Hotel

by Arthur Hailey

  The unexpectedness, the harsh chilling voice, momentarily robbed Warren Trent of speech. Recovering, he protested, “In God’s name, I’ve not the least idea what this is about.”

  “No idea, when there’d been a race riot in your goddamned hotel! When the story’s spewed over every New York and Washington newspaper!”

  It took several seconds to connect the angry harangue with Peter McDermott’s report of the previous day.

  “There was an incident yesterday morning, a small one. It was certainly not a race riot or anything near. At the time we talked I was unaware that it had happened. Even if I had known, it would not have occurred to me as important enough to mention. As to the New York newspapers, I haven’t seen them.”

  “My members’ll see them. If not those papers, then others across the country that’ll carry the story by tonight. What’s more, if I put money into a hotel that turns away nigs, they’d scream bloody murder along with every two-bit congressman who wants the colored vote.”

  “It’s not the principle you care about, then. You don’t mind what we do as long as it isn’t noticed.”

  “What I care about is my business. So is where I invest union funds.”

  “Our transaction could be kept confidential.”

  “If you believe that, you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.”

  It was true, Warren Trent conceded glumly: sooner or later news of an alliance would leak out. He tried another approach. “What occurred here yesterday is not unique. It’s happened to Southern hotels before; it will happen again. A day or two afterward, attention moves on to something else.”

  “Maybe it does. But if your hotel got Journeymen’s financing—after today—attention would damn soon switch back. And it’s the kind I can do without.”

  “I’d like to be clear about this. Am I to understand that despite your accountants’ inspection of our affairs last night, our arrangement of yesterday no longer stands?”

  The voice from Washington said, “The trouble isn’t with your books. The report my people made was affirmative. It’s for the other reason all bets are off.”

  So after all, Warren Trent thought bitterly, through an incident which yesterday he had dismissed as trifling, the nectar of victory had been snatched away. Aware that whatever was said would make no difference now, he commented acidly, “You haven’t always been so particular about using union funds.”

  There was a silence. Then the Journeymen’s president said softly, “Someday you may be sorry for that.”

  Slowly, Warren Trent replaced the telephone. On a table nearby Aloysius Royce had spread open the airmailed New York newspapers. He indicated the Herald Tribune. “It’s mostly in here. I don’t see anything in the Times.”

  “They’ve later editions in Washington.” Warren Trent skimmed the Herald Tribune headline and glanced briefly at the accompanying picture. It showed yesterday’s scene in the St. Gregory lobby with Dr. Nicholas and Dr. Ingram as central figures. He supposed that later he would have to read the report in full. At the moment he had no stomach for it.

  “Would you like me to serve breakfast now?”

  Warren Trent shook his head. “I’m not hungry.” His eyes flickered upward, meeting the young Negro’s steady gaze. “I suppose you think I got what I deserved.”

  Royce considered. “Something like that, I guess. Mostly, I’d say, you don’t accept the times we live in.”

  “If it’s true, that needn’t trouble you any more. From tomorrow I doubt if my opinion will count for much around here.”

  “I’m sorry for that part.”

  “What this means is that O’Keefe will take over.” The older man walked to a window and stood looking out. He was silent, then said abruptly, “I imagine you heard the terms I was offered—among them that I’d continue to live here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Since it’s to be that way, I suppose that when you graduate from law school next month, I’ll still have to put up with you around the place. Instead of booting you out the way I should.”

  Aloysius Royce hesitated. Ordinarily, he would have tossed back a quick, barbed rejoinder. But he knew that what he was hearing was the plea of a defeated, lonely man for him to stay.

  The decision troubled Royce; all the same, it would have to be made soon. For almost twelve years Warren Trent had treated him in many ways like a son. If he remained, he knew, his duties could become negligible outside of being a companion and confidant in the hours free from his own legal work. The life would be far from unpleasant. And yet there were other, conflicting pressures affecting the choice to go or stay.

  “I haven’t thought about it much,” he lied. “Maybe I’d better.”

  Warren Trent reflected: all things, large and small, were changing, most of them abruptly. In his mind he had not the least doubt that Royce would leave him soon, just as control of the St. Gregory had finally eluded him. His sense of aloneness, and now of exclusion from the mainstream of events, was probably typical of people who had lived too long.

  He informed Royce, “You can go, Aloysius. I’d like to be alone for a while.”

  In a few minutes, he decided, he would call Curtis O’Keefe and officially surrender.

  5

  Time magazine, whose editors recognized a newsy story when they read it in their morning papers, had hopped nimbly onto the St. Gregory civil rights incident. Their local stringer—a staffer on the New Orleans States-Item—was alerted and told to file everything he could get on local background. Time’s Houston bureau chief had been telephoned the previous night, soon after an early edition of the Herald Tribune broke the story in New York, and had flown in on an early flight.

  Now both men were closeted with Herbie Chandler, the bell captain, in a cramped, main floor cubbyhole. Loosely known as a press room, it was sparsely furnished with a desk, telephone, and hat stand. The Houston man, as became his status, had the solitary chair.

  Chandler, respectfully aware of Time’s liberality to those who smoothed its way, was reporting on a reconnaissance from which he had just returned.

  “I checked about the dentists’ meeting. They’re closing it up tighter’n a drum. They’ve told the head floor waiter no one’s to get in except members, not even wives, and they’ll have their own people at the door checking names. Before the meeting starts all the hotel help has to leave and doors’ll be locked.”

  The bureau chief nodded. An eager, crewcut young man named Quaratone, he had already interviewed the dentists’ president, Dr. Ingram. The bell captain’s report confirmed what he had been told.

  “Sure we’re having an emergency general meeting,” Dr. Ingram had said. “It was decided by our executive board last night, but it’s to be a closed-door deal. If it was my say-so, son, you and anybody else could come in, and welcome. But some of my colleagues see it the other way. They think people’ll speak more freely if they know the press isn’t there. So I guess you’ll have to sit that one out.”

  Quaratone, with no intention of sitting anything out, had thanked Dr. Ingram politely. With Herbie Chandler already purchased as an ally, Quaratone’s immediate idea had been to employ an old ruse and attend the meeting in a borrowed bellboy’s uniform. Chandler’s latest report showed the need for a change of scheme.

  “The room where the meeting will be held,” Quaratone queried, “is it a good size convention hall?”

  Chandler nodded. “The Dauphine Salon, sir. Seats three hundred. That’s about how many they’re expecting.”

  The Time man considered. Any meeting involving three hundred people would obviously cease to be secret the instant it finished. Afterward he could easily mingle with the emerging delegates and, by posing as one of them, learn what happened. That way, though, he would miss most of the minutiae of human interest which Time and its readers thrived on.

  “Does the wotsit saloon have a balcony?”

  “There’s a small one, but they’ve already thought of it. I checked. There’ll be a coup
le of convention people up there. Also, the p.a. microphones are being disconnected.”

  “Hell!” the local newspaperman objected. “What’s this outfit afraid of—saboteurs?”

  Quaratone said, thinking aloud, “Some of them want to speak their piece but avoid getting it on the record. Professional people—on racial issues anyway—don’t usually take strong stands. Here they’ve already got themselves in a box by admitting to a choice between the drastic action of walking out or making a token gesture, just for appearance sake. To that extent I’d say the situation’s unique.” It was also, he thought, why there might be a better story here than he had supposed at first. More than ever he was determined to find a way of getting into the meeting.

  Abruptly, he told Herbie Chandler, “I want a plan of the convention floor and the floor above. Not just a room layout, you understand, but a technical plan showing walls, ducts, ceiling spaces, all the rest. I want it fast because if we’re to do any good we’ve less than an hour.”

  “I really don’t know if there is such a thing, sir. In any case …” The bell captain stopped, watching Quaratone who was peeling off a succession of twenty-dollar bills.

  The Time man handed five of the bills to Chandler. “Get to somebody in maintenance, engineering or whatever. Use that for now. I’ll take care of you later. Meet me back here in half an hour, earlier if possible.”

  “Yessir!” Chandler’s weasel face screwed into an obsequious smile.

  Quaratone instructed the New Orleans reporter, “Carry on with the local angles, will you? Statements from city hall, leading citizens; better talk to the N.A.A.C.P. You know the kind of thing.”

  “I could write it in my sleep.”

  “Don’t. And watch for human interest. Might be an idea if you could catch the mayor in the washroom. Washing his hands while he gave you a statement. Symbolic. Make a good lead.”

  “I’ll try hiding in a toilet.” The reporter went off cheerfully, aware that he too would be generously paid for his spare-time work.

  Quaratone himself waited in the St. Gregory coffee shop. He ordered iced tea and sipped it absently, his mind on the developing story. It would not be a major one, but providing he could find some refreshing angles, it might rate a column and a half in next week’s issue. Which would please him because in recent weeks a dozen or more of his carefully nurtured stories had either been rejected by New York or squeezed out during makeup of the magazine. This was not unusual and writing in a vacuum was a frustration which Time-Life staffers learned to live with. But Quaratone liked to get into print and be noticed where it counted.

  He returned to the undersized press room. Within a few minutes Herbie Chandler arrived, shepherding a youngish, sharp-featured man in coveralls. The bell captain introduced him as Ches Ellis, a hotel maintenance worker. The newcomer shook hands diffidently with Quaratone, then, touching a roll of whiteprints under his arm, said uneasily, “I have to get these back.”

  “What I want won’t take long.” Quaratone helped Ellis roll out the plans, weighting the edges down. “Now, where’s the Dauphine Salon?”

  “Right here.”

  Chandler interjected, “I told him about the meeting, sir. How you want to hear what’s happening without being in.”

  The Time man asked Ellis, “What’s in the walls and ceilings?”

  “Walls are solid. There’s a gap between the ceiling and the next floor above, but if you’re thinking of getting in there, it wouldn’t work. You’d fall through the plaster.”

  “Check,” said Quaratone, who had been considering just that. His finger stubbed the plan. “What are these lines?”

  “Hot air outlet from the kitchen. Anywhere near that you’d roast.”

  “And this?”

  Ellis stooped, studying the whiteprint. He consulted a second sheet. “Cold-air duct. Runs through the Dauphine Salon ceiling.”

  “Are there outlets to the room?”

  “Three. Center and each end. You can see them marked.”

  “How big is the duct?”

  The maintenance man considered. “I reckon about three feet square.”

  Quaratone said decisively, “I’d like you to get me in that duct. I want to get in it, and crawl out so I can hear and see what’s going on below.”

  It took surprisingly little time. Ellis, at first reluctant, was prodded by Chandler into obtaining a second set of coveralls and a tool kit. The Time man changed quickly into coveralls and hoisted the tools. Then nervously, but without incident, Ellis shepherded him to an annex off the convention floor kitchen. The bell captain hovered discreetly out of sight. Quaratone had no idea how much of the hundred dollars Chandler had passed over to Ellis—he suspected not all—but it was evidently enough.

  The progress through the kitchen—ostensibly of two hotel maintenance workers—went unnoticed. In the annex a metal grille, high on the wall, had been removed by Ellis in advance. A tall stepladder stood in front of an opening which the grille had covered. Without conversation, Quaratone ascended the stepladder and eased himself upward and in. There was, he discovered, room to crawl forward, using his elbows—but only just. Darkness, except for stray glimmers from the kitchen, was complete. He felt a breath of cool air on his face; the air pressure increased as his body filled more of the metal duct.

  Ellis whispered after him, “Count four outlets! The fourth, fifth, and sixth are the Dauphine Salon. Keep the noise down, sir, or you’ll be heard. I’ll come back in half an hour; if you’re not ready, half an hour after that.”

  Quaratone tried to turn his head and failed. It was a reminder that getting out would be harder than getting in. Calling back a low-voiced “Roger!” he began to move.

  The metallic surface was hard on knees and elbows. It also had agonizingly sharp projections. Quaratone winced as the business end of a screw ripped the coveralls and cut painfully into his leg. Reaching back, he disengaged himself and moved forward cagily.

  The air duct outlets were easy to spot because of light filtering upward. He eased over three, hoping grilles and duct were securely anchored. Nearing the fourth he could hear voices. The meeting, it seemed, had begun. To Quaratone’s delight the voices came up clearly and, by craning, he could see a portion of the room below. The view, he thought, might be even better from the next outlet. It was. Now he could see more than half the crowded assemblage below, including a raised platform where the dentists’ president, Dr. Ingram, was speaking. Reaching around, the Time man brought out a notebook and a ballpoint pen, the latter with a tiny light in its tip.

  “… urge you,” Dr. Ingram was asserting, “to take the strongest possible stand.”

  He paused, then continued, “Professional people like us, who are by nature middle-of-the-roaders, have dilly-dallied too long on issues of human rights. Among ourselves we do not discriminate—at least most of the time—and in the past we have considered that to be enough. Generally, we’ve ignored events and pressures outside our own ranks. Our reasoning has been that we are professional, medical men with time for little else. Well, maybe that’s true, even if convenient. But here and now—like it or not—we are involved up to our wisdom teeth.”

  The little doctor paused, his eyes searching the faces of his audience. “You have already heard of the unpardonable insult by this hotel -to our distinguished colleague, Dr. Nicholas—an insult in direct defiance of civil rights law. In retaliation, as your president, I have recommended drastic action. It is that we should cancel our convention and walk from this hotel en masse.”

  There was a gasp of surprise from several sections of the room. Dr. Ingram continued, “Most of you have already learned of this proposal. To others, who arrived this morning, it is new. Let me say to both groups that the step I have proposed involves inconvenience, disappointment—to me, no less than to you—and a professional as well as a public loss. But there are occasions, involving matters of great conscience, when nothing less than the most forceful action will suffice. I believe this to b
e one. It is also the only way in which the strength of our feelings will be demonstrated and by which we shall prove, unmistakably, that in matters of human rights this profession is not to be trifled with again.”

  From the floor came several cries of “hear, hear!” but, as well, a rumble of dissent.

  Near the center of the room a burly figure lumbered to his feet. Quaratone, leaning forward from his vantage point, had an impression of jowls, a thick-lipped smile and heavy-rimmed glasses. The burly man announced, “I’m from Kansas City.” There was a good-natured cheer which was acknowledged with the wave of a pudgy hand. “I’ve just one question for the doctor. Will he be the one who’ll explain to my little woman—who’s been counting on this trip like a lot of other wives, I reckon—why it is that having just got here we’re to turn tail and go home?”

  An outraged voice protested, “That isn’t the point!” It was drowned out by ironic cheers and laughter from others in the hall.

  “Yessir,” the burly man said, “I’d like him to be the one to tell my wife.” Looking pleased with himself, he sat down.

  Dr. Ingram was on his feet, red faced, indignant. “Gentlemen, this is an urgent, serious matter. We have already delayed action for twenty-four hours which in my opinion is at least half a day too long.”

  There was applause, but brief and scattered. A number of other voices spoke at once. Beside Dr. Ingram, the meeting’s chairman pounded with a gavel.

  Several speakers followed, deploring the expulsion of Dr. Nicholas, but leaving unanswered the question of reprisal. Then, as if by assent, attention focused on a slim, dapper figure standing with a suggestion of authority near the front of the hall. Quaratone missed the name which the chairman announced, but caught “… second vice-president and member of our executive board.”

  The new speaker began in a dry crisp voice, “It was at my urging, supported by several fellow executive members, that this meeting is being held in camera. As a result, we may speak freely, knowing that whatever we say will not be recorded, and perhaps misrepresented, outside this room. This arrangement, I may add, was strongly opposed by our esteemed president, Dr. Ingram.”