Walking Dead Man (16 page)

“Then you must see that I have no choice but to hold you on suspicion of murder.”

“I’d think you were an idiot if you didn’t,” Cleaves said. “I’d feel very much better if you did, because when it’s tried again, I’d have the perfect alibi.”

Chambrun stirred in his chair. “The whereabouts of your physical body, Mr. Cleaves, isn’t very important to us. We know you didn’t fire the shot at George Battle last night. There is nothing in your history to suggest that you are an expert in the field of explosives. If you are guilty of these two attempts on Battle’s life, it is as an employer of an assassin and a bomb expert.”

“That will take some proving,” Cleaves said, undisturbed.

Chambrun reached out and put his hand down on the copy of
A Man’s World
which lay in front of him on the desk. “I haven’t read this, Mr. Cleaves, a deficiency which I expect to remedy in a short while. What is there about it that so interests and disturbs George Battle?”

“I wish to God I knew,” Cleaves said. “You know him, Chambrun. You know how devious he is. I’ve never thought he wanted to finance the film. Quite the contrary. I think he wants to stop its being made. He’s kept us dangling for nearly a month with absurd conditions. He’s managed to block other ways of getting money. Knowing him, I’m certain he has no intention of financing us.”

“He’s admitted that to us,” Chambrun said.

Cleaves was suddenly animated. He leaned forward in his chair. “Why, for God sake?”

“That he hasn’t told us. I assumed you could.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Potter laughed, wriggling in his chair, his short legs dangling above the floor. “Maybe Richard has
ESP
,” he said. “Maybe he revealed something in his book about Battle without knowing he was doing it.”

“That’s pure crap, Peter,” Cleaves said. “If I had something on Battle, I wouldn’t hide it in a fiction story. I’d let him have it right between the eyes.”

“You want him dead,” Kranepool said.

“Would you have a love affair with the man who paid to have your father killed?” Cleaves asked.

“Or with the man who killed him?” Chambrun’s voice was quiet. “Your motive is so clear-cut, Cleaves.”

“As far as you are concerned, Chambrun, I had my chances at you and for some reason, God knows what, I couldn’t go through with it. Perhaps if I got my chance at Battle, the same thing would happen. Perhaps I’m simply not a killer when the chips are down.”

“But if you could damage him with your book—?”

“I would, and glory in it. But, so help me, I don’t know what there is in my novel that disturbs him.”

“What about you, Potter?” Kranepool asked. “You worked for him, you hated him, you quit him.”

“He laughed at my deformity,” Potter said. “I hated his guts for that. But killing him wouldn’t take the hump off my back or make me six feet tall.”

“So you quit him?” Kranepool asked. He went on without waiting for an answer. “There are strange responses to Mr. Battle. People hate him, fear him, and yet the people who work close to him seem to be unusually faithful. Allerton had worked for him for twenty years; Dr. Cobb about the same length of time; Butler, the bodyguard, for something more than twelve; Gaston, the chef, for eight. That suggests he isn’t too bad to work for below the surface. They stand by him, and he counts on them completely.”

Potter laughed. “None of you, unless it’s Mr. Chambrun, really understand George Battle,” he said. “He doesn’t count on love and kisses to get what he wants. I’ll bet my best silk undershirt Allerton and Cobb and the others haven’t stood by him all this time out of gratitude or affection.”

“Meaning what?” Kranepool asked.

“Meaning Battle has something on them,” Potter said. “If anything happens to Battle, these people will all go into a carefully prepared meat grinder. I’ll bet if you go back in their histories—and I’m just guessing, you understand—you’ll find the good Dr. Cobb was guilty of some sort of malpractice which would put him in jail for the rest of his life; the others have some kind of ax hanging over their heads. Battle counts on them because he can destroy them if their feet slip.”

Kranepool looked at Chambrun.

“Interesting theory,” Chambrun said. “George doesn’t ordinarily leave anything to chance.” He put out his cigarette in the ash tray on his desk. “I find myself still interested in your book, Mr. Cleaves, and the film script. Are there changes and additions in the film script that don’t appear in the novel?”

Cleaves shrugged. “The much-talked-about nude scene,” he said. “That’s added for box office purposes. Actually Peter suggested it.”

Potter chuckled. “We’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of it so far,” he said. “There hasn’t been as much interest in a casting project since they were trying to get someone to play Scarlett O’Hara.”

“Other changes?” Chambrun asked.

“A few minor plot gimmicks that tighten the story. In a novel you can explain things in narration; in a film the explanation has to be visual.”

“Would it be possible for me to read the film script in addition to the book?” Chambrun asked.

“Why not,” Cleaves said. He leaned forward in his chair. “Does Battle think I’m the one who’s out to get him? Because if he does, I’m entitled to a little protection, gentlemen.”

“Protection?” Hardy said.

“If Battle thinks I’m responsible for the shot that was taken at him, and the bombing, he may not wait around for you to solve the case, Lieutenant. George Battle fights his own wars.”

“Nobody is going to fight any wars,” Hardy said; “Mr. Battle is being guarded by my men and the hotel security. He won’t move anywhere without our people around him. That’s meant to protect him, but it will also protect you, Cleaves, if you are in any danger.”

“Those could be famous last words,” Potter said, and he giggled.

C
LEAVES AND POTTER WERE
returned to their rooms with instructions from Kranepool not to leave the hotel without his permission. They were, in effect, being held for questioning without being made uncomfortable. Kranepool took off for the penthouse where the rubble in the bedroom was still being sifted and examined by Carlson and his men. Postal inspectors were trying to trace the letters that had been delivered to the penthouse. From Hardy’s evidence there was no question they’d been addressed to Battle and apparently postmarked in the normal fashion. Hardy seemed reluctant to leave us.

“We don’t have a hell of a lot to go on,” he said to Chambrun. “If you’re right, and the principal in the case is hiring some outsider, or outsiders, to do the job, we don’t have a single lead. It must have been all carefully planned before Battle ever arrived in the hotel—a way to get into the penthouse, the letter bomb isn’t something you put together in a few minutes. With the kind of security we’ve thrown around Battle, do you think there’ll be another try?”

“You think kidnaping me was planned before Battle arrived here?” Chambrun asked. His eyes were narrowed, looking past Hardy to somewhere.

“Like we said, a way to raise money to pay for the project,” Hardy said. “Whoever, we’re dealing with knows Battle well enough to know he’d come through with ransom money for you.”

“But how well informed this character is,” Chambrun said. “The shot was taken at Battle, the police and the assistant
D.A.
arrived. Who knew that you were in charge of the case except those of us who were in the penthouse, Hardy?”

Hardy shrugged. “I came through the lobby. People in the hotel know me. I’ve been here before, you know.”

“And Kranepool? Who could know in advance the name of the assistant
D.A.
? It was a phone call, supposedly from him, that trapped me. Only somebody in that penthouse knew Kranepool’s name.”

“He made calls in and out,” Hardy said. “Someone on your switchboard? It could have happened that way, you know. ‘I want to speak to the assistant
D.A
.—What’s his name?’ Your operator tells the caller. No reason not to.”

“Could be,” Chambrun said. He looked at me. “Have Ruysdale check out if there was such a call, Mark.”

I went to the outer office and gave Miss Ruysdale the word. Hardy and Chambrun were still at it when I rejoined them.

“You’re saying that only someone in the penthouse would have known the assistant
D.A.
’s name,” Hardy was saying. “I said, in the beginning, that only someone in the penthouse could have fired that shot at Battle. But none of the four men in the penthouse had a gun. I searched them, like I said, right down to their skins. I searched their rooms, the entire apartment. No gun.”

“And none of them could have been my man in the stocking mask,” Chambrun said.

“So there is more than one Stocking Mask,” Hardy said.

“There can be an army of them if it’s a paid job being done by outsiders,” Chambrun said. “But how were these outsiders made aware of the assistant
D.A.
’s name?”

“They could have seen him come. They could have been watching in the lobby when he arrived and known him by sight. They can be watching everything we do right now, damn it!”

“I think I’d like to talk with Dr. Cobb,” Chambrun said. “Maybe he was joking when he said he knew how Stocking Mask got into the penthouse. Maybe he wasn’t.”

I was sent up to the seventeenth floor to ask Dr. Cobb to come down to the boss’s office. I didn’t mind. I wanted to see Shelda. It had been almost twenty-four hours since she’d arrived and we hadn’t had ten private words together. She couldn’t work for Battle around the clock. Sometime there had to be an opportunity for us to be together without interruption.

There was hell to pay upstairs. Battle was yelling the house down. There was no outside phone line in 17B. He could only talk through the switchboard, and that was being monitored. He was demanding that Jerry Dodd get the telephone company in to install an outside line at once. You and I would wait three weeks to get service from the phone company. I had a feeling Battle could get it done in a matter of minutes. Jerry kept telling him that if he wanted to make outside phone calls he could use the switchboard without being monitored—if Hardy gave his okay.

“I conduct millions of dollars’ worth of very delicate business negotiations,” Battle said. “I won’t have some eavesdropping operator listening in, or some long-eared cop in this suite! I’ll move out of this hotel if I don’t get what I want, and quick!”

“That will be up to Hardy,” Jerry said, not ruffling.

“Damn Hardy! Blast Hardy! Who the hell does he think he is?”

“A Homicide detective trying to solve a murder and prevent another one,” Jerry said. He was as patient as a nursemaid.

I managed to interrupt long enough to say that Dr. Cobb was wanted downstairs.

“I will not be left without medical attention!” Battle said.

“I’ll have Dr. Partridge, the house physician, come up,” Jerry said. He turned to me. “I’ll send Dr. Cobb down as soon as Partridge gets up here.”

There was no sign of Shelda. I asked if there was a chance of talking to her.

“She’s gone on an errand for me,” Battle said. He looked like a petulant, angry child.

Jerry went to the door with me. “He’s just been in a huddle with Cobb. He doesn’t need him,” he said.

“Will you tell Shelda to get in touch when she gets back?”

“If that old sonofabitch will give her a chance,” he said. “He’s getting even with the world by keeping everybody busy.”

It was a half hour before Dr. Cobb, wheezing and puffing, turned up in Chambrun’s office. His emphysema, or whatever he had, made moving around really rough for him. Chambrun waved him to a comfortable armchair, but it was a good minute before the doctor was able to speak. While he struggled for breath, he managed to get out a cigarette and light it.

“Should you be smoking, Doctor?” Chambrun asked.

Cobb choked on the cigarette. Then he finally managed to say: “At my age, Mr. Chambrun, you stop caring what’s good for you or not good for you. There are damn few pleasures left in life. I tell you, I could go tomorrow. Why shouldn’t I enjoy today?”

“Your funeral,” Chambrun said.

“A rather ghoulish comment, sir,” Cobb said. “How can I help you?” A little trickle of saliva ran down his chin and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. “Could it have anything to do with the joke I made to Mr. Haskell?”

“Joke?”

“I’m afraid it was a joke,” Cobb said. “I said I knew how the man in the stocking mask got into the penthouse. Is that what you’re concerned about?”

“It interests me,” Chambrun said.

“Puzzles have always interested me, too,” Cobb said. The cigarette bobbed up and down between his lips as he spoke, ashes dribbling down his shirt front. “I had a crazy idea at the time I made that remark to Mr. Haskell. Afterwards I realized that while I might have an answer as to how Stocking Mask got in the room, and how he might have chosen a time to slip away, that he couldn’t have fooled George—Mr. Battle.”

“Fooled him?”

Dr. Cobb was amused, but laughter made him gasp for breath. It delayed him a moment. “I—I was inclined to believe with you, Lieutenant Hardy, that the men stationed on the roof could be trusted, and that there was no way Stocking Mask could have gotten into the penthouse after we’d arrived—unless, as you thought—perhaps think—it was one of us on George’s staff. Well, you trust your men; I trust ours. Of course I knew I hadn’t done it, and I was completely sure that neither poor Allerton, nor Butler, nor Gaston would have done it. So someone had to have been hiding in the penthouse before we arrived—and you and I are both right. Edward Butler searched the penthouse the moment we got there. You heard him testify to that and so did I. I heard him admit he hadn’t looked in the laundry hamper in the bathroom. You agreed with him that it would have been pointless. No one could hide in it, you said.” The doctor shook his head and his shoulders heaved with that silent laughter of his.

“No one could have,” Hardy said.

“George has such bizarre enemies,” Cobb said. “He is not an ordinary man with ordinary interests, and his enemies are not ordinary. When I heard that talk about the laundry hamper, I had a wildly comical idea.”