Random Killer (2 page)

Hammond, in life, had been an almost too handsome man, elegant bone structure; bright, inquisitive, sardonic blue eyes; a strong, straight mouth. What was there now was a horror. Wide-open eyes bulged out of his head. His mouth was grotesquely twisted open and swollen, his black tongue protruded from it. It was like a ghastly mask out of a horror movie.

“Garroted,” I heard Jerry say. “Picture wire. Done from behind the poor bastard.”

“No real struggle,” Chambrun said.

“No. Someone he didn’t suspect came up behind him. He never got out of the chair. In tightening the wire the killer finally pulled it over backwards—toward him.”

“Did the room-service waiter see who the breakfast guest was?” Chambrun asked.

“No. He brought the wagon, Hammond told him to just leave it there in front of the armchair. No one in sight.”

“Man or woman?”

“Hell, boss, I only got here about three minutes before you did,” Jerry said.

“Looked in the bedroom?”

“Only to make sure there was nobody there.”

“You called Homicide?”

“We got lucky,” Jerry said. “Lieutenant Hardy’s on his way.”

Hardy is an old friend who has handled other violences at the Beaumont.

Chambrun looked at me. I had seen the cold fury in his eyes before, the thin, straight set to his mouth. Jerry Dodd had commented on that look once, long ago. “Someone just fouled his nest.” They say a drowning man sees his whole life parade before him just before he goes down for the third time. Chambrun, I knew, was seeing projections of the future. He was seeing what would happen to our carefully disciplined existence when the word got out that Geoffrey Hammond had been murdered in the Beaumont.

“How long have we got, Mark?” he asked me.

He meant how long did we have until the news broke.

“Depends on how urgently somebody tries to reach him,” I said.

“Alert the switchboard. Get them to take messages. Anything to stall.”

“If Hardy comes steaming up here in a police car with the sirens going, we’ve had it,” Jerry Dodd said.

“Hardy won’t do that,” Chambrun said. He knew his man.

T
HE NEXT HOUR COMES
back to me, as I write this, in disconnected fragments. I was reminded of something I should have remembered by Mrs. Veach, the chief daytime operator on the hotel switchboard. Geoffrey Hammond, on this particular visit to the Beaumont, was a “John Smith.” His presence was to be kept secret. He was registered under another name. As far as anyone knew, who didn’t know Hammond by sight, the occupant of Room 3406 was one Roy Conklin. “Roy Conklin” wasn’t a phony name, however. There was a real Roy Conklin and he was Hammond’s business manager, agent, publicity genius. I knew Conklin by sight from other Hammond visits to the Beaumont, a prematurely grey, bitter-faced man, who walked with a severe limp, the result of war wounds I’d been told. I don’t think I knew what war.

“Conklin” had been registered in 3406 for four days, and Mrs. Veach couldn’t recall any in-coming phone calls. Certainly there had been no calls for Geoffrey Hammond, who wasn’t supposed to be there.

None of this, you understand, was particularly unusual. The fact that Hammond was registered under his manager’s name was noted on the registration card. It was not a secret kept from the front desk or from Chambrun, for that matter, who had seen the card the morning after Hammond was registered. We had covered up for famous people like this time and time again.

Roy Conklin was going to have to be found and notified that his distinguished client was dead. That could wait, however, until Lieutenant Hardy was in charge, which would be very shortly.

Jerry Dodd’s office would have notified the various command posts that we had a disaster. My job was to fend off the outside world for the moment. The minute I hit the lobby I sensed that Mr. Atterbury on the front desk, Johnny Thacker, the day bell captain, and his crew were aware of what was up. No one asked me what was new, but the question was on half a dozen faces.

I was looking for the unwanted sign that the press was in attendance. It was only a little after ten, which is normally early for news people who are just looking for scraps of gossip. They usually don’t appear until the lunch hour when the famous and notorious gather for the first martini of the day. Today, worse luck, was different. The oil company executives were meeting in the Palm Room, and where there is oil in this day and age there is news. Half a dozen reporters who weren’t gossip collectors were watching the corridor that led to the Palm Room, among them Dick Barrows of the
Times,
who is a very shrewd operator indeed. He spotted me as I stood there wondering how to keep them occupied when Hardy arrived. All they had to do was get a glimpse of the Homicide man and we had trouble.

“Hi, Mark,” Dick Barrows said. “What’s new?”

“It’s the third of May nineteen seventy-eight,” I said. “It’s the first time it’s ever been that.”

“Ho, ho, ho!” Dick said. He is a pleasant-faced, sandy-haired guy with very direct grey eyes. “Kid me not, friend. I have an instinct for the offbeat.”

“Oil prices are going up—or down,” I said.

“Screw oil prices,” Dick said. “I see one of your security people report something to Atterbury on the front desk, and Mr. A promptly goes into shock. I see the same security man report to your bell captain, who passes it on to his boys, who all suddenly take on the look of CIA agents who have blown their cover.”

“Tip on the feature race at Belmont,” I said. “They’re all anticipating making a fortune on a long shot. The security man is the hotel bookmaker.”

Dick was looking past me across the lobby. “And I now see a well-known homicide detective wandering toward the elevators as though he was looking for the men’s room. What room is he really looking for, Mark?”

“Keep those other guys distracted and I’ll give you the inside track,” I told him.

He was watching Hardy disappear into an elevator. “I trust you with my life but not with my career,” he said. He was watching the floor indicator move upward outside the shaft of the elevator Hardy had taken. It would stop at thirty-four and that would be that. “Who collected what, Mark?”

“We need a little time for Hardy to get plugged in,” I said.

“Who?” Dick said, still watching the indicator.

I had to play ball with him or have the whole army down on us. “Special to the
Times,”
I said, “in return for keeping it strictly to yourself.”

The elevator indicator had stopped at thirty-four. Dick gave me a twisted little smile. “Scout’s honor,” he said.

“Geoffrey Hammond,” I said.

Dick shook his head. “I share nothing with that bastard,” he said.

“You’re not listening,” I said. “Hardy is here to investigate Geoffrey Hammond’s murder.”

Dick looked at me, his eyes widening. “You’re kidding!”

“I wish I was,” I said. “Thirty-four-oh-six in fifteen minutes—if you keep the others off us.”

Dick grinned. “Chambrun must be boiling,” he said. “No one that important has a right to get killed in his hotel.”

Our Richard wasn’t far off the mark. But, I noticed, not shocked by the news. I was to realize before too much time had passed that Geoffrey Hammond was not loved by many people.

A note about Betsy Ruysdale, who was my next port of call. She looks taller than she is because she carries herself so well, straight and lithe. I’m guessing that she is in her late thirties, but she could be more or less. Someone has said that the older a woman gets the better she gets—up to a point, I suppose. Betsy Ruysdale is well within that point, whatever it is. She is handsome, well groomed, her hair a reddish blond. She dresses conservatively in the office. Chambrun wouldn’t want messenger boys hanging around making eyes at some chick. I’ve seen her at a couple of swank evening functions in the hotel, dressed to kill, and she is gorgeous. I might have had dreams about her if I hadn’t been convinced that Chambrun was both her business and her private life.

As a secretary she is fantastic. As far as Chambrun is concerned she reads his mind. He orders something done and it has been done before he mentions it. He wants something from the office files and Ruysdale already has it in her hands. She and Chambrun are tuned in on exactly the same wavelength. About a year ago Chambrun disappeared, without explanation, from the hotel for twenty-four hours. The. person who took charge in his absence was Betsy Ruysdale. No one debated it. Every detail that Chambrun had at his fingertips was also at hers.

Betsy Ruysdale is a very special person and, secretly, I am quite mad for her. But that morning was not a time for daydreams.

One of the girls from the stenographic pool was at Ruysdale’s desk in the outer office when I got there. Ruysdale was in Chambrun’s office, at the command post. Evidently orders were coming down from 3406.

“We’d better try to locate Roy Conklin,” I said.

“He’s on his way,” Ruysdale said.

I should have known. I told her that I’d had to spill the beans to Dick Barrows in order to keep the other reporters out of our hair. She nodded approval, I thought.

“Hammond evidently wasn’t popular with his peers,” I said.

“To put it mildly,” Ruysdale said.

“It would seem he was having breakfast with someone who didn’t like him,” I said.

She gave me a thoughtful look. “Jerry doesn’t think we can assume that,” she said. “The person who had breakfast with him could have left before the killer appeared on the scene. Odd thing, Mark. Hammond was a very busy man, on the go every second—appointments, interviews—but Jerry hasn’t found any kind of appointment book, any addresses or telephone numbers. First thing he looked for, to see who was due for breakfast.”

“Maybe Conklin handles all that for him.”

Ruysdale tapped a green leather notebook on Chambrun’s desk. “Pierre keeps more in his head than any man I ever knew,” she said. “But appointments and special phone numbers are written down for him. I do it for him if he neglects to. Conklin isn’t around to do my kind of job.”

“Jerry thinks somebody stole an appointment book?”

“I’d steal it, wouldn’t you, if you didn’t want anyone to know you’d had breakfast with him?”

“Sounds logical,” I said.

“No other signs of robbery,” Ruysdale said. “Money, watch, jewelry like pearl dress studs, all untouched. But no record of any appointments.”

“He must have had appointments lined up for the day,” I said. “He wouldn’t be sitting around playing solitaire in his room, even if he was keeping his presence here a secret. Where did you find Conklin?”

“At his office, just a few blocks down Madison Avenue. He should be here any moment.”

“I’d better get upstairs before Dick Barrows starts hammering on the door of thirty-four-oh-six,” I said.

Ruysdale opened a drawer of the desk and produced a flat box of Egyptian cigarettes. “Better take these to Pierre,” she said. “In his present state of mind he should be just about out of them by now.”

She knew his needs before he was aware of them himself.

Lieutenant Hardy, a big, blond, rather clumsy-looking man, appears more like a slightly bewildered professional fullback than a very shrewd expert in the field of crime. Whatever he looks like, he is one of the very best at his job. He and Chambrun work well together because their approaches are so different. Chambrun is a hunch player whose hunches are almost always solid. He is mercurial, arriving at answers without bothering to gather facts that will prove out his instinctive processes. Hardy is an evidence gatherer, slow, plodding, but never leaving a single stone unturned until he has covered every inch of the territory. He knows he has to build a case for a district attorney. Chambrun only wants an answer for himself. Combining their talents they are a very tough team.

One of Jerry Dodd’s security boys was on guard outside 3406, but I was ushered in without question. The living room was crowded. Evidently Hardy’s homicide crew, fingerprint boys, and police photographers, had come up by a service elevator and were hard at work. A young Chinese doctor from the medical examiner’s office was kneeling beside what was left of Geoffrey Hammond. Hardy didn’t waste time.

The blond detective, Chambrun, and Jerry Dodd were in a huddle at the far end of the room. I joined them, weaving my way through the army of technicians. Hardy gave me a cheerful nod.

“How come you cruised through the lobby instead of coming up the back way with your boys?” I asked him. “Dick Barrows of the
Times
spotted you and I had to fill him in to keep a whole army off our backs.”

“I wanted to be seen,” Hardy said.

“By whom?”

“I wish I knew,” Hardy said.

I had to let that one lie where it was because Chambrun, cold as ice, was at me.

“Roy Conklin is on his way,” he said. “Hardy doesn’t want him up here. He’s to be taken to my office. Hold his hand until Hardy and I can get there. You might ask him about women.”

“What women?”

“A woman spent a good part of the night here—may have breakfasted with Hammond.”

“How do you know?”

Jerry Dodd grinned at me. “Go smell the bedsheets and the pillowcase,” he said. “Unless Hammond wears Chanel Number Five, he had company.”

“Now!” Chambrun said to me.

Mine not to reason why. I made tracks for the second floor and Chambrun’s office.

Roy Conklin was already there, storming up and down Chambrun’s office on his gimpy leg, shouting at Betsy Ruysdale and two security boys who were preventing him from taking off. I have described him as prematurely grey, bitter faced. He was in a rage now.

“You can’t keep me here,” he was telling the world. “It’s false arrest. I’ll have you all and this hotel sued out of your socks before I’m done with you.”

“Mr. Chambrun and Lieutenant Hardy will be here in a few minutes,” I told him. “I’m Mark Haskell, public relations for the hotel. Hammond’s room is full of technicians at the moment. No place to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk! I want to see for myself!”

“You wouldn’t like it,” I said.

“Maybe you’d be good enough to tell me just what has happened,” Conklin said. “Nobody else has bothered.”