Girl Watcher's Funeral (3 page)

“Me!” I said.

“You,” Chambrun said. He smiled faintly. “Your three-minute friendship with Miss Morse seems like a good opening wedge.”

I just stared at him.

“You and I, Ruysdale, Jerry Dodd, and the Doctor are the only ones who'll know what's in the wind. To the rest of the world Nikos died of angina. Period. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” I said in a small voice.

His smile widened slightly. “I'm sure you've always wanted to play cops and robbers, Mark.” Then the smile disappeared. “I count on you. Nikos was my good friend.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, shall we see what Mr. Gallivan has on his mind?”

I
SUPPOSE I SHOULD
have expected that Timothy Gallivan would be something rather special. Karados wouldn't have had an intimate he trusted with all his affairs who was ordinary. Gallivan was short and lithe, and he seemed to be full of bounce, as though at any moment he might take off in a soft-shoe routine. I was reminded of an old movie I'd seen on the Late-Late show—Jimmy Cagney playing the role of George M. Cohan in
Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Gallivan had that kind of irrepressible energy that made both Cagney and Cohan great performers. His smile was ready to explode at you any second. I imagined that he and Nikos had spent a lot of time laughing together at the cockeyed world.

“I don't know much about Greek wakes,” Gallivan said, when he'd introduced himself, “but Nikos wasn't having any. Cremation at once—and a party. That was his idea. Always leave them laughing. Would you believe there's money—a hell of a lot of money—set aside in a dozen places to buy drinks for friends when the moment came: the Ritz in Paris, Moriarty's Saloon here in New York, Sardi's, Dinty Moore's, The House of Chan, some dump in Athens, another in Rome, a London club where he was a member, a tailorshop in Dublin where he bought clothes, and here, Chambrun. For one hour, starting at the cocktail hour tomorrow, Nikos will pick up the whole tab in the Trapeze Bar. He wanted people to have fun on him.”

“It's in character,” Chambrun said.

“The reason I'm here,” Gallivan said, rumpling his curly red hair that was salted here and there with gray, “is to reassure you about the fashion show. Everything will go on exactly as planned. The people involved who are registered here will stay on till after the showing. All the arrangements for the Blue Lagoon Room stand: the food, the liquor, the music.” He chuckled. “A pop orchestra this time, Chambrun, that may send you screaming for some mountaintop. But Nikos wanted it; something in the mod-mood. There are no problems about prompt payment. Nikos knew this was going to happen someday. Money for this brawl is in a special account to which I have immediate access.”

“I wasn't worried,” Chambrun said.

Gallivan's smile faded and he shook his head. “It's going to be a strange world without him,” he said. “Twenty years I've been at his elbow, night and day. Never a dull moment. I am suddenly so rich I couldn't count it if I wanted to. I'd gladly give it all back just to have him walk in that door.” His bright blue eyes lifted to fix on Chambrun. “You knew him when it counted.”

“Yes, when it counted heavily,” Chambrun said.

“I knew him then, but I didn't become permanently involved with him until nineteen fifty.” Gallivan drew a deep breath and grinned at us. “Well, my one aim now is to make these next three days the success Nikos wanted them to be. Did you know, gentlemen, that
Women's Wear
has not paid proper attention to Max Lazar? Did you know that the high priestesses of the fashion world have not bowed deeply to Lazar? Did you know that a fat Greek shipping tycoon intended to kick these lady fashion writers and their rag-trade bible in their respective smug rumps and catapult Mr. Lazar over their prostrate forms to the top of the high-fashion mountain? That's what Nikos meant to do, just for the hell of it, you understand, and by God, that's what we'll all do for him. This show here at the Beaumont is just the beginning. But it will be a shot heard round the world!”

“You say ‘we'll do it for him,'” Chambrun said. “Who is ‘we,' Mr. Gallivan?”

“The team,” Gallivan said. “There was a ‘team' in your time, Chambrun—the people who kept you and your Resistance people informed. That's how Nikos worked. A team for each project—a team of specialists. We have them now. The team includes me—handling the money whip; Monica Strong, a stylist who will stage a show that will leave them breathless; Zach Chambers, who can produce the most beautiful models in the world, exclusively for us; the Michael Faradays, who will provide us with the society tie-in we must have; and there is Rosemary Lewis, fashion columnist who will die laughing as she whizzes past the opposition. And there is, of course, Max Lazar, who has designed the product.”

“Is he any good?” Chambrun asked.

Gallivan gave us another candid grin. “How good is good?” he asked. “He is talented. He is a disciple of the cult of pop-fashion. Is he a put-on? Is he just plain mod-camp? That's for you to decide, gentlemen. But the final answer to this little skirmish is who blows the loudest trumpet. I've got a few million bucks that says we will!” His laughter was full of delight. “You want the girls to put on underwear again? When we're through, if Lazar says so, they will. You like girls without bras, or do you prefer the No Bra Bra? It will be Lazar who determines the future of the female bosom, not a trade paper or a fashion writer.”

“Is Jan Morse a member of the team?” I asked.

The blue eyes turned my way and I thought for a second a glacial hardness covered them. Then he laughed. “The general must never be allowed to become bored,” he said, “or he may lose interest and the battle be lost. Jan is a darling girl with the mind of a twelve-year-old and the instincts of a Lolita. It pleased Nikos just to look at her. She kept the general from being bored. She is now, though she doesn't know it yet, a very rich and desirable young heiress.”

The key, I remembered, had been on Nikos's side of the door. I felt unaccountably depressed.

“It's my job at the moment,” Gallivan said, “to rally the team. We are holding a slight drinking bash in Nikos's suite. Nikos's wish. ‘Not later than an hour after my death the people closest to me will meet to eat and drink and remember happily all the past joys of our time together.' His words. You gentlemen are both cordially invited.”

“Unfortunately I'm up to my neck in problems,” Chambrun said, “but I'm sure Mark will accept with pleasure. It's his job to cover the public relations aspect of this whole affair for the Beaumont.”

“Come along, chum,” Gallivan said to me. “If nothing else, you will get a glimpse of some women that will make your young mouth water.”

I looked at Chambrun. His face was innocently blank. …

Under normal circumstances if anyone had suggested to me that I'd enjoy going somewhere to watch girls, I'd have had a stock reply. “Why should I want to watch girls? I've got a girl.” It just happened, however, that Nikos Karados had chosen a disturbed time in my private life to die. I have a fabulous secretary, golden blond, shaped like a lewd angel, witty and full of fire, named Shelda Mason. For two years Shelda and I have lived a very happy, totally involved, life together. We both have what Shelda calls “Chambrun fever.” The Beaumont is our joint life. I have a suite of rooms on the fourth floor, down the hall from my office, and Shelda has a small garden apartment two blocks from the hotel on the East Side. I keep clothes in both places.

Shelda and I had come to an unexpected crossroad. We could go on forever, without any sort of permanent obligation to each other, loving every minute of it; or we could take the plunge, tie the knot, make it final, total. It sounds like a simple decision to make, but somehow it wasn't. I think we were both a little afraid to change the status of our relationship. It might not be as wonderfully good, as free and as completely fun.

It so happened that Chambrun had some rather special business to transact with Mr. George Battle, owner of the Beaumont, who sits in the sun on the French Riviera counting his money. Chambrun, who had never told anything about our relationship and knew everything about it, suggested that Shelda might act as his courier. She would spend a couple of weeks on the Riviera and in Paris doing some odds and ends for him, buy herself some new clothes, have herself a ball.

It seemed to make sense. Separated for a couple of weeks, Shelda and I might come to some kind of decision about ourselves. For two weeks, Shelda said on the night before she left, we'd both be completely free. If I found myself interested in another girl, I was to be unhampered, and no recriminations. If she found herself intrigued, same deal. I knew, of course, that no other girl was going to interest me, but I felt a hot iron turning in my gut when I thought of Shelda and some other man. I daresay she felt the same thing. I was to meet Shelda ten days from now at Kennedy, with or without a marriage license in my pocket. She would say yes or no. There'd be no discussions, no regrets. The moment of final decision would take place then.

That was the state of my emotional life when I headed for Gallivan's drinking bash in the late Nikos Karados's suite on the 19th floor. I could be girl-watcher without feeling guilty, I assured myself. Actually it would have to be just in passing. My job was to sniff out some kind of lead to a particularly subtle killer who might also be girl watching.

The Beaumont's suites and rooms are soundproofed by experts. When I walked along the 19th floor corridor, it was as quiet as St. Patrick's Cathedral. When the door of 19A was opened in answer to my buzz, I was nearly knocked over on my back by a wave of sound—loud voices, music, slightly drunken laughter. An astonishing redhead with green eye shadow and a skirt that came a good four inches below her hip bones grabbed me by the front of my dark blue blazer, pulled me into the room, and gave me a full and very active kiss on the mouth.

“Welcome!” she shouted at me, when she'd finished working me over. Then she laughed as she saw me reaching for my handkerchief. I had to be smeared with that scarlet lipstick. “You're safe, baby,” she said. “It doesn't come off. A House of Lazar special.”

Well, that was one way to promote a product.

No two suites at the Beaumont are decorated in identical style. Nineteen-A has dark green brocade walls with a Flemish painting or two strategically placed. It is usually reserved for the very rich and the slightly old-fashioned. Nikos Karados, despite his mod contacts, was fond of it and had always asked for it over the years. It was far from being the correct setting for the current production.

A young man in tight pants, a Nehru jacket, a string of coral beads around his neck, strutted past me, jabbing a finger at me and chanting, “Here come de judge! Here come de judge!”

There were girls in very chic see-through black lace, there was one in a camellia-pink pants suit, and another in black satin pants with a white silk turtle-neck blouse and a little black bolero. I saw Mrs. Michael Faraday in a handsome dark brocade embroidered, no less, with rhinestone snowflakes. Pants and ersatz jewelry and see-through tops or flesh-colored tops that looked like skin seemed to be the order of the day. And the men—if they were men! Max Lazar, standing over by the fireplace sipping a martini on the rocks in a huge glass, had set the pattern. His hair was long, growing down into his open collar, his pants were tight-fitting, made of a shiny black material, and his white shirt was open to the base of his hairless chest. On his bare feet were black patent leather evening pumps. There was a cowboy vest made out of what looked like sable. There were more Nehru jackets, and turtle necks, and beads everywhere. I saw Tim Gallivan coming toward me, armed with two martinis. He'd changed from his conservative business suit into blue chino slacks, a navy turtle-neck sweater, brown loafers on his bare feet.

“Every inch the Southampton croquet player,” a pleasant female voice, cultivated, said at my elbow.

You couldn't speak softly in the room because of all the laughter and screaming and the two boys in the far corner with Beatle hairdos working on a guitar and a set of blood-red drums.

Gallivan reached me and handed me one of the martinis. He introduced me to the lady who'd just finished describing him.

“Monica Strong—Mark Haskell,” he said. “You two should get to know each other. Monica's the gal who's staging the Lazar showing, Mark. She'll be coming to you for help along the way.”

“Pleasure,” I said.

Monica Strong did not belong to that fifty percent of the world which is twenty-five or under. Without meaning to downgrade her in this mod society, I guessed she was in her late thirties or early forties. She had on a very chic beige jersey suit with a wine-red blouse. There was a floppy bow at her neck. She had the legs for the short skirt. But with this one you didn't look at the clothes first. She had a really beautiful face—classic in structure: high cheekbones with little hollows below them, a wide, generous mouth, and candid gray-green eyes under long black lashes. Her hair was a shiny bird-wing black, quantities of it done in a very elegant bouffant coiffure. For my money she outshone all the groovy kids in the room, even the glamorous Mrs. Faraday.

“I've been wanting to find you, Mark,” she said, “but things are on the hectic side. There are details I need to work out with you.”

“Any time, anyplace,” I said.

Gallivan had drifted away, leaving me with the lady and my bathtub of gin. The stomping and shouting to the music seemed to grow louder.

“You have enough models here to show three designers' collections,” I said.

Her smile was enchanting, if just a touch bitter. “About half of these gals aren't models,” she said. “Fashion has become a Barnum and Bailey world, Mark. Everyone gets into the act, particularly the young matrons in the high-fashion world. The nuder the look, the surer you can be that they aren't professional models.”