Going for the Gold Page 6

  Thatcher stiffened. “What is this about Yves Bisson?”

  “We are all from Grenoble,” explained the leader. “Bisson is one of our local men and we expected to see him take a gold medal.”

  Impatiently Thatcher waved this aside. “But what did he have to do with the tour?”

  “It was his tour. You understand, he works for the travel agency in Grenoble that put this tour together, and he handled all the arrangements last summer.”

  “Exactly what arrangements were those?” Thatcher asked the leader.

  “He did all the promotion, he made the reservations.”

  “And met with us,” a woman sighed nostalgically. “In the flesh.”

  Privately Thatcher thought that was the least Bisson could have done for the people he was going to fleece. “And he arranged the purchase of the traveler’s checks?”

  “But of course.”

  Naturally. Bisson had simply pocketed the share of the payment intended for Eurochecks and supplied counterfeits. With the tour not arriving in Lake Placid until the concluding days of the Games, there had been little chance of his role being exposed.

  But as Thatcher’s gaze thoughtfully took in the distressed faces watching him, he decided not to repeat the folly of that teller at the bank. He would probably be lynched if he attacked the sainted memory of Yves Bisson. Let someone else do the dirty work.

  “You will be relieved to hear that a representative of the French Ambassador is arriving here today to take charge of the body. No doubt you will be consulting with him, and I will certainly keep him abreast of any developments.”

  It was too much to hope that the Ambassador’s representative would also be a proud son of Grenoble.

  Chapter 5

  Some Flurries

  BACK in New York, Everett Gabler was indefatigably working his way down John Thatcher’s list, despite one interruption after another. He had barely established that no other bank in the city had been troubled with counterfeit before the New York Post called, asking what he knew about 30 stranded Frenchmen. No sooner had he finished his last overseas call, this one to Eurocheck headquarters, than Walter Bowman arrived.

  “Robichaux here,” he said. “Do you want to help me take him on?”

  “I suppose,” said Gabler rising, “it was only to be expected.”

  Robichaux & Devane, Investment Bankers, was an old and staid firm, whose association with the Sloan Trust Department went back a long way. Robichaux & Devane did the selling and the Sloan did the buying.

  Tom Robichaux, with misplaced if touching guile, persisted in believing that he should try to seize the day.

  Charlie Trinkam had another way of putting it. “While the cat’s away, eh Tom?” he said genially, strolling in to reinforce Gabler and Walter Bowman.

  Robichaux, who had the blue-eyed innocence of the very rich, deprecated the insinuation. “I only wish John were here,” he said simply and untruthfully. “We’ve come up with some interesting situations—especially Zimmer Industries.”

  Zimmer Industries produced stony silence.

  “Where is John anyway?” Robichaux asked, disappointed, as he always was, by the failure of his end run.

  “Lake Placid,” said Gabler, still braced.

  “Good God, that’s right!” Robichaux exclaimed. “The Sloan’s involved with the Olympics, isn’t it? My wife was reading about the trouble this morning at breakfast.”

  Tom Robichaux’s wife, whoever she happened to be at the moment, was always a conversational problem. Walter Bowman, professionally swashbuckling, did not feel competent with non-stop marriage, divorce, alimony and remarriage. Gabler, naturally, had strong moral objections to Robichaux’s hobby, which he regarded as particularly unsuitable in a banker. Only Charlie Trinkam, himself a ladies’ man, was willing to venture a guess. “Oh yes,” he said breezily. “The contessa.”

  For a confirmed bachelor, he had an enviable capacity to keep nearly current with Robichaux’s hectic domestic progress.

  “Contessina,” said Robichaux in the interests of accuracy. “A contessina is the daughter of a contessa. Of course, none of these Italian titles . . .”

  There were those who claimed that Tom Robichaux never learned, his Quaker partner Francis Devane among them. This was not altogether true. Each wife, one way or another, broadened his horizons. Grazia’s contribution was not, it developed, Papal titles or lesser Wittelsbachs’. It was, oddly enough, the Olympics.

  “What was that you said?” asked Everett, who tended to close his ears when the subject was the reigning Mrs. Robichaux.

  Robichaux was always willing to repeat himself. He, and the contessina, of course, had entertained Carlo Antonelli for a long weekend some weeks ago.

  “He’s Grazia’s cousin,” he explained. It did not occur to him to wonder why Gabler should care, so the matter of John Thatcher’s list did not arise.

  “What does he do?” he said blankly in response to Gabler’s next question. “He’s on the Italian bobsled team—”

  “Yes, I know,” said Gabler, startling Charlie and Walter Bowman. “But what does he do when he’s not bobsledding?”

  Robichaux blinked at him. “Things are different in Italy, you know,” he said obliquely. “Carlo’s family owns half of Cortina d’Ampezzo, as I understand it. He doesn’t have to do anything, lucky devil. He travels a lot. . .”

  It had taken massive efforts by the united Robichauxs to lever Tom, when he was Carlo Antonelli’s age, into the family firm.

  “. . . knows how to enjoy himself. He brought a little French girl along who was a real honey,” said Robichaux, with a connoisseur’s smile. Then, sadly, “But it wasn’t a success. For some reason or other, Grazia didn’t take a shine to her.”

  Grazia, Charlie recalled, was a mature siren of riper charms. He felt a sympathetic twinge of autumnal melancholy that was dissipated when Gabler said, “Would you call him a playboy?”

  Robichaux was beginning to look baffled so Charlie hastily intervened. “A playboy who bobsleds, Ev. Now about Zimmer Industries. . . .”

  As Gabler marked time in New York, his many calls were bearing fruit on two continents.

  In Grenoble, Lucien Allard, owner of Voyages Allard S.A., passed a trembling hand over his glistening brow. “All that is needed now to bring this disaster to its ultimate completion is a miracle.”

  His companion, from the Banque de Grenoble, projected silent but ardent sympathy.

  “If miracles did occur,” Allard went on, “if Yves Bisson were raised from the dead, I would kill him with my bare hands. Thus to everything else, there would be added mortal sin.”

  M. Allard was intemperate but M. Allard had cause. He had risen to Bisson’s murder with a florid elegy, only to learn that the fallen hero was a not-so-petty crook. Without faltering, he switched from tragedy to treachery, concluding, as he had planned all along, that life, hélas, must go on.

  Then 32 Allard clients were stranded in the wilderness!

  “. . . all their relatives, who believe that they are without food and water. Also, much as I regret to say so Air France is proving uncooperative, to say the least. Naturally there are outcries from reporters, what do you expect? But is it reasonable that the government of France . . .?”

  This litany did not surprise the Banque de Grenoble. Grenoble, normally a serene backwater, had been rocked by the happenings in Lake Placid, and no one more than M. Allard. But the Sloan had requested specifics, so the Banque de Grenoble was paying this little visit of condolence.

  “Yves Bisson?” the banker murmured suggestively.

  After the smoke of expletives cleared, M. Allard was forthcoming. A youthful, handsome athlete, what travel agent could not use him?

  “. . . to promote ski tours to Switzerland. You understand he had the glamour. Also, when Bisson himself traveled to a competition, well, here in Grenoble, people remembered that he was with the Voyages Allard. It made for the happy association.”

  But had Bi
sson really been a travel agent?

  “Assuredly,” said M. Allard with a mournful smile. “He sat there where you are sitting and told me he could not ski forever. He wished for a career after, a career where his name would be worth something. He wished to learn the business. Did I suspect he was a serpent? No, never. I said to myself, Ah hah! A hard head on young shoulders. But let him learn. I will teach him all the many complexities of a first-class travel agent.”

  In short, although that was not how Allard unburdened himself, Yves Bisson had worked industriously, learning the ropes for over a year. “No, not when he was skiing. . . . Yes, of course, we gave him time off. What else could we do? Publicity like that, superb!” But Bisson, between meets, had learned to route tourists, charter flights, and issue Eurochecks. He had had ample opportunity to make his nefarious substitution.

  The Banque de Grenoble had more than one string to its bow. There were also the police. A brief detour produced the salient facts. Bisson had had no known criminal associates. Like all young people, he was a familiar in the local discos and bars. But he was a young man to be proud of. It made one think, did it not?

  Bisson’s parents, prostrated by grief, were in seclusion in their apartment out in Marieville.

  Wendell Lowder, Esq., lived in Denver, Colorado. He was the most important lawyer in the most important law firm in town, he was married to a cultivated wife, he had four wonderful children and he had traveled widely. But he lived in Denver and, beside this achievement, all else paled. In his cups, Wendell Lowder, Esq., could make relocation from Scarsdale sound like the Long March.

  “Sure, out here in the West, we all know each other,” he told the phone expansively. “Or if we don’t, we just make a call. I got in touch with good old Floyd. Floyd’s a trustee out at State, that’s what we call Colorado State. About Dick Noyes. I’ve got it all scribbled down here somewhere. . . . Now let’s see. According to Floyd, Dick’s not much of a student. A C-plus average. But he’s a damned good all-around kid, and one helluva skier. I can vouch for that myself. We’ve got a little place up in Aspen. . . . What? Oh, Noyes is a full-time student. No athletic scholarship or anything like that. His dad’s a vet up in Steamboat Springs, and they’re pretty well fixed. Summers, Floyd says he works for his dad. . . .”

  In Garmisch-Partenkirchen the substance was much the same. The style, however, was different.

  “It is most kind of you to see me on such short notice, Herr Rischler.”

  “My pleasure, Herr Kunstler. May I offer you some of the excellent coffee that my good Helga provides each morning at this hour?”

  The cups were bone china.

  This gavotte was not taking place in a tearoom but in the offices of the Mayor’s Council. Herr Kunstler was visiting on behalf of the Association of German Exporters, a longtime Sloan account.

  “You spoke earlier of an interest in Gunther Euler,” said Herr Rischler, stirring delicately. “An outstanding young athlete, and one of whom our city”—he gazed blandly out his window at a forest of smokestacks— “is deeply proud.”

  “No doubt,” said Herr Kunstler tonelessly. “But, and please correct me if I am in error, to be an athlete, unless one is rich, is sometimes difficult.”

  “Euler’s father is a foreman in Klemperer’s Foundry,” said Rischler.

  “Ah!”

  There was a long pause during which Herr Kunstler composed his already composed features. “I am not myself conversant with the world of sports. But surely, for a poor boy, there are expenses. . . .”

  “Traveling to meets and such things, you mean? Oh yes, there are expenses. They are met by donation from the West German Sports Confederation toward which the state, and the city of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, I am proud to add, make modest contributions. The bulk of such funds are raised from public subscriptions.”

  “Ah,” said Herr Kunstler again. “My daughter is 12 years old.”

  Herr Rischler appeared to find this information engrossing.

  “She is at the age where there are pictures from newspapers and magazines on the walls of her bedroom.”

  Herr Rischler waited.

  “Singers with long hair. Strange wild-looking musicians,” said Kunstler, a faint frown crossing his brow. “Her mother tells me there is a photograph also of Gunther Euler.”

  “A fine-looking young man,” said Rischler.

  “He is astride a costly motorcycle. Is that part of the expenses toward which you make the contribution of which you spoke?”

  This time the ah was Rischler’s. Then, with all the circumlocutions of which the language is capable, he dilated on how a poor boy who rose to athletic eminence might afford an expensive life style.

  “. . . a resort, you understand, which might feed and house him in great comfort. Then there are ski manufacturers who are delighted when Gunther Euler wins, wearing their equipment. I know nothing concrete, naturally, but that is the way these things are managed.”

  Herr Kunstler had an accountant’s mind, with all its strengths and weaknesses. “But when he is not skiing, does young Euler work?”

  “No,” said Rischler. He was about to go on, then thought better of it. “No.”

  “So,” said Kunstler, “his appearance of affluence can be explained. And it is difficult to see how Euler could be involved in an intricate system concerning counterfeit checks, is it not?”

  To judge from Herr Rischler’s expression it was difficult, but not impossible.

  * * *

  It was late at night before Gabler reported back to Lake Placid.

  “Everett?” said Thatcher, after making sure that Brad Withers was out. “You’re a good deed in an otherwise naughty world.”

  Gabler rightly disregarded this frivolity and proceeded. First he had to get Tom Robichaux and Zimmer Industries off his chest.

  “Tom may have his faults,” Thatcher replied, “but at least he doesn’t have Olympic athletes on the brain.”

  “Now there’s where you’re wrong,” said his loyal subordinate.

  Thatcher listened to Gabler’s haul for the day. It fleshed out his own impressions without materially altering them. Then his ear caught something.

  “Is that all, Ev, or are you saving the best for last?”

  Gabler did not know if it was the best; it was the only hint of anything useful to have come his way. “This Mathilde Lowengard,” he began.

  “Tilly,” said Thatcher with a smile. He had a slight weakness for nut-brown girls.

  “Miss Lowengard,” said Gabler firmly, “lives in Wengen, Switzerland.”

  “Good,” said Thatcher, recalling that lovely village clinging to the mountainside above Lauterbrunnen. “They don’t allow automobiles in Wengen, you know.”

  “If Switzerland had an automotive industry, I am sure they would,” said Gabler.

  Thatcher tut-tutted. “You have no sentiment. Anyway, Tilly Lowengard lives in Wengen and . . .?”

  “And in the off season she works in Interlaken, in a bank.”

  If Everett expected a sensation, he was disappointed.

  “Since she’s only 21 years old, I doubt if she occupies a highly responsible position. In fact, I suspect that Swiss banks find this a good way to subsidize amateur athletes.”

  “Highly unlikely,” said Gabler. “A well-run bank has no business getting involved in foolishness of this kind.”

  “I’ll tell Brad you said so,” said John Thatcher.

  Chapter 6

  No Relief in Sight

  MEANWHILE, the Olympic pot was still bubbling away. Cross-country skiers passed one checkpoint after another; in the Arena, skating couples tangoed, waltzed and, in one case, hulaed; at all hours of the day and night vast throngs billowed in, through, and around Lake Placid. For most participants in this controlled pandemonium, Yves Bisson’s murder was only one more event on the crowded schedule. Counterfeit traveler’s checks drew less attention than the forthcoming hockey match between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

&nb
sp; Not that everybody was concentrating on the public spectacle. There was a dissenting minority which included the 30 afflicted Grenoblois, currently deafening an unfortunate French consul. Also included, although less clamorous, were the New York State Police and John Thatcher.

  “Yes, of course the Sloan will cooperate with whatever you have in mind, Captain Ormsby,” he said, wondering why he had to reiterate the point. “Hathaway and I have excellent reasons for wanting to get to the bottom of this counterfeit scheme, don’t we, Hathaway?”

  If Roger Hathaway appreciated the united front, he was not sheltering behind it. “God knows I do,” he muttered.

  Thatcher made a mental note to take him aside for a pep talk, emphasizing the Sloan policy of standing by its own when it came to bad luck, as opposed to negligence. But he had to defer his morale building because Ormsby was still worrying the larger issue.

  “Melville, the IOC, and a dozen ambassadors want to cooperate with the police, too,” he said dispassionately. “Only, according to the governor’s office, I’ve got to watch my step, not upset any arrangements, not bother any competitors. You get the picture?”

  Thatcher did. “The Sloan does not expect kid-glove treatment. If it will help in any way, you can give Hathaway here a badge and swear him in.”

  This mild pleasantry did not, as intended, improve the atmosphere in Hathaway’s small office.

  “He’s the man I want,” said Ormsby. “Or at least I think so.”

  Thatcher sympathized with the fleeting uneasiness he caught on Hathaway’s face. “Yes?” he said cautiously.

  “I asked you down here because I figured we’d have to have your okay, Mr. Thatcher,” Ormsby explained. “But what I want from Hathaway is a list of the names on all the Sloan counterfeit.”

  With or without Thatcher’s approval, this was a taller order than Ormsby knew and Hathaway said so: “Oh, my God!”

  Before Ormsby could misinterpret, Thatcher softened this response: “We can compile those names for you, but what will it tell you?”