Authors: Hugh Pentecost
“I just had a call from Walter Ames,” he said.
“Connie’s with him?” I asked, feeling relieved.
“No,” Chambrun said. “He called, asking for her. Been on some kind of a boat cruise up the Hudson. No radio or TV. He hadn’t heard the news until he got home a short time ago. He’s on his way. Should arrive in about an hour.”
“He can’t drive a hundred and twenty-five miles in an hour, even at night,” I said.
“Helicopter,” Chambrun said. “Buck Ames always does things in style. You’ve had no luck?”
“Nothing practical. Some gossip.”
“Well, if you can stay awake till Ames arrives—”
Buck Ames was like a blast of fresh wind as he came charging into Chambrun’s office about two o’clock that morning. I was instantly reminded of the present-day Caesar Romero, the movie actor—a big man, white-haired, with a beak of a nose over a black mustache and white-toothed smile. Black eyebrows shaded very bright black eyes. He was suntanned to a mahogany brown, and though I suspect he was sixty years old, he looked trim and well-muscled as an exercised man of thirty. Something in the shape of his face was reminiscent of the more delicate, fine-boned Connie. His voice was big, booming—the Buccaneer shouting his commands from the quarter-deck. He ignored me as if I was a useless piece of furniture and bore down on Chambrun.
“You’re Chambrun,” he said. “Have you found Connie?”
Chambrun shook his head.
“Jesus H. Christ, why not?” Buck shouted. “You’ve got the whole goddam city police force, the FBI, your own security people. Why not?”
“Because we’re walking on eggs in this case, Mr. Ames,” Chambrun said. “I’d like you to know Mark Haskell, a trusted assistant. He’s been looking for Connie.”
“Without any luck,” I said.
“I’ll lay ten to one I can tell you where she is,” Buck said.
“We hoped you could,” Chambrun said. “That’s why we’ve been trying to reach you all night.”
“She’s upstairs on the fifteenth floor with those crazy bastards,” Buck said. “She’d want to be with her kids. She’s given herself up as another hostage.”
“I thought of that,” Chambrun said quietly. “But I’ve had to write it off.”
“Why?” Buck demanded. “I know that girl like I know myself. Nothing would keep her away from those kids. She knows how scared they must be. She knows how badly they must need her.”
He was right, of course. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that myself. And as I wondered, Chambrun knocked it down.
“Pour Mr. Ames a drink of whatever he wants, Mark,” he said. “And help yourself.”
“Bourbon, neat, and don’t spare the horses,” Buck said, before I could ask him. “Why did you write off that theory, Chambrun?”
“I told you, we’re walking on eggs, Mr. Ames.”
“Buck, for Christ sake,” Buck said. “Everybody calls me Buck including my no-good son-in-law.”
“I wrote it off, Buck, because there’s no way she could have got there or made contact with this Coriander fellow without my knowing,” Chambrun said. “The phones to the fifteenth floor are open. We don’t interfere with calls in or out, but we monitor them. Your daughter hasn’t made any attempt to contact Coriander by phone, nor has he made any attempt to reach her. There is no way to get to the fifteenth floor without having to pass one of our security guards on the stairway or in an elevator. No one she would have to pass to get there has seen her.”
“Someone slipped up, took a walk, went to the john.”
“My people are working in pairs in that area,” Chambrun said.
“So you and the government and the cops and the FBI are just sitting around on your ass doing nothing and waiting for Coriander to call the tune, right?”
“Your son-in-law is trying to raise the ransom money,” Chambrun said.
“Don’t make me laugh!” Buck said, and actually roared with laughter. “He couldn’t raise the money to buy the dog tag his late mother should be wearing. Raise the ransom! If that’s the kind of thinking that’s going on around here, God help us! Look, Chambrun, I haven’t heard anything but the reports on the radio in my helicopter. Bring me up to date.”
Chambrun spun it out for him and to my surprise added the Horween story to it.
“I know Doug Horween,” Buck said. “He’s just the kind of reckless bastard who’d try that sort of thing. You buy it? You think they killed him?”
“Horween had a rare blood type—AB negative. The police phoned me a few minutes ago to tell me the bloodstains on the clothes match. AB negative.”
That was news I hadn’t had till then.
“Horween has walked a tightrope all his life over a cage full of hungry lions,” Buck said. “Sooner or later he was bound to fall in. He always took too big chances. That’s why the limeys fired him out of their spy service, or whatever it’s called.” He tossed down the old-fashioned glass full of bourbon I brought him as though it was water. “My horse’s ass son-in-law took him in because he’s the same kind of reckless gambler, without the same kind of iron in his system. I’m sorry about Horween. He was an interesting character. Too bad it couldn’t have been Terry boy.”
“We’ve been presented with a theory about Terrence Cleaves,” Chambrun said quietly.
“I don’t need theories about him. I know about him, all about him,” Buck said. “Someday, when I have nothing left to live for, I’m going to take pleasure in disemboweling him.”
“Why does Connie stay with him?” I asked.
“Because she’s an idiot, God love her. Because she loves him in spite of everything.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said.
Buck’s black eyes burned into me. “Has she been playing her game of musical beds with you?” he asked.
“I don’t think she plays musical beds,” I said.
“Ah! Love raises its ugly head.”
“Don’t be absurd. I scarcely know her. But a man who does, tells me there’s nothing to that rumor.”
“So you found one who doesn’t kiss and tell,” Buck said.
“I found a man named Andrews who has a special interest in your son-in-law,” I said.
The black eyebrows rose. “Colin Andrews—
London Times?”
“The same. I just left him fifteen minutes ago.”
“It’s Andrews who presented us with a theory,” Chambrun said. “He thinks Cleaves may actually be Coriander. That this whole thing is a scheme for him to raise money for himself. That the political demands are just diversionary.”
Buck’s red lips pursed in a long, low whistle. “Sweet Judas,” he said. “That’s just the kind of scheme Terry boy might dream up. What have you done about it?”
“Nothing except launch inquiries,” Chambrun said. “There’s nothing we can do. Mark has been upstairs. He’s seen the layout, the guns, the ammunition, the explosives. Coriander, whoever he is, isn’t bluffing.”
Buck turned to me and a nerve twitched at the corner of his mouth. “You saw the children?”
“Saw them, talked to them. They were holding up well. That was a long time ago, late yesterday morning. Miss Horn, the governess, is with them.”
“That bitch is one of Terry boy’s girl friends,” Buck said. “She’d know if this was a scheme of his.”
“And you think it may be?” Chambrun asked.
Buck handed me his empty glass without looking at me. I took it over to the sideboard and refilled it. His dark brows were drawn together in a scowl. “I’ve got such a strong bias,” he said. “Anything bad anyone told me about Terrence Cleaves I’d believe. But I also know men.”
“Meaning?”
“Cleaves is a stupid villain,” Buck said. “He has no conscience, no morals, but I’d have said he wasn’t bright enough to think up a scheme like this. He’s a hit-and-run kind of a jerk. This Coriander, whoever he is, is a real cool operator. He’s willing to sit up there for days, with a whole army camped around him, waiting to get exactly what he wants. Terry boy hasn’t the constitution to sweat out anything like that. Thirty men up there, you say. He couldn’t get thirty men to go along with him on any project. Of course—” Buck’s voice trailed off.
“Yes?”
“Coriander could have included Terry in,” Buck said. “Terry could be working on the outside for him, promised a piece of the pie.”
“He’d let them use his own children?” I asked.
“He’d send those kids to the sausage factory if it would suit his purposes,” Buck said. He squared his shoulders and tossed off his second drink. “Well, I’m not going to sit here and let them play games with those kids and Connie. Because I still think she got up there somehow.”
“What do you propose doing?” Chambrun asked very quietly.
“I’m going to find the money,” Buck said, his voice harsh. “I’m going to offer it for the return of the kids and Connie. Then, if Coriander turns me down, I’ll know he has no intention of ever letting them go. They can identify him by now, you know. He can’t wear that false face all the time. I promise you one thing, Chambrun. He isn’t going to get away with this, if I have to blow up your goddam hotel with him in it to get him!”
Chambrun smiled, his sphinxlike smile. “Well, getting the money should keep you busy for a while, Buck.”
Buck looked dead serious. “You know what my job is, Chambrun? I work for ITC, biggest of all the multi-national corporations. You think we don’t have an army of our own? That’s how you fight an army—with an army. If anything happens to those kids and Connie, I’ll wipe this Army For Justice off the face of the earth and Coriander will be buried at the bottom of your elevator shaft.”
We watched him storm out of the office. I was too tired from the long, tense day to try to figure out whether he was for real or not. I remember walking over to the sideboard to pour myself a drink. My legs felt a little wobbly under me. Chambrun, one of his Egyptian cigarettes balanced between stubby fingers, was watching me. He looked as fresh as if he’d just gotten up from a good night’s sleep instead of having been on the job, nonstop, for about eighteen hours.
“You better get some rest,” he said to me. “This is going to get down to the nitty-gritty in a few hours. There are going to be some answers for Coriander that he won’t like.”
“You’ve had some word?” I asked.
“Let’s face it,” he said. “Nobody is going to consider for a minute releasing those prisoners in Vietnam. And the Pentagon isn’t going to send its generals to jail. The money may be found, but that’s all.”
“If Andrews is right, the money is all that’s important,” I said.
“Could be,” Chambrun said, sinking back into some private thoughts. “Get some rest.”
I went down the hall to my apartment. The area was deserted now. The people who had crowded there earlier in the day were gone, and the security people were now at the bottom of the stairway and the elevator bank to keep anyone from getting up. The bars and the Blue Lagoon would be closed now and the Beaumont had settled down to something like normal, even with the explosive danger ever present on the fifteenth floor.
I walked like a man in a trance to the apartment and opened the door with my key. I switched on the lights.
I stood there with my mouth hanging open. Someone had ripped the place to pieces. Books had been thrown out of the cases, cushions on the couch and in the chairs tossed around. My desk had been searched, drawers open, papers strewn around. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t keep anything here that was of any real value to anyone, except possibly the few small paintings I’ve mentioned. They’d been taken off the wall, evidently to search their backs for something.
I wondered about the rest of the apartment and I moved unsteadily toward the bedroom. Even before I reached it, I could feel the small hairs rising on the back of my neck. There was the faint scent of a perfume I remembered. As I reached the door, a voice spoke out of the darkness—a small, broken voice.
“Please—please don’t turn on the light, Mark.”
“For God sake, Connie!” I said. I could see the outline of her body stretched out on my bed, arms thrown up over her face.
“Please!” she said. “Not the light.”
I stepped into the bathroom and turned on the light there. It provided enough to see her clearly without providing any glare. I went over to the bed and sat down beside her. She turned away, moaning slightly.
“Where have you been?” I asked. “We’ve been crazy with anxiety for you. What’s happened?”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
I took hold of her hands. They were cold as ice. I pulled them gently away from her face. Suddenly she turned onto her back and looked up at me.
“Oh, Jesus!” I heard myself say.
I say she looked up at me, but that’s just a figure of speech. Her eyes were swollen and almost closed. Her whole face was dark with swellings and bruises. There was a little trickle of blood at one corner of her mouth.
She had taken a brutal beating from someone, almost beyond description.
I
REACHED FOR THE
bedside phone and called Dr. Partridge, the house physician. He’s a crotchety old bird and responded to my summons with a string of profanity that wasn’t designed for delicate ears. He is always outraged if anyone needs his help after he’s gone to bed, or during one of his endless games of backgammon in the Spartan Bar.
All the time I talked to him Connie kept clutching at me and saying, “No—no, Mark—please, no!”
Then I called Chambrun and gave him a quick one-two.
“Don’t touch anything in your living room,” was all he said.
Then Connie was clinging to me, sobbing.
“What in God’s name happened to you?” I asked her. “Who did this to you?”
She turned her head from side to side. I thought she couldn’t answer because of the tears. I disentangled myself and went out into the living room and fixed the door latch so that Chambrun and Doc Partridge could get in. Then I poured a jigger of brandy for Connie and took it back into the bedroom. She protested at first, but then she drank it, choking a little after she tossed it off in one gulp. Then Chambrun was standing beside us.
“How long have you been here, Mrs. Cleaves?” he asked.
“Just—just a few minutes,” she said.
“Was Mark’s place torn apart the way it is when you came?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who did it?”
“No.” She was hanging onto me again, her fingernails biting into my arms.