Girl Watcher's Funeral (12 page)

The party was dead, a corpse. Hardy's men had put a blight on it with the word about Rosey Lewis. The red drums and the steel guitar were on chairs in the corner, but no musicians. The green walls with their Flemish paintings looked mournful. The Scarsdale housewives had evaporated. I learned later that all the names and addresses had been carefully noted, that no one was supposed to leave the hotel, but that they'd been given permission to go somewhere for food—which I suspected everyone needed to combat martini anesthesia.

There were still two people in the room, standing over by the bar. I had been wrong about Max Lazar. He could still navigate and he was making himself a fresh martini on the rocks. Monica Strong was with him. Monica's eyes widened when she saw me.

“What on earth happened to you?” she asked.

I hadn't taken time to look at myself in the mirror. I discovered later I looked like Kirk Douglas after his last beating in
The Champion
—swollen eye, cut cheekbone, thick lip.

“I got mixed up with a stone-crusher,” I said. “We're looking for Dodo Faraday.”

“Oh,” Monica said, as though that explained everything. “She was here. She may have joined some of the others in a search for something more nourishing than caviar.” Her eyes narrowed. “Did Mike do that to you?”

“Mike—and six other guys, naturally,” I said.

“You should learn to stay away from rabbit women,” Monica said. She turned to Chambrun. “There seems to be some sort of conspiracy against our getting our show on the road, Mr. Chambrun. How much more can happen?”

He looked at her as though he didn't quite believe what he'd heard.

Max Lazar had joined us. He held a glass in one hand, and with the other he stroked the rich fur of his cowboy vest. I thought he must be very drunk, but he was quite steady on his pins.

“I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Chambrun,” he said. It was Oxford English with a slight accent which I took to be French. He spoke carefully, as if to make certain he didn't slur the words. “This is all a disaster beyond belief. Poor Rosey. She was a doll.”

“You plan to go ahead with Friday's event?” Chambrun asked.

Lazar raised a hand to stroke his long, curly hair. “It's hard to think of going on,” he said. “I remember, when President Kennedy was assassinated, I thought it was the end of the world. But after a day of mourning it was business as usual. The investment is enormous. We have models under contract who will not be available at another time. Nikos would have wanted us to go ahead. He planned for it in case anything happened to him. Rosey would feel the same way, I think.”

“It's nice for you that you can justify,” Chambrun said. “You think Mrs. Faraday is somewhere else in the hotel?”

“I don't know who's left in the bedroom,” Monica said.

Chambrun made a little gesture with his hand and I went to see. The look-alikes were still on the bed, both of them asleep now. On a chair in the corner, his gray head bent, was Zach Chambers. He had forgotten about Merle Oberon. He was crying like a small child, tears streaming down his face, his whole body convulsed with sobs. Kneeling beside him was a gorgeous girl who must be, I thought, the one Jan had referred to as looking like Julie Christie.

“Zach, you mustn't!” she kept saying over and over.

“She was so special,” Chambers choked out. “So not bitchy. She was so clean and healthy, so attractive and sporty—like a—like a Cristina Ford or a Happy Rockefeller. Not all bedroomy and sexy—but blooming. Oh, God, Laura, I loved her so much—in a very special way. I'd have let a truck run over me if she'd asked. She never treated me as though I was some kind of faggoty worm from under a rock. She treated me like I was just like anyone else. Oh, God!”

“You mustn't cry, Zach,” Laura pleaded.

There was no one else in the room. I tried the john to be sure. Dodo was among the missing. I went back to report.

Chambrun was still standing with Monica and Max Lazar. I told him Dodo was gone.

“You'll probably find her in the Blue Lagoon,” Lazar said. “It's her favorite place to dine. She's asked me many times, but unfortunately I have never been able to accept—thanks to you, Mr. Chambrun.”

Chambrun's eyebrows rose.

“Silly rule about neckties,” Lazar said. “To me neckties are an abortion. That Spanish grandee who presides over the Blue Lagoon stands guard over your Victorian tastes, Mr. Chambrun.”

“There has to be someplace in the hotel where gentlemen won't be embarrassed because they're not wearing beads,” Chambrun said. He looked at me. “Miss Strong tells me that outbursts of maniacal rage are part of Faraday's history. It seems his custom is to buy his way out of trouble when the storm clears.”

“There was a waiter in a Paris restaurant,”‘ Lazar said. “A wheelchair case as a result. Mike settled a huge sum on him to avoid criminal prosecution.” He gave me a tired smile. “You may have found a way to get rich, Haskell.”

“Faraday is headed for a new experience,” Chambrun said, his face grim. “I think we should find Mrs. Faraday, Mark. She may save us time.”

We left the dead party and whooshed down in an express elevator to the lobby. Chambrun wasn't in a mood for conversation. As we walked away from the elevator and started toward the Blue Lagoon, Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, waylaid us. Mike has the old-young face of a Sicilian bandit.

“Been trying to find you, Mr. Chambrun,” he said. “Jerry says to tell you he's got the Faraday dame in the front office.”

As usual, Jerry wasn't behind the times. There is a small office back of the reception desk in the main lobby. It isn't used by anyone in particular. It's a place to take a guest who has a complaint or wants a check cashed, or to interview the banquet manager about a party. It's simply furnished with a flat-topped desk, several small upholstered armchairs, the wall decorated with photographs of famous persons and parties dating back over the years.

Dodo Faraday was sitting in one of the chairs, her hands locked tightly together in her lap. That odd, hazy, drunken look had left her. She was staring straight ahead at the wall. Jerry was sitting on the edge of the desk fiddling with a cigarette. He glanced up as we came in.

“I thought Mrs. Faraday might cut some corners for us,” he said, “but she's not being very cooperative.”

“I was taken away from my dinner, like a criminal,” Dodo said, “brought in here, and—” She stopped. I had come into her line of vision. “Oh, my God!” she said. “Mike did that to you?”

“And my secretary—a woman—is in the hospital with a broken jaw and a possible fractured skull,” Chambrun said. “I recommend to you that you help, Mrs. Faraday.”

“Please,” she said. “I've been so angry I haven't really been listening to what he's been saying.” She nodded toward Jerry. “What is it you want me to do?”

“Gloves off, Mrs. Faraday,” Chambrun said. “We understand your husband's having an affair with a girl named Jan Morse.”

Her voice turned bitter. “Oh, it's on the electric sign around the Times Building every night,” she said. “The whole world knows. Except Nikos. Poor Nikos. They managed to keep it from him.”

“The police discovered that Rosemary Lewis jumped or was thrown from the window in Jan Morse's room,” Chambrun said. “Mark took Miss Morse down to my office to wait while the police went over her room on the nineteenth floor. Your husband appeared there, Mrs. Faraday, slugged my secretary, who tried to intercept him, broke into my office and beat Mark into unconsciousness. Then he left the hotel—with Jan Morse. Where would he be likely to take her?”

“Oh, God,” she said, and lowered her eyes.

“Apparently the girl went with him willingly. She wasn't dragged out by the hair of her head, Mrs. Faraday. Where would they be likely to go?”

Dodo looked up slowly, and two great tears rolled down her cheeks. “You'd think I'd be ready to help to get back at him,” she said. “You're wondering why I didn't tell Nikos, who could have destroyed them both. You're wondering why Jan went off with him, not protesting, leaving two badly hurt people behind.”

“I just want to find him, Mrs. Faraday,” Chambrun said.

“Because I'm afraid for my life—and so is Jan,” Dodo said. She looked at me. “Maybe Mr. Haskell can tell you what he's like. Mike is an unbelievable sadist, Mr. Chambrun. If I told you the things he's done to me, you wouldn't believe me. I've wanted to run, to leave him, to go to the other side of the world. It wouldn't be any use. He'd follow me, he'd find me, and in the end he'd kill me. If I wasn't afraid to die, I'd run the risk. That's why Jan went with him, in the face of everything. She knew if she didn't, she'd be confronted with—with God knows what.”

“That makes it all the more urgent for us to find him,” Chambrun said.

“I can only tell you what you'd find out without my help,” she said. “We have a house at Fifth Avenue and Ninetieth Street.”

“He'd take another woman there?”

Her laughter had a jangling sound to it. “The house has been full of women for all of our married lives!” she said. “I meet them in the hallways. I find them in my breakfast room. They don't laugh at me. They've found out that Mike is no laughing matter.”

“Did you ever see Jan there?” I asked.

“No, Mike had to play it cautiously with her because of Nikos.”

“Does Jan Morse have a place in town of her own?”

“Didn't you know, Mr. Chambrun? Jan Morse was Nikos's property. Where he lived, she lived. If there was anyplace she'd call home, it would be Nikos's yacht, which is anchored somewhere in the Hudson.”

“Would they go there?”

Dodo shook her head. “She was Nikos's girl. The Greek pirates who run the yacht for Nikos would tear Mike apart if they found him fooling with Nikos's girl.”

“Even after Nikos was dead?”

“Nikos is not dead to the people who loved him, Mr. Chambrun,” Dodo said. “I wasn't one of his favorites or I might have gone to him for help. He was a man you could count on in trouble. I've heard you know that, Mr. Chambrun.”

“I knew it very well,” Chambrun said. “I'm sorry to put you through this, Mrs. Faraday, but we've got to find your husband.” He turned to me. “Let's try the Fifth Avenue house.”

My instant reaction was to plead a previous engagement. I could visualize Faraday taking both Chambrun and me apart without too much difficulty. I wasn't prepared to face him again just yet. I should have known that Chambrun wasn't going to play hero.

We had company on the way uptown in a taxi in the person of Lieutenant Hardy. The big, broad-shouldered Homicide man was a comforting presence. As we squeezed together in the back seat of the taxi, I could feel the hard shape of his gun pressed against my arm.

“I am charging him with criminal assault for the moment,” Chambrun said. “Among the fingerprints your men have picked up in Jan Morse's room are going to be Faraday's. We know he spent some time there late this afternoon. That should be enough to hold him on suspicion of homicide. A man who could run amok as Faraday did in my office could be triggered to toss a woman out a window without giving it a second thought.”

“I'll take him in,” Hardy said cheerfully. “He'll probably produce some expensive legal talent.”

Chambrun's face was turned to watch the dark tree shapes in Central Park. “I have a lot of friends in this town in key positions,” he said. “I haven't spent my life asking them for irritating favors. When I do ask for the key to the jailhouse, I think I'll get it.”

I'd seen the house on Fifth Avenue many times without knowing that it belonged to Faraday. It was one of the last of the old mansions that had resisted the assault of new, towering apartment buildings. It was a gray stone affair, about five stories tall. The front door, massive oak, looked as if it had been built for a medieval castle.

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't what happened. Hardy rang the front doorbell and started reaching in his pocket for the leather case in which he carries his police badge. The door opened before he got it out. We were confronted by a man in a white house coat.

“Come in, gentlemen,” he said. “Mr. Faraday is expecting you.”

We looked at each other, wondering.

We were led across a great entrance hall, thickly carpeted, gloomy portraits of Faraday's ancestors peering down at us from the walls—and into a living room that belonged in another world. The furnishings were the most modern of modern—chromium, angles, a white fur rug before a huge white marble fireplace, a dozen garish pop-art paintings on the walls. At the far end of the room was an elaborate bar, stacked with bottles and expensive-looking glass. Faraday was standing by it, a drink in his hand. He was wearing white silk house pajamas, cut in a version of a karate expert's uniform. There were rope sandals on his feet. His perpetually suntanned skin was handsomely set off by the white silk and the white and silver scheme of the room. He gave us a cordial, almost warm smile.

“I've been expecting you, gentlemen,” he said. “My wife phoned me that you were on the way. How are you, Chambrun?” He frowned sympathetically. “I hope things aren't too bad with you, Haskell.” The pale eyes moved to Hardy. “I assume this gentleman is from the police.”

Dodo Faraday was so frightened of him she'd had to warn him.

“Lieutenant Hardy, Homicide,” our Notre Dame fullback said. “I'm here to arrest you on charges of criminal assault and suspicion of homicide.”

Faraday's face clouded. “The secretary?” he asked.

“My secretary is in the intensive care unit at the hospital,” Chambrun said. “God help you if she doesn't make it. The homicide charge at the moment relates to Rosemary Lewis.”