Random Killer (3 page)

I told him. Hammond strangled with picture wire from behind. An unknown breakfast guest. An unknown woman in his bed. As I talked, Conklin lowered himself into one of the office’s leather armchairs, as though his leg and a half wouldn’t hold him up any longer.

“Where is Bobby?” he asked.

“Bobby who?”

“Geoff’s secretary.”

“Does she wear Chanel Number Five?” I asked.

“Bobby is a ‘he,’ for Christ sake,” Conklin said. “Bobby Bryan. He’s undoubtedly the one who had breakfast with Geoff. He usually had breakfast with him to set up the day.”

“This Bryan scheduled the appointments? The cops wondered about not finding any appointment book, with addresses, telephone numbers, and like that.”

“Geoff didn’t have one. Couldn’t be bothered. Bobby handles all that. He probably had breakfast and took off on errands.”

“After strangling Hammond?” I suggested.

“You goddamned imbecile!” Conklin shouted at me. “Bobby is Geoff’s closest and most trusted friend.”

“Can you suggest who the woman might be who spent the night with Hammond?” I asked.

Conklin gave me a twisted, sardonic smile. “I doubt if any woman spent the night with him. Oh, I’m not saying there wasn’t a woman. I’m saying that she did what she was paid to do and took off, long before breakfast. He couldn’t bear to have women around after—after the fact.”

“Paid?” I said. “You mean he was partial to call girls?”

“Romance wasn’t Geoff’s dish,” Conklin said. “He got what he wanted, paid the bill, and had no obligations. Place like this is always loaded with fancy tarts. Why don’t you ask the head of the union?”

I hate to admit he was right. High-class call girls are always available in the best hotels. It goes with the territory. We police the situation pretty well but it exists.

“Bobby can probably tell you when he turns up,” Conklin said. “He not only arranges Geoff’s business appointments but also his pleasures.”

So where the hell was Mr. Bobby Bryan?

“We thought you were the one who handled Hammond’s affairs,” I said. “Business manager, agent, public relations?”

“I am all those things,” Conklin said, “which doesn’t include picking up women for him, or buying his razor blades, or keeping track of his nonbusiness dates.”

“He’s registered here in your name,” I said.

“With the full knowledge of Mr. Chambrun and your reservations department. There were business reasons for his wanting to stay obscure on this visit.”

“Are those reasons a secret?”

He pushed himself up out of his chair and limped toward me. I swear I thought he was going to take a swing at me. “What are you, Haskell, the cops or something? You can take your questions and stuff them!”

“He’s not the cops,” Chambrun said from behind me. He and Hardy were in the doorway. “But he asks perfectly reasonable and intelligent questions.”

Chambrun walked over to his desk and sat down. Miss Ruysdale pushed a memo pad in front of him on which she’d made notes.

“Hammond’s secretary, one Robert Bryan, has a single room on the fourth floor,” Chambrun said. “He doesn’t answer his phone.”

Ruysdale had been at work while I was talking to Conklin. She never misses.

“So he’s out somewhere,” Conklin said. “Is he supposed to check with you on where he’s going or what he does?”

“No,” Chambrun said. He looked a question at me.

I brought him up to date on Bryan, his habit of breakfasting with Hammond, and his special job, which indicated that the lady who had been in Hammond’s bed wasn’t a lady.

“So we come back to Mark’s last question,” Chambrun said. He fished in his pocket for a cigarette, came up empty, and I handed him the box Ruysdale had given me. She brought him a demitasse of Turkish coffee from the sideboard. He had everything he needed except answers.

“What questions?” Conklin asked.

“Why was he registered in your name?” Hardy asked, speaking for the first time.

“He had the right to stay under cover if he wanted to, didn’t he?” Conklin was still burning.

“We can go on with this at police headquarters if you like, Mr. Conklin,” Hardy said.

“Don’t try to strong-arm me, Lieutenant!” Conklin said.

“I can be patient for about two minutes,” Hardy said.

Conklin seemed to make the intelligent assessment that he was up against someone he couldn’t bluff or browbeat. He retreated to his chair and sat down again. He raised his hands and pressed their palms against his eyes for a second.

“This is a deep personal loss and a severe business crisis for me,” he said, lowering his hands. “I’m afraid I’m not thinking very clearly.”

“Take your time,” Hardy said. He glanced at Ruysdale. “Perhaps Mr. Conklin won’t mind if you turn on the tape recorder, Miss Ruysdale.” Conklin looked up, his eyes narrowed. “Just so we don’t have to go over and over it, Mr. Conklin. If you don’t like it when it’s done, we’ll throw it out.”

The tape recorder is kept in Chambrun’s desk drawer.

Ruysdale turned it on. Believe it or not, I don’t know where the microphones are hidden in that office.

“The question is,” Hardy said, “why was Hammond staying under cover, registered in your name, Mr. Conklin?”

Conklin drew a deep breath. This was for the record. You could sense his need for care and caution. “The poor sonofabitch was famous,” he said. “You know that. Most of the time he enjoyed what that brought him, big shots fawning over him, women being quite open in their admiration, even autograph collectors. He liked being famous. But there were times in his business, in his profession, when privacy was important.”

“His business, I understand, is interviewing important people for television,” Hardy said.

Conklin hesitated. “That’s his business, his profession.”

“But he uses his contacts for personal advantages?” Chambrun asked, his eyes narrowed against the smoke from his cigarette.

“Doesn’t everyone?” Conklin said, his voice harsh.

“We’re still at square one, Mr. Conklin,” Hardy said. “Why what Chambrun calls ‘the John Smith treatment’ this time?”

“He is—or was—about to tape an interview,” Conklin said. “Tomorrow—it was to have been. It was to be with one of the leaders of the Palestine Liberation group. It’s not a popular project in a Jew-ridden city like this. If some Zionist hoodlums got wind of it, Geoff might have been in physical danger.”

Chambrun was suddenly sitting up very straight in his chair. He didn’t like what he’d heard.”

“You are anti-Semitic, Mr. Conklin?” he asked, his voice cold.

Conklin gave him a level stare. “How I feel isn’t important,” he said.

“It’s important to me,” Chambrun said. “I won’t listen to that kind of garbage in this office.”

Hardy ignored the exchange. “It seems he was in physical danger,” he said. “In spades.”

“It’s a controversial subject,” Conklin said. “That stupid, gun-toting Arafat appears before the United Nations and creates a crazy image of the Palestinian people. They have a case, you know. Geoff was going to see to it that their story was properly told. There are certainly people who don’t want that to happen.” He glanced at Chambrun. “Prejudiced people.”

“So help me—” Chambrun began.

“Where was this interview, this taping, to take place?” Hardy interrupted smoothly.

“A sound studio has been rented, over on Broadway,” Conklin said. “Our own technicians would have handled it. It’s been in the planning for about three months. I could have sworn not a word about it had leaked out. Silence was as important to Zadir as it was to us.”

“Zadir?” Hardy asked.

It was Chambrun who answered. “Rhaman Zadir, a Palestinian soldier of fortune. An artist at terrorism.”

Conklin shrugged, as if to say there was no use fighting Chambrun’s prejudice.

“If this Zadir was going to have his story told his way, he had no reason to want Hammond hurt,” Hardy said.

“Of course not,” Conklin said. “But some hot-headed Zionist—”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Chambrun said. “He invites someone who has it in for him for breakfast? Lets an enemy wander around behind him with a garroting wire?”

“I still say it was Bobby Bryan who had breakfast with him, as he often did,” Conklin said. “You’ll see when he turns up.”

“No one broke into thirty-four-oh-six,” Chambrun said. “Hammond let whoever it was in—if there was someone. The person who killed him either had breakfast with him or came in after Bryan left, if you’re right about that. Whoever that person was didn’t bother Hammond, didn’t alarm him. He wasn’t prepared for what happened.”

“What about Bryan?” Hardy asked. “Were there difficulties between them you haven’t mentioned?”

“Bobby is like a son to Geoff,” Conklin said.

“Sons have been known to kill their fathers,” Hardy said. “I could cite you scores of cases.”

“Two people couldn’t have been closer,” Conklin said.

“What about you, Mr. Conklin?” Chambrun asked. “Where were you for breakfast, or just after breakfast? You handle Hammond’s money, his career. Had something gone wrong between you?”

“What bull!” Conklin said.

“You mentioned Zionist hoodlums,” Hardy said. “Did you have someone in mind?”

“The woods are full of them,” Conklin said. “They’re never mentioned in this country’s Jewish-controlled press. It’s always Arab or Palestinian terrorists who get the headlines.”

Chambrun’s eyes glittered in narrowed slits. “Suppose you tell us, Mr. Conklin, how you got that bad leg of yours,” he said quietly.

I have seen hatred mirrored on human faces in my time, but nothing to equal the murderous look that Conklin gave Chambrun. I think it jarred Hardy, too.

“I don’t have time for a private war,” he said.

“I have been accused of prejudice,” Chambrun said, looking smugly happy. “I think it should be made clear to you, Hardy, that Conklin is at least equally prejudiced. Tell him what happened to your leg, Conklin.”

Chambrun evidently knew, but how he had come by the information I had no idea. Ruysdale, I thought, looked surprised, too. When Conklin didn’t respond, Chambrun spelled it out.

“It’s no secret,” he said, “that Hammond has for a long time been an expert observer of the conflict in the Middle East. It’s also no secret that his contacts and his sympathy have been with the Arab cause. There’s no law against that. I suspect, however, that Hammond, and probably Conklin, have gotten rich on information and tips passed on by the Arab oil barons. Hammond has covered the action out there for years, has been informed in advance of anti-Israeli moves by Arab terrorists. He has always been on hand to report them, giving the Arab cause a sympathetic coloring. Not popular in this country.”

“If you knew or would listen to the facts—” Conklin said.

“A few years back Arab terrorists raided an Israeli settlement in the Sinai,” Chambrun said.

“An illegal settlement!” Conklin said.

“Women and children were butchered,” Chambrun said. “Hammond and Conklin were there as observers. Hammond would have to justify it later. That’s what he got paid for. Israeli commandos appeared out of nowhere and the observers had to take it on the run. Hammond made it, but Mr. Conklin found himself cornered. An Israeli commando didn’t have time to take prisoners, but he made sure Conklin would still be around to be picked up later. He fired a round of machine-gun bullets into Conklin’s knee and leg. Hammond staged a rescue before a mop-up squad could take Conklin prisoner, but Conklin no longer has a rational view of Jews, or Israelis, or those who sympathize with them.”

“Would you, in my place?” Conklin almost shouted. He yanked at his right trouser leg, pulling it up, and revealed a shiny aluminum artificial leg. I noticed his sock was fastened to it with some kind of tape. “Would you love people who left you to hop around the rest of your life on a tin foot?”

Chambrun sipped at his demitasse of Turkish coffee and put the cup down on his desk. “Thirty-odd years ago,” he said, “I fought in the French Resistance in Paris. I saw atrocities, cruelties, inflicted by the Nazis on innocent French civilians. I hated the Germans as a people, irrationally and to the death. If, to this day, you hear me take off against a German man, mark it down as not to be trusted. And so, Mr. Conklin, I despise and distrust myself in that area, just as I despise and distrust your remarks about Jews in this city, about the American press, and about ‘Zionist hoodlums’ who may be responsible for Hammond’s murder. You are as sick about Jews as I am about Germans. My point about all this is that Lieutenant Hardy should know that you will even use the death of a friend as a means of striking at a whole nation of people you hate.”

The room was deathly still for a moment except for the faint whirring sound of the tape recorder in the desk drawer. The little red light blinked on Chambrun’s phone, Miss Ruysdale answered.

“Mr. Robert Bryan is in the outer office,” she said.

I got to know and like Bobby Bryan before this grim adventure was finished. He was young, not yet thirty, which is a kid in my book. I am not yet forty. He wears his blond hair crew cut. Short hair is “in” these days. He is so American it’s almost funny, and it’s surprising that he should have become so close to the British-bred-and-educated Geoffrey Hammond. He wasn’t smiling when he came into Chambrun’s office that day, but it was almost the only time I was to see him without a smile near the surface, a mischievous humor that was the key to his personality. He was a Brooks Brothers boy, wearing grey flannels and a summer sports jacket, with a pink button-down Brooks shirt and a moderately gay figured blue tie. There was a stunned look in his normally bright blue eyes.

He seemed relieved to see Conklin present. “What in God’s name happened, Roy?” he asked.

“Someone strangled him with a wire,” Conklin said. Anger had deserted him.

Bobby looked around, bewildered, while Hardy introduced himself and the rest of us.

“Did you have breakfast with Mr. Hammond this morning?” Hardy asked.

“No!”

“Someone did. Do you know who, Mr. Bryan?”

“No!”

“You made his appointments, set up his daily routines for him. And you don’t know who was scheduled for breakfast with him this morning?”