that,” Wexler said.

  The smile widened. “If my help went on strike even God couldn’t do anything about it,” he said.

  “Let me try without threats,” Wexler said. He was a very tired man as he walked down the hall to the door of Chang’s suite.

  The familiar routine took place. Yuan Yushan and his giant friend stood in the doorway, handguns drawn. We couldn’t hear what Wexler said or what the reply was from inside. It took a long time. Then Wexler came back.

  “You were right,” he said, sounding surprised. “If you’ll face the wall and lock your hands behind your heads—”

  We were very efficiently searched and the little Chinese guard wrote down our names in his notebook. And then we walked to the door, between Yushan and his friend. Peter’s hand on my arm shook so I thought he was suffering from a chill. The little man in the frock coat gave us his oriental bow and we were facing General Chang. The General’s eyes were bright with a kind of excitement.

  “You are full of surprises, Mr. Chambrun,” he said.

  Peter’s fingers bit into the flesh of my arm. The General’s eyes were fixed on him.

  “We are meeting sooner than I expected, Mr. Williams,” he said. The wide smile widened. “Shall I keep on talking? I expect you are listening for a voice you heard some years back. Do I sound familiar to you, Mr. Williams?”

  I looked at Peter. A little trickle of sweat was running down his face past the black goggles. He didn’t speak.

  “But you didn’t come here just to introduce me to Mr. Williams, did you, Mr. Chambrun? You are concerned about the disappearance of my other enemy, Miss Malone.”

  “Your intelligence department is highly efficient, General,” Chambrun said.

  “The very best,” Chang said. “It has to be. Just imagine. A country which dreams itself to be the most powerful in the world, unable to reach out and put its hands on one miserable, revenge-crazed maniac. Thousands and thousands of dollars spent to pay the salaries of guards who are not certain they can guard. The top man in my entourage murdered in cold blood, and neither the Federal Government nor the city police able to make an arrest. One reformed prostitute able to disappear from a crowded area of this hotel, ringed around by so-called security agents. Do you wonder, Mr. Chambrun, that I must depend on my own intelligence and security forces?”

  Chambrun’s smile was cold. “If that is a true analysis of the situation, General, then it will be clear to you why I come to you to ask what has become of Miss Malone. Your people should be able to help me where my fumbling staff has failed.”

  “Oh, that’s rather good,” Chang said, laughing softly. “Very good. Unfortunately I do not, as yet, have a report from my people. They are, of course, only concerned that Miss Malone and her killer boyfriend do not get anywhere near me. If they should, after we have dealt with them I’ll be happy to let you know where to find them. As for Mr. Williams—have you decided yet, Mr. Williams, whether mine is a voice you’ve heard before? In any event, I’ve allowed you to come in here with Mr. Chambrun, so that you’ll know if you try getting to me without my permission you will find yourself very stone-dead. Since you can’t see, has Chambrun described to you just how tight the security is? Are you aware of the two men with automatic rifles out in the hall? Are you aware of the two men who are standing just behind you with drawn pistols? Are you aware—and are you, Mr. Chambrun—that every move you make in the hotel is being watched by men you couldn’t see, even if you had eyes?”

  “It is those men who can tell us where Miss Malone is,” Chambrun said, dangerously quiet.

  The smile faded from Chang’s face. “I find myself bored by this absurd exchange, Mr. Chambrun.”

  “I, too,” Chambrun said. “What it amounts to, General, is a declaration of war between you and me.”

  Chang laughed again. “A declaration of war between a hotel manager and the Republic of China? Because in my role here, Mr. Chambrun, I am the Republic of China. Your President, your State Department, your Justice Department, your Secret Service are committed to protecting me. Are you taking them on, too, Mr. Chambrun?”

  “I can try,” Chambrun said. “I know I can make your stay here so unpleasant that you will beg to be housed somewhere else.”

  “Try, and you will be removed from your job in the space of time that it takes me to make a phone call to Washington.”

  “So we know where we stand,” Chambrun said. “I recommend that you help to see that Miss Malone is returned unharmed, immediately. If not, we’ll both discover what I can do against the Republic of China. Good evening, General.”

  “Couple of silly kids, swapping threats!” Chambrun said, as we walked down the corridor to the elevators. “ ‘My father can lick your father.’ ” It wasn’t until we were out of earshot of the guards at the mouth of the corridor that he spoke to Peter. “Well, Mr. Williams?”

  Peter had given up any pretense of operating by himself. He was hanging onto my arm as though I were a life preserver. He still had violent shakes and his face was wet with sweat.

  “So help me God, I don’t know,” he said. “He’s so suave, so smooth. My man—my voice—was shouting.” He shook his head. “You could see him, I couldn’t. Do you think he knows about Laura?”

  “He likes to play games,” Chambrun said. “He likes to wave his power like a flag. But he’s a perfectly normal man in one respect.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t want to die,” Chambrun said. “Drury is a real danger to him, Mr. Williams is a danger, and Miss Malone. Anyone connected with Neil Drury is a danger. If he doesn’t know where Miss Malone is, he’s just as interested in finding her as we are. If he does know where she is—”

  “He’ll use her to force Neil into the open, or at least hold his fire,” Peter said.

  The elevator door opened and we went into the car. The operator, one of Jerry’s men, asked: “Any luck?”

  Chambrun shook his head.

  At the lobby level the car door opened and Jerry Dodd was facing us. “Just coming up to find you. We’ve got something—maybe.”

 
We stepped out of the car.

  “The drugstore,” Jerry said. He didn’t stop to explain but started walking briskly across the lobby toward the drugstore, which is located next to the side-street entrance to the lobby.

  There are half a dozen shops in the lobby area, all but one of them lining the corridor that leads in from the Fifth Avenue entrance—a gift shop, a bookstore, a furrier, a jeweler, a women’s dress shop. You can enter those shops only from the corridor. But the drugstore, across the lobby by the side-street entrance, has a door into it from the lobby and it also has a door opening directly out onto the street. You don’t have to come into the hotel to enter the drugstore, and you don’t have to come into the lobby to get out onto the street.

  The night manager of the drugstore, an Armenian named Kervorkian, was waiting impatiently to close up for the night. Understand, the shops aren’t run by the hotel. We just rent space to these businesses.

  “Tell Mr. Chambrun what you told me,” Jerry said to Kervorkian.

  Kervorkian was a pharmacist. Normally he handled only the filling of prescriptions, or the sale of nonprescription drugs. A clerk or clerks handled the doodads—the toothpastes, and Alka-Seltzers. Sometimes Kervorkian got kindhearted and let the clerks go home a little before closing time. He’d done that tonight. He had been alone in the shop for the last forty-five minutes.

  “I was just checking out the cash register when this girl came in,” Kervorkian said. “Nothing specially to notice about her except her hair—kind of a gold-blonde. I paid attention only because we sell all kinds of junk for coloring hair—shampoos, rinses. I wondered if it was real, and if it wasn’t what she used. That was all.”

  “What time was it?” Jerry prompted him.

  “About a quarter to twelve,” Kervorkian said. “I was planning to close a few minutes early if there wasn’t any traffic. Been a dead evening.”

  The time fitted.

  “What did she want?” Chambrun asked.

  “A forty-eight cent tin of aspirin,” Kervorkian said. “I remember because I’d locked up the money in the cash box, ready to take it inside to be put in the safe, and I made change for her out of my own pocket.”