Shape of Fear (17 page)

“Nothing,” Hardy said. He hesitated. “You didn’t tell Mr. Haskell on the phone that you knew the other man, Mrs. Girard.”

“Knew him?”

I felt her hand on my arm, steadying herself.

“According to Mr. Chambrun, he was an old friend of your father’s. I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay here and answer some questions from Sergeant Decker, Mrs. Girard.”

“A friend of my father’s?”

Hardy’s mouth was a tight slit. “The dead man is Sam Loring, a special agent for the
U.S.
Bureau of Narcotics.”

“But he was a friend of Digger’s!” I said.

“Some friend,” Hardy said.

It’s hard to remember the exact sequence of events in the next hour or so. Things happened so rapidly, and each of them like a hammer blow.

Sergeant Decker, one of the plain-clothes men in the garden, took center stage for the next few minutes. He tried quietly yet determinedly to get something that made sense out of a distracted Juliet. She kept turning to me, helplessly, as if she couldn’t bear to go back over ground that explained why she was here and why Digger had been here. Chambrun, standing a little distance away in the doors to the garden, watched and listened, his face rock-hard. He had evidently filled in Decker with a little of it.

“You came here after your husband and Sullivan had a fight in the hotel?” Decker asked.

“Yes. Miss Mason—Miss Shelda Mason, whose apartment this is—brought me here.”

“You wanted Sullivan to come here to see you?”

“Yes.” It was a shuddering whisper.

“How did you contact him?”

“I—I didn’t,” Juliet said.

I stared at her, thinking I hadn’t heard her correctly.

“How did he know you were here?”

“I—I suppose Mr. Haskell—or Miss Mason …”

“Wait a minute, Juliet,” I said. “You were going to phone him.”

“I tried—three, four times. They couldn’t locate him at the hotel. Then the doorbell rang and—it was Digger.”

“Didn’t he tell you how he knew you were here?”

“It didn’t matter,” Juliet said. “There was so much else we had to talk about. I just assumed …”

It must have been Shelda. She’d probably run into Digger somewhere in the hotel and told him. She might not have looked him up, but she couldn’t have resisted telling him if she saw him.

“You were sitting here, talking with Sullivan, when he became aware there was someone in the garden?” Decker said.

“Yes.”

“He went to the door, drawing his gun?”

“Yes.”

“Where did he carry the gun?”

“I—I don’t know. Suddenly it was in his hand.”

“The man in the garden couldn’t have been over ten or fifteen feet away from Sullivan. They must have recognized each other. They were old friends, at least they’d known each other a long time. Didn’t they say anything to each other?”

“I—I was screaming at Digger to come away from the door,” Juliet said. “I didn’t hear them speak. They just started shooting.”

“Loring didn’t say anything like ‘you’re under arrest,’ or ‘drop the gun!’?”

“I didn’t hear them say anything to each other.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Decker said harshly. “Loring was a law officer. He wouldn’t start shooting without a warning.”

Juliet turned her head from side to side. “I’m just telling you what happened, what I heard or didn’t hear.”

“Did Sullivan shoot first?”

“I don’t know! It was all so quick.”

Decker fished in his pocket for a cigarette. He was sweating. “Okay,” he said. “They both started shooting. Then what?’

“The man—Loring, you say—staggered back, twisted around, fell on his face. Digger—he just stood there looking at him. I thought for a moment he hadn’t been hit. And then he—he crumpled up and fell on the flagstones.”

“Then?”

“I ran out to him,” Juliet said.

“Go on, Mrs. Girard.”

“There was a—a terrible wound in his chest. His eyes were closed. Blood was running out of his mouth. I—I saw that he wasn’t breathing. At least, it seemed to me that he wasn’t.”

“Then?”

“I went inside to call for help.”

“You didn’t look at Loring?”

“No.”

“How did you know he was dead?”

“I saw the hole appear right between his eyes when Digger shot. I—I just knew. The way he fell …”

“Why did you call Mr. Haskell instead of the police?”

“I didn’t know where to call. Mr. Haskell was a friend. I thought he’d know what to do.”

“And you called him within two or three minutes of the shooting?”

“I think so. There was the shooting. They both fell. I went out to Digger. Then I came back in and phoned. I guess it was two or three minutes.”

Decker dropped the cigarette he hadn’t lit into an ash tray on the coffee table. “Now, Mrs. Girard, about Loring. Mr. Chambrun says he knew your father; worked with him in Paris some years ago. But you say you didn’t recognize him.”

“I never saw him until now,” Juliet said.

“He never came to your house in Paris? Your father never introduced him to you?”

“No. I—I knew there was such a man—a Loring who was connected with the United States government—a narcotics agent. My father mentioned him, knew him and trusted him. But I never happened to see him.”

“So he was a complete stranger to you until we identified him just now?”

“Complete, in so far as knowing what he looked like.”

It was then Harry Clark, the agent who’d been stationed in Chambrun’s office, appeared. He was white as a sheet, muscles rippling along the line of his jaw. He stopped in the middle of the room, staring at Juliet. Then he walked out into the garden and knelt down beside the blanket-covered body of Sam Loring. He lifted the edge of the blanket and stared for a long time.

“Sonofabitch,” I heard him say over and over. “Sonofabitch!”

Then he stood up and came back to the doors. “Well, Chambrun, that settles all our doubts about who’s who,” he said.

“Does it?” Chambrun said in a colorless voice.

“Girard was right about Sullivan all along. Sam must have come on the truth about him, followed him here, thinking this might be where the contact was to be made.”

“You’re dead sure of your own man?” Chambrun asked.

I thought Clark was going to hit him. He actually took a step toward him, his fist drawn back. But he stopped.

“Dead sure, Chambrun,” he said. “Absolutely dead sure.”

There was a moment of tense silence and then Juliet’s unsteady voice broke it “I think I’d better go to Charles,” she said.

She stood up unsteadily, as if no one else was there, as if she was going to go by herself. Clark and Decker looked uncertainly at each other.

“Is there any reason she shouldn’t go back to the hotel?” I asked.

“We need a statement from her,” Decker said.

“Can’t it be taken from her at the hotel?” I said. “How much do you think she can go through in one stretch of time? She needs a chance to get pulled together, for God’s sake.”

The sergeant hesitated. “I’ll send a man back with her,” he said.

“I’ll take her,” I said. “Somebody’s got to tell her husband what’s happened. He doesn’t know.”

“Maybe—he doesn’t know,” Harry Clark said grimly.

I dont think Juliet heard him. She had started to move blindly toward the door. Chambrun had come up beside me.

“Mark may be able to get a little more detail from her,” he said to Decker. “They’re friends. It may be a little easier for her to talk to him.”

“Go ahead, Mr. Haskell,” Decker said. “If she tells you anything she hasn’t told us …”

I didn’t answer. I felt unaccountably angry at being placed in the position of trying to pry at her. She needed someone to hang onto at this moment.

One of the cops out on the pavement flagged down a taxi for us. Juliet sat in one corner, staring straight ahead. How can I explain that I felt happy being there with her, able to offer some sort of support.

“I did it to him,” she said, without looking at me. I could feel her whole body begin to tremble. I took one of her hands in mine and held onto it hard.

“You didn’t do anything to him,” I said.

“He came because he knew I was there and wanted to see him. If I’d just had a chance to convince him how dangerous it was for him.”

“It wouldn’t have changed the danger,” I said, “and he wouldn’t have gone away. He told us that earlier. He was determined to get to the truth about your father.”

“I don’t understand any of it,” she said, turning her head from side to side. “If that other man was Loring, as they say, what happened between them?”

“We’ll find out sooner or later,” I said.

For the first time she turned those wide blue eyes on me. “You know what Charles will think? That this proves he was right from the start about Digger. That Loring had discovered he was part of the conspiracy and that Digger was cornered and had to try to fight his way out.”

That was exactly what I’d been thinking myself. I’d been trying not to, but how else could you explain what had happened?

“One thing is certain,” I said. “He came to see you because he loved you.”

“And no matter what the truth is I love him,” she said. “It’s like a sickness for which there’s no cure. Mark, will you try to help me to explain what’s happened?”

“Of course,” I said.

“And—Mark?”

“Yes.”

“Will you promise to let me know what happens? How he is?”

“Of course I will.”

It was only a short run to the Beaumont and that was all the conversation we had time for. I helped her out of the cab and hurried her across the lobby to the elevators. If the news had reached the hotel, I saw no signs of it.

We were whisked up to the fifteenth floor and then walked down the corridor to the door of the Girard suite.

Girard opened the door. He took one look at Juliet, and his face seemed to light up.

“Juliet!” He had her in his arms. He looked at me over the top of her bowed head and must have sensed instinctively that something was seriously wrong.

“I think I’d better talk to you for a minute,” I said.

“Come in.”

She seemed to be hanging onto him, almost dead weight, as he helped her into the living room of the suite.

“Please,” I heard her whisper, “I’d like to go to my room, Charles. Mark will explain.”

He went with her. After a moment or two, he came back.

“Where was she?” he asked.

I told him that Shelda had offered Juliet the use of her apartment. I told him what had happened there. It must have been hard for him not to show what he really felt—relief and satisfaction.

“How badly off is Sullivan?”

“Very bad,” I said

“There’s not much comfort in being proved right,” he said “That she should have seen it happen! She’ll go on blaming herself forever. How do we live with that?”

“It’s rough,” I said. “But whatever the showdown was, Mr. Girard, it was bound to happen sooner or later, whether Digger had gone to see her or not. It’s just unfortunate for Juliet that it happened there. You’ve got to try to convince her that she’s not responsible.”

“I’d give my life for her,” he said bitterly, “but even revealed for what he is, Sullivan controls her heart, her future. Damn him, damn him, damn him!”

“She’s in shock,” I said. “She needs tenderness, and understanding—and time.”

“I know,” he said. He held out his hand to me. “Thanks for being her friend, Haskell.”

“Friendship is an easy thing to give to her,” I said.

I
N CHAMBRUN’S OFFICE, HARRY
Clark worked with a kind of cold, efficient fury. Jerry Dodd had been manning the phone set up for Clark while Clark had made his trip to Shelda’s. A glance at the chart Jerry had kept revealed that Girard had never left his suite and that Bernardel, Kroll, and Miss Lily Dorisch had migrated to the Trapeze Bar. No outsider had joined them there.

As I came into the office, Clark was on the phone to one of his men giving orders that Delacroix and LaCoste were to be picked up at the Waldorf and brought here.

“I’m going to get ’em all here,” Clark said to Chambrun. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this if I have to beat it out of all of them with a lead pipe!”

“Not very fair to the men you’re so dead sure of,” Chambrun said. He had wandered over to the pot of Turkish coffee on the sideboard in the corner of the room.

“What are you talking about?” Clark said angrily.

“If you’re right about Loring …”

“I’m right about him!”

“If you’re right about him,” Chambrun said, unruffled, “he gave his life trying to expose the whole conspiracy. You blow your top now, and you blow the whole game. Play your cards right, and Loring may not have died for nothing.”

“What cards?” Clark said.

“You’ve probably got your killer,” Chambrun said. “In the hospital, alive or dead at this moment. He’s probably Cardew’s killer too. He must also have been in on the murder of Colonel Valmont. Big day for you, Mr. Clark. Announce it. Make the headlines. Be openly satisfied that you’ve caught the Big Boy and smashed the ring. American playboy heads international dope ring. Everybody will be happy and the thing you’ve been waiting for will happen—an exchange of money for drugs. Bring them all up here, put the heat on all of them, and the whole thing will be called off until a safer time comes. You’ll have lost your grip on the situation just for the pleasure of playing it tough.”

Clark hesitated.

“You’ve got a lot of chances if you don’t spoil them by using your heart instead of your head, Mr. Clark. As long as Sullivan lives, there’s a chance he may talk. Quite often a dying man will tell you things he wouldn’t think of revealing if he had a chance to live. That’s one chance. A complete revelation: the naming of names, details of plans. You may even find out what really happened in that garden.”

“What really happened? Sullivan opened fire on him, and Sam shot him in self-defense before he died.”

“Maybe,” Chambrun said. He poured some coffee into a little demitasse.

“Maybe, for Christ’s sake, Chambrun, the woman saw it all!”

“Did she?” Chambrun walked toward his desk, balancing the cup in the palm of his hand. “She was sitting on the couch. Her back was to the door. It was Sullivan, facing her, who saw someone in the garden. He got up and went to the door. She, I suppose, half turned to see what was what. There’s a low awning outside that door. Perhaps she couldn’t see all that Sullivan saw.”