Shape of Fear (16 page)

“Oh, we can cover them all—and nothing would happen,” Clark said. “We can’t move an army in to watch them. They’d just remake their plans. We’ve got to try to stay hidden and hope for a break. If we don’t catch them cold with the goods, we’re right back where we started. That’s why I’m here, Mr. Chambrun.”

Chambrun nodded. “You don’t hide your curve ball very well, Mr. Clark,” he said.

“I’m not trying to pitch to you,” Clark said. “Sam Loring has to stay pretty well out of sight. They all know him. And, so help me, they can smell our agents! If we move a dozen men in here to watch, we might just as well throw in the towel. But we’re in luck, in a way.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Chambrun said drily.

“The murder of this man Cardew,” Clark said. “It may be connected with our problem as you and Hardy think. But connected or not, Hardy has a legitimate reason for being in the hotel, with extra detectives, investigating a crime. He can help to play our game for us. But you loom a lot larger than that, Chambrun. You have a large, well-organized, trustworthy staff. There is no place in the hotel, no time, when some one of your employees can’t have a legitimate excuse for being exactly where we want him to be. A floor maid or a housekeeper can keep us informed hour to hour and minute to minute about who goes to Bernardel’s suite, who visits Girard, who visits Kroll. If you say the word, I can sit here in your office and know more about what’s going on than a whole squad of our own goes, who’s having a drink in what bar, who delivers agents could tell me. I can know where everyone a package to whom. Your switchboard can keep track of phone calls. Your doormen can tell me who comes and who goes. You can set the trap—and close it at the proper moment, Chambrun.”

“Isn’t it far more likely,” Chambrun said, “that the exchange you talk about—heroin for money—will take place on a bench in Central Park or on a Bronx subway train, or just between two people rubbing elbows in a department store?”

“It’s very possible that’s how it will happen,” Clark said. “But this is a big one—big, big money. A huge powerful conspiracy may well depend on that money. It won’t be passed over to some Joe Blow, you can be sure of that. Only one of the very important, highly trusted people will receive it: Bernardel, Kroll, LaCoste, Delacroix. They know how risky it is. They’re all on a suspect list. They must know that. The chances of their being followed and watched in a place like the Park, or on a train, or in a store must be obvious to them. The best place would be a busy, confused place where they have every right to be—the Beaumont”

“Delacroix, and LaCoste are not staying here,” Chambrun said.

“I know. But let me point out something. Whoever receives the money will head straight back for France with it. That’s where it’s needed. Neither Delacroix nor LaCoste is likely to be that messenger. Their official jobs are here, in this country. They know that if either of them made a sudden, unexpected trip home, we’d be down on them like a ton of bricks. Bernardel, Kroll, and Girard will be going back to France after this Trade Commission business as a matter of course.”

“And so you come down on them like a ton of bricks,” Chambrun said.

Clark made an impatient gesture. “We’ve come down on them so many times—Customs searchers, lost baggage that wasn’t really lost, every trick of the trade. Our best chance is to catch them before there’s been any time for concealment or further transfers. You can make that possible, Chambrun.”

Chambrun’s hooded eyes revealed nothing of what he was thinking. “I have the machinery here that might do what you say but for one flaw,” he said. “They can bribe so high. Only one person has to look the other way at the right time.”

“It’s a chance we have to take. Someone slips past us—We have to risk it.”

“It’s not that simple,” Chambrun said. “If I were Bernardel, I would by this time have bought me Mark Haskell, or Miss Ruysdale, my secretary, or Jerry Dodd, the house officer. All that’s necessary is for the bought one to report what we’re up to. That ends the whole thing there, and you can pack up your toys and go home, Mr. Clark.”

Clark looked uncomfortable. “Do you actually suspect …” His eyes flicked my way.

Chambrun laughed. “I mentioned the three people I would stake my life on,” he said.

I felt better.

I
T WAS NOT UNHEARD
of for the Beaumont’s staff to be alerted to pay special attention to a particular guest. Troublesome drunks, dead-beats, an occasional husband known to be gunning for his wife’s boy friend, a famous Hollywood star or an international political figure who particularly asked to be protected from unwanted snooping from a special source—all had come under surveillance from an alerted staff.

The present situation was a little more elaborate. Four guests of the hotel, Bernardel, Kroll, Girard, and Miss Lily Dorisch—added by Chambrun on the possibility that she had been the one to phone Girard about the meeting in my office—were to be watched, plus Ambassador Delacroix, LaCoste and any other members of the Ambassador’s party. It couldn’t be arranged without comment, gossip, and a thousand wild guesses. Mrs. Veach’s staff had unusual eavesdropping orders for the telephones to the rooms of Bernardel, Kroll, the Girards, and Miss Dorisch. The doormen, the captains of the various bars and dining rooms like Mr. Novotny, Mr. Del Greco, and Mr. Cardoza, Jerry Dodd’s staff, the head bell captains, all had instructions. The housekeepers and floor maids on night and day shifts had their orders. Any movements by our specified guests and the Delacroix party were to be instantly reported to Mr. Chambrun’s office; visitors, phone calls, package deliveries, telegrams, mail—all were to be scrutinized and reported on in as much detail as possible.

Such elaborate surveillance wasn’t ordinary, nor was it usual for such instructions to be given without any explanation. The principal guess was that it had something to do with the murder of Murray Cardew, and when the direct question was asked by one or two key people, like Mr. Atterbury on the front desk, Chambrun’s answer was that it did. Most of the staff would have obeyed orders without question, and almost all of them would have been willing to help square accounts for Cardew. The old man had been well liked. I don’t think any members of the staff who’d had any contact with him had disliked him.

What Chambrun called his “family” was ready to go to bat for him. Less than twenty minutes after we had started to spread the alarm, reports began to trickle in to Harry Clark, set up on a special phone in Chambrun’s office. Delacroix left Bernardel’s suite and had taken a taxi back to the Waldorf. Miss Lily Dorisch had joined Kroll and Bernardel in the latter’s room, and a new supply of champagne had been ordered, plus a pound of imported caviar. Girard was in his suite. He had made two phone calls—both to the same number—at half hour intervals before the order to listen in had been received. The calls had been to a Miss Margaret Hillhouse on upper Park Avenue. Clark was able to get this information through the telephone company; he knew that Miss Hillhouse was an aunt of Juliet Girard’s. Girard, we gathered, was trying to locate his wife, hoping that she might have contacted her only relative in New York. By four o’clock in the afternoon the machinery of espionage was working like a Swiss watch.

About four I got my first chance to go to my room since the fight I wanted a shower and a change to fresh clothes. The phone rang while I was standing under hot water. It was insistent. Swearing as artistically as I knew how, I got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around my middle, and went to the phone. “Yes?” I said.

“Mark?” It was a woman’s voice I’d never heard before.

“This is Mark Haskell,” I said.

“Juliet Girard,” the voice said. It was high, tense, edged with hysteria. I would never have recognized it.

“What is it, Mrs. Girard? What’s wrong?”

I could hear a sort of long, quivering sigh, “He’s dead, Mr. Haskell.”

“Who’s dead? What are you talking about?”

“Digger!” she said, and sudden convulsive sobs broke her off.

“Mrs. Girard!” The water on my body seemed to have turned ice-cold. “Mrs. Girard!”

“He—he came,” she said. “We—we were talking. Then we heard someone in the garden.”

“In the garden?”

“Digger—Digger went out to see who it was. The man drew a gun. Digger managed to get his own gun out of his pocket. Suddenly they—they were shooting at each other. They’re both dead, Mr. Haskell.”

“Have you called the police?” It was an automatic question. I just couldn’t take it in yet.

“I—I didn’t know what to do, Mark. I—I called you.”

“You stay put,” I said. It sounded insane. Like saying “you pour yourself a cup of tea and I’ll trot over.”

“He’s dead!” she cried out, her voice rising. She was on the verge of a screaming crack-up.

“Stop that!” I said. “There’ll be a patrol car there in five minutes. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

I called Chambrun’s office and got Harry Clark. I told him what Juliet Valmont had reported. Hardy was there. Hardy took charge. Chambrun came on the wire.

“I’ll meet you at the front entrance,” he said.

I never got dressed so fast in my life. I thought of Shelda down in the Chartreuse Room, watching the fashion models strut their stuff. Better leave her out of it.

I was still buttoning my shirt and tying my tie when I went down the elevator. I realized that, in spite of all the talk about danger and violence, I hadn’t really soaked it in. I hadn’t believed Digger was in any danger after three years of getting nowhere. There’d been a lot of words like “cold-blooded” and “deadly” floating around and I just hadn’t swallowed them. Juliet Girard had been right. I just hadn’t conceded the possibility that it could happen here in our civilized world. Digger dead!

Chambrun was at the front entrance along with Hardy. The lieutenant had waited to hear my story, having sent a prowl car to Shelda’s place and alerted the local precinct headquarters. Chambrun had brought him part way to date. He knew that Shelda had let Juliet use her apartment and that I’d been there to see her. I told him, word for word, what Juliet said on the phone.

“You carried a message for Mrs. Girard to Sullivan?”

“No. I didn’t want to be any more mixed up in it than I was,” I said. “I assume she phoned him and he went there.”

“You may find yourself in trouble, hiding her out there in your girl’s apartment,” Hardy said.

“The only person he can be in trouble with is Girard,” Chambrun said. “The only person she was hiding from was her husband. She wasn’t wanted for anything.”

“Did you call Girard?” I asked.

“If she’d wanted him, she’d have called him. She called you,” Chambrun said.

That was about all before we pulled up a few doors down the street from Shelda’s place. Two prowl cars were outside the front door.

Inside, the place was crowded. At least, the garden was crowded. Juliet Girard was sitting on the big couch, and a cop with a notebook in his hand was asking her questions. Her face was the color of ashes. By some enormous effort she’d managed to control her tears.

Over the racket made by the riveters working on the new building next door, deafening with the doors to the garden open, I heard the sound of an ambulance siren. Through the open doors I saw two detectives and a uniformed cop grouped around two bodies lying on the garden flagstones.

“Mark!” I heard Juliet say.

I moved in and sat down beside her on the couch, taking her icy hands in mine. Chambrun and Hardy joined the group in the garden. I didn’t want to go with them. I didn’t want to see Digger.

“They keep asking me,” she said, so low that I had to strain to hear her. “We were sitting here, on the couch. Suddenly Digger said ‘There’s someone in the garden.’ He got up and went to the doors. Then I heard him swear under his breath. He—he pulled a gun out of his pocket. I cried out to him to stay here. You—you know what I was afraid of, Mark. He didn’t pay any attention to me. He ran out, his gun drawn, and—and they opened fire on each other at the same time.” She raised her hands to cover her face. I glanced up at the cop. His Irish face was expressionless. “I—I saw them both fall,” Juliet went on. “I ran out to Digger. There was nothing to do—for either of them.” She twisted her body from side to side.

Three years ago she’d walked in on her father in just such a situation. Now, Digger, the man she loved.

The room was suddenly abnormally silent. I looked up at the cop again. He was checking his watch. “Quitting time,” he said.

I realized the riveting machines had stopped their chatter.

“Nobody could have heard the shots with those things going,” the cop said.

“Who had to hear them?” I said bitterly. “The two men are out there.” I was thinking I might have prevented all this. I should have tried to persuade Digger to go away myself—kept him away from Juliet. But the assassin must have followed him here. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference.

A white-coated intern and an ambulance driver, carrying a folded stretcher, walked through the room and out into the garden. Against my will I saw the young doctor kneel by Digger’s body, start to examine him. Then he took something from his doctor’s bag. It looked as if he were giving Digger some sort of injection. That brought me to my feet and across the room to the garden doors. You don’t administer injections to a dead man. I saw them roll him onto the stretcher. The doctor took a quick look at the other man, shrugged, and he and the driver picked up the stretcher and started with it toward me. I stood to one side, finding it a little hard to breathe. I looked down at Digger. They’d covered him with a blanket except for his face. It was twisted into an odd expression like a man who has had a stroke, a kind of terrible twisted agony.

“Alive?” I heard myself ask the doctor.

He gave me a sour look. “Ten to one he doesn’t make the hospital,” he said.

Hardy was just behind him. “Outside chance he may talk before he kicks off,” he said.

I hadn’t been aware of Juliet coming up behind me. She gave a little cry. “I’m going with you!” she said. “I could have sworn he was dead. Oh, God, is there anything I could have done for him?”