Girl Watcher's Funeral (18 page)

“I didn't call it off,” Hardy said.

“Lazar's wish,” Chambrun said.

“The stupid bastard! He can't do that to Nikos!” Gallivan said. “Look, I'm sorry, gents, but I've got to talk to Max. He can't do this.”

Chambrun picked up the house phone on his desk and asked for Lazar's room. Then, quietly: “Would you mind coming down to my office, Mr. Lazar?”

“Does Monica know?” Gallivan asked. “She's put in months of work on this.”

“About your room,” Hardy said. He wasn't concerned with fashion shows. “You're positive you didn't see Miss Lewis go into your room?”

“Sonofabitch suddenly thinks he's a big shot now that Nikos is gone,” Gallivan said.

“Miss Lewis was pitched out that window,” Hardy said, “and then the killer took time to clean away all traces. Maybe a piece of her tweed suit was torn off as she went out. Maybe he deliberately tore off a piece of it before he heaved her out the window. It makes an interesting point, Mr. Gallivan. Why would he want to make us think it happened in Miss Morse's room? It was risky to go through the motions of setting up that fake.”

“How the hell do I know why?” Gallivan said. He was clearly thinking about Lazar.

“Cleaning off the window still in your room makes sense,” Hardy said. “He had to make sure he wouldn't leave any fingerprints. But why, then, the fake-off in Miss Morse's room? What difference would it make to him what room it happened in, if he didn't leave evidence behind him? It would work just as well for you to be suspected as Miss Morse, wouldn't it?”

“Unless,” Chambrun said, in a faraway voice.

“Unless what?” Gallivan said.

“Unless it was you, Gallivan,” Chambrun said. “You might try to point somewhere else.”

“Oh, for God sake come off it,” Gallivan said in a disgusted voice. “You bastards haven't got a single lead to this mess. Don't try to fake out on me, chums. Hell, Rosey was my very good friend. Why should I—”

“That's par for the course,” Hardy said. “Everyone was Rosey's ‘very good friend'—except someone wasn't. Rosey went to a very good friend—in your room, Gallivan—and said, ‘You shifted Nikos's pills,' and the very good friend clobbered her, threw her out the window, and then tried to make it look as though it had happened somewhere else. Why, unless as Chambrun suggests, it was you?”

Gallivan grinned his Irish grin. “Well, if I did, it didn't work. So what's new, Lieutenant?” He held out his hands. “You want to match my fingerprints with some you've found around? Help yourself. Couldn't we be a little less absurd? Nikos was my closest friend, my brother, my benefactor. I would have died myself rather than let him be knocked off. Rosey knew that. Whoever she suspected, you can bet your life on it it wasn't me. And if she had suspected me, I'd have laughed at her, taken her by the hand, bought her a drink, and told her to wise up.” He shook his head as though Hardy was a stubborn child. “The people who were double-crossing Nikos were Jan and Faraday. Faraday, with his temper, is the kind of guy who would kill someone and then figure out afterwards what to do about it.”

“Like framing his girl?” Chambrun asked.

“A little while ago you had Jan pegged as the killer,” I said.

“I still think she may be. She, or Faraday, or both together.”

“Carefully pointing a finger at themselves?” Chambrun asked.

Gallivan's relaxed grin widened. “Since you were bound to discover it was a fake, it would actually point away from them, wouldn't it? Not too stupid, when you stop to think.”

The office door opened and Max Lazar came in. Gallivan's grin vanished.

“What's this about your calling off the showing, Maxie?” he asked.

Lazar looked at the two cops, puzzled. “Is there some reason why—”

“You're damn right there's a reason why,” Gallivan said, his voice rising. “You know what Nikos wanted. You know how carefully he planned it. What the hell's the reason for calling it off?”

“Personal reasons, Tim. The show will be buried under murder and scandal. No one will pay the slightest attention to my designs. They'll be lost in the headlines. Nikos wouldn't want that to happen. So I wait—until the next time around.”

“I won't have it!” Gallivan said. “Nikos's wishes are going to be carried out, down to the last dotting of an ‘i' and the crossing of a ‘t.' That show is going on, Max, come hell or high water.”

There was surprising strength in Lazar's dark face. “I'm sorry, Tim, but I've made up my mind. I have to think of myself. And I'm thinking of Nikos, too. He wouldn't have wanted me to lose out.”

“You'll go through with it, Max, or you'll wish to God you'd never been born.”

“I take it, Gallivan, you're executor of Nikos's will,” Chambrun said quietly. “Do you have some special authority to alter its provisions? Mr. Lazar has full control of his inheritance, hasn't he?”

Gallivan's voice was unsteady. “Yes. Unfortunately I can't do anything about that.” He swung around at Lazar. “It's taken money to build you up, Maxie. It's taken connections to get to the right people to wear your clothes at the right time and at the right places. I do have access to those connections. I do count the important buyers in the high-fashion field among my friends—and Nikos's. I can snow you under forever, Maxie, if I choose. And I choose, if you don't go through with this showing.”

“Either I have something to offer or I don't,” Lazar said. “If I can be wiped out by your pulling strings with your friends, I'd better find it out now and turn to something that isn't based on such a whimsical foundation.”

Gallivan changed his tack. His manner became smooth as velvet. “Look, Maxie, I'm your friend,” he said. “You know that. I've handled all Nikos's business details as they relate to you. I encouraged him to go all-out for you. You know that. I think you owe it to him and to me to go through with what he planned for you.”

“I don't see why it's so important to you,” Lazar said. “It's my judgment, and Mr. Chambrun, who was also Nikos's friend, agrees with me, that it would be a personal disaster to go ahead with the showing in the face of all this trouble.”

“Damn Mr. Chambrun!” Gallivan exploded. “You want me to play rough, Maxie, I will. I promise you.”

It was a strange kind of argument. Hardy and Jansen, the two cops, concerned with a multiple killing and a missing key witness, seemed to have been taken back by the sheer violence of Gallivan's attack. Gallivan, who should have been worrying about the fact that a crime had probably been committed in his room and that he was certainly on the prime list of suspects, seemed to have forgotten everything except his outrage at Lazar's decision. It didn't make sense to me. The showing was Lazar's ball game to win or lose.

Gallivan turned to Hardy. “I don't like to drop out of your little game of pin the tail on the donkey, Lieutenant, but I've got to try to make this idiot make sense.” He spun back at Lazar. “Have you talked to Monica?”

Lazar shook his head. “There isn't any reason to talk to anyone, Tim. It's my decision to make, and I've made it.”

“Monica Strong knows more about this field than all of us put together,” Gallivan said. “Do me the favor of talking to her before you do anything final.”

“Well, yes, I'll talk to her,” Lazar said. “I have to tell her the showing is off.”

“Will you listen to her?”

“Sure, I'll listen.” Lazar looked at me. “Would you come along with me, Haskell? Monica may have some very sound advice about who the press people are who should be told at once.”

I very much didn't want to go. The only thing that really concerned me at the moment was Jan. If Jerry Dodd or anyone else came up with any kind of a lead, I wanted to be on deck to help. Finding her seemed to be the most important thing on the agenda.

“Go along with Mr. Lazar, Mark,” Chambrun said.

I looked at him reproachfully. His stony face told me nothing.

“I'll let you know if there's any news,” he said.

“Let's go,” Gallivan said. “I hope Monica can talk some sense into you, Maxie.”

“I'm sorry, Gallivan, but I'm not through with you,” Hardy said.

“Will you knock off this nonsense!” Gallivan almost shouted at him. “I don't know anything about your windows and your frame-ups. If I knew anything that would help you, I'd tell you, but I don't. This business of Maxie's is vitally important to me. I've got to go with him to Monica.”

“When I'm through with you,” Hardy said, unbudging.

“God-damned idiots!” Gallivan said, his face dark with anger.

“You and Lazar run along, Mark,” Chambrun said.

I knew that ultra-quiet tone of voice of Chambrun's. Something was cooking with him.

Lazar and I went to the outer office together. I suggested he call Monica Strong to make sure where she was. He found her on her room phone. She told him she'd meet us in the Trapeze in about ten minutes.

We walked down into the lobby together and up the short flight of stairs to the Trapeze. The crowd had thinned out a little there and Mr. Del Greco had no trouble finding us a table. We each ordered a drink. Lazar's dark young face looked almost painfully exhausted.

“It's a hard choice to make, you know, but it's a hell of a lot harder for me than for Tim. I've put in months of design work.” He shook his head. “He makes it sound as though it was costing him something personally.”

“Was he an investor?” I asked.

“Nikos was the only angel,” Lazar said. “The money that's been spent so far means absolutely nothing to Nikos's estate. Peanuts that can be written off as a business expense against taxes.” The waiter brought his drink, but he just toyed with it. “It's hard to believe he could be so violent over a change of plans that will cost him nothing.” He looked at me and gave me a weary little smile. “You're not with me. You're still concerned about Jan?”

“No trace of her,” I said. “We're going over the hotel inch by inch, from roof to basement. Frankly, I'm not hopeful.”

“Zach had nothing to offer?”

“No help as far as finding her is concerned.”

“Ask Monica when she comes,” Lazar said. “You know, Monica was in Jan's position for about ten or twelve years—Nikos's girl, his confidante. She may have been a great deal more to Nikos than Jan is. She was with him long before he had his first heart attack. She was his woman, his hostess, the caretaker of his pleasures. Not unreasonably, she resents Jan. But she might know special routines that Jan might follow in trouble.”

He didn't go on because Monica appeared in the doorway. She'd changed from her party dress of the afternoon into a deceptively simple black knitted thing that did a great deal for her still gorgeous figure. We stood up as she came across the room to our table. As she sat down between us, I was aware of an elusive perfume.

“What's up?” she asked.

“I've decided not to go ahead with the showing,” Lazar said.

She drew a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. She looked at me. “I wonder if I might have a vodka and tonic?” she asked. She opened her little gold mesh bag and took out a cigarette. I held my lighter for her and then signaled to the waiter and ordered her drink. “I've been thinking you might come to that, Max,” she said. “Well, that's a lot of work gone down the drain. It was going to be a lovely party.”

“You think I'm wrong?” Lazar asked. “Tim is outraged by it. He thinks I owe it to Nikos to go ahead. He threatens to have the buyers and the press down on my back for the rest of my life.”

She smiled a thin little smile. “Tim is not Nikos,” she said. “If Nikos threatened you, you could be sure he could make it stick. Tim is the heir apparent, but he isn't Nikos. We've all got to learn to make our own decisions now. New world, Max, for all of us.”

“Do you feel I owe it to Nikos to go ahead?”

She didn't answer at once. The waiter brought her drink and she turned it round and round in her slim fingers. “Sentiment is a commodity that's pretty well disappeared from the world these days,” she said. “Nikos was taking a huge delight in putting you over at this time, Max. He would have done it. It might still happen, but without him, you can't be certain. Nikos could afford to be a sentimentalist. But can you? Practically, I think you're right in waiting. I'm sorry about it. It would have been a fine sendoff for me in a world without Nikos. But for you I think the decision is correct.”

“You think it's sentiment that has Tim so upset?”

She laughed outright. “Tim is about as sentimental as an armor-plated tank,” she said. “No, I think our Tim has other problems. The king is dead, long live the king—only the subjects will suddenly scatter. He gives an order to you, Max, and you disobey it. That's his first taste of what it's going to be like. An empire is already slipping through his fingers. Did you ask his advice before you decided?”

“No,” Max said.

“That's how it's going to be,” Monica said, “from everyone. You wouldn't have dreamed of making a move on your own without consulting Nikos, would you? Tim imagined it would be like that for him. In just a few hours the whole thing is coming apart at the seams for him.” She smiled, and it had a Cheshire cat quality.

“You're not fond of Gallivan, are you?” I said.

She turned to give me a very direct look. “Is it that obvious? Oh, you can't trust me, Haskell. I'm a vindictive, bitchy gal. Remember, I'm the deposed queen. Tim treated me like royalty for ten years. All I had to do was raise an eyebrow and I got what I was thinking about. I liked him in those days, even trusted him. He was Nikos's right arm. It seemed to me he had a genius for anticipating everything Nikos wanted. His financial and legal judgments were invariably right. He was a perfect gentleman, with courtesy and humor about everything he did. And then Nikos had his heart attack and I was given my walking papers. Now I was on the outside, and my every wish was no longer law to Tim. I began to see another side of him that had been hidden from me up to then.”