Nightmare Time (11 page)

“The Plaza,” Chambrun said in that small faraway voice.

“Yes, that was it,” the boy said. “Rozzie took me for rides in a hansom cab—you know, a horse cab?”

“I know,” Victoria said. “Believe it or not, Guy, I can remember when that was the way to get around in cities—London, New York, Paris.” She smiled. “I can remember some romantic encounters in hansom cabs.”

“You’re straying from the subject at hand, Victoria,” Chambrun said. “My encounter with Ham Willis was just over two years ago. He’d come here to the Beaumont for a meeting with someone from one of the U.N. delegations. I had gone out to the bank on business. On my way home I was attacked by muggers just down the block. Ham Willis luckily, was just leaving the hotel. He was armed, and he was a brave man. He almost certainly saved my life. We became friends. After that, when he came to New York he made the Beaumont his base of operations. But Guy can’t tell you anything about his connections here except for this visit, which began three days ago.”

“Mr. Romanov was the only friend you met?” Victoria asked the boy.

“There was a Miss Smythe who was with Mr. Romanov,” the boy said, “but I don’t think Dad and Rozzie had met her before.”

“Your father didn’t mention any other friends in your presence who might be staying here?”

The boy shook his head. “Just Mr. Chambrun, who I was to trust and feel free to call on if I was in any trouble.”

“So he had no friend staying here in the hotel,” Victoria said.

“That doesn’t mean a friend wasn’t circulating here—without being a guest,” Chambrun said.

“You don’t want to face it, do you, Pierre?” the lady said.

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but he did. He made an impatient gesture, as though he was brushing away an irritating fly.

Victoria looked at me. “Vanity isn’t a good crutch to lean on when important friends are in trouble,” she said.

“Vanity?” I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Pierre prides himself on his judgments of people,” the lady said. Perhaps I should mention here that I’ve heard rumors around the hotel that once upon a time there had been a young man-older woman thing between Chambrun and Mrs. Haven. She, at least, knew him rather more intimately than most of us who had come to work here long after Victoria and Chambrun had been good neighbors on the hotel rooftop. “But a hundred percent right would be a miracle, wouldn’t it?”

“Say whatever it is you have on your mind and get it over with, Vicky,” Chambrun said. “This day is just racing past us, and we have no time.”

“So be it, Pierre. You seem to accept the idea that Major Willis was led into a trap by a friend or someone he trusted. So he had no friends here but you, and you didn’t lead him into a trap. But this is your hotel; he has every reason to trust you and the people you trust, Pierre—your staff. There is someone here he’s gotten to know over the last couple of years, someone who’s made a point of serving him well. Someone in whom you’ve misplaced your faith, Pierre; someone who has betrayed you and Major Willis, and worst of all, Betsy!”

“That’s just not possible,” Chambrun said. As I’ve mentioned, the Boss is an extraordinary man about the hundreds of people who work in the hotel. He knows about their private lives, their spouses, their children, their outside interests. No one would last very long with him who didn’t merit his trust, certainly not the two years that Major Willis had been coming to the Beaumont.

“It may not be,” Victoria said, “but surely, Pierre, it’s possible. As I understand it, there could be huge sums of money involved—bribes that would almost certainly turn some heads. It’s possible, Pierre, and you should examine that possibility. Who, in the two years Major Willis has been coming here, has paid him particular attention, provided him with special services? A room-service waiter, a bellboy or bell captain, a desk clerk, someone who handles the theater-ticket agency, a valet. It could be anyone, Pierre, not necessarily someone in an important position. I would give my arm for the room-service maid who takes care of me every day. If I found a diamond ring missing I’d know she wasn’t the thief, couldn’t be. And yet she might be. You have to consider, Pierre, that someone you trust may not be trustworthy.”

He sat silent for a few moments, scowling at the expanse of blue sky that was visible through the windows. Then he turned to the lady and touched her hand with a little gesture of affection. “Thanks, Vicky, for not letting me fall asleep at the switch,” he said.

“I
T ISN’T PLEASANT
to have your weaknesses pointed out to you in public,” Chambrun said. He and I were alone in that self-service elevator descending from the roof to the lobby.

“I don’t think of myself as the ‘public,’” I said, “and surely it can’t be so bad to have a good friend like Mrs. Haven make a suggestion to you.”

“‘Vanity,’” he said. “I don’t think of myself as vain, but I am proud of this hotel. I am proud of the fact that in more than twenty years not a single employee I’ve hired to work here has turned sour on me. Pride and vanity are not quite the same, do you think?”

“I would never have used the word ‘vanity’ in connection with you, Boss,” I said. “But there are unusual factors involved here. Money, for instance. Enough money could be offered to turn an honest man a little dizzy.”

“There isn’t a single man or woman working in the Beaumont who doesn’t know that if they found themselves in trouble they could come to me for help.”

“But would you give them a million bucks to handle as they chose?”

He gave me a cold look. “Would you sell three or four human lives for a million dollars, Mark?”

I tried to keep it light. “I might think about it for about ten seconds,” I said.

He gave me the faintest of smiles. “Ten seconds is far longer than an honest man would need,” he said. “Maybe, when this is over, we should have a talk about it. I may have misjudged you, Mark.”

I was grateful for the smile. He had to be kidding.

He stopped the elevator at the second floor, but he had orders for me. “Find Johnny Thacker and Mike Maggio for me,” he said. “Jerry, when he can get free, and Mrs. Kniffin, who is the housekeeper on the seventeenth floor. Hardy, if you see him.” He left the elevator and went down the corridor to his office.

Johnny Thacker and Mike Maggio are the day and night bell captains at the Beaumont, trusted employees at the top level. Mike would normally be off duty and at home at this time of day, but he almost certainly wouldn’t have left the hotel with all that was brewing today.

I don’t know if I can properly describe what the lobby was like when I got there. It was like a stage set with the actors gone somewhere to take a break. There were one or two strangers who didn’t belong there, policemen with dogs! They use those beautiful German shepherds to sniff for bombs as well as drugs. There was no one at the front desk, but I caught a glimpse of Atterbury, the head day clerk, moving in the small office back of the desk. The evacuation had obviously gone well. There weren’t even any stragglers. Two of Jerry’s men were stationed at the main entrance, obviously to keep anyone from coming in from the street. Beyond those doors I could hear the sound of hundreds of voices, rising and falling like waves on a beach. I felt, suddenly, as though I were in a strange place. And then I saw Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, emerging from the rear corridor that leads to the private dining rooms and the grand ballroom.

Mike is Italian, as his name suggests, dark-haired with bright black eyes and an almost perpetual professional smile. He grew up a smart street kid, and he’s about as quick as anyone I know to spot a phony, or someone who doesn’t have the best interests of the Beaumont on his mind. Jerry Dodd has asked more than once to have Mike transferred to his security force, but Chambrun felt he could serve the hotel better in a position that didn’t attract attention to him as “the law.”

“Rats have all deserted the sinking ship,” Mike said as he walked up to me.

“The boss wants you in his office,” I told him. “Also Johnny, Jerry if he can get untracked, and Lieutenant Hardy if you can find him.”

“Just saw him,” Mike said. “He’s down in the basement where they found Tim Sullivan. All kinds of cops standing around playing guessing games. What the hell’s going on, Mark? Anything on Betsy?”

“Nothing. But the boss will bring you up to date. I’ve got to try to locate Mrs. Kniffin.”

“Telephone,” Mike said. “Not even bombs or earthquakes can move old Kate out of her linen room on seventeen. I’ll round up Johnny and the others for you.”

“The Boss isn’t a patient man today,” I said.

“I can imagine,” Mike said, taking off. Then he stopped and called back to me. “If I don’t get a chance, tell The Man he can count on me to help break some arms and legs over Betsy.”

MRS. KNIFFEN
, the motherly old housekeeper who had been at the Beaumont almost as long as Chambrun himself, was exactly where Mike said she would be, in her linen room on seventeen. I waited for her in the lobby and we went up to Chambrun’s office together.

“Like a ghost town,” she said as we went upstairs.

Mike Maggio had taken me at my word, and he and Johnny Thacker were already there when Mrs. Kniffin and I arrived. Jerry Dodd and Lieutenant Hardy had been notified and would come as soon as they could get free.

“We don’t know any more than we did hours ago about where Major Willis and his wife are, or Betsy,” Chambrun told them. “But there are ways you three might help.”

“Name it,” Johnny Thacker said. He is the direct opposite of Mike Maggio in appearance—flaxen blond hair, blue eyes, tall and slender.

“We think it’s certain,” Chambrun told them, “that Major Willis and his wife were tricked by someone they thought was a friend or someone they trusted. We think it’s certain Betsy let someone she knew and trusted into her apartment, was roughed up and taken away. That suggests someone in the hotel who knew both the Willises and Betsy.”

“That Air Force character thinks it’s Mr. Romanov,” Mike said. “He’s asked me a thousand questions about him.”

“Miss Smythe gives him an alibi,” Chambrun said.

“He’s her guy. She would,” Johnny said.

“But Betsy wouldn’t invite him up to her apartment at four o’clock in the morning,” Chambrun said. “Not the way things are.”

“Romanov is your friend,” Mike said. “If he told Betsy he had a message from you—”

“I would have phoned her. She already knew what Zachary thought about Romy. She wouldn’t have opened the gate for him.”

“So who are you aiming at?” Mike asked.

Chambrun explained his theory of the enormous bribe. Johnny Thacker bristled.

“You think maybe one of us—?”

“Don’t be a damn fool, Johnny,” Mike Maggio said. “If he thought that, he’d have us hangin’ out to dry somewhere, not here in his office, talking.”

Chambrun ignored that byplay. “Even the boy can’t tell us too much about his father’s friends,” he said. “Ham Willis fought a war in Vietnam, West Point and the Air Force before that, diplomatic posts in Central America, Europe, Russia. He knows people all around the world, many of whom he’d trust.”

“No way to guess,” Mike said.

“Betsy Ruysdale is another story,” Chambrun said.

“In what way?” Mike asked. “She’s worked here in the hotel for—how long—ten years?”

“Twelve,” Chambrun said.

“In that time tens of thousands of people have passed through the place. The number of people she knows could make Major Willis look like a piker. She not only knows them, she knows about them, thanks to your files on registered guests—their financial status, their sex habits, how they handle alcohol and drugs. It would scare the hell out of most of our guests if they knew how much we know about them. Pretty hard to guess who Betsy might trust, wouldn’t you say?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Chambrun said. “Let’s not play it cute right now, Mike. I know Betsy, how she thinks, how her mind works, better than anyone else in the world. I can tell you that, not counting me, there aren’t more than three people Betsy would have let up to her room at four o’clock this morning. Nothing had happened to alert the Willises at nine o’clock last night, but at four o’clock this morning we had a kidnapping and a murder. Betsy would have been on guard.”

“And the three people, she’d have let up to her apartment—not counting you?” Mike asked.

“Jerry Dodd, you, and Johnny,” Chambrun said. “I should add Mark to that list, but I happen to know exactly where he was at that time. In my penthouse with the Willis boy.”

“So one of us has sold you out,” Johnny Thacker said in a tight, hard voice.

“That has never occurred to me for a moment,” Chambrun said. “I ought to know another person she would trust that much, and I don’t.”

“Someone Betsy trusted and the Willises too,” Johnny said. “Someone like Romanov.”

“Not necessarily,” Chambrun said. “We’re working against a whole system of agents for another country. It doesn’t have to be just one person who trapped the Willises and also struck at Betsy.”

“If she was picked up on the street before she ever got home—” Johnny said.

“She wasn’t. Someone other than Betsy was in that apartment, remade the bed. Someone had to let that person in.”

“Her keys, taken from her when she was picked up,” Johnny said.

“Then why remake the bed if it didn’t need it?” Chambrun asked.

No one seemed to know where to go from there for a moment. I should have guessed it would be Mike who’d come up with an idea.

“If I was in Betsy’s position,” Mike said, “warned of danger, there is one person I might trust, unlock doors for, who I didn’t know at all.”

“In your right mind?” Johnny asked.

“Of course. I might trust a cop. Look, the place here was crawling with cops. Somebody rings Betsy’s front-door buzzer, says he’s one of Hardy’s men. The Lieutenant needs answers to some questions about hotel routines. He tells her Mr. Chambrun is occupied and she is the most likely person to have answers he needs.”

“Betsy might buy that,” Chambrun agreed.

“So she springs the front door for him,” Mike said, “he comes upstairs and she opens her apartment door for him.”