Walking Dead Man (2 page)

Battle stood in the middle of the room, still shrouded in mink and felt. He didn’t speak. Dr. Cobb was struggling with an asthmatic cough. Allerton, his bowler removed, stood at attention, waiting for something. None of the Battle party spoke except Shelda.

“Hello, Mr. Chambrun” she said.

“Nice to see you back here, Shelda,” he said. He looked at me and I saw that his eyes were amused.

The bodyguard reappeared. “All clear, Mr. Battle,” he said.

Allerton sprang into action. He turned down the mink collar and he took the hat. I don’t know what I’d expected, but what I saw was the wreckage of what must have been an extraordinarily beautiful young man. The face was like a lovely piece of china, cracked and stained. The eyes were blue and very bright, the cheekbones prominent, the delicate mouth drooped a little as though George Battle was about to burst into tears.

“Hello, Pierre,” he said. The voice was soft, almost musical.

“Welcome,” Chambrun said. “I see you made it safely.”

“I’m exhausted from the tension of it,” Battle said, “Has Gaston arrived?”

“He’s in the kitchen,” Chambrun said. “I believe he has prepared some hot bouillon and dry crackers for you—knowing your taste on such occasions.”

“Thank God,” Battle said. He tottered toward an armchair. “Allerton!”

“At once, Mr. George,” Allerton said, and headed toward the kitchen.

“It’s generous of you, Pierre, to turn over your place to me,” Battle said. “It seems so much easier to protect than rooms in the main body of the hotel.”

“I understand,” Chambrun said. He glanced at the bodyguard. “My security man, Jerry Dodd, will be here presently to discuss round-the-clock arrangements with you.”

“You trust this Dodd?” Butler asked.

“With my life,” Chambrun said.

“What I’m concerned with is Mr. Battle’s life,” Butler said.

“Bully for you,” Chambrun said, the amusement faded from his eyes. “Is there anything I can do for you, George?”

“I understand the film people have arrived.”

Chambrun glanced at me and I nodded.

“Please get word to Mr. Maxwell that I—”

“Mr. Maxwell Zorn,” Allerton said in a stage whisper.

“—get word to Mr. Zorn that I can’t possibly see anyone tonight; that I’m exhausted and will be till tomorrow morning. However, if they want to see Miss Mason—” So many words seemed to have done him in. He lowered what looked like paper-thin eyelids.

Shelda, who looked as though she hadn’t heard, appeared to be studying a beautiful Matisse that hung on the far wall. Why, I wondered, would Maxie Zorn want to see her? Then I felt a cold finger run down my spine. Was she in line for that seven minutes of public lovemaking with David Loring in the epic? I told myself I would damn well put a stop to that, and realized at once that if Shelda wanted to, Shelda would.

“If you have any problems about security, George, the switchboard operator can reach me wherever I am,” Chambrun said. “Mark and I will leave you to rest.” He gave me a sign that he was ready to leave.

I tried to will Shelda to look at me, but it didn’t work.

In the elevator Chambrun gave me a wry smile. “A year wasn’t enough,” he said.

“Meaning?”

“Shelda,” he said. “Lovely girl.”

“Is she thinking of becoming a movie actress?”

Chambrun took his silver cigarette case from his pocket and tapped a cigarette on the back of it. “It would please George Battle,” he said.

“To hell with George Battle!”

“Don’t be possessive,” Chambrun said. “You retired a year ago, remember?”

Oh, I had retired, in a kind of small boy pique a year ago. Shelda and I had been living together for two years, very much in love, very happy. She’d had an apartment about a block and a half from the Beaumont. I kept clothes there, and shaving things, and my private life. Shelda was early women’s lib. I was vintage puritan in a way. I wanted to marry her. Every day that we spent together I wanted her more, and was more afraid of losing her. I suppose I saw marriage as a trap she couldn’t escape. I guess she saw it the same way. It got to be an almost daily debate and some of the joy went out of being together. Chambrun needed someone to go to France with special papers for George Battle to sign, and he offered Shelda the chance to be his messenger. The shrewd little bastard sensed that we needed to be separated for a spell. It looked like a couple of weeks. So Shelda went and when she got there, she wrote me a “dear John” letter. It was clear that unless she gave in to me we just couldn’t go on together. She needed much more time than two weeks to come to a decision. Mr. Battle had offered her a permanent job and she was going to take it. I had nightmares in which Mr. Battle was some kind of Casanova and all the dark, handsome Frenchmen in the world were waiting in line for her. She didn’t answer letters. I had blown it, and very slowly I began to learn to live with that as a fact. Now, in the space of twenty-five minutes, I was hooked again.

“I suggest you convey George’s message to Maxie Zorn,” Chambrun said. “You may be able to find out whether your lady is really a candidate for the big sex scene with the Golden Boy. Talk to Peter Potter.”

“Who is Peter Potter?”

“Public relations man for Zorn. If you saw them arrive, you must have seen him. He’s a dwarf.”

“That one!”

“A very witty, very bitter, very charming little man,” Chambrun said. “If he chooses, he can tell you the truth, which may be more complex than you imagine.” The elevator stopped at the second floor where Chambrun gave me a gentle pat on the shoulder and went along to his office. I continued down to the lobby.

The Beaumont’s lobby normally has a kind of cathedral quiet and elegance. It had been thrown completely out of character by the arrival of David Loring. The Golden Boy had disappeared along with his entourage when I got there, but the memory lingered on. The place was still crowded with gabbling, breathless women. I had the feeling they might camp out there until the glamour boy took off for some other sanctuary. The Spartan Bar, normally reserved for elderly gentlemen who played marathon games of chess, had been invaded by females. A glance upward told me that the Trapeze Bar on the mezzanine was bursting at the seams.

“What we need is a bull horn,” Johnny Thacker, the bell captain, said at my elbow. “David-baby isn’t going to show again tonight. Dinner party arranged for in Fourteen-B, his suite. Did you get a look at that dame he had with him?”

“Briefly.”

“Angela Adams, said to be our David’s number-one candidate for private and public lovemaking. Raquel Welch is an also-ran beside Angela-baby.”

“Where is Zorn located?” I asked. I hoped Johnny was right. If Angela Adams was David Loring’s choice for the epic, then Shelda was almost certainly out. Loring would surely have his way.

“Maxie-baby is in 1421, right next to Golden Boy and Golden Girl,” Johnny said. “Excuse. Some nut is drawing phallic symbols on the wall over there.”

The Beaumont was having it tough. If Chambrun knew what was happening, he’d probably appear, point imperiously to the front door, and the ladies would all slink away with their tails between their legs. He had that kind of command.

I found Maxie Zorn alone in 1421. He was dark, slim, with a long nose and black eyes that seemed to burn. He was highly irritated by the message I delivered. “Crazy bastard!” he said. “He’s exhausted from crossing a very calm ocean in a luxury yacht that makes Onassis look like a pauper. He’s got to rest while hundreds of people are waiting for the word.”

“What word?”

He looked at me as if I was some kind of idiot child. “Money, friend. Haven’t you ever heard of money? Mr. George Battle is the money behind my film, or will be when he says yes. You know this Mason doll?”

“Yes, I know the Mason doll,” I said, feeling my jaw muscles tighten. “She used to be my secretary.”

“Maybe I can use you,” Maxie said.

“I wouldn’t try,” I said

The black eyes burned into me. “Can you imagine why she hesitates?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“You’ve read about the big moment in this picture of mine?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“We’re offering your Miss Mason the part,” he said, “and she can’t make up her mind. Would you believe there’s seven million bucks on the line?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s what Battle has agreed to put up to finance my film—under two conditions. Condition number one, the Mason doll is to play the big scene in the raw with David. Condition number two, he is to have five prints of the film. Of course a share of the profits, chum, and there will be profits. And the Mason dame can’t make up her mind! How do you like that for dizzy blonde thinking.”

“Probably not everyone thinks that rolling around with David Loring is the key to happiness,” I said.

“The hell with that. We’re offering her a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for seven minutes’ exposure on film and she can’t make up her mind. Talk to her for me. Don’t tell her I said so, but I’ll go to a quarter of a million if she’s trying to make a tough deal with me. It’s worth a quarter of a million to get seven.”

“Why does Battle want five prints of the film?” I heard myself ask.

“To warm up his old age, I suspect,” Zora said. “He’ll probably keep looking at those seven minutes until he’s worn out all five prints.”

“You mean he’s a dirty old man?”

“I mean he’s a screw pot.”

“There must be plenty of beautiful girls who’d jump at the chance,” I said.

“Battle wants her and nobody else,” Zorn said. “So it doesn’t matter if she’s wall-eyed and knock-kneed. We’ll make that popular if we have to. Will you talk to her?”

“I promise,” I said. My ten cents’ worth was not going to help him.

But I didn’t get the chance that evening. My spies informed me that Shelda was one of the dinner guests in David Loring’s suite. He was evidently using his personal charms to persuade her.

My normal routine in the evening is to climb into a dinner jacket about seven o’clock and circulate. Shelda used to say I was like Marshal Dillon putting Dodge City to bed for the night. There was always someone to talk to, some celebrity staying with us for a spell, someone to drink with. My job was to promote people who wanted a little promotion and to keep others under cover. Then there were fashion designers and buyers who use the hotel often for special showings, society people planning charity functions, people concerned with special social or diplomatic banquets. And just lonely people who like to talk.

That night I didn’t want to talk. This cockamamey business about Shelda and the Maxie Zorn film had me climbing the walls. I could imagine her up there in 14-B with Golden Boy, being sold a bill of goods. They might even be practicing!

I’m a slow drinker and I hold my liquor pretty well. I have to in my job. That night I was pouring it on at a pretty good clip. About ten o’clock I was in the Trapeze Bar with Eddie, the head bartender, giving me the fish eye when Mr. Del Greco, the captain, touched me on the shoulder and told me I was wanted on the phone. It was Mrs. Kiley, the chief night operator on the switchboard.

“Mr. Haskell?”

“Probably,” I said.

“You’re wanted on the double in the boss’s penthouse,” she told me. She sounded up tight.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Somebody just tried to kill Mr. Battle,” she said.

O
N THE WAY UP
in the elevator I didn’t take it too seriously. By that time I was thinking of George Battle as a degenerate old creep, scared of his own shadow. Somebody had probably said “Boo!” to him unexpectedly. That could bring on a breakdown, I told myself.

But when I stepped off the elevator at the penthouse level, I saw that it wasn’t a joke. One of Jerry Dodd’s men, Art Stein, was standing outside the front door. He was fish-belly pale.

“How the hell he ever got in is beyond me,” Art said. “Three of us patrolling the outside, never in one place for a minute.”

“Who got in where?” I asked.

“Some jerk wearing a stocking mask. Took a shot at Mr. Battle in his bed. Then, somehow he got away, which is just as impossible as getting in.”

“Is Battle hurt?”

“The bullet missed him by about six inches,” Art said, “but the old boy may have had a heart attack, Jerry says.”

Art gave the doorbell some kind of a signal ring and it was promptly opened by Ed Butler, Battle’s guntoter. Butler looked nasty. Before I could say anything, he began to slap over my clothes, evidently looking for concealed weapons. He wasn’t gentle and I protested.

“You hold still if you don’t want your effing neck broken,” he said. Finally he was satisfied that I wasn’t carrying a hand grenade and let me in.

Chambrun and Jerry Dodd were alone in the living room. Jerry Dodd, our security officer, is short, thin, wiry tough with ice-cold blue eyes. He predates me at the Beaumont, and I guess that next to Miss Ruysdale he comes as close to being indispensable as anyone on Chambrun’s staff.

“Hell to pay,” Chambrun said, and his eyes were those of the hanging judge at that moment. Anyone who disturbs the efficient routines of the Beaumont, anyone who commits a violence or a nuisance on the premises, has made himself a mortal enemy.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Old man went to bed about nine o’clock,” Jerry said in his crisp, cool voice. “I had three men acting as sentries on the roof. Seemed kind of nonsensical, but they were there, goddamit. Inside was Butler, sitting outside the bedroom door reading a magazine. Allerton and the chef, Gaston, and Dr. Cobb were in their respective rooms. They all heard the gunshot, so did my men outside. Butler was the first one in the room. Mr. Battle was sitting up in bed, light on at the bedside table, covers pulled up around him, screaming. Bedroom window on the north side was open. As you know, it’s barred, because it’s flush with the side of the building—twenty-four floor drop, for Christ sake. Butler ran into the bathroom, which also opens into the hall. No one in sight. By then Allerton and the chef were there. No one had seen or heard anything but the gunshot. They finally got some kind of sense out of Battle. He’d been asleep. He woke up, suddenly certain that there was someone in the room. He reached out and turned on the bedside lamp. What he says he saw was a man wearing a stocking mask with a gun aimed at the bed. The instant the light came on the man fired. Bullet’s buried in the headboard about six inches from Battle’s forehead. According to Battle, the man cried out—something unintelligible—and ran into the bathroom. No one else saw him or heard him. Disappeared into thin air.”