Gilded Nightmare (2 page)

But I enjoy the drink.

On B day I found a friend at the bar. I sat down beside him and signaled to Eddie, the bartender, for my usual. Sam Culver was in the process of filling a charred black-briar pipe from a yellow oilskin pouch. Sam is somehow what you expect from a chain-pipe smoker—easy going, philosophical, with a gentle humor. He’s in his early forties, and he maintains a slim, muscular figure by careful eating and a daily workout in the Beaumont’s gymnasium on the twenty-first floor. I think he plays squash almost every day. I made the mistake of taking him on one day. I’m younger and should get around faster and with more vigor than Sam, but he cut me to ribbons. He’s a tactician of the first order. He managed to stay in front of me in center court and had me running from side to side and up and down until my tongue was hanging out. I understand the squash pro has trouble with him.

Sam is a writer. He made quite a lot of dough in Hollywood early in his career. He now writes a column which is syndicated three times a week across the country and around the world. Sam writes about people, gently, perceptively, amusingly. Gossip doesn’t interest him. Each piece is a little nugget of character analysis. Many people are flattered to be the subject of one of his pieces. Not a few run at the sight of him. They know how clearly he sees through sham, the false front.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” Sam said, after he’d got his pipe going. “Know your habits, so I was waiting.”

“At last you’re going to interview me,” I said.

A cloud of blue smoke floated around his gently smiling face. “Believe it or not, Mark, I have a hatful of notes on you. The man who sees all and knows, surprisingly, nothing about what he sees.”

It wasn’t meant to be wounding. I didn’t take it as a dig.

“Surface facts are your job and you’re an expert at collecting them,” he said. “Below-the-surface facts are my job. Harder to come by, but, I tell myself, more interesting. I am now, however, in search of a surface fact.”

“Be my guest.”

“Do you know what time the Baroness Zetterstrom is supposed to arrive today?” Sam asked. He nodded to Eddie, who’d brought my martini, indicating he wanted a refill.

“She arrives at Kennedy at two o’clock,” I said. “If the plane’s on time and she bays her way through customs in a hurry, she should be here in the neighborhood of three o’clock.”

He just nodded.

“You aim to do a piece on the mystery woman?” I asked.

He looked at me, his smile just a little tighter than normal. “Mystery woman? I knew Charmian Brown when she wore pigtails,” he said. “Grew up with her. She’s complex, but not mysterious.”

“I didn’t know anyone knew her. It’s rumored she hasn’t been off her island for twenty years. Zetterstrom brought the world to her there, according to Chambrun.”

“The word is
bought,
not brought,” Sam said, staring into his blue cloud of smoke. “I’m interested to see what all that has done to her.”

“Made her perhaps the richest woman in the world,” I said.

“There you go with surface facts,” Sam said. “In my terms, it may have made her the poorest.” He tamped down the tobacco in his pipe with his forefinger. “Know that fellow at the end of the bar?”

I looked. A tall, dark, good-looking man in a worn tweed jacket was brooding over a whiskey on the rocks. I guessed he was about Sam’s age.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Not a Beaumont regular?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”

Sam’s smile grew tighter. “I don’t think Charmian will be pleased to see him,” he said.

“Again—who is he?”

“His name is Stephen Wood,” Sam said.

“Do I have to pry it out of you with a can opener?”

“Drama is uninteresting when it’s explained in advance,” Sam said. “But I suggest you watch the confrontation when it takes place.”

“I have ceased being fond of you,” I said.

“Oh, I’m playing it all very lightly, Mark. The cheerful smile hiding the cancerous growth.” His face had gone rock-hard. He slid down off his bar stool. “I think there’s time for a leisurely luncheon before the lady puts in her appearance.”

I watched him head for the stairway to the Spartan Grill. …

At two thirty-five that afternoon Mr. Atterbury received a phone call from Kennedy Airport. It was Helwig, the Baroness’ steward. They were, Helwig said, through customs and they would arrive at the hotel in about a half an hour. Helwig trusted that all would be ready for them. All would, Atterbury assured him.

I was notified and I went down from my fourth-floor office to the lobby, leaving behind me a protesting Shelda.

“Someone has to mind the store,” I told her.

The luncheon crowd had pretty well gone back to its offices on Fifth and Madison when I got downstairs. The lobby was relatively quiet. There were, however, two rather interesting observers occupying two of the big overstuffed armchairs. Sam Culver was working on a pipe with a little pocket tool. The man named Stephen Wood was several chairs away from Sam, chain-smoking cigarettes. A waiter had brought him a whiskey on the rocks. I saw him toss half of it down in one swallow. His black eyes were fixed on the main entrance, and they looked hot and hungry.

I walked over to Sam. “On the level, what’s with your friend Wood?” I asked him.

Sam glanced at the dark man. “I’d say he’s been pouring it on,” he said. “Must have had half a dozen whiskies since we last saw him.”

“Is he going to make some kind of trouble?”

“Too bad,” Sam said. “It’s your job to prevent it, isn’t it?”

“Sam, Chambrun’s your friend,” I said.

He sighed. “I’ve been indulging myself in small-boy mystifying. I don’t think he’ll make any public trouble,” he said., “I think he just wants Charmian to see him.”

“And then what happens?”

“Presumably Charmian’s blood starts to run cold,” Sam said.

Just then I saw Jerry Dodd across the lobby. He’s a thin, wiry little man in his late forties, with a professional smile that doesn’t hide the fact that his pale, restless eyes are always searching for a sign of anything inimicable to the Beaumont’s best interests. Chambrun trusts him without reservations, and his performance over the years as security officer has justified that trust. He’s a shrewd, tough, yet tactful operator.

“It seems the staff is of the opinion the Baroness will do a strip tease as she comes in the revolving door,” he said when I joined him. I noticed that a great many staff people seemed to have found business in the lobby.

“You know the guy in the corner chair—name of Stephen Wood?” I asked.

Jerry looked. “New to me,” he said.

“Sam’s hinting around he might try to make trouble for the lady,” I said.

“Thanks for the tip,” Jerry said, and moved casually toward the staring Mr. Wood.

At that moment the cavalcade from Kennedy arrived at the front entrance.

There were three large, magnificent-looking, air-conditioned Cadillacs. Two of them carried people and the third a collection of luggage that might have been manufactured in the mint. Waters, the Beaumont’s elegant doorman, reached for the rear door of the first Cadillac, which obviously carried the queen. He was fast, but not fast enough. The door opened and out popped a man whom I identified from the newspaper clippings as John Masters, the bodyguard. He was slim, hard-faced, wearing a tightly belted trench coat, black glasses, and a black hat with the brim pulled down over his eyes. His hands were in his pockets and I visualized hair-trigger guns. He was right out of
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
—pure camp.

Masters looked quickly up and down the street, satisfied himself that Fifth Avenue was devoid of assassins, and gave a brisk nod to the occupants of the car.

Out came another man, tall, square-shouldered, wearing a black Chesterfield with a velvet collar. He also wore black glasses, and gray hair showed under the rim of his black fedora, brim jerked downward. Helwig and Masters stood on each side of the open car door. The third passenger, however, did not appear.

The second Cadillac, instead, started to disgorge. Out came a short, obese little man, black-coated, hatted, and glassed like the others. He carried a small, black medical bag. This was Dr. Malinkov, “physician in residence.” He moved, uncertainly, toward the revolving doors. He was followed by two women: a blond Amazon in her early fifties wearing a tweed coat with a mink collar and a little mink toque on her ash-blond hair; and a small, very pretty girl, also blond, carrying a black miniature poodle who yipped disapprovingly at Waters.

The two women and the three men now made a sort of alley between the first Cadillac and the door. Out of the car stepped another man, also wearing black glasses. But there the black motif ended. He was hatless, and his red hair was long, mod-style. He wore a double-breasted overcoat of pale-blue tweed with a heavy fur collar that looked like what I think sable looks like. The bottoms of his trousers were tight-fitting and, so help me, bright red. His shoes were a matching red in suede. He turned and held out his hand to the last passenger in the Cadillac.

The Baroness made her appearance, controlled but brisk. Her coat was black sable, her hat black sable. The coat was a three-quarter-length affair, and all that was visible below it was a pair of very shapely legs covered by sheer stockings that were, in effect, invisible. Her skirt was obviously fashionably short. One gloved hand held the coat together tightly at her throat. The other hand just touched the gigolo’s fingers as she came out of the car and moved, quick and lithe, across the sidewalk. Helwig, the gray-haired man, wheeled in front of her, and Masters, the bodyguard, moved in directly behind her. It was as if it had been rehearsed many times. The girl with the pet poodle and the gigolo, Peter Wynn, came next. The Amazon and the doctor brought up the rear.

Did I mention that Charmian Zetterstrom also wore black glasses? The lights from the lobby chandeliers made them glitter as she came through the revolving door and started for the desk. She looked around, cool, self-possessed. She moved with the grace of a professional dancer. She suggested youth and a controlled vitality that were extraordinary for a woman of what I knew her age to be.

The whole campy entrance was ludicrous but I found my impulse to laugh choked off abruptly in my throat. Charmian Zetterstrom’s hidden glance rested on me for a moment, held on me steadily. A cold wind ran along my spine. I felt like a helpless insect about to be pinned to a collector’s card.

Then she looked away, and I realized my hands had been clenched so tightly that my fingers hurt.

Helwig was at the desk, talking to Mr. Atterbury.

Charmian Zetterstrom stood a few feet away, surveying the lobby with an air that wouldn’t have pleased Chambrun. She gave the impression that the Beaumont looked pretty run-down to her.

Johnny Thacker, the day bell captain, and half a dozen bellhops came staggering through the revolving door with the gaudy luggage from the third Cadillac.

And then it happened. Stephen Wood was standing face to face with Charmian Zetterstrom.

“Charmian!” he said. His voice cracked like a pistol shot.

She looked at him, apparently completely undisturbed. If the sight of him made her blood run cold, as Sam Culver had predicted it might, there was no way to tell. And there was no time for a second reaction from her.

Masters, the bodyguard, acted so swiftly I couldn’t really follow his moves. The back of his right hand seemed to catch Wood on the Adam’s apple, like an axe blade. There was a gurgling cry from Wood as he tottered backwards. Masters’ left hand, a triphammer, then caught him on the point of the jaw and Wood went over in something approximating a back somersault, and lay still. Masters was instantly standing over him, waiting for him to move, which he didn’t.

Jerry Dodd, caught off base for one of the few times in his career, gave Masters a shove which wasn’t expected and sent him staggering a few steps away from the prostrate Wood. Instantly there was a gun in Masters’ hand, pointed straight at Jerry. Somebody screamed. I think it was the girl with the pet poodle.

“Put that away and get your whole goddamned army out of here,” a cold voice said.

I turned to look at Chambrun, who was walking straight toward the gun, placing himself squarely between Masters and Jerry Dodd. I tried to move, and felt as if I had on diver’s boots. It was Masters who wavered, not Chambrun. The bodyguard slowly lowered his gun and dropped it back in the pocket of his trench coat.

Charmian Zetterstrom was at Chambrun’s elbow. “I apologize for Masters,” she said, her voice as cool and clear as brook water. “I have been in some danger recently and he was only doing his job. You are Mr. Chambrun?”

Chambrun turned. “I am Pierre Chambrun.”

“George Battle has spoken of you with the utmost regard.”

“And he engages me to run this hotel, Baroness. I will not have this kind of horseplay.” He looked over to where Johnny Thacker and two of his boys were helping Stephen Wood to his feet. The man’s eyes were glazed, and a little trickle of blood ran from one corner of his slack mouth. “You know this man?”

“I’ve never seen him before in my life,” Charmian Zetterstrom said, looking steadily at Wood. “His approach was so sudden, so startling, that Masters did the only thing he could do. You will concede, Mr. Chambrun, that a bodyguard can’t wait until after an attack is made to go into action. It couldn’t matter less what happens after it’s too late. You do agree, don’t you?”

Helwig, his face expressionless, his eyes hidden by the black glasses, moved in. “Your rooms are on the nineteenth floor, Baroness. They are ready.” Chambrun might not have been there so far as Helwig was concerned. He signaled to the bellhops, the gigolo, the doctor, the Amazon, and the poodle carrier. They all started toward the elevators.

Charmian Zetterstrom gave Chambrun a bright, questioning smile. “With your permission, Mr. Chambrun?”

“No more gun-wavings,” he said. “No more strong-arm stuff.”

“Unless it is absolutely necessary,” she said. She turned toward the elevators, and came face to face with Sam Culver. He was smiling too, his slow, gentle smile. She walked straight past him as though he were part of the lobby furniture. So much for having grown up with the lady in her pigtail days.