Golden Trap Read online

  “And Smith means nothing to you?”

  “Nothing. But Atterbury tells me he had a note from Senator Maxim which is how he happened to get a room. We’re full up.”

  “The Senator’s office never heard of him,” Hardy said, “and the Senator is—”

  “—somewhere between here and Honolulu.”

  “How do you know the note was really from the Senator?” Hardy asked.

  “His stationery. His signature is familiar,” Atterbury said. “Of course I suppose it could be forged, but—”

  “We’ve sent his fingerprints to the FBI,” Hardy said. “We’ve done a ballistics test on his gun. It may match up with some unfinished business somewhere. Likewise Lovelace’s gun—which he wants back! You planning to turn this place into a shooting gallery?”

  “I don’t plan to turn him out onto the street,” Chambrun said. “He’s a friend.”

  Hardy nodded. “Well, I’ve got a nice little chore for someone. I understand you’ve got about a thousand guests in the hotel. I want Lovelace to go over the entire list and check off anyone or everyone he knows or has ever heard of. There must be a few people we can write off as probable killers. I remember a few permanents from other days that must be on the safe list.”

  Chambrun glanced at Atterbury who went silently across the thick rug and out of the office.

  “What are you going to do for Lovelace?” Chambrun asked.

  Hardy made a wry mouth. “I’ve got a man outside Haskell’s apartment. Lovelace isn’t to leave those rooms till I say so.”

  “But tomorrow—and the next day and the next day?”

  “There are things we don’t know yet,” Hardy said. “The medical examiner hasn’t pried the bullet out of Smith’s skull. We have to make sure this friend you vouch for didn’t shoot Smith, clean his gun, and walk away from the crime with his fancy story. Oh—I know. He’s an old buddy-buddy. But we check out bullet against gun before we let him loose.”

  Chambrun’s smile was thin. “I approve of anything that keeps him protected. But after you know that isn’t the answer?”

  “Then I have a murder to solve, and when I solve it he may be safe. Let’s not borrow trouble and assume there are half a dozen killers running around loose. But I must admit I don’t have one single damn lead at the moment. No gun, if it isn’t Lovelace’s; no witness who saw anyone come or go; no motive until I know who the hell Smith really is. We just wait and hope to God we come up with an identification quick.”

  “And Lovelace?”

  “Knowing you, I know you have ideas,” Hardy said.

  “Complete surveillance by my staff,” Chambrun said. “We monitor his phone. We grab any messenger who delivers a letter or a package for him. We let him circulate and hope somebody makes a misstep.”

  Hardy nodded slowly. “I see your point,” he said. “Open protection and the killer just waits. I’d like to add a couple guests to your list. The Commissioner wouldn’t like it if I left the entire protection job to you.”

  “Can do,” Chambrun said. “Only your men will have to be pointed out to my staff or they might get a water bottle over the back of the head if they seem too interested in Lovelace.”

  “We got a couple of guys who know how to wear a dinner jacket,” Hardy said. “As soon as I have a report from ballistics that Lovelace is in the clear and he’s gone down your guest list for old friends—or enemies—you can turn him loose” …

  It was nearly five o’clock when I got back to my office on the fourth floor. My gal Shelda was putting the place to bed for the night. Shelda is disconcerting because she is so damned beautiful. She belongs on a magazine cover and not shut away in a fourth-floor office. She is highly efficient, but she disrupts my life because she knows how to make me constantly unsure that she really belongs to me.

  I should have tried to explain about the lipstick smear on my collar long before this, but there hadn’t been time. She gave me a hostile look as I came in.

  “Closing up pretty promptly, aren’t you?” I said.

  “You have had three telephone calls from Marilyn VanZandt,” she said.

  “About that lipstick smear—” I said.

  “She’s reserved a table in the Blue Lagoon for dinner. You’re to be sure to check in with her. I have a date with Curtis Dark in the Trapeze in ten minutes—unless there is an emergency.”

  “There is no emergency involving you,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of making you late for a date with Dark. As for the lipstick, it isn’t really important you should know—”

  “You bastard!” she said.

  “The woman was crying—right in the lobby,” I said. “She put her head on my shoulder and her mouth came off on my collar. I brought her up here to get over the weeps!”

  “Who cares about your collar?” she said. “What’s going on in this place, Mark? Half the police force has been coming and going. Who’s the man in your apartment?”

  “It’s too complicated to tell you in ten minutes,” I said, suddenly enjoying myself. “I wouldn’t have you keep Mr. Dark waiting.”

  “Damn Mr. Dark!” she said.

  “You threw him at me,” I said.

  “Oh, Mark, don’t be a miserable jealous jerk! I did tell Curtis we’d have a drink with him, but—”

  “We?”

  “You and I, you stinker. You always take the wrong things seriously.”

  “Like you—the lipstick on my collar?”

  “All right!” She took her bag out of the desk drawer and slammed it shut.

  “Let’s start over again,” I said. “I come into your office after an exhausting day and I say, ‘Hi, darling!’ And you say—”

  “Hi, darling,” she said meekly.

  “And I say, ‘Come into my office, my sweet, and I’ll you about a murder.’”

  So we went into my office, and after a while I told her about the murder…

  Hardy’s routine with the Beaumont’s guest list struck gold of a kind. I was still telling Shelda, between moments of delightful intimacy, about the murder of John Smith and Lovelace’s problems, when I got a call from Ruysdale asking me to go to my apartment on the double. Shelda went off to keep her date with young Dark, but that was no longer a source of worry to me.

  I found Chambrun and Hardy with Lovelace, who seemed almost glassy-eyed with fatigue. He was coat-less, his tie loosened, and the ashtray on my living-room table was spilling over. He’d been going through a massive card-index file that I recognized as the property of Atterbury. It was the constantly changing list of hotel guests. A stack of some fifteen or twenty cards had been removed from the box. Lovelace’s blank eyes stared at me as if I was a complete stranger.

  “There are twenty-two people registered in the hotel whom George knows,” Chambrun said. “Five of them may deserve our special attention.” He took the top five cards off the little stack and handed them to me.

  There is a code system used by the Beaumont on these cards which tells a great deal more than the name, address, and banking references of the customer. The code-letter A means that the subject is an alcoholic; W on a man’s card means that he is a woman-chaser, possibly a customer for the expensive call girls who appear from time to time in the Trapeze; M on a woman’s card means a man-hunter; O arbitrarily stands for “over his head,” meaning that particular guest can’t afford the Beaumont’s prices and shouldn’t be allowed to get in too deep; MX on a married man’s card means he’s double-crossing his wife, and WX means the wife is playing around. The small letter “d” means diplomatic connections. We have a lot of them at the hotel. If there is special information, it is written out in the form of a memo on the card, and if this information is not to be public knowledge in the front office, the card is marked with Chambrun’s initials, meaning the information is in his private file.

  I looked at the cards Chambrun had handed me. The top one bore the name of Louis Martine; credit unlimited, the small “d” for diplomat, and a note indicating he was
head of the French delegation to the UN. I knew Monsieur Martine casually. I’d done a press release on him when he’d registered with his wife, onetime film star Collette Cardone. I was too young to remember Miss Cardone’s starring years in prewar films, but she was still quite something to look at, and she had that husky low voice typical of so many French women. The Martines were a very elegant, very distinguished couple. I’d been instructed to give them the red-carpet treatment when they registered.

  “Louis Martin was in the Resistance with George and me,” Chambrun said. “He has every reason to remember George with gratitude and affection. Madame Martine may be something else again.”

  There was nothing on Collette Martine’s card to indicate she was of special interest. I looked up at Lovelace.

  “Collette Cardone was a collaborator with the Nazis in Paris,” he said in a flat, toneless voice. “She had no connection with Louis Martine in those days. I don’t think he met her until after the war. Collette was wined and dined by the Nazis. She made propaganda films for them. There were many French people caught one way or another in that trap and they were forgiven for it later. Collette was obviously forgiven by Louis Martine, who did not offer forgiveness easily. But Collette’s father, also a collaborator, was something else again. He was a part of the German secret police, betraying his supposed friends right and left.” Lovelace drew a deep breath. “I killed him. I caught him delivering secrets about the Resistance to a German official. I killed them both.”

  My mouth felt dry. He said it so casually, as though it had been part of the day’s routine.

  “I don’t imagine Collette has ever forgiven me,” Lovelace said.

  “And Monsieur Martine?”

  Lovelace shrugged. “He is married to her. He loves her.”

  I turned to the next card, which carried information on a Dr. Claus Zimmerman. He rated an A for alcoholism, an O for over his head financially, a W for woman-chaser. The further note on the card read: “Traveling on a Swiss passport.”

  “I knew Zimmerman when I was Karl Kessler in Germany,” Lovelace said. His voice seemed to grow unsteady. “He was a doctor at the Auschwitz death camp. He was an experimenter on live human beings—a cold-blooded bastard. He stood by, probably laughing, as thousands of Jews were slaughtered. He was tried for war crimes after the peace, and the evidence of Karl Kessler—me—sent him to prison for a long term. But somehow these people all slip back into the world, fresh and clean. He was paroled. Everyone seems to have forgotten who he was and what he did. He hasn’t forgotten, of course, and he hasn’t forgotten what I did to him.”

  I looked at the next card made out to Anton Rogoff, a Roumanian businessman. He had only checked in the day before. His credit rating was excellent. He had reserved a suite for ten days. A note indicated he was a personal friend of Mr. Battle, the Beaumont’s owner. Kid-glove treatment indicated.

  “He knew me as Gregor Bodanzky,” Lovelace said. “He manufactured munitions during the war. He sold to both sides, without either side knowing it. I exposed him to the Russians, our ally at the time, and he just missed being put up against the wall and shot. He might hold a grudge this long.”

  I glanced at the last card. It was for one Hilary Carleton. Credit excellent, a “d” for diplomat, a note indicating he was on the British delegation to the UN and that he did not want his military title of Air Marshal used. A second note caught my attention. “See Curtis Dark, Carleton’s personal secretary.” At that moment Shelda was having a drink with Dark. I asked about him.

  “He’s only twenty-five or -six,” Chambrun said. “He was an infant when Carleton had his contact with George.”

  “Which was?”

  “I was Michael O’Hanlon, a wild Irishman living in London during the blitz,” Lovelace said. “I was temporarily assigned to the British. There was a leak somewhere about bomber flights. Hilary Carleton was an Air Marshal in the RAF. His younger brother, Digby, had been wounded early in the war, no longer able to fly, and had been assigned to Hilary’s staff. He was an embittered, hard-drinking, woman-chasing, charming young man. It was my job to make friends with him. I as Michael O’Hanlon was supposed to be an Irish war correspondent. I drank with Digby and chased girls with him, and listened to his uncontrolled drunken talk. Eventually I had the goods on him, and I confronted him with it one night when he was pub-crawling with me. The words were only just out of my mouth when he pulled a gun. I thought I was done for. But instead of firing at me he put the muzzle in his mouth and blew the top of his head off. The official line was that he had been AWOL, missed an important assignment, and killed himself. Michael O’Hanlon was listed as a bad influence who led this brilliant young officer into defaulting on his responsibilities. I came face to face with Air Marshal Hilary Carleton at the inquest. He told me then, in his cold British way, that if it took all his life he would find a way to even the score with me.”

  “Does he know the truth now?” Hardy asked.

  Lovelace shrugged. “It wasn’t my business to tell him. Certainly there’s never been any public statement to the effect that Digby Carleton was a traitor, or that Michael O’Hanlon was an Allied agent.”

  “An interesting cast of characters,” I said.

  “Interesting,” Chambrun said, “and to be closely watched. Socialized with if possible. I can handle the Martines. Louis is almost as close a friend as George is. I should think you might take on Mr. Hilary Carleton, Mark.” He smiled very faintly. “I understand your secretary”—he managed to underline the word—“is at this moment having a drink in the Trapeze with Dark, Carleton’s secretary.”

  I felt a little color rise in my cheeks. “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “All these people were put under surveillance the instant George marked them off on the list,” Chambrun said. “Carleton came first and with him Dark. Mr. Del Greco checked in with Ruysdale ten minutes ago.”

  Del Greco was the captain in the Trapeze.

  “You could bring up the subject of Carleton’s brother.” Chambrun said. “Rogoff I will handle. He’s a friend of Mr. Battle’s, as you saw. It would be protocol for me to find out if he is comfortable and happy.”

  “And your German doctor-butcher?” I asked.

  “He spends the evening in the bars, looking over the girls,” Chambrun said. “We will all try to make him feel at home during the evening.”

  I glanced at Lovelace. “There’s Marilyn VanZandt,” I said. “She’s tried to reach me several times during the afternoon, and she’s dining in the Blue Lagoon.”

  “She has to be faced sooner or later,” Lovelace said, his face a grey mask. “Could we dine there too, Mark? I’d rather not be alone with her, and she’s going to see to it that we meet.”

  Hardy made a grumbling sound deep in his throat. “You’re suggesting kid games,” he said to Chambrun. “I’ve got a murder on my hands and another man threatened with assassination. Am I supposed to sit on my behind while you people drink martinis and chat about old times with a bunch of highly probable suspects? I ought to drag every goddam one of them up here now and put ’em over the jumps.”

  “You do that and you scare them off,” Chambrun said. “It would be like surrounding George with the Coldstream Guards. Whoever is interested in him just backs away and waits until we get tired of protecting him—or he gets tired of being anchored in one place. Can you connect any of these people with Smith?”

  “I can’t connect anyone with Smith, or Smith with anyone,” Hardy muttered.

  “Until you can, just let us sniff around the edges,” Chambrun said. “We can’t hurt your case and we may damn well help it.”

  “I haven’t got a case,” Hardy said.

  The phone rang and I answered it. It was Ruysdale. One of Hardy’s men was trying to locate him. He had a ballistics report. Hardy ordered him to come straight to my place.

  Neither Chambrun nor Hardy would have a drink, but I made one for me and one for Lovelace. As I came back with them Hard
y was scowling over the report his man had brought. Finally he looked up.

  “The bullet that killed John Smith didn’t come from Lovelace’s gun or from his own. That means we don’t have the murder weapon.”

  “And it means George is in the clear,” Chambrun said.

  Lovelace took a swig of his Scotch. He wasn’t drinking carefully anymore. “So you see, Lieutenant, it is, to coin a phrase, open season on good old George!” He finished his drink in one more swallow and held out the glass to me.

  “Reports on Smith’s fingerprints and other pertinent data should be back here from the FBI in a couple of hours,” Hardy said. “Play your fancy games if you like, but I’m pulling in the whole lot of them the minute I have one slim lead.”

  Part 2

  One

  THE TRAPEZE BAR IN THE early evening is a way station for people going on to private parties or to one of the hotel’s dining areas. When I got there, looking for Shelda and Curtis Dark, the Trapeze was doing a rushing business. Mr. Del Greco and an assistant maître d’ were moving about among the tables helping the waiters to take orders. Mr. Del Greco prides himself on the swiftness and efficiency with which orders are filled in this room.

  The clientele at the Trapeze are not the ordinary off-the-avenue customers you find in most Fifth Avenue hotels. They are, by and large, not the new rich or the publicity-hungry celebrities from Hollywood or Madison Avenue. The women are expensively put together, dressed for the evening, jeweled. You’ll see more different hair colors there than God ever dreamed of. The men wear the black and white uniform of dinner jacket or tails. There is a curious blankness to the faces. They aren’t there to display themselves to a gawking public. This was their room, not open to autograph hunters or glamor-struck adolescents.

  Two of the half dozen people in the room not yet dressed for the evening were Shelda and young Curtis Dark. I paused in the entry way, watching them. To me they stood out like neon signs in the dark. Shelda is Shelda, her gold hair shimmering in the lights from the glass chandeliers, her basic black dress revealing all the soft and lovely curves of her body. I wondered how much the blankness in the faces of the older men who looked at her, pretending not to notice too much, hid a sudden hunger for lost youth and adventure. Shelda is something! She has a gift for listening with a kind of breathless eagerness that makes you think what you are saying is the most important thing in the world. She had turned on that particular facet of her charm for young Dark.