Murder Goes Round and Round: A Pierre Chambrun Mystery Hardcover Read online

  MURDER GOES ROUND AND ROUND

  BY HUGE PENTECOST

  Once again the Hotel Beaumont is the scene of violence. Pierre Chambrun barely survives a sniper's bullet, only to face a fate worse than death.

  Dodd, Mead & Co. Edition $15.95

  MURDER GOES ROUND AND ROUND

  BY HUGH PENTECOST

  Published by special arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Co.

  Part One

  1

  I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard and seen it. Toby March has a reputation in this country and abroad as an extraordinary jazz musician, both as a vocalist and an instrumentalist. When he and his supporting cast were booked into the Blue Lagoon, the glamorous nightclub in the Hotel Beaumont, New York's top luxury hotel, every inch of space was sold out for two weeks, long before a single note had been played or sung.

  I was partly responsible for booking Toby March into the Beaumont, although I'd never heard him perform or talked business with him. I am Mark Haskell, public-relations director for the Beaumont, working for and with the hotel's legendary manager, Pierre Chambrun. Chambrun suggested I try to sign up Toby March for a stay in the Blue Lagoon. March's reputation was a guarantee to smash all box-office records. I never got to talk to March or to meet him. The business was handled by Frank Pasqua, March's manager, a bright-eyed, young Italian-American who could have sold tea to the Chinese. Toby March was brand-new to me until that opening Saturday night. I crowded into a corner of the Blue Lagoon for the second show that night, which started at midnight. When the show was over at about one-thirty, I was completely sold. Toby March was everything people had said he was and more. There was one grim and bizarre thing about that performance. There was no way that Toby March could have known, any more than I could have, that that was to be his last performance ever.

  I had been warned by Frank Pasqua not to use the words "imitate" or "imitation" in my press releases about Toby March. Toby "recreated" famous jazz singers and instrumentalists. In that last performance, I heard Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and his love affair with San Francisco, and Sammy Davis, Jr., as vocalists, Benny Goodman on the clarinet, Harry James on the trumpet, Teddy Wilson on the piano, and Lionel Hampton on the vibes. March didn't do anything in the way of make-up to make himself look like the person whose music he was "recreating." But if you closed your eyes and listened and then looked up at the stage, you would have been shocked not to see Old Blue Eyes up there on the stage in person. March tried to stay anonymous so that his own identity wouldn't interfere with what he was "recreating." As a matter of fact, he blotted out his own appearance by wearing a black silk mask that covered his forehead, eyes, upper cheekbones, and nose. His press releases showed only pictures of the masked man. When I watched March's performance that first Saturday night, I had no idea what the star performer looked like, nor was I tempted to guess that anyone but Sinatra, or Goodman, or Hampton was behind that mask when their music was being "recreated." I was to learn later what lengths March had gone to to keep from being recognized as himself. Having watched him for an hour and a half, I might not have known him if I'd passed him on the street the next day. Of course, I wasn't going to pass him the next day, because by then he wasn't going to be in the land of the living.

  Pierre Chambrun, French born, educated around the world by a nomadic father, is now ruling his own kingdom in New York City. That kingdom is the Hotel Beaumont, which I suppose you could call a small city within a city. The Beaumont has its own police force, its own hospital, its own bars, restaurants, shops, its own theater for the showing of live or filmed performances, and offices for its own lawyers, doctors, and stockbrokers. If you were a guest, I can't think of anything you might want that Chambrun's world could not provide.

  I can't tell you that the Beaumont was free from crime, but the crimes that took place there over the years were crimes of passion, person-to-person violences. Organized criminal operations, such as the sale and distribution of drugs, large-scale confidence games, financial wheelings and dealings, simply didn't happen because The Man, Pierre Chambrun, was too watchful, too clever, I might almost say too psychic, for anything like that to get a foothold in his world. "When I don't know what's going on in my hotel," I've heard him say, "it will be time for me to quit."

  Chambrun didn't know what was happening in his hotel in the early hours of the Sunday morning following Toby March's Saturday-night opening in the Blue Lagoon. But, of course, there is no such thing as quitting in the steel-wire fiber of The Man. He would only have quit if he hadn't been properly prepared, if some part of the Swiss-watch functioning of his world had broken down. Even if he were psychic, Chambrun couldn't have foreseen what was going to happen on that Sunday morning. He would only think of quitting if he failed to see a violent criminal put behind bars.

  Chambrun, short, stocky, yet elegant in his movements, could have been played to perfection by that late, great actor, Claude Rains. I have never, in all the time I've worked for him, found him caught off guard, trapped outside the image he presented of cultivated self-control. But believe me, this was a "perfect gentleman" with whom you wouldn't have wanted to cross swords.

  Every day, Monday through Saturday, I have a regular routine with The Man. I report to his office at exactly nine o'clock. He will be drinking his first after-breakfast cup of coffee — Turkish coffee — seated at his carved Florentine desk, going over the list of yesterday's new Beaumont guests. On Sundays, the regular time schedule is changed. Life has been active in the Beaumont until the early hours of Sunday morning, and Chambrun and I meet in his penthouse on the roof of the hotel at about one o'clock in the afternoon.

  On that Sunday afternoon, the time that this story really begins, our conversation began with a discussion of Toby March's opening in the Blue Lagoon the night before. Of course, I had been there for the second show and had seen it. Chambrun, anchored in his office by some operational problems, had only heard it over his intercom system.

  "Audience seemed to be happy with it," Chambrun said.

  "Hysterically happy," I said.

  "It's amazing how well he gets away with it," Chambrun said. "He can't look like any of the performers whose music he 'recreates.' Some are white, some are black, fat or thin."

  "He doesn't look like anybody, including himself. He wears a mask."

  "Off stage as well as on?"

  "That's what I'm told," I said. "I've never seen him without it. Frank Pasqua, who handles his promotion as well as his business affairs, has worked for him ever since he started this musical act, and he says March never lets anyone see him without the mask."

  "He has to take a shower now and then or wash his hair," Chambrun said.

  "He doesn't have to invite you or me to watch."

  "Women?"

  "Whatever his private life is, he hasn't let it be open to the public," I said.

  "There has to be someone who knows what he looks like," Chambrun said. "He's a middle-aged man. He's only been doing this act of his for five years."

  "The people he knew before he went public with his act are the people he has to hide from," I said.

  "If what he really looks like was circulated, his act might not work. Right?"

  "Right," I said. "The way he works, masked, there is no reason for the audience to think of anyone but the person they are hearing. Behind that mask must be Frank Sinatra, or Sammy Davis, Jr., or Benny Goodman. No one must not believe that in order for the act to work. No one must know that good old Johnny/ or whatever his real name is, is behind that mask hiding who he really is and what he reall
y looks like. That's the name of his game."

  "It sounds more like a master criminal trying to hide from the world, rather than a top-flight entertainer who needs to attract attention to his act," Chambrun said.

  "To his act but not to himself," I said.

  At that moment the door to Chambrun's living room was thrown open and Jerry Dodd, head of the Beaumont's security organization, charged in. Jerry, a short, wiry, intense little man, a former FBI agent, was free to come and go at will.

  "There's hell to pay downstairs, boss," Jerry said to Chambrun.

  "What kind of hell?"

  "Seventeen C, Toby March's suite," Jerry said.

  "Now what?"

  "The maid on seventeen took some clean linens to March's suite," Jerry said. "The place was wrecked."

  " 'Wrecked.' Wrecked how?"

  "As if someone had taken a baseball bat and smashed chairs, tables, lamps. It turns out not to have been a bat but the iron poker from the fireplace tools. But that's just the beginning, boss. In the bedroom and bathroom, it looks as if there'd been a pigsticking. Blood every where — on the bedspread, on the rug, on the bath mat."

  "And March himself?"

  "No sign of him," Jerry said. "I've had to notify the police."

  "Of course."

  Bringing in the police would produce the kind of notoriety

  Chambrun hated for his hotel. I knew he would have chosen to handle the beginning of the investigation himself, so that there could be some kind of sensible explanation before the police and the press made a sensation of it. But Jerry Dodd knew his job, and had felt the situation was serious enough to get moving on his own.

  "Let's get down there," Chambrun said. "You locate Frank Pasqua, March's manager. He's in 17D, the room adjoining the suite."

  "Not there," Jerry said. "One of the musicians told me that after a Saturday-night performance, March's people are free to go their own way. Pasqua didn't have to leave word where he might be going. 'Some dame somewhere,' his friend suggested."

  "Wreckage" was a gentle word for what we found in March's suite. Chairs and tables smashed to pieces, table lamps shattered.

  The bloody mess in the bedroom and bath was stomach-turning. It was hard to imagine that anyone subjected to that kind of violence could have survived.

  The police arrived just as we were walking back into the living room. The officer in charge was a Lieutenant Herzog. I knew him by sight from the local precinct but not from any personal dealings. He was a tall, fair-haired, intense-looking guy, about forty, I'd guess.

  "Somebody didn't like somebody," Herzog said. "The person who called in mentioned blood."

  "That was me, hotel security, Lieutenant," Jerry said. "Come with me. I'll show you."

  The moment the two detectives left Chambrun and me alone, the front doorbell sounded. Chambrun gestured to me to see who it was. The news was obviously out. Facing me was Doc Partridge, the hotel's house physician, a tall, gray-haired old man, who'd been Chambrun's doctor forever. Behind him in the hallway were three of March's musicians, Mrs. Kniffin, the housekeeper, and a maid.

  "The switchboard operator reported to me that Jerry was reporting a bloody mess to the police," Partridge said. "I thought someone might be hurt."

  "Come in, Doc," Chambrun called out.

  "You'd better all come in," I said. "Jerry said the police will have questions for all of you."

  There were expressions of shock and surprise, although the maid who had made the first discovery must have told them what to expect. I have to concede that the wreckage here in the living room and the bloody mess in the bedroom and bathroom would have been hard to take without feeling surprise and shock, no matter how thoroughly you'd been warned of what to expect.

  "The blood is in the next room, I take it," Doc Partridge said. He walked on through to join Herzog and Jerry.

  "The police are going to be asking if anyone saw Toby March leave this suite. Man in a black mask."

  "When is he supposed to have left?" Mrs. Kniffin, the housekeeper, asked. "Last night? This morning?"

  "He was performing in the Blue Lagoon till about one-thirty this morning," Chambrun said. "When he came up here to his suite, I don't know."

  One of the men who wandered in with Mrs. Kniffin and her maids spoke up. I recognized him as one of the musicians in Toby March's group. "I'm Ben Lewis," he said. "Guitar and also piano when Toby isn't playing it himself. Frankie Pasqua can answer most of your questions. He always knows where Toby is."

  "Maybe not today," Chambrun said, his mouth a thin, tight line even when he spoke. "He doesn't answer his own phone. Someone suggested a lady."

  Ben Lewis, dark-skinned and tired-looking, shrugged. "Saturday nights, I suppose, yes. He didn't have to report to Toby until the next business day, which would be tomorrow."

  "You know who his girlfriend is?" Chambrun asked.

  Lewis grinned. "Better make that plural, Mr. Chambrun. Girlfriends."

  "Can you start us off with one?"

  "A name, an address —no," Lewis said. "There's the red-haired one with the beautiful boobs. Frankie calls her Maggie. But Maggie who and an address, never. People have given up last names in this day and age. There's the black-haired gal with the searchlight smile. He calls her Sue, but Sue Who is a mystery. This was his first night here, so Frankie probably hasn't had much chance to sweep any of your locals into his net."

  " 'Business manager,' he was called," Chambrun said. "I know he made the deal with Mark for the engagement here. What about the last date you played? Would he have had a chance there to sweep some gals into his net? Would that be a place to look for him?"

  "Atlanta, Georgia? Not likely he took off for there after we shut up shop last night. Frankie was here when we played our last number last night—this morning."

  "No one could have lost that much blood and walked out of here without help," Lieutenant Herzog said from the bedroom doorway. "Pints of it."

  "The body only holds a few pints," Doc Partridge said. "If the blood in there all came from one person, he hasn't got long to live."

  "Does Toby March have a doctor?" Chambrun asked. "That doctor would know what March's blood type is. We'd know then whether he was the victim."

  "Not for sure," the doctor said. "March's blood type could be type O, negative. If the lab shows that's the type in there, you'd be able to guess. It's not like fingerprints, which can give you a positive identification. Thousands and thousands of people have type O, negative blood. No way to determine that the blood in there is any particular person's. If you can find out what March's blood type is, the best you can do is make an educated guess that the person who bled in the bedroom could have been March, if his blood type matches. You can't be sure it was March. It could be type A or B, which are just as common."

  "You know who March's doctor is?" Chambrun asked Ben Lewis.

  "No. Toby was apparently healthy as a horse. Never even had a cold in the time I've worked for him."

  "Which is how long?" Lieutenant Herzog asked.

  "About four years," Lewis said.

  "Then you can tell us what he looks like," Herzog said. "We can send out a general alarm on him."

  "Would you believe that in all the time I've worked for him, I've never seen him without his black mask?"

  "Sounds unreal," Herzog said.

  "The story I got when I came to work for Toby came from Frank Pasqua," Lewis said. "Toby was a third-rate pianist playing with an unheard-of group in London. No reputation. No publicity. One day, someone tossed a bomb into a bus he was riding in to work. The explosion blew away his face. It looked like a raw hamburger, sprinkled with A-l sauce, Fran-kie told me. Plastic surgery didn't work. He couldn't appear in public without shocking everyone who saw him. He had to hide out. That's when he developed the act he does now, recreating the music of famous stars. He has to stay behind the black mask. It wouldn't work if he exposed his disfigurement. I don't even know what his name was before he went into hiding b
ehind that mask."

  "There must be a police record of the bombing," Herzog said. "It would have the names of the people who were hurt. March's name, whatever it was then, would appear in that record." The detective looked around the room. "It's hard to believe no one heard this place being smashed up."

  "Soundproof," Chambrun said.

  "I still have to think March is the person who was hurt here," Herzog said. "He was doing his act in the Blue Lagoon until one-thirty in the morning. When that was finished, he'd have come back to this room, wouldn't he? If he found it the way it is now, he'd have called hotel security, wouldn't he? Of course he would. So it happened after he got here. He couldn't call because he was seriously hurt. I don't think there's any doubt that Toby March was beaten, badly hurt, and then taken away somewhere by the attacker. This guy Pasqua can probably tell us who had it in for him. Our first job is to find Pasqua."

  "Unless Frankie hears about this on the radio or sees it on television," Ben Lewis said, "there's no reason for him to show up here till tomorrow morning. That's when he's supposed to connect up with Toby."

  Chambrun looked at me. "Turn everyone loose on finding Pasqua, Mark," he said.

  "You'd better notify the radio and TV people," Herzog said. "That way Pasqua may come to us, find himself for us."

  My connections with the media were pretty good, and by three o'clock that afternoon radios all over the country were blaring out the news of the ugliness at the Beaumont. An hour later, there were interviews with Toby March's musicians, with famous people whose music he had "recreated," and with producers, like Chambrun, who had booked March's act and profited from it. Our switchboard was flooded with calls from reporters who wanted to corner Chambrun. My boss was almost as famous as Toby March himself. Being able to link them together was news with a capital N.

  The thing we'd hoped for—a contact from Frankie Pasqua, Toby March's manager and perhaps closest friend — didn't happen. It was irritating but not unreasonable. If Pasqua was involved with a beautiful woman somewhere, he wouldn't reasonably be listening to the radio or TV.