Time of Terror (13 page)

It was a strange interlude in a time of violence. I lay still beside her, holding her gently. In her sleep she pressed her body against mine and her coppery hair was next to my face. I cared about her, I thought; I cared about what happened to her; I felt a fierce anger against the man who had beaten her; I puzzled over why she didn’t let him have both barrels. I didn’t quite understand her explanation. It didn’t matter. She had asked me to stay with her, to be her protector. I guess, eventually, I dozed off, not wanting to move my arm, which was cramped and uncomfortable, for fear it would disturb her.

Would you believe that I had almost literally forgotten the one-armed man in 15 A? I’d forgotten the murder of Horween, and the two little girls who must now be frozen with fear since no one seemed to be doing anything to get them released. I had forgotten that with every beat of Connie’s heart, which I could feel against my chest, time was running out for those children. Inside and outside the hotel Coriander’s Army For Justice must be preparing for the next move. They wouldn’t wait, motionless and inactive, forever. A little girl’s ear, a hand, a foot! Would you believe I had wiped all that out of my consciousness as I cruised in and out of sleep, holding another man’s wife, and imagining some future time when it would make more sense?

I might be standing still in space, but not the rest of the world. Everywhere presses were rolling with the full story of the kidnapping and Coriander’s demands. Men on trucks were tossing bundled accounts of the situation to corner newsdealers and in front of small stores for the early morning readers. I need only to have pressed a button to discover that all-night talk shows on television had been with the story, hour after hour. Diplomats and government heads in Europe, five hours ahead of us and well into their day, had opinions that were being expressed. England in particular was being very vocal, since the victims of Coriander’s scheme were British subjects. Official comments were guarded. Only the United States government could do anything about political prisoners in Vietnam. Unofficial voices were more positive. The United States had turned a blind eye to the actions of the South Vietnamese government, her ally in Indochina. Now the day of reckoning was at hand.

Crackpots everywhere had opinions. We were reminded that the “tiger cages” in which political prisoners were held in Vietnam had been supplied by Uncle Sam, actually manufactured in this country. Isolated groups of veterans of the war in Vietnam applauded Coriander. It was time attention was called to the duplicity of the Peace With Honor. It was time the real villains in the world of the Pentagon were forced to face up to some kind of real justice. Harley Latham, that ever-present man of God, publicly prayed for the cleansing of our national conscience. “No price is too high to pay for the safety of two innocent children!” he told the all-night audiences. “They are worth more than all the armies, all the power, all the men in high places.” He would personally urge the President, he promised, to pay whatever the price might be for the release of those innocent children, and he was certain every mother in the United States would support his plea.

Outside the Beaumont the army of pickets, augmented by hundreds of uninvolved curiosity hounds, grew to such proportions that the police were forced to reroute traffic around four blocks of Fifth Avenue. Across the street in Central Park people brought blankets and their breakfasts and lunches, prepared to make the death watch a kind of national picnic.

For real, a grim-faced James Priest, State Department, discussed the facts of life with Chambrun, the Assistant Police Commissioner, a representative of the mayor’s office, Captain Valentine of the bomb squad, Gus Brand of the FBI, Lieutenant Hardy of Homicide, and hotel security represented by Jerry Dodd, as dawn crept over the city.

The President would make a public announcement at nine in the morning that the government was considering the possibility of meeting Coriander’s demands. He would say that the Pentagon was reexamining the possible guilt of higher-ups. But, Priest told his audience, this simply represented the willingness of the President to stall for a little time. Political prisoners could not be released. No way. Even if the Pentagon was honestly reexamining, it would take months to bring new men to trial.

Priest was asked about the money.

“It would take an act of Congress for the government to give away such a huge sum,” Priest said. “The congressmen would have to get what they call ‘the sense of their constituents.’ Most Americans will have a deep sympathy for the little girls, but those same Americans in very large numbers will oppose the idea that the government of the United States submit to blackmail by a criminal. You’ve seen that attitude in a jail in Texas where innocent hostages were shot rather than submit to blackmail by the criminals; you saw it at Attica; people on hijacked planes are regretfully abandoned by the authorities; there is a long history of refusing to be intimidated.”

“So we stall, with phony promises, while pieces of little girls are sent back to us on their breakfast trays,” Chambrun said.

“Until you find a way to storm the fifteenth floor,” Priest said.

“And have the hostages and ourselves blown to pieces,” Chambrun said.

“Coriander might settle for the money and a safe way to escape,” Gus Brand said. “He must know the other demands can’t and won’t be met.”

“I have never thought anything but the money mattered,” Chambrun said. “The other demands simply make it all seem more righteous to some people. Let’s suppose the money can be found. How do we assure the escape of thirty people? I know your system, Mr. Brand. You’ll have a hundred sharpshooters ready to mow them down the minute they leave the fifteenth floor. They’ll have the hostages with them, because of course no one will be released until they’re safely away. So everyone dies and we save the money. That’s an American ‘attitude’ too, isn’t it?”

Gus Brand didn’t answer.

“There has to be a way,” Jim Priest said.

“I’m willing to listen,” Chambrun said. “I’ve spent the last twenty hours trying to think of a way and I’ve come up empty.”

While all this was going on, I drowsed through the first light of morning, holding Connie in my arms. The telephone bell in my living room sounded shrill and harsh. I came awake, and Connie stirred and moaned softly in her sleep. I managed to stumble up and go into the living room to answer the persistent ringing.

An anguished woman’s voice that I didn’t recognize in my foggy state said, “For God sake help me, Mark!”

“Who is this?”

“Martha. Martha Blodgett.”

“What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“They assigned me a room on the tenth floor,” she said, her voice breaking. “Ten fourteen.” All of Cleaves’s staff had been on Fifteen and were now scattered around the hotel.

“What’s wrong?” I said again.

“Please come, Mark. Please!”

“Look, I’ve got trouble here,” I said. “I’ll send someone if you’re in real trouble. I—”

“It’s Colin!” she cried out. “They’ve killed him, Mark.”

“What are you saying?” I must have sounded like a dummy to her.

“Oh, my God, will you please come!” she said.

“Hang up,” I said. “I’m bringing help.”

I called the switchboard and asked them to locate Jerry Dodd. I was told he was in Chambrun’s office. I got Chambrun and told him what Martha had just said. When I met him out in the hall, having left Connie still asleep, not only was Jerry with him but also Lieutenant Hardy, the homicide man.

“No more details than you gave me?” Chambrun asked as we waited for an elevator.

“‘They’ve killed him’ is all she said.”

I guess we reached 1014 within five minutes of Martha Blodgett’s call. She answered our knock the instant Jerry’s knuckles rapped on the door. She was wearing a pale blue robe. A river of blood was running down from her disheveled blonde hair across her face and down onto the robe which she clutched around her throat. She didn’t speak, but just stood aside to let us in.

I know I turned away because I thought I was going to be sick at my stomach. What may have been Colin Andrews lay twisted on the bed, stark naked, his head battered in like a smashed pumpkin. The sheets and the pillows looked as if they’d been used to mop up a slaughterhouse.

T
HE FIRST THING TO
do was get Martha away from there and leave the bloody arena to Hardy and his homicide squad, who would presently be riding sirens through the city streets. We were clumsy about it, I suppose. Martha was barefooted, and she obviously had nothing on under her bloodstained blue robe. Like other people who had been shut off the fifteenth floor by Coriander, she had almost no personal belongings. An empty box from the lobby boutique suggested the robe was something she’d bought there since yesterday morning, along with an inexpensive comb and brush on the bureau. The dress she’d been wearing when she and Colin Andrews had been in my apartment was on a hanger in the closet. A pair of panty hose and a bra were on another hanger. Shoes neatly placed in the middle of the otherwise empty closet.

Colin Andrews’ clothes were draped over an armchair.

“Bring Miss Blodgett’s things, Mark. My office,” Chambrun said. There was no other place to take her.

Hardy held up the exodus for a moment. “A brief statement, please, Miss Blodgett. You saw who did it?”

“No.” A whisper.

It was awkward. She and Andrews had obviously been in bed together, and probably not to sleep. Martha was standing by me and she reached out to my arm to steady herself. It took guts for her to go on.

“We were making love,” she said almost inaudibly. “Someone struck Colin and he—he rolled away from me, trying to escape, I think. And then I was struck.” She lifted her hand to her bloodied hair. “That was all. I didn’t see anyone. I—I must have been unconscious for a while. I don’t know how long. What time is it?”

“Five-thirty,” Hardy said.

“A half hour, then,” Martha said. “When I came to I—oh, my God—I saw Colin like that—the way he is. I called Mark, the only person I could think of to call.”

“You heard whoever it was come into the room?”

“No.” She fought encroaching tears. “We were making sounds together—loving sounds. Can you understand, Lieutenant? I wasn’t listening for anything.”

“The door wasn’t forced,” Jerry Dodd said. “Whoever it was had a key. Coming could have been almost noiseless.”

“Has anything been taken from your room?” Hardy asked.

“There was nothing to take, Lieutenant. I had nothing here except this robe I bought, a comb and brush, a toothbrush and paste in the bathroom. Everything I own is upstairs in the room I had on Fifteen.”

“Handbag?”

“There on the bureau.”

“May I look at the contents, Miss Blodgett?”

“Yes. There’s nothing in it—a lipstick, an American Express credit card, some tissues, about six dollars in bills and some change, the door keys to this room and my room on Fifteen.”

Hardy opened the bag and looked at what he held. “Nothing missing,” he said.

“Can’t this wait, Hardy, until Miss Blodgett has had a chance to get on some clothes and pull herself together a little?” Chambrun asked.

Hardy, a handkerchief wrapped around his hand, picked up the telephone on the bedside table. “I’ll join you as soon as my people get here,” he said.

I gathered up Martha’s meager belongings and we headed for the elevators. She walked, barefoot, between Chambrun and me, hanging on to each of us for support.

When we got to Chambrun’s office, Betsy Ruysdale was there. I’ll never know how Ruysdale manages it. No matter what the time of day or night, if there is a situation where Chambrun needs her, she manages to be on tap.

There is a little dressing room and bath off Chambrun’s office. He uses it for normal needs and for an occasional forty winks in the course of a busy day. He actually lives in a penthouse on the roof. Ruysdale took Martha’s things from me, and without any questions led her away.

In the office Chambrun went to his desk and the phone. He called the security office and talked to Bill Plante, Jerry Dodd’s chief of staff. “I want a report on Terrence Cleaves,” he said, “from the moment he left Mark’s apartment at a little after two o’clock this morning.” Plante’s report was brief, and Chambrun thanked him and put down the phone. “Cleaves went directly to his room, 805, and hasn’t left it since.”

“You thought—?”

“He had a motive,” Chambrun said. “Andrews was out to get him. Did Mrs. Cleaves tell you anything?”

I tried to make Connie’s story sound sensible. About all it did was verify the fact that Terrence Cleaves had something serious to hide, just as Colin Andrews had told us.

“Something about it doesn’t add up,” Chambrun said, scowling at the end of his cigarette. “She has something on Cleaves, something big. It would seem she could get custody of her children and walk out on him. But she stays with him, even though they ‘loathe’ each other, she told you.”

“It’s hard to figure,” I said.

“I am also bothered by an echo,” Chambrun said. “Andrews told you that Cleaves found his wife in bed with a young man in the foreign service, beat him half to death. Tonight someone finds Miss Blodgett in bed with Andrews and does beat him to death. Miss Blodgett indicated to you that Cleaves had been after her. What was it she said about her track shoes being worn out? You’d say Cleaves doesn’t like other men to fool around with women he considers belong to him. But unless Bill Plante slipped up, it could have been Cleaves who broke into 1014.”

“He could have slipped up,” I said.

“I almost wish I thought so,” Chambrun said. “It would make it so simple.”

Ruysdale emerged from the dressing room at that point. She is a woman who rarely shows any sort of deep feeling, but she looked a little done in this time.

“That’s a very gutsy girl,” she said to Chambrun. “Go easy with her, Pierre. She’s hanging on by an eyelash.”

I can’t remember ever having heard her call him by his first name before.

“Will you call Bill Plante,” Chambrun said. “He says Cleaves has been covered every minute of the time since he left Mark’s apartment. I want the details of that coverage, minute by minute. If there is the tiniest gap in it, I want to know.”