Random Killer (20 page)

“Afterward?”

“When he went to get the wagon in thirty-four-oh-six and found the body,” Dominic said. “Then he was overcome with—with horror, would you say? Jabbering away like a crazy man. Jerry, who was the first to question him, can tell you. He was like demented.”

Jerry nodded. “I don’t speak Italian either. I had a time getting him to say something I could understand.”

“He reported to you what he’d found?”

“No. No, he ran down the hall to the housekeeper’s room. You remember, boss, it was Mrs. Kniffin who reported to us. She managed to keep Guido there till I got to him. He didn’t really have a story to tell, you know. He took the breakfast wagon to thirty-four-oh-six, Hammond told him where to place it, and he left. He didn’t see who the breakfast guest was. He went back at ten o’clock and found—what he found.” Jerry shrugged. “After Sergeant Baxter got that out of him, I told Guido to go home and get himself pulled together. Not to bother to come in till the next day.”

Chambrun glanced at his pad. “So how did the killer get Guido’s address?”

Jerry and Dominic looked at each other.

“I gave his address to the police,” Dominic said, “but certainly not to anyone else.”

Chambrun’s eyes narrowed as he turned to Jerry. “You say Sergeant Baxter questioned Guido?”

“Yeah, before Guido went home. Baxter agreed there was no use his staying around. He really had nothing to tell that would help the cops.”

“Tell me, Jerry,” Chambrun said very quietly, “what is the first question the police ask when they are questioning a witness?”

“Name and address,” Jerry said. His eyes widened. “Oh, brother!”

Chambrun looked at Dominic. “So how did you come to give Guido’s address to the police?”

Dominic looked confused for a moment. “Why, I was at my station in room service. The phone rang and a man said he was Sergeant Somebody. He wanted the name and address of the waiter who’d found the body in thirty-four-oh-six. It was the police, so I gave it to him.”

“Like hell it was the police!” Chambrun said.

“The whole place was a madhouse,” Dominic said. “I never thought—”

“I suppose there’s no reason why you should have,” Chambrun said. He sounded tired. He’d said there’d be an easy way for the killer to get the address, a plausible story. What could be more plausible than a police request to a distracted member of the staff?

“My God!” Dominic said. “I helped to get him killed!”

“I think the killer would have found a way without you, Ray,” Chambrun said. “Don’t blame yourself.” He straightened up in his chair. “This is what I want you to do, both of you. Find out everyone Guido talked to from the time he delivered breakfast to thirty-four-oh-six until he was sent home after he discovered the murder. There’s a chance he may have told someone about the man who bumped into him in the hallway. It’s the only lead we’ve got.”

“Not much of a lead,” Jerry said.

“Good enough for someone to kill Guido to hide it,” Chambrun said.

I told Chambrun what had been bugging me before the news about the unfortunate Guido had broken. He listened to my account of what Joanna Fraser had seen two years ago at High Crest and how everyone had conveniently forgotten it until Alvin Parker found it lurking somewhere in his conscience. Chambrun listened, squinting at me through the smoke from his cigarette.

“Describe Paul Newman to me,” he said, when I had finished.

Games, yet! So I described Paul Newman as I recalled him: six feet tall, or a little more, blond, blue eyes, good athletic build.

“But if there wasn’t a label on that description—a name attached to it—it could fit a thousand men,” Chambrun said.

“Well, I don’t know about his warts or his birthmarks,” I said.

“Not important,” Chambrun said. “Let’s look at it for a moment, Mark. Hammond knew who he was, invited him for breakfast. He killed Hammond because Hammond had something on him. That’s the assumption, right? But he killed Joanna Fraser, you’re saying, because she suddenly recognized him. How? All she saw at High Crest was a man, his back to her, bundled up in winter clothes with a parka over his head. That could have been Paul Newman and she’d have no idea of it. She could have come face to face with Paul Newman, or Robert Redford, or Jesus Christ in the lobby and she’d have no reason to connect any one of them with the backside of a man in winter clothes with a parka over his head.”

“So she wasn’t killed because she suddenly recognized him after two years,” I said. “He wasn’t dressed for winter skiing in the Beaumont lobby in June!”

“Let’s not reject that idea entirely, but let’s move on,” Chambrun said. “No question about the motive for killing poor Guido. He collided with the killer in the hall outside thirty-four-oh-six. He could have described that man in a way that would have left no doubts about him. Bobby Bryan or Roy Conklin would have recognized that description as someone with whom Hammond had dealings. What could Guido have told us except that the man was a certain height, a certain coloring, a certain build? A general description, like your description of Paul Newman.”

“Most likely he would have told us he was a guest he’d served in a certain room. That would identify him for us,” I said.

“Could be,” Chambrun said. “But how would that have meant anything to Joanna Fraser?”

I gave up. “Maybe he had two heads,” I said.

Chambrun gave me a steady look. “Perhaps that’s closer than you know, Mark,” he said. “Joanna Fraser would have noticed that from behind, wouldn’t she? Two heads, two parkas.”

“Oh, come on, boss!” I said.

“I haven’t suggested a scar on his face, or that he was ‘brown, or black, or green’ as young Bryan suggested to you, because Joanna Fraser didn’t see his face at High Crest. But two heads? Quite a remarkable idea, my friend.”

So if he wanted to kid around that was up to him. He suggested that I join Jerry in hunting for someone to whom Guido might have spoken about his collision on the thirty-fourth floor. I decided he wanted to be rid of me and my wisecracks. Hell, you get so twisted up in a thing like this that you decide to say something funny or cut your throat.

I went down to the lobby to look for Johnny Thacker, the day bell captain. He’s a smart cookie who’s worked in the Beaumont for fifteen years, sees all, knows all. He can tell you what old man is enjoying himself in what wrong room with what young woman. He could have made a million bucks if he’d decided to turn to blackmail as a profession. He was enormously valuable to Chambrun because he chose to turn anything he knew over to the head man. Staff people trusted Johnny, passed along their own bits of gossip to him. I figured if he was turned loose on the Guido business he was the most likely person to hear something.

I briefed Johnny.

“If Guido said anything to anyone I’ll come up with it,” he said. “Tell the boss I’m taking myself off duty for a while. Joe Nemjou can take over for me.”

I turned away and came face to face with Colin Dobler, who was crossing the lobby toward the elevators. Just behind him, like a dutiful St. Bernard dog, was the bodyguard assigned to him.

“I hoped the police would let me get into Joanna’s apartment,” Dobler said. “Believe it or not, I’m the executor of her estate. All her papers are up there. There may be things that need immediate handling.”

“Get your shadow here to ask Hardy’s permission. He’s in the executive room across the lobby there,” I said. “I’ll buy you a drink in the Spartan Bar. There’s something I’d like to ask you.”

The Spartan Bar is one of the last strictly male bastions in the city. Oh, we don’t admit that women are not welcome there. But they are not allowed in “unescorted,” and anyone who brings a lady is likely to find all the tables reserved the next time he appears. It is really a hangout for older men, almost like a club, where they play chess, and backgammon, and gin rummy, and talk about how great they were at whatever they did thirty years ago.

Dobler gave me a sad little smile as I took him to a table.

“This was one of Joanna’s targets,” he said. “It was unthinkable that there should be a men-only bar in the place where she lived. But Chambrun and the maître d’ here were too smart for her. It’s a saga in itself. She was a good enough sport to be amused at the way they maneuvered her.”

I ordered drinks and told him what was on my mind. How come he hadn’t mentioned that Joanna had seen someone outside Carpenter’s cabin at High Crest the night of the murder, two years ago?

He gave me pretty much the same answer Nora had. Of course he wasn’t there. But later, when Joanna came back and they were together, she’d told him about seeing someone, but that the police hadn’t been interested.

“Her description of the man she saw?” I asked.

“There wasn’t exactly a description, as I remember,” Dobler said. “His back was to her, bundled up in winter gear. I know she said she couldn’t possibly have identified him. Never saw his face.”

“Did she—how shall I put it—brood over the fact that the police ignored what she’d seen?”

“Men!” he said, with a little laugh. “You can’t expect anything very intelligent from men. I don’t remember her ever talking about it after she first came back. It wasn’t as if she could have testified to something under oath.”

“So how could she have recognized this man two years later, invited him for drinks, left herself open to attack?”

Dobler looked at me as though I wasn’t quite bright.

“That’s what we think,” I said. “That, somehow, Joanna spotted this man, which is why he killed her. But why invite him for drinks?”

“She couldn’t have spotted him,” Dobler said. “She never saw his face. He was just a bundle of clothes with his back turned. She didn’t have a notion, from what she saw, whether he was young or old.” He shook his head slowly. “Joanna was a mass of contradictions,” he said slowly. “She headed a crusade for women— against men. Yet she admired certain traditional male attributes. She wanted to be a ‘gentleman,’ a ‘sportsman,’ play the game by the rules.” He shook his head slowly, from side to side. “If she saw this man—and I say it’s possible—and something about him made her wonder, but she was uncertain—she might have decided that the sportsmanlike thing to do was to confront him with it before she blew the whistle on him. But I swear to you, Haskell, she never mentioned anything that would make me believe there was anything that would lead her to suspect someone.”

“He didn’t have two heads?”

Dobler laughed. “She never mentioned it if he did.”

Johnny Thacker came hurrying into the Spartan. He excused himself to Dobler. “I haven’t found anyone who talked to Guido,” Johnny told me, “but Carl Brewer, the operator on elevator four in the main bank, saw it happen.”

“Saw what happen?”

“The collision Guido had with someone in the hallway on thirty-four. I’m taking him up to the boss. Thought you’d like to know.”

Carl Brewer’s was a face I’d seen every morning of my life since I’d come to work at the Beaumont. He is what we call a “B and S” behind Chambrun’s back—B and S for Bright and Shining. The first faces a guest sees in the morning should be smiling and happy, not hung over like the guest himself might be. I remember arguing about it with Chambrun. There were mornings in my life when if anyone gave me that good-cheer routine I’d have kicked him right in his Pepsodent smile.

“The largest percentage of people,” Chambrun told me, “don’t have your jaundiced view of life.”

“Only some mornings,” I said.

That afternoon Johnny Thacker had encountered Carl Brewer just as he was coming off his shift. The news about Guido had already spread backstage like a forest fire. Johnny saw that if he didn’t ask about Guido, people would tell him. Carl Brewer, still in his blue uniform, was the first to approach him with something other than a question. He had seen Guido, briefly, having a row with someone on the thirty-fourth floor on the morning of Hammond’s murder.

Carl told his story over again to Chambrun, Johnny Thacker and I standing by.

“It may not be anything, Mr. Chambrun,” Carl said.

“Anything about Guido is something, Carl,” Chambrun said.

“I’d just taken over from Zorba the Greek,” Carl said.

“Who?”

“Zacharapoulus, night elevator man,” Johnny Thacker explained. “Nobody can pronounce his name, so they call him—”

“Go on, Carl,” Chambrun said.

“The panel was lit up with calls, all the way from the roof down. People coming down for breakfast, going to work. Regular morning rush of people going out. There was a passenger on my car, number four, waiting to go up. I didn’t pay any attention to him because the Greek and I were making some wisecracks to each other. This passenger, standing behind me, said he wanted thirty-four when I started up. There were no up calls along the way and we zoomed right up to thirty-four. I opened the door and my passenger walked out—and right into Guido’s breakfast wagon, which was coming around the corner from the service elevator.” Carl grinned. “It was a first-class collision, like someone driving out of a side street right into a car on the main road. My passenger was off-balance and he staggered against the wall. He started to yell at Guido like a Marine sergeant. I tell you, I heard swear words like I never heard before, Mr. Chambrun. Normally I would have closed my door and gone on up to answer my calls, but I waited a moment because this guy, my passenger, sounded wild enough to make some kind of physical attack on Guido. Guido was shouting, too, but in Italian. He was trying to place things back in order on his wagon. That was all that concerned him. After my passenger had called him every kind of a Wop bastard you can think of, he turned away and went slowly down the hall. I gave Guido a thumbs-up, closed my door, and that was that. I guess it really isn’t anything.”

“Let me tell you how much it is, Carl,” Chambrun said quietly. “Later, when Guido found the body in thirty-four-oh-six, he answered questions from the police and then he was sent home. He was pretty badly shaken up. But he told his wife there was something important he hadn’t told me—about bumping into a man in the hall on thirty-four. He thought that man might have been Geoffrey Hammond’s breakfast guest.”