Nightmare Time Read online

  Nightmare Time

  A Pierre Chambrun Mystery

  Hugh Pentecost

  Contents

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Part Two

  One

  Two

  Part Three

  One

  Two

  Three

  Part One

  One

  IT WAS ABOUT one o’clock on a summer morning as I walked through the lobby of the Hotel Beaumont, New York’s top luxury hotel. The hotel was very much alive at that time in the morning. A debutante function was taking place in the Grand Ballroom, the Blue Lagoon, the hotel’s popular nightclub, was going full blast, and the two main bars, the Trapeze and the Spartan, were crowded with customers. I was headed for my office on the second floor when I saw Mr. Cardoza, the maître d’ of the Blue Lagoon, signaling to me. I went over to join him.

  Mr. Cardoza looks more like a Spanish nobleman than a headwaiter.

  “I’ve got one that calls for The Man,” he said.

  The Man is an in-shop name for Pierre Chambrun, the hotel’s famous manager. Chambrun is the king, the Mayor, of a small city within a city. Under the Beaumont’s roof are bars and restaurants, shops including a pharmacy, a health club, a hospital, a police force, almost anything you could think of asking for in a home away from home. Chambrun knows every inch of it, every small detail of every function. He is a walking computer on the subject of the Beaumont. He also has a personal life which is kept that way—personal.

  I am Mark Haskell, head of public relations for the hotel, and one of three people who know where to find The Man in his most private moments. The others are Jerry Dodd, the wiry little former FBI agent who is head of the hotel’s security, and Betsy Ruysdale, The Man’s storybook secretary who is rumored to be his private life.

  “What’s cooking?” I asked Cardoza.

  “I am being faced down by a ten- or twelve-year-old boy,” Cardoza said.

  “That’ll be the day!”

  “His name is Guy Willis,” Cardoza said. “He and his parents, Major and Mrs. Hamilton Willis, are registered in suite 17C. The boy claims his parents left him alone about nine o’clock, headed for the Lagoon. They planned to be gone for about an hour. They never came back.”

  “Which shows what a sensational host you are, Cardoza.”

  “The Major and his lady never came to the Lagoon,” Cardoza said. “The boy called down for them, and when I told him they weren’t here he came down to see for himself. He insists on seeing The Man. He says his father told him that if he was ever in trouble while staying here, he should go to The Man. No one else will do. Suddenly there’s a priest in the act, a Father Callahan, who offers to take the boy under his wing. The boy says he doesn’t know him. The priest says he’s an old friend of the boy’s father. The boy won’t budge unless The Man tells him to budge. I know you can reach Chambrun, Mark. Would you mind?”

  When Chambrun goes private, nothing short of a bomb threat to his precious hotel justifies his being disturbed. But there was something special about Major Hamilton Willis. Every morning at nine o’clock Betsy Ruysdale and I join Chambrun in his office when he is having his second cup of breakfast coffee. We look over the registration cards of people who have checked in since the day before. Those cards, eventually marked with letters, tell us all there is to know about a guest—his credit standing, whether he’s an alcoholic, a husband cheating on his wife, or a wife cheating on her husband. Then there are the initials P. C., which indicate that Chambrun knows something about the guest that is not to be general knowledge. A couple of days ago the Willises’ card came to my attention.

  “Red-carpet treatment for these people,” Chambrun said. “It just may be I owe Ham Willis my life.”

  The story had made the front pages of the newspapers a couple of years back. Chambrun, who had left the hotel to discuss some financial matters at his bank, was returning when he was jumped, just outside the hotel, by three thugs. They turned out to be Arab terrorists who planned to hold The Man hostage to get some leader of theirs freed from jail. Luckily Major Hamilton Willis turned up at the critical moment, drew a gun, shot one of the terrorists, and held the other two at bay until the police took over.

  “It was a near thing,” Chambrun said. “I owe him, beyond the ability to pay.”

  This, I thought, could be the moment. At least he wouldn’t resent my breaking in on his privacy. I called a number I had, and Chambrun thanked me.

  “Stand by the boy till I get there, Mark. Fifteen minutes…”

  I walked into the Blue Lagoon with Cardoza. I saw the boy instantly. He was blond, handsome, wearing gray slacks and a navy blue blazer with brass buttons. I saw at once that he was tense, fighting hard not to show that he was scared. He was at a corner table, his chair backed up against the far wall, staying as far away as he could from the priest, easily recognized by his turnaround collar, who was leaning across the table, talking earnestly. No one else in the Lagoon was paying any attention to him because Duke Hines was on stage, supplying the guests with some of his marvelous jazz-piano music.

  Cardoza and I headed for the table. The boy’s bright blue eyes widened as he saw us approaching. We were the marines, I thought.

  “Guy, this is Mark Haskell,” Cardoza said to the boy. “He’s talked to Mr. Chambrun, and he’s on his way.”

  The boy stood up, gripping the back of his chair. “Thank you, sir,” he said to me.

  The priest had also risen. “I am Father Paul Callahan,” he said to me. “I’m an old friend of the boy’s father. I want to help him if I can.”

  “I never saw this man before!” the boy said. “He isn’t a friend of my dad’s.”

  “How did you know he was in trouble?” I asked the priest. “If you didn’t know him by sight—”

  “Series of coincidences,” the priest said. “A parishioner of mine told me about the fellow who plays the piano here.” He gestured toward Duke Hines on the stage. Duke was in the middle of his marvelous version of “Saint Louis Blues.” “I found myself in the neighborhood. I grew up on New Orleans jazz, and I thought I’d drop in to hear this man. He’s pretty magical.”

  “About the boy,” I said.

  “I was just sitting down at this table, shown to it by this head waiter, when Guy rushed up to him. He explained who he was, that his father was supposed to be here, but wasn’t. That was the second big coincidence. I was a chaplain in the Air Force ten years ago, Vietnam. Lieutenant Hamilton Willis, now a major, was one of the fliers I knew well. It was almost a miracle that I’d been brought here when his kid was in trouble. I can and will care for him until the Major gets in touch.” He moved toward the boy, put an arm around his shoulder. “Come along, son.”

  The boy wrestled himself free, gave the surprised priest a violent shove, and rushed to me for protection.

  “The boy is following his father’s instructions,” I said. “If he was in any trouble he was to contact Mr. Chambrun.”

  “I understand that,” the priest said. “Of course, the Major didn’t know that I would, miraculously, be here. Now listen, Guy. The people here are far too busy to be able to take care of you.”

  “I think not, Father,” Chambrun said from behind us.

  Chambrun is short, stocky, with heavy pouches under bright black eyes. Someone was once going to do a movie about the Beaumont. I was asked if I could suggest an actor who would be right for the Chambrun role. Unfortunately, the perfect actor for the part was no longer available. I was thinking of the late Claude Raines. He had Chambrun’s elegance of movement and graceful style.

  “I’m Pierre Chambrun, son,” he said.

  Young Guy Willis rushed to him, cl
ung to him. This was someone he could believe in—because his father had told him he could.

  The priest made a little gesture of resignation. “Only trying to be helpful,” he said. “I’d like to check back with you in a while, Mr. Chambrun, to find out if Ham Willis has turned up safe and sound.”

  “Do that,” Chambrun said. His arm was around the boy, and this gesture was not resisted.

  “Will I be able to get through to you?” the priest asked.

  “I’ll leave instructions to make sure that you can,” Chambrun said.

  The priest smiled at the boy. “I’m sure there’ll be a perfectly normal explanation, Guy. A message miscarried. Someone your father counted on dropped the ball. Good night, gentlemen.”

  We watched the priest walk out of the Blue Lagoon and into the lobby.

  “Let’s sit down, Guy, and you tell me what the problem is. I only got a sketchy notion from Mark,” Chambrun said. We sat down at the table. “Your parents decided to come down here to listen to the music and left you up in 17C?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was that kind of thing usual?”

  “Well, they weren’t going anywhere—just downstairs,” Guy said. “All I had to do was pick up the phone if I wanted anything. I had a TV set if I got bored.”

  Chambrun looked up at Cardoza. “Did they reserve a table?”

  Cardoza shook his head.

  “They talked about it,” the boy said. “Dad thought, for the early show at nine o’clock, they wouldn’t need a reservation. If he was wrong, they’d come right back. Rozzie laughed and said it would add to the excitement not to be sure.”

  “Rozzie?”

  “My mother, Rosalind.”

  “Were you pretty full at nine o’clock?” Chambrun asked Cardoza.

  “Almost full,” Cardoza said. “A couple of side and corner tables left. We were booked solid before Duke Hines was halfway through his first show.”

  “Could Major Willis and his wife have come in without a reservation, taken one of those side or corner tables without your knowing who they were?”

  Cardoza shrugged. “You know our policy, Mr. Chambrun. You set it! When we’re that full we don’t give the last vacancies to strangers without reservations. We save them for regulars who may just walk in.”

  Chambrun looked at the boy. “Was your father wearing civilian clothes, Guy, or was he in uniform?”

  “Uniform,” the boy said. “Dad always wears his uniform when he’s not on duty.”

  Chambrun’s dark eyebrows lifted. “Wears a uniform when he’s not on duty? That suggests he might wear civilian clothes when he is on duty.”

  The boy nodded, as though there was nothing complicated about that. “Dad is in Air Force Intelligence,” he said. “When he’s on duty he doesn’t want to be readily spotted. May I ask you a question, Mr. Chambrun?”

  “Of course.”

  “Isn’t it unusual for a priest to be carrying a gun in a shoulder holster?” the boy asked.

  Chambrun’s eyes narrowed. “Father Callahan?”

  “Yes, sir. When he put his arm around me, tried to make me go with him, I wrestled free, pushed away from him. I felt the gun under his left arm then.”

  “How in the world would you know it was a gun?” I heard myself ask him.

  “Dad wears one all the time when he’s on duty,” the boy said. “I know just what it feels like.”

  “Why didn’t you mention it at the time?” Chambrun asked.

  The boy’s eyes narrowed. “I was afraid if I did he might decide to use it,” he said.

  Chambrun’s face was suddenly a dark thundercloud. “Mark, see if the Father is still loitering around in the lobby. Guy and I will be up in my office.”

  THERE WAS NO SIGN of the gun-toting priest in the lobby area. Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, hadn’t noticed him, but there was no particular reason he should have, what with people coming and going. Waters, the doorman on the Fifth Avenue side, thought he remembered seeing a priest leave the hotel.

  “Short time ago,” Waters said. “I had no reason to pay special attention. He just walked away. A priest is a priest is a priest.” Waters grinned at me. “Plenty of people in the hotel who need to confess their sins. A priest wouldn’t be an attention-getter.”

  Chambrun’s office on the second floor is more like an elegant living room than a place of business—Oriental rug, beautiful antiques, a blue Picasso on the wall opposite The Man’s carved Florentine desk, a gift of the artist himself. When I got there to report on the vanished priest, Chambrun’s key people were there with him and young Guy Willis. Jerry Dodd, dark, wiry former FBI agent who heads our security, was taking notes. Betsy Ruysdale, secretary extraordinary, lovely to look at with dark red hair, was sitting on the couch opposite Chambrun’s desk with the boy beside her. I happen to know that the number where I’d reached Chambrun earlier was Betsy’s unlisted phone in her apartment, just east of the hotel.

  I reported that Waters had seen a priest leave the hotel. It could have been our man, it could have been some other priest.

  “Guy is about to tell Jerry about his evening,” Chambrun said. His eyes narrowed against the smoke from one of his Egyptian cigarettes. At his elbow was a demitasse of Turkish coffee, always ready for him in a coffee maker on the sideboard.

  “Where is your home, Guy?” Jerry asked the boy.

  “It’s an apartment in Washington, D.C.,” The boy gave an address, which Jerry wrote down.

  “This was a pleasure trip, coming to New York?”

  “Partly,” the boy said. “It was a pleasure trip for me and for Rozzie, my mother. For Dad it was part of his job. Rozzie planned to do some lady-type shopping. I could go to a ballgame at Yankee Stadium. I have a seat for tomorrow’s doubleheader.”

  “Do you know what your father was here to do?”

  “His job,” the boy said.

  “Which is—?”

  “Dad’s in the Air Force Intelligence,” Guy said. “He doesn’t talk to Rozzie and me about it because it’s top-secret stuff. Star Wars, I think. ‘What you don’t know, no one can try to force you to tell them,’ Dad always tells us.”

  “Last night they decided to go down to the Blue Lagoon to hear Duke Hines play the piano, leaving you in 17C?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And before they left they told you if you had any trouble you were to call Mr. Chambrun?”

  “No, sir. I mean, not then. That was when we first checked in, a couple of days ago.” The boy glanced at Chambrun. “Dad told me about the thing with the people who attacked you out on the street, sir. He said he felt he could ask you for help if there was any trouble.”

  “He was right,” Chambrun said.

  “What kind of trouble did he expect?” Jerry asked the boy.

  “I’m just eleven years old, sir,” Guy said. “I was going to be pretty much on my own in the daytime. Rozzie would be shopping, no way to reach her; Dad would be doing whatever he was scheduled to do, no way to reach him. I would be going to a ballgame, or the movies or something. I suppose there could be an accident on the street, or at the ballpark, or something. If I needed someone and I couldn’t reach Dad or Rozzie I should feel free to call Mr. Chambrun.”

  “So last night they left you to go down to the Blue Lagoon?”

  “Yes, sir. They said they’d be gone for just an hour or so.”

  “But it was after one in the morning when you tried to find them,” Jerry said.

  The boy gave him a sheepish look. “I was watching TV, an old Clint Eastwood western. I’d seen it before. I—I fell asleep.”

  “When you woke up your parents weren’t there?”

  “No, they weren’t, sir, and I was instantly very frightened. Dad had said they’d be back in an hour or so, give or take fifteen minutes. They’d been gone more than four hours when I woke up. Dad would never be that late and not call.”

  “But you were asleep,” Jerry said.

  “I was si
tting right by the phone in the sitting room, sir. It would have waked me if it had rung. And if it didn’t wake me Dad and Rozzie would have come directly up to the suite from wherever they were to find out what was wrong, why I hadn’t answered.”

  “They were having such a good time they didn’t notice the way time had passed,” Jerry suggested.

  “No, sir—not if they were just having fun listening to Duke Hines. When an hour and fifteen minutes went by Dad would have called—if he could!”

  Chambrun’s coffee cup made a clicking sound as he put it down in the saucer. “Why couldn’t he?” he asked.

  “Trouble connected with his job,” young Guy said. The corner of his mouth twitched as he fought to keep his cool. “He couldn’t always tell us, Rozzie and me, when he was coming home. His job isn’t like an office job with regular hours. And it’s dangerous. That’s why he carries a gun. But he keeps in touch when he can, and if he can’t make it at a time he’s named, he calls—always! When I woke up and he hadn’t called, I knew there was some kind of big trouble.”

  “Do you know who your father’s commanding officer is in Washington?” Chambrun asked.

  “Steve Martin,” Guy said. “Colonel Steve Martin in the Pentagon.”

  “Did your father have a private number for him?”

  “I suppose he may have, sir.”

  “Would it be up in 17C?”

  “I doubt it, sir. It would be private, and it would probably be in his wallet, which he’s carrying.”

  Chambrun pushed back his desk chair and stood up, “Ruysdale, take Guy up to my penthouse and stay there with him, will you?” When it’s business he neuters Betsy by calling her “Ruysdale.” “Jerry, take Ruysdale and the boy up there, then put penthouse security into effect. After that, a top-to-bottom search for Major and Mrs. Willis.”

  “Penthouse security” meant that the two elevators that go to the roof would be cut off at the floor below. There are three penthouses on the roof, one occupied by Chambrun, one by a fabulous old lady in her eighties named Victoria Haven, and the third held in reserve for special diplomatic dignitaries or famous movie stars who want their stay at the Beaumont to go unpublicized. I happened to know that Penthouse Number Three was unoccupied that night. So the elevators would be stopped at the thirty-ninth floor, guards would be stationed on the fire stairs, and no one would be able to get up to the roof without an okay from Chambrun—or Jerry Dodd. A “top-to-bottom” meant a search of every inch of space in the hotel for Major Willis and his wife, no matter how irritating that might be for hundreds of guests who had already retired for the night.