Golden Trap Read online

  “Hilary Carleton answered his door, sleepy—but unmarked,” Jerry said. “He woke up a little when I told him what was cooking. Rogoff is in his suite with three broads. He turned a little pale when he saw me. I guess he thought I’d come to put the arm on him about the girls. He turned instantly cheerful when he found out all I was interested in was murder!”

  “And the doctor?” Chambrun asked.

  “I had to let myself into his room with a passkey,” Jerry said. “He was there, okay. Passed out cold. I slapped him around a little trying to wake him up, but it was no use. Anyhow, the VanZandt girl could have taken that old buzzard with one arm tied behind her.”

  “And no one has seen Lovelace?”

  Jerry’s face was grim. “No one. And you know we had him pretty well covered early in the evening. Every key person on the staff knew him by sight.”

  Chambrun made an impatient gesture. “The key people weren’t stationed on the fire stairs or at the basement exits,” he said.

  “So he got out of the hotel,” Jerry said.

  “You still think he may have attacked Marilyn VanZandt and run?” Chambrun asked.

  “It’s possible.”

  “In spite of the call for a doctor and the blanket?”

  “He blew his top. When he came to and saw what he’d done he got help for the girl and took a powder,” Jerry said.

  “Doesn’t the condition of Anderson’s head do anything for you, Jerry? Lovelace didn’t come off the elevator and slug Anderson from behind.”

  “Then why did he leave the hotel if the guy he wants is holed up here?”

  “We don’t know that,” Chambrun said. “The killer may be someone we haven’t even thought of. It’s looked so easy because there were so many handy suspects.”

  This, it developed, was Lieutenant Hardy’s theory. The killer was not on our list of suspects. He was somebody not living in the hotel. Lovelace had gone after him, and evidently he knew where to look for him in the city. A general alarm was out. Radio patrol cars were alerted. We sat in Chambrun’s office and waited for news. All the barn doors were closed, but no horse. The phones quieted down. The staff had nothing new to report In a way it was like waiting for a bomb to go off.

  Jerry Dodd was blaming himself for something that wasn’t really his fault. He didn’t, in fact, have an army to deploy. He’d counted on Anderson outside my apartment and on me or Marilyn inside to let him know if anyone came or went from there. He would instantly send the men he did have to a danger point. But Anderson had been had, and Marilyn had been beaten helpless while Jerry’s flying squad waited for a report that never came.

  Then the little red light on Chambrun’s phone began to blink, Chambrun picked up the receiver, almost eagerly.

  “Right away,” was all he said, and hung up. “We’re wanted on the fire stairs,” he told Jerry and me. “Hardy!”

  We left the office and walked to the emergency exit at the end of the hall that led to the fire stairs. Hardy leaned over the stair rail from the third-floor landing.

  “Up here,” he said.

  We climbed the enclosed stairway to where the Lieutenant and one of his plain-clothes men were waiting.

  “Stay on the right side,” Hardy called down to us, “Someone went down on the other side—leaking.”

  We looked to the other side of the stairs.

  “Blood!” Chambrun said.

  There was a trail of it; drops on each step. Hardy’s face was grim when we got up to him. His man had a flashlight and he pointed it at the cement wall.

  “Some kind of a gun battle out here,” Hardy said. “Two bullets hit the wall there. There are three other slug marks up on the fourth-floor landing. Your floor, Haskell. The way it looks there was one man here on the third floor and another up on the fourth floor. The one up above is the one who was hit. The blood spots start up there and go right down to the exit that opens out onto the side street. There’s a little pool of blood on the sidewalk. It ends at the curb, like the wounded man hailed himself a cab.

  “How do you read it, Lieutenant?” Chambrun asked.

  Hardy shrugged. “It’s a guess. If I’m wrong you can put it on television. The fellow who beat up Miss VanZandt was scared away from Haskell’s apartment before he finished the job he set out to do.”

  “What job?” I asked.

  “Kill Lovelace,” Hardy said. “The girl was a surprise. He fought with her. It must have made a hell of a lot of racket. It woke Lovelace out of a drugged sleep. Maybe Lovelace called out. This gent didn’t want to meet Lovelace face to face. Lovelace has a reputation with that pea-shooter of his. This gent wouldn’t have objected to shooting Lovelace in his sleep, but he cares for his own skin. So, he powdered.”

  Chambrun nodded, his heavy-lidded eyes studying the bloody trail down the cement steps.

  “He made for this emergency exit,” Hardy continued, “This killer guy. Maybe he waited to listen up there on the fourth floor. Then he heard Lovelace come out of the apartment and he started down. Lovelace caught him on this landing. They started shooting at each other ducking out of range, firing. With a handgun you don’t shoot cigarettes out of a guy’s mouth. You can’t be that good. So then the guy on the fourth floor was hit.”

  “Lovelace,” Chambrun said.

  “The way I read it,” Hardy said. “He was hit bad, because you can see he bled like a stuck pig. The killer boy had a minute to run, down the stairs and out onto the street. Lovelace followed, a lot slower, also out onto the street and into a cab. Maybe the first fellow took a cab or had a car and Lovelace was trying follow. Or maybe Lovelace was dragged into the other fellow’s cab—or car. So we start looking for a wounded man in a city of eight million people who may already be stuffed into an ash can or floating down the East River—if the killer boy took him outside there on the sidewalk.”

  “And the only suspects we have are all neatly tucked away in bed,” Chambrun said bitterly.

  Three

  IT SEEMED THAT THE case had moved out of the Beaumont—out of our hands. There was nothing to do but wait for Hardy and the police to come up with answers. It was then about four in the morning. I couldn’t go back to my apartment. Hardy’s fingerprint crew were going over the whole place, hoping to come up with something that would help identify the killer.

  Chambrun suggested I try to get some sleep somewhere. Reporters would be swarming down on us as soon as the story broke, and handling them would be part of my job.

  I could have gotten Karl Nevers, the night manager, to find me a bed somewhere, but I didn’t feel much like sleep. What I really wanted was to go over to Shelda’s place, pour myself a stiff drink, and get her to massage the kinks out of the back of my neck—it says here. I really wanted to get out of the golden trap that had come up empty for a little while.

  I told Chambrun where I was going. I guess he was too tired to make the wisecrack I expected. Shelda’s was only a ten-minute walk. I could be back that fast if he needed me. I wondered if, when I was gone, the ever-present Miss Ruysdale would massage a few kinks out of the back of his neck.

  It was still dark on the streets. There was a taxi in the rank outside the hotel and I decided to forget what a healthy thing walking is. Shelda’s apartment in the East Seventies is one of those little gems that are getting scarcer and scarcer in the city. It’s in a remodeled brownstone. It’s the ground-floor apartment and it has its own private entrance. Actually it’s a couple of steps below street level and had probably been the kitchen in the original private home, and there was a beautiful little garden at the back, surrounded by a high board fence, soot-stained but brave. Shelda has a bright awning out there covering a little flagstone terrace, some evergreens growing in tubs, and even some flowers in season. Inside there was a large, cool living room, a kitchenette, bedroom and bath. It was an ideal setup for a bachelor girl. Sometimes when I pressured Shelda on the subject of marriage she’d tell me the apartment was what kept her from giving in. She couldn�
�t bear to part with it.

  I had the key to Shelda’s apartment, which might have shocked the maiden aunt from Dubuque. There were times when, in spite of my devotion to the Beaumont, it was pleasant to be able to go somewhere and put my feet up and not be available for an hour or two. I often went there when Shelda wasn’t at home; more often, I have to admit, when she was. But I was privileged to arrive at any time without a fanfare of trumpets. I needed the relaxing effects of Shelda’s oasis before the hotel was inundated by the press and photographers a little later on.

  The taxi let me out and cruised away. There were no lights visible on the street side of the apartment. Shelda had probably long since hit the sack.

  There are a complicated series of locks on Shelda’s front door, since it was so readily accessible from the street. You had to be like someone who has the combination to a safe to get them all open. I knew the combination. After a moment I turned the knob and pushed the door inward. It only moved a few inches. The chain was hooked—the extra chain lock. No light came from inside, which I assumed meant Shelda was at the other end of the apartment, asleep in her downy. I was irritated. She should have known I might be appearing.

  And then Shelda was standing just inside the door peering out at me through the narrow opening.

  “Go away, Mark,” she said.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. She was wearing a dark red housecoat I’d given her for Christmas. Her eyes were very wide and strange-looking. Have I said she has violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor?

  “Come off it, baby!” I said.

  “Please, Mark, I’m tired. I don’t want to see you,” she said.

  “Where’s the gal who kissed me goodnight?” I asked, trying to keep it light.

  “Will you please go, Mark! I don’t want to see you!”

  Her lips were trembling. For a fraction of a second I thought it was anger. She can be angry in such unexpected flashes. Then, somehow, it came over me like an icy wave that she wasn’t angry at all.

  “Please!” she whispered.

  Just as sure as God there was someone behind her in the room—someone there in the darkness.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, making it sound as cheerful as I could.

  “Fine. I just don’t want to see you now,” she said.

  Out of the line of vision from the darkness beyond I made a little okay circle with the thumb and forefinger of my left hand.

  “My lawyer will see you in the morning,” I said, loud, and hoping it sounded like a joke.

  “Goodnight, Mark,” she said, and closed the door in my face. I heard all the locks clicking back into the closed positions. I stood there, my heart thumping against my ribs.

  Living in New York in the Sixties is not always the most comfortable experience you can imagine. Everyday you hear of muggings, of senseless sexual attacks on girls who live alone, the breakings and enterings, the psychotic behavior of young people who have indulged themselves with a little LSD. Life is cheap as hell. Just as sure as God some lunatic had gotten in there with Shelda.

  Find the nearest cop, you say. Well, I did look up and down the completely deserted street. I did see a police call box down near the corner. But in this age of violence you get to think in strange ways. It would take a minute to walk to the call box. It might take another five to ten minutes for a patrol car to show up. Whoever was in there with Shelda, if he was off his rocker, might have been kicked off by my almost getting the door open. He might be wondering if we had managed, somehow, to communicate. Right this minute his hands might be around her throat. I could get in there a hell of a sight faster than a hoped-for policeman.

  I ran swiftly and silently down the alley between buildings. At the far end of the board fence that surrounded Shelda’s garden I took a jump up and clung to the top of the fence. Inch by inch I pulled myself up. I’d gone there because I knew there was a little hedge of evergreens at that far end. I could drop down behind them and stay hidden for a moment while I figured things out.

  When I reached the top of the fence, sweat was pouring out of me from the sheer effort of pulling myself up. I rolled off the top with the idea of landing on my hands and knees in the soft flower bed.

  I landed not in the flower bed but on a body.

  There was an anguished moan, and I scrambled a foot or two away, fighting my own impulse to let out a yell of terror. I could see a dark shape move slightly.

  “For the love of God keep still, whoever you are,” a low voice said.

  I could hear my breath swoosh out of me like a collapsing balloon. The voice belonged to George Lovelace…

  In the last five minutes I had completely forgotten about Lovelace and the Beaumont. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that Shelda’s danger had any connection with the bloodletting at the hotel. It had seemed perfectly clear to me that some neighborhood nut had somehow forced his way into the apartment.

  There was just enough light from the city’s electric aura for Lovelace and me to see each other, crouching like two dogs in the darkness, nose to nose.

  “Mark!” he whispered.

  “In God’s name—” I said.

  “Quiet!” he said. I could sense he was fighting pain. “I—I must have passed out.”

  “Who’s in there with Shelda?” I asked.

  “Shelda?”

  “Shelda Mason, my secretary—my girl!” I said.

  “I didn’t know. He went into this apartment. I—I tried coming at him from this side, but I fell getting over the fence. My leg—”

  “Who went into the apartment?” I said.

  “The Englishman.”

  “Carleton? He’s back at the hotel, under guard. He couldn’t be in there with—”

  “Curtis Dark,” Lovelace said.

  “Dark!”

  Lovelace’s breath exhaled in a kind of shudder. “Marilyn?” he asked.

  “In the hospital. She’s badly hurt, George.”

  “I knew,” he said bitterly.

  My head was spinning around. “Dark!” I said. “Are you telling me he’s the one who attacked Marilyn?” My eyes were getting used to the darkness—or perhaps I was getting a little help from a faint light in the East. I could see his white, haggard face.

  “He’s the one,” Lovelace said. “I was out like a light. You remember the pills you gave me? But I came to, and all hell had broken loose in your living room. I—I didn’t know Marilyn was there. I called out. The struggle ended and I heard the door slam. I—I was in a fog, Mark. I scrambled out of bed, like a drunk. I had my gun. I got out there and found Marilyn. I could see how bad it was. I called the doctor and covered her. My head was getting a little clearer. I wondered how whoever it was had gotten past the brass polisher in the hall. I went out. No one.”

  “We knew you found him on the emergency stair,” I said. “We know you were wounded.”

  “Must have lost quarts of blood,” he said. “My leg. Got a makeshift tourniquet on it in the taxi.”

  “You saw Dark on the stairway?”

  “Yes. His first shot winged me, which is why I didn’t get him. I was half doped and hurting. My shooting wasn’t good. But I saw him, clearly. Marilyn had damaged his face quite a bit.”

  “But why? Where does Dark fit in?”

  “You’ve got me,” Lovelace said. “He’s Carleton’s boy. That’s all I know. He ran. I couldn’t follow that fast. I got to the street just as he was climbing in a taxi. I heard him give the address of this apartment. Then I got a cab myself and came here after him. I didn’t see him go in, so I didn’t know which apartment he’d entered. There were no lights at the front of the house. So I came around here. There were lights in this ground-floor apartment. I saw him inside, with a blond girl helping him to get his face cleaned up. I climbed the wall, fell, and passed out.”

  “They heard you?”

  “I think so.” He turned his head toward the apartment. “No lights now.”

  “He’s still there,” I said. I told him how
I knew.

  “How would he happen to come to your girl’s apartment?” Lovelace asked.

  “They had a date tonight,” I said angrily. “He knew where she lived, the bastard! Shelda wouldn’t hesitate to let him in when he rang the bell. He probably had some story about how his face got scratched and torn—some kind of a barroom brawl. She’d help him get cleaned up.”

  “Marilyn couldn’t talk?”

  “She’s very badly hurt, George.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  “She wanted to stay there while you slept. She fought to protect you.”

  “Oh, God!” he said, his voice shaken.

  “Can you move?” I asked him.

  “Crawl is about all,” he said.

  “You’ve got your gun?”

  “No good,” he said. “I fired it empty at that sonofabitch. Extra cartridges are back in my luggage in your rooms.”

  “I’d probably be just as effective with it empty as loaded,” I said. “You think he heard you when you fell over the fence?”

  “Why else the blackout? Why would your girl turn you away? Because he’s threatened her if she doesn’t play ball with him.”

  “But he can’t get away with it now!” I said “You know. I know. Shelda knows. If Marilyn is eventually able to talk, she knows. He’s had it!”

  “There’s still me,” Lovelace said. “He still means to get me before he’s taken. And he knows I’m out here in this garden.”

  “I’m going for the cops,” I said.

  Lovelace raised his head. “Too late,” he said. “Dawn. You climb that fence he’ll knock you off like the head pin in a bowling alley. That baby knows how to handle his gun, and I suspect his is reloaded.”

  “So we just wait until he decides to come out here and pot us?” I asked.

  Lovelace didn’t answer, I guess because he didn’t have an answer just then. I kept thinking he’d have to come up with something. Most of his adult life had been spent in a climate of violence. He must have techniques I’d never dreamed of. But all he did was lie there in the earth of the flower bed, his grey face twisted with pain.