Walking Dead Man (6 page)

“I understand he may be interested in financing a film,” I said, and instantly wished I hadn’t.

“Maxie Zorn’s epic?” My friend from the
News
grinned at me. “Is it true your ex-girl friend is going to play a nude scene with David Loring?”

“I don’t think any casting decisions, beyond David Loring, have been made,” I said.

“You hope!” my friend said.

“I don’t have any more information for you, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “The police will have to answer questions about the attempted crime. Mr. Battle is under sedation and I have no authorization to make any kind of statement for him. You’ll just have to wait for anything more. I promise to cooperate with you as best I can.”

They weren’t happy, and I knew they were going to be milling around the hotel for the rest of the night, but there wasn’t anything more I could do for them.

The Trapeze Bar was still open and I decided to go up there for a drink. The Trapeze Bar is almost literally suspended in space in the foyer to the Grand Ballroom. The walls are iron grillwork, and some artist of the Calder school has decorated it with a collection of mobiles of circus performers operating on trapezes. The faint circulation of air from a conditioner keeps these little figures in constant motion.

Ordinarily the customers have begun to thin out at this time of night, but not now. It was crowded to the doors and the ordinary gentle hum of voices was now a loud, excited noisiness. I was about to turn away when I saw Eddie, the bartender, signal to me that there was an empty stool at the bar. It wasn’t until I slid onto it that I saw that my neighbor on the left was Peter Potter, Maxie Zorn’s deformed little
PR
man.

“Been saving this for you,” he said. “I guessed you’d show up, sooner or later.” His head and shoulders came just above the edge of the bar, his short little legs dangled in space. “I don’t do well at press conferences without a periscope.” He held out his hand. His grip was firm. “I’m Peter Potter.”

“I know,” I said.

“I dream you’ll give me the real lowdown,” he said.

I signaled to Eddie for my usual, a double Jack Daniels on the rocks. “It seems that most people in the hotel know more about it than I do,” I said.

“I understand the clumsy assassin wore a stocking mask,” Potter said. “Unrecognizable. I hope to God he was over four feet tall.”

“I think it would have been mentioned if he hadn’t been,” I said. “Otherwise you think you might be a suspect?”

“Why not? I hate the sonofabitch.”

“George Battle?”

“I hate all big, powerful men,” Potter said. “Unfortunately the best I can do about it is a kick in the shins or a bite out of the calf of a leg.” His smile was winning. He didn’t seem to be really hating anyone. “My job, however, requires me to be concerned about Battle. Seven million bucks’ worth of financing is at stake.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“And you may be the key to it.”

“I?”

“Of course,” he said, his smile widening. “Your girl.”

“I don’t have a girl,” I said.

“Oh, come, Haskell. Your ex-girl, then. The lovely Shelda.”

“I have no control over what she does,” I said.

“Want to bet?”

“You know something I don’t know?” I asked.

“I always know something other people don’t know,” Potter said. “It’s the only way I can keep from being overlooked.”

“I doubt that.”

“Oh, people stare at me,” he said, and now there was bitterness in his voice. “They laugh at me or feel pity for me. Which is your inclination, chum?”

It was a nasty question. “I haven’t made up my mind,” I said. “Maybe neither. What do you know that I don’t know?”

“About what?”

“About Shelda.”

“Ah, yes, Shelda. A complicated decision she has to make. Modesty versus a small fortune. You know something? There’s only one thing I can think of I wouldn’t do for a small fortune. I wouldn’t appear naked in front of anyone. But if I were beautiful, like Shelda, it would be a simple decision. I’d be rich, and admired, and quickly forgotten if I wanted to be forgotten.”

“The thing is would she forget—afterwards?” I said.

Potter’s warm brown eyes looked at me quite seriously. “If she can’t forget, you’re lost anyway, chum.”

“You suggested you know something I don’t know—something that might give me some control in the situation.”

“She loves you,” Potter said.

“Nonsense! What makes you think so?”

“Because she denies it so vehemently,” he said. “Let me put some cards face up on the table for you, Haskell. Maxie Zorn is desperate. He has but big money troubles. If he doesn’t find the money to make this film and when he does if it isn’t a big success, Maxie is done for. But it’s not just Maxie, but hundreds of people who work for him—office staff, technical staff, the whole barrelful that go to make up a production unit. Maxie was outraged when Battle made your Shelda a condition—until he saw Shelda. Now he’d be delighted to use her. His main problem, in addition to Shelda’s hesitation, is Loring. Our David doesn’t want Shelda for the part, though he’s been a good boy and asked her to do it.”

“Why doesn’t he want her?” I asked.

Potter laughed. “No way to make it right for you, is there, chum? If we want her, we’re villains; if we don’t want her, we’re villains. Loring wants his girl friend, Angela, for the part. Now we come to a kind of a puzzle. Why does Battle make her a condition of financing this film? Maxie doesn’t care why. It fascinates me. Maxie thinks he has a lech for her and can’t make it himself, so he wants to be a voyeur by way of seven minutes of film. I don’t think so. You see, I know George Battle. I worked for him once.”

“You worked for him?”

Potter nodded. “Most devious mind you ever encountered. There’s never a simple answer to why he does anything. The simple answer to this thing with Shelda is that he’s a dirty old man. It’s so simple that it can’t be so. Do you know what I did for him in Europe for almost a year? You couldn’t guess. I was a secret messenger for him—carrying life-and-death communications to industrial and political allies of his. Now I ask you, Haskell, would you hire me to be a secret messenger?”

“Why not? You’re obviously a clever man.”

“Sure I’m clever, but there’s one thing I can’t do. I can’t disguise myself. I’m four feet tall. I have a hump on my back that won’t go away. If I want someone to carry a secret for me, I hire a man who would be anonymous, who can disappear into a crowd, who can change his identity if necessary. But George Battle hired me, perhaps the most easily followed man in the whole world. Oh, I was followed. I spent a year trying to duck away from and escape men who were trained in the art of surveillance. Every time I led them straight to the person I was supposed to be delivering my message to. I told Battle I was a failure, but he just smiled and said I was doing fine. Then, one day, I was taking a message to a man in Prague. It was a thick, sealed envelope. One night I was in a hotel room, after trying to shake a tail all day. What can be so important? I asked myself. So I steamed open the envelope. Want to guess what was in it? Never mind, I’ll tell you. Blank paper! Oh, no invisible ink or any crap like that. Just blank paper. I knew then what the game was. The best industrial spies in Europe had been following me all over the map, while the real messenger with the real messages was doing his job unhampered, and George Battle was laughing himself sick. I quit. I was getting paid a thousand dollars a week, but I quit.”

“Why?”

“Because he was vising my deformity to play a joke on his business enemies,” Potter said. He took a sip of the brandy in front of him on the bar. “But, enough of my personal sensitivities. Why does the master mind want your Shelda in the film? Seven million dollars to look at a film clip of a pretty secretary in the raw? Never! He can hire a parade of broads to walk past him naked for twenty-four hours a day for a great deal less than that. So what’s the answer? Nothing he does is for any obvious reason.” Potter grinned at me. “You can’t imagine anyone not wanting to look at your girl without her clothes on, but I assure you Battle has far too many irons in the fire to waste time on that kind of vicarious thrill. So why?”

“If you’re right, I don’t know why,” I said.

“He’s one of the shrewdest men in the world about people,” Potter said. “He knows exactly what to expect of them. Your Shelda has been working for him for a year, I understand. I promise you he knows all there is to know about her. So he must have known that she wouldn’t jump at the chance, even with a big chunk of money involved. And she didn’t. Also, may I point out to you that it was he who made the suggestion that perhaps she ought to talk to you about it on the assumption, he told Maxie, that you would take a practical view of it.”

“He didn’t know me,” I said.

“Let’s not be too sure,” Potter said. “Shelda has worked for him for a year. There must have been some moments of casual chit-chat. Isn’t it true that he offered her a job as a favor to Chambrun—because you and she needed to be separated for a while? Don’t look so surprised. Shelda told me that herself. So, I say Battle may have made a very sound evaluation of you. He knew you would say ‘no’ at the top of your lungs if Shelda asked you. So what can we conclude? That Shelda was thrown into the ball game for purposes of stalling.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “He wouldn’t need excuses for delaying a decision to finance the film.”

“No?” Potter lifted his brandy glass and squinted at its dark dregs. “Unless, to mix metaphors, somebody has him by the short hairs and he needs time to wriggle off the hook.” He put down his glass and laughed. “You want to start a panic, chum? Get Shelda to say yes, now, tonight. I’ll bet you the best dinner this fancy joint can provide that Mr. George Battle wakes right up out of his drugged sleep screaming.” He slid down off the bar stool and looked up at me, his brown eyes twinkling. “Cheerio, chum. If you come up with a better theory than mine, let me know.”

I felt suddenly dog tired. Wheels within wheels. I knew one thing. I had to talk to Shelda or I wasn’t going to get much sleep tired or not. I wanted to start over with her. I wanted her to forget all the jibes and juvenile cracks I’d made. I wanted her.

I went to the house phone in the far corner of the Trapeze and asked the switchboard to connect me with her room. No answer. I’d left her in Chambrun’s office with the boss and Ruysdale and I headed back there in the hope she was still there. I found her in the outer office with Ruysdale.

“Wondered when you’d be back,” Ruysdale said. She looked as fresh as if she’d just gotten up from ten hours’ sleep. “How are the fourth estate?”

“Churning,” I said. “I suppose I ought to report to the boss.”

“He’s gone back up to the penthouse. No instructions for you,” Ruysdale said. She stood up and walked toward the door to the inner sanctum. She smiled at us. “I’d better make a fresh batch of Turkish swamp water.”

Shelda was looking down at the toe of that damned shoe again.

“I’d like to apologize for being such a schmuk,” I said.

She looked up at me slowly. “Oh, Mark!” she said.

Believe it or not, that’s all there was to it. She was suddenly in my arms and the beloved mouth was pressed against mine and I held her and held her. Eventually we separated to look at each other and she was laughing and crying.

“I thought you’d never say anything nice,” she said.

“I think I am madly, insanely in love with you,” I said.

“Whatever you want I want,” she said.

“My place,” I said.

We turned to the door, my arm around her—and Ruysdale reappeared, frowning.

“I’m sorry, Mark, but I may need you,” she said.

“Not now, baby. Not for God sake now,” I said.

Ruysdale was headed for her telephone. “Mr. Kranepool, the assistant district attorney in charge upstairs, called about a half hour ago and asked Mr. Chambrun to come upstairs. Mr. Chambrun left immediately. Now Mr. Kranepool calls and asks Mr. Chambrun to come upstairs. I tell him he responded to the first call half an hour ago. Mr. Kranepool says there never was a first call.” She got a connection on the phone and spoke with Mrs. Kiley, the night supervisor on the switchboard. “There was a call for Mr. Chambrun about a half hour ago from the penthouse, Mrs. Kiley. Will you check it for me?” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “They’re monitoring all calls in and out of the penthouse.” Then Mrs. Kiley evidently came back on and Ruysdale’s frown deepened. “Thank you, Mrs. Kiley.” She put down the phone and looked at me, and I thought there was something like fear in her eyes. “There’s been no call from the penthouse until just now. The call half an hour ago came from an outside phone.”

“The first call was a phony,” I said.

Ruysdale nodded. “Take that other phone, Mark, call the penthouse and get Jerry Dodd down here on the double.” She asked the switchboard to get her the room Chambrun was occupying while Battle had the penthouse. “Not that I think he’s there,” she muttered.

I had some trouble getting Jerry on the line, but he came on at last, sounding irritated. “It better be important,” he said. “Where the hell is the boss?”

I told him about the fake phone call from Kranepool and that Chambrun had taken off half an hour ago.

“Could he have gone to his temporary quarters?” Jerry’s voice was hard and cold. I glanced at Ruysdale. She was shaking her head at me. No answer from Chambrun’s room. I told Jerry.

“Jesus! He wouldn’t listen to me,” Jerry said.

Y
OU HAVE TO BEAR
in mind that, to me, Chambrun was a kind of superman. He was also a cantankerous taskmaster as far as the Beaumont was concerned. Nothing happens to superman, but a perfectionist like the Great Man could be sidetracked if he saw something going wrong with the Swiss-watch workings of the hotel. Things were going wrong that night, like the invasion of the Spartan Bar by David Loring’s female admirers. I refused to be panicked in spite of the butterflies that were flapping around in my stomach. I could visualize the boss downstairs, driving the ladies out of the Spartan and raising general hell with the main floor staff, including Mike Maggio, the night bell captain. You didn’t let things get out of hand at the Beaumont, and someone had.