Walking Dead Man (9 page)

“None of them saw anyone in a stocking mask?”

“Gone,” Hardy said. “Of course the key one is Butler, the bodyguard. He was sitting right outside the door of Battle’s room, gun in his lap. I tried to get him to admit he’d fallen asleep. No dice. It would be better for him if he’d admit it, you understand. How did Stocking Face get past him if he was awake?”

“Easy,” Jerry said. “It could have been Allerton, or the chef, or Dr. Cobb coming from this end. They could go into the bathroom without passing Butler.”

“Ten feet away with Butler having an unobstructed view? If Butler was awake, no one could have gotten into that room—except Butler.”

“So it was Butler,” Jerry said.

“Okay, then why isn’t he taking the obvious out?” Hardy asked. “He should be saying: ‘I goofed. It had been a long day. I fell asleep.’ Instead he keeps insisting that he was awake and that no one could have gotten in the room without his seeing. I have to remind you that the windows are out. They’re flush to the side of the building, barred, a big drop if the bars were faulty. Take a human fly.”

“So none of it happened,” Jerry said dryly.

“I haven’t seen the bullet,” Hardy said. “We’ve been kept out of the room since we got here.”

“But I saw the bullet before you were called,” Jerry said. “It’s there in the headboard. Naturally I left it for you to dig out.”

“So it happened. So why doesn’t Butler lie himself out of trouble instead of into it?”

“From what I’ve been hearing tonight, everything in this world is upside-down,” I said.

Hardy looked at me. “What have you been hearing?”

“That nothing in Battle’s world is ever what it seems to be,” I said.

“Richard Cleaves?”

“Richard Cleaves and Peter Potter, who worked for Battle some time ago. What seems to be happening isn’t happening.”

“Potter hate him, too?” Hardy asked.

I nodded.

Hardy sighed and stood up. “I guess I won’t stand for any more delay,” he said. “I’m going into that bedroom.”

We followed him back to the living room. Kranepool was on the phone to his office. Dr. Cobb had leaned his head against the back of the couch. His bluish eyelids were closed. Hardy walked over to him. He touched the doctor’s foot with his foot. The old man’s eyes flew open.

“Oh, it’s you, Lieutenant,” he wheezed. He fumbled in the pocket of his robe for a cigarette.

“I’m going in, Doctor,” Hardy said. “Want to stand by in case he comes to?”

“I have to protest,” Cobb said. He struggled with his lighten and finally got his cigarette going.

“You go right ahead and protest, Doctor. You want to do it in writing, that would be fine with me. Keep you out of my hair.” Hardy gestured to two plainclothes men who had been waiting in the corner of the room with cameras and other equipment He started for the door to the bedroom.

That door opened before he reached it. George Battle, wearing a silk blue-and-white polka dot robe, stood there. I was surprised again by the extraordinary brightness of his blue eyes, the curious wreckage of what must have once been real male beauty. The eyes fastened on me.

“Where is Pierre?” he asked.

Behind me I heard Dr. Cobb whisper, “Christ, I gave him enough to knock him out for twelve hours!”

“Where’s Allerton? I’d like some hot tea,” Battle said.

He looked, I thought, like the disintegrated portrait of Dorian Grey. What had once been beauty of facial structure had become a kind of obscene caricature of what must have been a youthful elegance.

Allerton appeared from the kitchen as though he’d had some kind of advance notice, carrying a tray. On it was a teapot and two cups. He put the tray down on a side table and proceeded to pour tea into both cups. Battle’s unnaturally bright eyes were fixed on him. Allerton picked up one of the cups and sipped from it. The king’s taster! A sip evidently wasn’t enough. Allerton looked apologetically at his employer and blew on the tea. Finally he was able to drink it. Only then did Battle step forward and pick up the second cup. His skin, very tight around his temples, seemed to glisten in the lamplight. He looked at Hardy.

“You are—?”

“Lieutenant Hardy, Homicide, in charge of this case. I’ve been waiting to examine your room, Mr. Battle.”

“So examine,” Battle said, and sat down at the opposite end of the couch from Dr. Cobb, who kept looking at him with disbelief.

Hardy signaled to his technical crew and they all went into the bedroom. The bright blue eyes now shifted to Jerry Dodd and me.

“Where is Pierre?” Battle asked.

“He left when he understood the Doctor had put you to sleep” Jerry said.

Battle gave the doctor a contemptuous little smile. “Cobb and his magical herbs!” he said. “Tell Pierre I want him back here. I don’t like the way things have been handled.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Jerry said;

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know where he is,” Jerry said. I saw that he was watching Battle closely. If there was anything to Cleaves’ theory—

Kranepool joined us. “Somebody called Mr. Chambrun on the phone,” he said, “pretending to be me. Mr. Chambrun started up here but he hasn’t arrived. At the moment we don’t know where he went.”

“Who are you?” Battle asked.

“Lester Kranepool, assistant
D.A.,
in charge.”

“I thought that policeman was in charge,” Battle said.

“For Homicide. I represent the District Attorney,” Kranepool said,

“The usual inefficiency of a bureaucracy,” Battle said. “Two men in charge.” He pointed a long, thin finger at Kranepool. “You damn well better come up with results, young man. It’s a miracle I wasn’t killed here tonight. What are you doing to protect this penthouse now?”

“No one can get in here without an okay from us,” Kranepool said.

“That’s what they told me when I went to bed last night,” Battle said. “How did that masked creature get in here?”

“We’re not sure yet.”

Battle glanced at his platinum wrist watch. His mouth curled down. “You’ve had over four hours. Would you or would you not call that incompetence?”

“We’ve been handicapped,” Kranepool said, fighting outrage, “by not being able to talk to you.”

“Why didn’t you have Cobb wake me?”

“He said you were drugged out,” Kranepool said.

“Faithful old Cobb,” Battle said. He made it sound like an insult. “So your handicap is removed, Mr. Kranepool. Talk to me.”

“I want a detailed account of everything that happened to you here tonight,” Kranepool said.

Battle looked at him as if he smelled bad. “I told the whole thing to this man,” and he jerked his head toward Jerry, “and to Pierre.”

“Tell it to me,” Kranepool said.

“My, my, authority does go to our head, doesn’t it?” Battle said.

“Look, Mr. Battle, I don’t give a damn how rich or important you are, I’m investigating a crime here. If you don’t choose to cooperate, I’ll have you taken downtown where you can think it over in a jail cell.”

Battle actually smiled. “It would be almost worth while to let you try, Mr. Kranepool,” he said. He turned to Jerry. “What are you doing to find Pierre?”

“What do you suggest, sir?” Jerry asked softly.

“A woman?” Battle asked.

“He was on his way here to help you,” Jerry said. “Do you think he could be willingly sidetracked?”’

Battle appeared to consider the possibility. “I suppose not,” he said. “Not Pierre.”

“Will you be good enough, Mr. Battle, to begin at the beginning,” Kranepool said, his voice unsteady with anger.

“‘In the beginning was the word,’” Battle said. His paper-thin eyelids closed. “Shortly after nine o’clock I went to bed. I was exhausted. However, before I turned in, this man Dodd showed me exactly what precautions were being taken to protect me.”

“You were expecting some sort of attack?” Kranepool asked.

Battle opened his eyes. “My dear young man, for the last thirty years I have expected an attack to be made on me, day and night. You are aware that I keep an armed guard by my side, a doctor in case I should be wounded, a chef who prepares my meals, and a servant who tastes them before I do in case poison should be the method used. Do you think that’s some kind of a parlor game?”

Kranepool restrained himself. “Dodd showed you what precautions had been taken,” he said.

“He did. There were three hotel security men patrolling the roof outside. Dodd showed them to me. I saw them. There was an operator and a security man assigned to the elevator which comes to the roof. No one except the tenants of the other two penthouses could get up to this level.”

“And no one did,” Kranepool said.

“That is a reasonably comic remark, Mr. Kranepool,” Battle said. “You should look at the bullet in the headboard of my bed. I don’t propose to go on with this if you insist on nonsensical comments.”

Kranepool was pale with anger, but he hung in there. “You were shown the sentries and the two men on the elevator,” he said.

“I was shown them,” Battle said, “but unfortunately I am not sufficiently psychic to have been aware of their inefficiency. Here, in this apartment, my man Butler was stationed outside my door. No one could come in without passing him. No one could come in by way of the bathroom, the door to which was in plain sight from where Butler was stationed.”

“And he swears no one got past him or into the bathroom,” Kranepool said.

“He is, of course, lying,” Battle said. “He fell asleep.”

“He says he didn’t.”

Battle smiled his feline smile. “Ask Dr. Cobb why he is lying.”

Cobb cleared his throat, coughed, gasped for breath, and then said: “There are unpleasant punishments for inefficiency in this world,” he said. “To have been asleep at his post could have most disastrous consequences for Butler.”

“So you went to bed,” Kranepool said.

“I went to my room. Allerton helped me prepare for bed. I normally need some sort of medication—seconal or the like—to sleep for any length of time, but I was so thoroughly exhausted from the trip that I thought sleep would come without help. It was a very, very lucky decision on my part, because if I’d taken my sleeping pills, I would have been in the deepest part of my slumber when he came.”

“The man in the stocking mask?”

“Who else, Mr. Kranepool? Are we, by chance, talking about someone else?”

“You slept,” Kranepool said.

“Yes, but lightly; lightly enough, thank God, to have heard some slight movement he made—perhaps the squeak of a door, perhaps he collided with a chair or some other piece of furniture. I was suddenly wide awake, very aware that someone was in the room. I wasn’t afraid at first. I thought it must be Allerton, or perhaps Dr. Cobb, checking to see if I was all right, if I needed something. I knew Butler wouldn’t have allowed anyone else into my quarters. I reached out and turned on the bedside lamp. I was frozen with terror when I saw him.

“You got a clear look at him?”

“A quick look, but very clear. He was standing just inside the bathroom door. He was wearing a pale brown stocking mask that covered his head—his hair, his face. He was pointing a gun at me. I find myself surprised now that I was able to move. My thought was to dive for the floor, and I projected myself toward the edge of the bed. We’re talking about fractions of seconds, Mr. Kranepool, because as I moved he fired. The bullet struck the headboard, inches from me. I heard him cry out something—and as I turned my head, I saw him go out through the bathroom door. At the same moment Butler came bursting in through the main door there. I screamed at him and pointed to the bathroom.”

“Just a minute,” Kranepool said. “You saw this man in the stocking mask go out through the bathroom?”

“Of course I saw him.”

“And at the same instant Butler came through the other door?”

“I thought Butler could have seen him.”

“Then Butler couldn’t have been the man in the stocking mask, doubling back?”

“Nonsense,” Battle said.

“Describe the gunman. Was he tall, short, fat, thin?”

“He could have been all of those things, my dear man. It was so quick. The mask was a light tan, with holes in it for his eyes. His clothes were dark, but don’t ask me what they were—a suit, a sweater, a topcoat. I saw the mask, and I saw the gun aimed right between my eyes. Not much else registered.”

“You say he cried out?

“Yes. Something meaningless. He sounded surprised. And then he was gone.”

“Do you know that Dodd, here, has a theory that the assassin was after Mr. Chambrun; that when he saw it was you, he jerked the gun away just in time?”

Battle looked at Jerry. “How very ingenious,” he said.

“You don’t believe it?”

“Of course I don’t believe it. If he was after Pierre, wouldn’t the sentries have made him wonder? Wouldn’t the sleeping Butler have made him wonder? No, Pierre doesn’t live under the threat of death that I do. He doesn’t require guards. Anyone who knew him well enough—” Battle laughed—“well enough to want to kill him, would have known that something was out of key.”

“Someone wanted him out of the way,” Jerry said. “He hasn’t disappeared by choice.”

“My dear Dodd, of course someone wants him out of the way. Don’t you know why?”

“Why?” Jerry said in a flat voice.

“Because there is just one man in the world I would trust to protect me beyond a shadow of a doubt. Pierre Chambrun doesn’t make mistakes.” His brow clouded. “Perhaps, like all of us, he is growing old. Because, if what you say is true, he has allowed himself to fall into a trap. God help me if I must count on you people and the police to protect me. I came here because I could count on Pierre. Who can I depend on now?”

I could have sworn he wasn’t afraid; he was more like some kind of game-player, delighted with a puzzle.

Hardy came out of the bedroom, and with him was Butler, the bodyguard. Battle raised what must have been a cup of cold tea to his lips, his eyes bright over the rim.

“Show me exactly where you were sitting,” Hardy said to Butler.

If anyone was afraid in the room it was Butler, the tough guy, the gunslinger. Little beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He glanced at Battle as if he was pleading for some kind of cue from his employer. Battle’s eyes were laughing at him.