Birthday, Deathday

by Hugh Pentecost

  The drugstore management had an arrangement with the hotel to leave its night cash in our care.

  “This girl was alone?” Chambrun asked. “Nobody waiting for her by the door, or outside on the street?”

  “I didn’t notice anyone, but I wasn’t looking for anything, you understand. I was anxious to close up and I followed her to the door and locked it when she went out.”

  “The door to the lobby?”

  “No, Mr. Chambrun, the door to the street. She went out onto the street.”

  “Did anyone meet her there? Did you see her take a cab?”

  “I just didn’t pay attention,” Kervorkian said. “There was no reason I should. I wanted to close up.”

  Jerry looked at Chambrun. “Could be,” he said.

  “And there are half a million blondes in New York City,” Chambrun said. “Still, the time is right—”

  It could have been Laura. The distance from the foot of the stairway coming down from the Trapeze to the lobby door into the drugstore wasn’t more than fifteen yards. Unless she called attention to herself by being in too much of a hurry there would have been no reason for the cops or Jerry’s men to pay special attention. They were looking for Drury, not Laura. She was free to come and go as she chose. A visit to the drugstore wouldn’t seem abnormal.

  Peter and I went back to Chambrun’s office with him. Reports were beginning to come in from a small army of searchers, all negative. Chambrun wanted to be where he could be found. Jerry had stayed behind to check with cab drivers who waited in a hack stand outside the side-street entrance. The blonde with the tin of aspirin might just have taken a cab, might just be remembered.

  Peter sat in one of the big leather armchairs, his hands raised to his face. He was emotionally done in. Miss Ruysdale had produced a tray of sandwiches and some American coffee. No one wanted to eat, but the coffee tasted good. Ruysdale stayed with us. She’d evidently gotten a high sign from Chambrun.

  “If the blonde in the drugstore was Miss Malone, she wasn’t dragged there by force, or out onto the street by force,” Chambrun said, really talking to himself. He was at his desk. “What you suggested, Williams, could have happened. A note dropped on her table which Del Greco didn’t notice, something before that in the Blue Lagoon or the grill. Drury, or someone from Drury, arranging a rendezvous outside the hotel.”

  “She knows what a dither we’d be in when I didn’t find her—when Mike didn’t find her,” I said.

  “Nothing would matter to her if she thought she was going to see Neil,” Peter said.

  “When you men get into a situation like this you can’t think of anything but melodrama,” Miss Ruysdale said in her cool, matter-of-fact voice. “The girl is under enormous pressure. What seems normal to you and Mark, Mr. Chambrun, might get to be a little hard to take—the endless hum of conversation around her, the clatter of dishes, the sound of music coming from the Blue Lagoon and the ballroom. All of that is a normal and happy sounding part of your everyday world.”

  “Dishes do not ‘clatter’ in the Beaumont,” Chambrun said, but he was listening.

  “She’s thinking about her man, the danger he’s in, the violence he’s planning,” Ruysdale said, ignoring the comment. “She may simply have decided she wanted to get a little fresh air. The aspirin suggests she had a headache. A little fresh air, a walk, a chance to think about her next move. She hadn’t ‘felt’ Drury was anywhere near. No one had told her she couldn’t step out for some air, had they?”

  “Not in so many words,” I said. “We took it for granted she wouldn’t get lost without letting us know.”

  “She could have walked from here to Poughkeepsie by now,” Chambrun said.

  “I didn’t suggest that no one saw her go, that nothing has happened to her,” Miss Ruysdale said. “What I’m suggesting is that she left the hotel of her own free will, with nothing more in mind than a walk. She wouldn’t feel obligated to let you know she was going out for five or ten minutes, Mark.”

  “She should have told Mike, shouldn’t she?”

  “He was there to protect her from wolves. He’d walked out on her,” Miss Ruysdale said. “He probably didn’t tell her he was just going to the john. So she went out to get a dozen breaths of fresh air.”

  “In New York City?” I said.

  “Take your complaints to the Mayor,” Miss Ruysdale said. “My point is that things could have happened to her that have nothing to do with Neil Drury or General Chang. She can have been hit by a car crossing the street; she can have been mugged by some hophead looking for money for a fix. There’s more to the world, gentlemen, than the Hotel Beaumont, although you may not think so. Have you checked the hospitals? Have you checked with the desk sergeant at the local precinct house? If somebody snatched her purse a block away from here, she’d have no identification. You haven’t put out a city-wide alarm, have you?”

  Chambrun nodded. “You may have something. Ruysdale. Set it in motion.”

  Miss Ruysdale walked briskly out to her own office.

  “She could be right, you know,” Chambrun said. “She could simply have gone out for a walk. But I find it hard to buy a hit-and-run driver or a hash-hungry mugger. Our bright boys didn’t pay any attention to her leaving, but there are others who would. Drury would. Chang’s undercover boys would.”

  “In any case, Ruysdale’s right,” I said. “The outside world may be the place to look.”

  Peter made a moaning sound, his face still covered by his hands. “Let’s hope to God it was Neil who saw her and followed her out,” he said. “She’d be safe with him.”

  “Let’s take a real tough look at it,” Chambrun said. “Drury may not have been anywhere near the hotel tonight. All Chang’s publicity informed the world he would be getting here tomorrow afternoon. Drury would know he couldn’t find out very much about the arrangements being made to protect Chang until the General got here. He had no way of knowing that either Miss Malone or Mr. Williams was going to be in the hotel. He might decide it was risky to loiter around until showdown time came, because Wexler and Larch and their armies would be looking for him. So I say it’s a better than even chance that Drury is somewhere getting a good night’s sleep in preparation for tomorrow’s action.”

  “So if he wasn’t here, who killed Li Sung?” I asked.

  “Some other enemy of the General’s; a personal enemy of Li Sung’s. Let’s assume it, anyway, for the moment.” Chambrun reached for his coffee cup. “But the General knew, early today, that Mr. Williams was in the hotel and that Miss Malone was due to arrive. Li Sung made that clear to you, didn’t he?”

  “That’s one I can’t figure,” Peter said. “I didn’t know myself I was coming to the hotel until a little before Li Sung came to Mark’s room. How could he know about me? How could he know about Laura?”

  “The General made it clear to us, didn’t he, that there are ‘eyes’ in the hotel that see everything for him? Those eyes saw you arrive with Mark. What the General didn’t say was that there are also ‘ears’ listening for him. Somebody leaked the fact to him that Wexler was bringing Miss Malone on from the coast. Li Sung knew. They were ready for her.”

  “What you’re saying,” Peter said, in a dead voice, “is that Chang knows where she went and why, and she’ll be used to force Neil to reveal himself to give himself up to Chang!”

  “That could very well be the name of the game,” Chambrun said.

  Peter turned his head from side to side, as though he was in pain. “You talked a hell of a big game of your own up there in the General’s suite—about taking him on. How, in God’s name?”

  Chambrun glanced at the white face with its black goggles. “We’ll have to find a way to put out his eyes and cut off his ears,” he said. “That for a start.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE BEAUMONT HAD ALWAYS seemed like a wonderfully safe place to me. I have often described it as a small town, independent of the rest of the world, run by a highly efficient mayor
in the person of Chambrun, with a first-class police force under the capable direction of Jerry Dodd. There was rarely any serious trouble, because Chambrun had a gift for anticipating it before it happened. It wasn’t just a gift, come to think of it. It was marvelous organization. Nothing could happen in the Beaumont, from an explosion by a psychotic dishwasher in the kitchen to the love life of an African diplomat in the bridal suite, that Chambrun didn’t know about within seconds. “When I don’t know what’s going on in my hotel it will be time for me to resign,” I’d heard him say more than once.

  That night, in his office, reports were coming to him directly and through Miss Ruysdale in a steady flow. They were reports that told him nothing helpful. For the first time in his life Chambrun wasn’t in complete command of his world. Chang and his private espionage system knew more of what was going on in the Beaumont than Chambrun did. The rules of the game were laid down by Wexler and Larch—by the United States Government, in effect. Laura, under close watch by Chambrun’s staff—me among them—had disappeared. Neil Drury, invisible to us, was planning a murder. There promised to be a head-on collision between Chang and Drury, and Chambrun was not in his customary position at the controls. While all this simmered, Chambrun was asked to make arrangements to have fresh salmon flown in from the West Coast for an arrogant birthday party. He had talked a “big game” to Chang, threatening to take on the Republic of China single-handed. The truth was that, sitting there in his office with Peter and me, he didn’t appear to have a single lead to any one of our problems—how to locate Neil Drury, how to find Laura, how to track down the roof-top murderer of Li Sung.

  But lead or no lead, Pierre Chambrun was not a man to sit on his butt and wait for the world to come to an end.

  “You still think your hearing is as sophisticated as you thought it was when you came here, Mr. Williams?” Chambrun asked.

  “Would I know Neil’s voice?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I would.”

  “There are four men in this hotel on whom we don’t have a proper dossier,” Chambrun said. “One of them just might be Drury. One or all of them just might be Chang’s eyes and ears. There’s no point in sitting here waiting for God to take a hand on our side. I want to talk to these men, and I want you to listen for some familiar vocal note, Peter.”

  Any kind of action did something to loosen the knots that had tightened, almost unbearably, in my gut. Whatever had happened to Laura—and thinking about it and knowing Chang was a terrifying business—I was partly responsible. I had been too casual about her “circulating.” I had trusted someone else to do the watching. That wasn’t entirely fair to Mike Maggio, because I would have trusted him with my own life.

  Chambrun seemed to read my mind. “Don’t blame yourself or Mike,” he said, as he and Peter and I headed for the lobby. “If anyone had tried to drag Miss Malone out of the hotel against her will she’d have been covered. It’s the one hopeful thing, as far as her safety is concerned. She chose to give you the slip.”

  “Unless she just went for a walk,” I said.

  “What happened to her after she walked out of the drugstore she may not have guessed was coming,” Chambrun said. “But walking out would seem to have been her own choice.”

  Chambrun got the room numbers of our four possible “Drurys” from Karl Nevers, the desk clerk. He began with Robert Zabielski, the thirty-year-old salesman from Cleveland, who took a call girl to his room each night and did some solid drinking there. Room service reported that Zabielski had ordered two club sandwiches and a bottle of bourbon sent to his room, 509, about forty-five minutes ago. Mr. Del Greco in the Trapeze reported that Zabielski had been drinking there earlier with the same hooker who’d been his companion on the two previous nights.

  “Mr. Zabielski is not going to be happy with me,” Chambrun said. “Don’t be surprised by my approach.”

  We went up to the fifth floor and rang the buzzer of 509. Nothing happened. I saw there was a DO NOT DISTURB sign hung on the outside doorknob. Chambrun pounded on the door with his fist.

  “Open up in there,” he shouted, “or I’ll have to use a passkey.”

  There was a muffled “Wait a minute” from inside. Then the door opened as far as the inside chain would allow and we saw Zabielski’s pale face. His hair looked rumpled. He was a scared cookie.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, with a show of bravado. “Can’t you read the sign?” His voice was a husky croak and he seemed to have a little trouble breathing. His wide brown eyes were bloodshot.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Zabielski,” Chambrun said. “I’m the hotel manager. I’m sorry—”

  “What are you, some kind of Christer?” Zabielski said. “I’ll bet there are a hundred guys in this hotel who have a girl in their room. Why should you pick on me to—”

  “I haven’t any concern at the moment about the lady you’re entertaining. There’s been a bomb scare in the hotel,” Chambrun said, blandly. “We have reason to believe it may have been planted on this floor, possibly in this room. I suggest you let us make a search for it unless you want to risk being blown to pieces.”

  There was a female squeal of terror from inside the room. The door closed a little and we heard the chain come off. Then we were inside. Chambrun gestured to me. I was evidently to search for the “bomb.”

  “What’s it all about?” Zabielski asked, shaken. “Some kind of rad-lib on the loose?”

  I glanced at Peter. He stood by the door, head cocked to one side, listening.

  Zabielski was no Adonis. He’d pulled on a terrycloth robe but it didn’t do much to hide his pot belly. A girl with platinum hair sat bolt upright in the bed, a sheet pulled up around her obviously naked body. On the bedside table was a half empty bottle of bourbon and two plates that had once carried sandwiches. I went through the motions of checking around the room and in the bathroom. I reported to Chambrun with a perfectly straight face.

  “Seems to be all clear,” I said.

  “Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Zabielski,” Chambrun said.

  We retired to the hall. We heard the chain go back into place. Chambrun glanced at Peter.

  “Well, Peter?”

  “Not possibly Neil,” Peter said. “Wrong height, wrong size, wrong voice. Of course I have no way of telling whether or not he might be connected with Chang.”

  “Nor I,” Chambrun said, his face grim. “So let’s try number two.”

  Number two was Paul Wells, the bald, elderly gentleman with the rooming-house address in Philadelphia. He was not in 921, his room. When there was no answer to our knocking Chambrun did let himself in with a passkey. Mr. Wells was traveling light. There was one well-worn blue suit hanging in the closet. His supply of shirts, socks, and underthings was sparse. There were no letters or papers anywhere. The bathroom revealed the rather intimate fact that Mr. Wells had false teeth. If he was anyone’s eyes or ears, the place was bare of any evidence to prove it.

  We tracked him down, though. He was in the Spartan Bar, the no-women-allowed room that is a constant target for the militant feminists, but is still a haven for elderly woman-haters. Most of the patrons sit around talking about “the good old days,” or playing chess, or backgammon, or gin rummy. It stays open until the last moment the liquor laws allow, because the old gents who gather there have nothing to go to bed for. Mr. Novotny, the Spartan’s captain, pointed out Mr. Wells. He was sitting alone at a corner table, wearing an ancient dinner jacket, his bald head shining in the dim light.

  “Been here since about ten o’clock,” Novotny told us. “Hasn’t left the table except to go to the men’s room. Strange old boy. Talks to no one. Pays for each drink as he orders it, and he takes on quite a load without showing it. I meant to speak to you about him, Mr. Chambrun. I have the feeling he’s spending his last bucks and that you may find him hanging from the chandelier in his room some morning.”

  Chambrun gestured to Peter and me to follow him
. The old man looked up at us with vague interest in his faded eyes as we approached his table.

  “I’m Pierre Chambrun, the Beaumont’s manager, Mr. Wells,” Chambrun said.

  “It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Mr. Chambrun,” Wells said. He had a pleasant, cultivated voice. I looked at Peter, who was frowning, his head turned to one side.

  “I just wanted to make sure you are enjoying your stay with us,” Chambrun said. “This is Mr. Haskell, our public relations man, and Mr. Williams.”

  The old man gave us a courteous little nod. I saw a look of pity come into his face as he realized that Peter was blind.

  “I’m honored, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. Chambrun, it’s a special pleasure.”

  “You have friends who know me?” Chambrun asked. It would be a way to check on the old boy.

  “Oh, no,” Wells said. “I—I don’t have any friends here. But sitting here every night, as I have for the last week or so, I hear a lot of talk. You are very highly regarded, sir.”

  “That’s nice to hear. If there is anything I can do to make your stay with us happier—?”

  The old man allowed himself a gentle laugh. “I am dying of curiosity, Mr. Chambrun. I understand that earlier today—” He glanced at the clock behind the bar. “—really yesterday, now, isn’t it?—a man was murdered, thrown off the roof? Have you—have the police—?” His voice trailed off.

  “The police are being very closemouthed so far,” Chambrun said.

  “Which, in my experience, means they haven’t come up with any certain answers yet.” The old man made it a question.

  “If they have, they haven’t told me about it,” Chambrun said.

  “Of course you would be the first to know,” Wells said.

  “Pleasure to chat with you,” Chambrun said. “Be sure and let me know if there’s anything I can do to make you comfortable.”

  We all said good night. Out in the lobby Peter shook his head decisively. “No chance,” he said.