Birthday, Deathday Page 5

  “Sounds pretty tight. Can you trust your own people?”

  “The ones assigned to this job, yes. I’d bet my life on each of them. No one will perform any service for General Chang who isn’t known to us for a long time, completely trustworthy.”

  I signaled the waiter for a second round of drinks.

  Peter leaned back in his chair. “I’ll bet you’re looking around as you talk for a five-foot-eleven-inch man, weighing about a hundred and sixty-five pounds, whom you don’t know,” he said.

  “I guess that’ll stay true till this is over,” I said. “What about you?”

  He cocked his head slightly to one side. “I can hear things that you can’t hear,” he said. “Conversations that are just a mumbling sound to you are rather embarrassingly clear to me. There is a couple sitting about fifteen feet away from us, to my left. Can you describe them to me?”

  I knew the couple he was talking about. The man, a florid, white-haired guy in his sixties, was the president of a big machine-tool manufacturing company from the Mid-west. He came to the Beaumont about four times a year and he spent money like water. The letter W was marked on his card—woman chaser. The girl with him was a very expensive call girl. Oh, we see call girls in the hotel. You may ask why we allow it. These girls, called “hookers” by Wexler, are a part of our world. As long as they don’t get potted and don’t make public scenes there isn’t much we can do about it.

  I told Peter who they were, what they looked like. The girl was a very lush redhead.

  Peter smiled. “Would it surprise you to know that the gentleman is urging her to come upstairs with him before dinner, where they will take off their clothes and she will delight him by whipping him?”

  “Good God!”

  “I’m not always sure that I enjoy this acute hearing,” Peter said. Even as he spoke my industrialist put a twenty-dollar bill down on the table and he and the girl walked out together.

  “He won the day,” I said. “They’re leaving.”

  Peter shrugged. “He’s paying for it. Why not?”

  At the doorway our couple was almost knocked down by Jerry Dodd. He stood there, looking around, spotted us, and came toward us, almost running. I knew him well enough to be certain something out of the ordinary had happened. He reached us, stood by my chair breathing hard.

  “Li Sung,” he said.

  “What about him?”

  “He went out a window from somewhere high up,” he said. “Very dead.”

  I heard Peter’s breath exhale in a quavering sound. He was gripping the edge of the table with both hands.

  “He’s here,” he said. “Neil is here!”

  Part Two

  CHAPTER 1

  THERE WAS NO SIGN of any excitement in the Trapeze or in the main lobby of the hotel. Li Sung had spattered himself on the pavement on the north side street. Most people came into the hotel through the Fifth Avenue entrance. I saw that Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, was standing by the revolving door on the side street. He had evidently locked it shut so that hotel patrons, unaware of violence, wouldn’t walk out into the center of police, photographers, and the smashed body of Li Sung, covered by a canvas tarpaulin.

  Sudden death is not a rarity in a big city hotel. There are always those elderly gentlemen who have heart attacks in the wrong rooms; the Beaumont, most expensive of all the city’s hostelries, quite naturally had a large clientele of older people, and older people die unexpectedly; and suicides are not uncommon. Lonely and desperate people are apt to go to a hotel, away from friends and family, when they are contemplating self-destruction. They stay alone, locked in their rooms, trying to decide what to do with themselves. Then there is the bathtub with its hot water and a razor blade, or the sleeping pills, or the open window, or, not infrequently, the belt or the bathrobe cord and the heels kicking together above the level of the floor.

  The one or two people who were stopped at the side door by Mike Maggio were told that someone had jumped. Neither Jerry nor Peter nor I considered for a moment the possibility of suicide. Jerry is an old hand at spotting dangerously depressed people. Mr. Atterbury and Karl Nevers, the chief desk clerk, and Johnny Thacker and Mike Maggio have a nose for it. I know of at least a dozen would-be suicides who have been stopped because these trained people knew the signs and acted accordingly. Li Sung, arrogant, in a position of power, riding the crest of Chang’s diplomatic position, would never in God’s world have jumped willingly out a top-story window

  One of Jerry’s men stopped him as we were approaching the elevators.

  “We still don’t know where he took the dive from, Jerry,” the man said.

  “Keep looking.”

  “Right. They’ll need a vacuum cleaner to pick him up. He’s spread around the sidewalk like a smashed pumpkin. One item. He was armed, but the gun is still snug in its holster.”

  “I’m on my way to the boss’s office,” Jerry said. “Call me there if there’s anything new. Cops on the job yet?”

  “Dozens of ’em. I called Lieutenant Hardy, like you said, in case it should be a homicide.”

  “There’s no ‘in case’ about it, Mac,” Jerry said.

  Miss Ruysdale, looking cool and efficient, waved us into Chambrun’s office. She should have been home long ago, but there she was. That is the extraordinary thing about her. She is always there when she is needed. I wondered what had kept her late tonight.

  Wexler was with the boss, and a man introduced to us as Agent Larch of the FBI, a sleek, dark, quiet man.

  “I found them in the Trapeze,” Jerry said, gesturing toward Peter and me. I introduced Peter.

  There were polite hellos.

  “No question that it’s Li Sung?” Wexler asked.

  “None,” Jerry said. “There was a wallet in his coat pocket, diplomatic passport, the works. He was carrying a gun.”

  “He had a gun when he visited us,” I said. “Shoulder holster, like I told you.”

  “You know yet where he came from?” Larch asked.

  “Not yet,” Jerry said. “There are over five hundred windows on that side of the house. We’re starting from the top, the way he smashed up. A few stories up wouldn’t have spread him around the way he is. Most of the rooms are occupied. Takes time. You have to explain to people before you can get in.”

  “Fire escapes?”

  “Only at the very low levels,” Jerry said. “Up above you use the inside fire stairs in an emergency.”

  “It couldn’t have been easy to force him out a window,” Larch said. “He was a big man, an athlete, a trained fighter, karate expert. I wouldn’t have wanted to tackle him myself.”

  “The gun is still in its holster,” Jerry said. “He evidently didn’t get to draw it.”

  “We’ll have to wait for the medical examiner to know whether the fall killed him—or something else,” Larch said. “I don’t think anyone could have forced him out a window while he was alive—or conscious. You’ll find a bullet in him, or some other kind of wound.”

  “If you can put him together to find it,” Jerry said.

  Wexler looked very tired. “There’s going to be hell to pay,” he said. He turned his somber eyes toward Peter, who was standing, rigid, beside me. “You can imagine the first thought I have, Mr. Williams. From the information we have, Li Sung was one of General Chang’s men in South America five years ago.”

  “He may have been,” Peter said, in a faraway voice.

  “Would Neil Drury know that?”

  “He’d know that anyone connected with Chang, then or now, was his enemy,” Peter said.

  Larch lit a cigarette and let the smoke out in a long sigh. “Look here, Mr. Williams,” he said, “you’ll have to understand that I can only guess what your own feelings are. I have to assume that Li Sung’s death isn’t a heartbreak for you.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Nor would you go into mourning if anything happened to General Chang.”

  “No.”

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p; “Yet you came here to help us prevent it.”

  “Not exactly,” Peter said. “I came here to try to help keep Neil Drury from walking into an almost certain death-trap set up by Chang.”

  “I don’t follow,” Larch said.

  “It’s quite simple,” Chambrun said, speaking for the first time, with some impatience. “Mr. Williams thinks Chang would plan to let Drury get through to him, and then mow him down.”

  “Is that it, Mr. Williams?”

  “That’s it,” Peter said. “You want the truth? If I thought Neil had a chance of succeeding I’d be home, minding my own business.”

  “The first thing Williams said when I told him what had happened was, ‘He’s here. Neil is here,’ ” Jerry said.

  “You have any way to know that for certain, Mr. Williams,” Wexler asked.

  “It was my first thought,” Peter said. “I can’t know it for certain. There are plenty of poor bastards around the world who’d like to see Chang—or Li Sung—dead. Neil’s only one of a small army. One very dedicated member of that army.”

  “You haven’t heard from him recently?”

  “Not since about a month after South America. Almost five years.”

  “If he did this would you help him to get away if you could?” Larch asked.

  “I would.”

  “It’s hard to figure out just whose side you’re on, Mr. Williams,” Larch said.

  “Not at all. I’m on Neil’s side.” Peter’s voice shook slightly. “I would help get him to Chang if I knew how; I’d help him to escape if I could. I came here to stop him from trying the impossible. I don’t want him to lose his life failing.”

  “Maybe he didn’t fail this afternoon.”

  “If it was Neil, he succeeded because no one was protecting Li Sung and Li Sung didn’t think of himself as a target, so he was careless. Chang will have his own Chinese wall around him, as well as you people. Another story.”

  Wexler shook his head. “I’m not sure we can risk accepting your help, Mr. Williams.”

  “That’s up to you,” Peter said.

  The door behind us opened and I turned around to see Miss Ruysdale standing there. “Mr. Wexler, there is a man of yours here, a Mr. Craven. He has a young woman with him, a Miss Malone.”

  “Please ask them to come in,” Wexler said.

  That was when I first saw Laura Malone.

  I set that sentence apart because it was a moment in my life I’m not going to forget. Not ever.

  I can’t describe her, because I don’t have words that will convey exactly what she was like. She was not tall, five feet four or five. She was wearing a dark dress, skirt just down to the middle of her kneecaps. She was carrying a tan cloth coat over her arm. Her hair was blonde, a golden blonde, worn shoulder length. Her eyes were wide, a kind of a lapis blue—dark blue, with the suggestion of banked fires. Her mouth was wide and generous, and I thought her lips trembled slightly as she faced us. Her figure was perfect—not overlush but perfect. Pass her on the street and you’d have thought she was an unusually pretty girl, but nothing sensational. Find yourself looking into those extraordinary eyes and you were hooked. She seemed to aim her total attention on Peter, who hadn’t turned her way.

  There was the babble of Wexler’s hurried introductions. I don’t know what he said because I couldn’t take my eyes off Laura. She came toward me, went past me, and put her hand on Peter’s arm.

  “You are Neil’s Peter Williams?” she asked. Her voice was low, husky. I found it enchanting.

  “Yes,” Peter said, not reacting.

  “We talked once, long ago,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “Someone to talk to.” Then, when he didn’t answer. “Are you angry with me for coming here to help them stop Neil?”

  He turned his head toward her and the black goggles focused on her. “It’s all we can do if we care for him,” he said.

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” she said. She took her hand away from his arm and turned to Wexler. “How do we do what we have to do?”

  “You think, Miss Malone, you’d know Drury no matter how changed his face is?” Wexler asked.

  “If he was in the same room with me I would know it,” she said.

  “How?”

  “We were in love,” she said simply. “I am still in love. I would know.” She saw the doubt in Wexler’s face. “I would know his hands if I saw them. I’d know the little characteristic gestures he makes. I’d know the way he holds his head, as if he was listening. Like Peter, I’d know his voice no matter how he disguised it. I’d know, that’s all.”

  “We think he is, or will be, here in the hotel,” Chambrun said. “He will have to study the procedures we’ve set up to protect General Chang. It seems to me you will have to begin an endless circulating in the public places in the hotel. He will have to eat and drink. He will have to watch and study. If you’re right about yourself, you’re bound to encounter him sooner or later.”

  “Please God!” she whispered.

  “They think Neil may already have killed one of Chang’s men,” Peter said.

  “I wonder,” Chambrun said. “I wonder if he would risk that luxury.”

  “He would if Li Sung recognized him,” Jerry said.

  “If Li Sung could recognize him, then Miss Malone and Mr. Williams are a cinch to make it,” Chambrun said. He turned to me. “I’ve arranged a room for Miss Malone.”

  “I’ve already been there. It’s very nice, thank you,” she said.

  “Then I suggest, Mark, that you instruct Miss Malone and Mr. Williams where to begin circulating. We need to find Drury, and find him fast.”

  The door behind us opened once more and there was Miss Ruysdale again, ushering in Mr. Roy Worthington Foster, the State Department man. He was pale with anger.

  “How could you have let this happen, Wexler?” he asked. He paid no attention to anyone else.

  “We had no way of knowing that Li Sung was in this part of the world until a short time ago. Nobody notified us he was coming in advance of the General. Mr. Haskell told us less than an hour ago that he and Mr. Williams had been visited by Li Sung. Larch and I were trying to locate Sung when we got the word that he’d gone out a window.”

  “The word has gotten to General Chang,” Foster said.

  “How? Who passed it on?” Wexler asked.

  “God knows,” Foster said. His shoulders sagged.

  “It’s not hard to guess at,” Chambrun said. “There’s probably been someone in the hotel for days, under cover, smelling out the lay of the land for the General.”

  “There are no Chinese registered in the hotel at the moment,” Larch said.

  Chambrun looked disgusted. “It wouldn’t be a Chinese,” he said. “It wouldn’t be anyone obvious.”

  “Well, there is hell to pay,” Foster said. “Chang has been on the phone to Washington. If we can’t protect his people he will take on the job himself—and damn the torpedoes. He’s not waiting till tomorrow. He’s on a jet plane now, arriving in about an hour. Are his quarters ready for him?”

  “They can be,” Chambrun said.

  “And the protective setup?” Foster turned to the CIA man.

  “Can do,” Wexler said.

  “If he isn’t satisfied with what you’ve arranged for him you’re going to have to accommodate him,” Foster said. “That’s from the very top in Washington.”

  “We could, of course, just turn over the country to him,” Chambrun said.

  Wexler’s smile was tired. “ ‘Ours not to reason why, Ours but to do and die.’ ”

  “Well, try to die some other place,” Chambrun said. He turned to Jerry. “You’ll have to make your bomb search now, Jerry. Notify Atterbury. Notify Mrs. Kniffin, the housekeeper on twelve. An hour doesn’t give us very much time.”

  Larch followed Jerry out of the office, muttering about organizing his own men. Wexler didn’t move. He was fumbling w
ith his pipe and pouch. “I’m sorry about this, Chambrun,” he said. “Between you and me, it’s as if your hotel was about to be taken over by gangsters. There’s nothing I can do to prevent it.”

  “Over my dead body,” Chambrun said. His glittering black eyes were buried deep in their pouches. He glanced at his wristwatch. “We haven’t much time. If you’ll excuse me, Wexler, I have my own arrangements to make.”

  “Don’t try to fight the General, Chambrun,” Wexler said. “You can’t win.”

  “I have only one interest in this matter,” Chambrun said. “The routines of my hotel are not to be disturbed; my guests are not to be disturbed. I suggest you tell the General that when he arrives. Let him try to disrupt our normal functioning and he may find out some of the facts of life about the techniques of resistance.”

  “Good luck,” Wexler said. “But don’t overplay your hand. Let me know the minute the twelfth floor is ready for occupancy. The General won’t want to be kept waiting.”

  “If he has to wait, he will wait—till we are ready,” Chambrun said.

  Wexler went out, a trail of pipe smoke drifting behind him.

  “You want us to start circulating?” I asked.

  “Wait,” Chambrun said. He pressed a button on his desk and Miss Ruysdale appeared.

  “You heard it all, Ruysdale?” Chambrun asked.

  She nodded I realized the intercom switch on his desk had been open the whole time.

  “I want to be present during the bomb search,” Chambrun said. “Please convey some orders for me.”

  Ruysdale’s notebook and pad were at the ready.

  “You will contact Mr. Fresney in the kitchen,” Chambrun said. “There will be no service to the twelfth-floor rooms without me, or Jerry, or Mark—or someone personally designated by me—going along to the rooms. Going into the rooms with the orders. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll get in touch with Mrs. Kiley.” Mrs. Kiley is the night supervisor on our telephone switchboards. “All calls in and out of the twelfth-floor setup will be monitored. That order will be conveyed to Mrs. Veach, the day supervisor.”