With Intent to Kill Page 13

  Chambrun gave me a bitter look. “It’s too bad you can’t think as clearly as that about something you may need to remember to save your life,” he said.

  The Private Lives Club was closed on Sundays. I should have remembered that, among other things. Linda had mentioned spending time on their day off with Nora. Not knowing Linda’s last name there was no way of looking her up in the phone book, in case she had a phone. The club drew a perpetual busy signal. Zach Thompson had an unlisted phone which Lieutenant Hardy was able to pry out of the telephone company. No answer when it was called. Dr. Morgan, when St. Vincent’s was called, was in surgery. He might have been helpful.

  I had imagined Chambrun might have sent me to hunt for Linda but he had grimmer plans for me. Until I could unearth whatever it was that had made me a target for a killer I was not to leave the hotel rooftop.

  “Here you are at least safe for now,” Chambrun said. “A cop and one of our security men are guarding the fire stairs. A cop is riding the one elevator that comes up here. No one is going to get above the thirty-ninth floor without being checked out down to his bare skin. So sit somewhere and think! Think about every minute of every hour from the time Stan Nelson and Company checked in here on Thursday until you walked into your apartment last night and got slugged. Write it down, go over it. Somewhere there is something, Mark, and you damn well need to find it!”

  And so in the end I installed myself at Chambrun’s desk in the living room, equipped with a legal pad and a couple of ball points, and tried to go back into what appeared to be a fog of inconsequential nothings.

  Things happened in the next couple of hours that I learned about later. What didn’t happen was a recall of anything that might make me dangerous to a psychotic killer.

  While I stewed away at my memory exercise Lieutenant Hardy sent one of his Homicide boys down to the Private Lives Club in the Village. He figured that even though nobody answered the phone down there someone must be on the scene, a watchman, a maintenance man. He came closer than that to striking oil. Some sort of janitor character answered a determined ringing at the front door, but when Sergeant Lawson identified himself as a cop, Zach Thompson himself emerged from his private office.

  “I suppose I should have expected you,” he said to Sergeant Lawson.

  “Nobody answered the phone here,” Lawson said.

  “We’re not open on Sundays,” Thompson said. “Every newsman in New York has been after me since Nora was attacked.”

  “You know that she’s dead?”

  “Of course I know. What do you think this is, some kind of desert island? The goddamn story goes round and round on the radio. What do you want of me, Lawson?”

  “I was sent here for a specific purpose,” Lawson said. “But as long as you’re here there are some questions.”

  “What specific purpose?”

  “We’re looking for a picture of Eddie Sands,” Lawson told him. “We hope to find someone who may have seen him at the Beaumont. The body is so disfigured from the wound there’s no way anyone could tell whether they’d seen him alive or not.”

  “You thought I might have a picture?” Thompson found that amusing.

  “We thought Miss Sands might have had one in her dressing room.”

  “Let’s look,” Thompson said.

  He took Lawson through the elaborate bar and lounge which was the centerpiece of the club to a backstage area. It seemed that all of the girls dressed in one large space with adjoining showers and bathrooms. Nora had had a private room of her own. There was a dressing table with makeup lights surrounding a mirror; a couple of comfortable upholstered armchairs, a small cot or a bed on which she could rest if she chose.

  The top of the dressing table was bare. Thompson frowned at it.

  “Looks as if someone cleaned it out,” he said. “There should be jars and bottles, comb and brush, tissues, stuff like that. There were the few times I saw it.” There were drawers on either side of the dressing table. He opened them. They were empty.

  “There are clothes in the closet,” Lawson said.

  “The wardrobe belongs to the club, to me,” Thompson said.

  “Mark Haskell, back at the hotel, mentioned meeting a girl who was Miss Sands’ friend, at St. Vincent’s. Someone named Linda.”

  “Of course!” Thompson said. “Linda probably took her personal things for safekeeping. Once the word was out this place could become a den of thieves. Nora wouldn’t need her perfumes and creams and the stage jewelry she wore. The other broads who work here would probably have cleaned her out. I’ve got a phone number for Linda in my office, let’s try.”

  Lawson told me later he thought Thompson looked like a character out of a horror film, with his Fu Manchu mustache and his beard, and the white smile that reflected no humor.

  Thompson’s office embarrassed Lawson. The walls were decorated with blown-up color photographs of naked girls in suggestive poses, center-fold girls. Lawson felt he shouldn’t be looking at them but he couldn’t help himself.

  Thompson read his mind and laughed. “Some of the best white meat that’s worked for me over the years,” he said. He found a telephone number in a card index file on his desk and dialed a number. “Linda? … Zach Thompson here. … Yes, I know. … Well, of course it’s awful. … Look, luv, there’s a cop here looking for a photograph of Eddie Sands. They thought Nora might have had one in her dressing room. Someone’s cleaned out her personal things and I thought it might be you…. Oh, good…. Is there a picture? … Well, can you trot over here with it? … Yes, we’ll wait.” He put down the phone. “Like we thought, Linda took her things, and there is a picture. She’s bringing it.”

  “Her last name?” Lawson asked.

  Thompson grinned at him. “We don’t give out last names to customers. It’s a kind of life insurance. But in your case …” He shrugged. “Linda Zazkowski. Polish, I imagine.”

  Lawson wrote it down in his notebook. “Address and phone number.”

  “She can give you that if she wants to,” Thompson said. “I protect my people.”

  “Not Nora Sands,” Lawson said, slipping the notebook back in his pocket.

  “Look, Sergeant, I’ve got over two hundred girls working for me across the country, plus bartenders, and musicians, and waiters, and cooks, and cleaning people, and office help, and a whole magazine staff, and God knows what else. It would take an army to protect each one of them every minute of the time. I don’t dig into their private lives unless it has some bearing on my business.”

  “But you knew Nora Sands well. I understand she’s worked for you a long time.”

  Thompson’s face darkened. “She was special,” he said. “Most of my girls work for me for two, three years. They’re burned out at twenty-two or three, or they hook some rich john to take care of them. Nora was different. She got better with age. And she became a first-class manager. I could leave her to run this club for months at a time, if I had to cover my other places. Yes, I knew her well, and trusted her, which is more than I can say for most people who work for me.”

  “She made enemies?”

  “Until yesterday I’d have said ‘No way.’”

  “But now you think—”

  “If it hadn’t been for the boy I’d have said it was just a vicious break-in and robbery,” Thompson said. “The two things have to be connected. I go along with that wise guy up at the Beaumont, Pierre Chambrun. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “So you have a theory?”

  Thompson’s eyes narrowed. “You have to have evidence if you don’t want to get sued out of all your assets,” he said.

  “Just between us,” Lawson said casually.

  “You know some of Nora’s history,” Thompson said. “It’s right under your nose up there at the Beaumont.”

  “Meaning Stan Nelson?”

  “What else?” Thompson said. The mention of Stan Nelson seemed to stir up some kind of anger in the man, Lawson said. “He was Nora’s o
ne big hunk of living outside of my orbit.”

  “He wants to pay for the funerals,” Lawson said.

  “Why not? That’ll make him look real good, won’t it?”

  “In whose eyes?” Lawson asked. “Stan Nelson doesn’t need anything to improve his public image.”

  “Maybe in your eyes,” Thompson said, his smile twisted. “Sooner or later, unless you’ve lost all your marbles, you cops are going to have to start thinking about Mr. Nice Guy.”

  “Why?”

  “What’s the matter with you, Sergeant? You keep asking kindergarten questions.”

  I realize I haven’t described Sergeant Lawson. I guess if I were to say that all Chinese look alike you’d call me a racist. Well, to me all cops look alike, except those who are working undercover and take on a variety of disguises. Lawson is about six feet, athletic build, short sandy hair cut 1940s style. He has the perpetual look of the officer who pokes his head in the window of your car and says, “Let me see your license, please.” Cool, impersonal, reacting outwardly to nothing you say, nothing mirrored in pale blue eyes. If Thompson thought he could jolt Lawson out of his cool he’d picked the wrong man.

  “Why should we be thinking about Stan Nelson?” Lawson asked again.

  “Because Nora Sands was beaten to a pulp by someone who had to keep her quiet,” Thompson said. “Nelson was a big number in her life. Someone searching for something she had on him.”

  “Years ago,” Lawson said. “And we know exactly where Nelson was when Nora Sands was attacked. He was in the Beaumont, under protection and surveillance.”

  “He could afford to hire someone to do his dirty work,” Thompson said. “He’s so rich it hurts to think about it.”

  “Did you think of that yourself,” Lawson asked, “or did you hear on the radio what our Mr. Anonymous told us?”

  “So I heard it on the radio, but I also thought of it myself,” Thompson said. “You didn’t buy the garbage Johnny Floyd dished out to you up there in the Health Club, did you? He helped Nora out to keep her from messing up Stan Nelson’s life? Helped her out with Nelson’s money? Oh, brother!”

  “So how do you figure it?” Lawson asked.

  “She had something on Nelson. They had to buy her off. This time around she went too far.”

  “Are you suggesting Miss Sands was a blackmailer?” Lawson asked.

  “Not as a business,” Thompson said, “but if she needed something for that kid of hers she’d bring any pressure to bear she could to get help.”

  “You were a much older and longer friend of hers than Nelson,” Lawson said. “Why wouldn’t she come to you for help if she needed it? You’d stood by her before, hadn’t you—a lawsuit out in California? Anyway, having worked for you for years she must have had enough on you to send you up for the rest of your natural life.”

  “I don’t have to take that kind of crap from you, Lawson!” Thompson exploded.

  “When I charge you with something I’ll read you your rights,” Lawson said. “All I’m saying is the same shoe fits different feet.”

  “Screw you!” Thompson said.

  “Why would somebody’s hit man kill the boy?” Lawson asked, as though nothing had interrupted their original line of talk.

  “More guessing games?” Thompson said.

  “At this point guesses are all we’ve got to go on,” Lawson said. “Try one on me.”

  Lawson told us afterwards that Thompson seemed to make a considerable effort to control his anger. He made a kind of grinding sound with his teeth before he spoke.

  “So I’ll make a guess for you,” he said. “But mind you, that’s what it is, a guess.” He took a deep breath. “That was Friday night. The boy played stickball late. Nora had already come here to work when he got home. My guess is that he found someone in the apartment, probably searching for something—something Nora had on Nelson. The boy tried to run and they shot him.”

  “There in the apartment?”

  Thompson shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe they grabbed him, took him up to the Beaumont to question him there, found out he knew too much, shot him and dumped him in the pool.”

  “You do know that Nelson, Floyd, and the bodyguard Mancuso were all in the ballroom at the hotel, in the middle of the telethon? Airtight alibis for all three!”

  “The hit man took the kid up there, got his instructions, and carried them out. He’d have had no difficulty getting into the ballroom to talk to one or all of them.”

  “When Miss Sands came up to the hotel on Saturday morning to identify her son she didn’t say anything about her apartment being entered or searched or robbed,” Lawson said.

  “Look, Sergeant, I don’t have to tell you, a cop, that break-in and robberies aren’t unheard of in this neck of the woods. People in this neighborhood would know her habits. If nothing important was missing she wouldn’t have had it on her mind looking down at that dead kid with a hole in his face!”

  “Wouldn’t connect it with what happened to the boy?”

  “He’d apparently been killed in the hotel! He had Stan Nelson’s autograph in his pocket!”

  “And the hit man was waiting for her when she got home. This time there was no doubt about a search.”

  “When the kid was connected with her,” Thompson said, “they couldn’t wait. They had to find whatever she had on them, and fast. They tried to beat her first, to get her to tell them where what they wanted was kept. When she passed out on them they had to take the place apart.”

  “Interesting guess,” Lawson said after a moment.

  “You got a better one?” Thompson asked him.

  Lawson didn’t have to answer that question because at that moment Linda Zazkowski came into the office. She was carrying a small, flat package wrapped in brown paper. Lawson identified himself. He was surprised by what appeared to be a nice girl, deeply distressed by the death of a friend. His notion of a hooker was someone tougher and more callous. She handed in the package.

  “It’s in a frame,” she said. “Nora always kept it on her dressing table.”

  Lawson unwrapped the package and found himself looking at a studio photograph of a handsome, blond boy with a relaxed, engaging smile. If anyone had seen Eddie Sands at the Beaumont, this excellent picture would surely be a help.

  “I came back here from St. Vincent’s,” she said. “Nora was—was still alive. I wanted to be sure no one messed with her things, because I knew she wouldn’t be back for a long time. Oh, my God, Sergeant, who did it?”

  “I wish I could tell you,” Lawson said. “Maybe you can help.”

  “How?”

  “The sergeant’s playing guessing games,” Thompson said.

  “You were her friend,” Lawson said, still deadpan. “You visited her apartment often, according to Mark Haskell, who talked to you at the hospital.”

  “I heard on the radio he was attacked, too,” Linda asked. “How is he?”

  “He’s fine. Lump on his head. He happened to be lucky.”

  “What kind of monster—”

  “About the apartment, Miss Zazkowski.”

  “I often went there on Sundays,” she said. “That’s our day off. We were friends, good friends.”

  “It wasn’t an ordinary burglary,” Lawson said. “The kind of things simple thieves take weren’t touched. There was a TV set, a hi-fi system in the boy’s room. Things like that can be sold on the black market. They weren’t taken. Someone was looking for something that could be kept in small places, drawers, hidden away in the upholstery, in the bedding. The killer-thief was looking for one special object. Do you have any idea what it might have been?”

  Linda shook her head.

  “Did she have a valuable piece of jewelry?”

  “Just fake stuff, stage stuff,” Linda said.

  “She never mentioned anything special, valuable, important that she might have hidden?”

  “I don’t understand. Like what?”

  “Like something she had o
n somebody,” Thompson said. “Something she had on somebody like Stan Nelson.”

  Linda shook her head, puzzled. “In all the time I knew her she never mentioned Stan Nelson to me until we heard him singing on his telethon on Friday night. I never knew about her and him until then.”

  Lawson wasn’t a stupid man. He’d heard my account of my drink with Linda. He’d heard what she’d told me about the “picture palaces” and the “blackmail factory.” He didn’t mention it to her then. She might not be safe if Thompson knew she’d been talking.

  “I’m grateful for the picture,” he said. “It may turn out to be very useful.”

  I’m not a guy who likes to be shut away from the action. About two hours of that Sunday afternoon spent trying to remember something that didn’t want to surface had me climbing the wall. Doc Partridge must have been right; I had a thick skull. The back of my head felt tender to the touch, but not being able to recall something that apparently wasn’t there was giving me a real headache. Everybody else who mattered in the Beaumont was doing something useful. I was just doodling on a legal pad. My best product was a cartoon of what Victoria Haven should have looked like sixty years ago—all bosoms and legs!

  I phoned Chambrun in his office.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” I told him.

  “You don’t like being safe?” he asked.

  “Safe and sane don’t go together,” I told him. “Look, if I circulate a little, boss, talk to people who were around on Friday, it might trigger something. Just sitting here looking at the skyline is for the birds. Let me get back in my own territory.”

  “I’ll talk to Hardy,” he said.

  Ruysdale had brought me a summer suit, among other things, and I was dressed and ready to go places when Sergeant Lawson appeared up on the roof.

  “I hear you’re getting restless,” he said.

  “Not getting—am!” I said.

  “The lieutenant thinks you might be useful circulating,” Lawson said. “You know everyone. The lieutenant thinks staff people may talk to you more freely than they will to cops or even to Chambrun, the boss.”