"What should I do, Mr. Meskin?"
"Keep searching. I'll call every room from nine up and see who needs linen."
Wearily Marvin Meskin began the process. As he went about this irksome task, the lobby elevator door dinged open. His quick eyes went to it, hoping it might be that lazy Esmerelda. He couldn't understand it. Everyone said Filipina help was top shelf.
The woman stepping off the elevator was not Esmerelda. Meskin's eyes followed her through the lobby anyway. She walked with a kind of loose-hipped undulation that wiped Meskin's mind free of his cares. He had never seen such a set of boobs on someone that young. She was quite a piece of work in her tight yellow skirt and yellow fingernails. Like a voluptuous banana. Meskin wondered what it would be like to peel her.
Someone picked up the line, breaking into Meskin's banana-flavored fantasy.
"Yes, this is the front desk," he said. "I was just wondering if you've gotten fresh linen for today. No? Well, I am very sorry. We seem to be having a busy day. I'll get right on it."
Thirty calls later, Marvin Meskin put down the desk telephone to find a man was hovering only inches away. He had not heard him approach the front desk.
"Yes? May I help you in some way?" Meskin asked, his nose wrinkling at the man's all-black ensemble. If a T-shirt and slacks could be called an ensemble.
"I'm looking for a guy," the man in black asked.
"I'll bet you are," Meskin said dryly.
It was the wrong thing to say, and on an ordinary day Marvin Meskin would never have allowed those insolent words to escape his lips, but he was in a bad mood and the man in black was not dressed like a traveler. In fact, he looked as if he had slept in his clothes.
But he had said it, and the wrongness, the utter and complete boneheadedness of the comment was brought home forcefully to Marvin Meskin when the skinny guy in black lifted his thick-wristed hands and clamped first one on Meskin's shoulder and then the other on his throat.
That was all. There was no other sensation. Not of floating. Not of flying. Not even of dislocation.
Yet somehow Marvin Meskin found himself on the other side of the front desk, his back crushing the deep-pile royal blue lobby rug and his left arm straining to come out of its socket.
Way up there where the oxygen was, the skinny guy was calmly and methodically using one terrible hand to slowtwist Meskin's going-numb left arm. His other hand rested on his hip. One of his feet-Meskin had no idea which was planted irresistibly in his windpipe, restricting the flow of air.
"Gasp," Marvin Meskin gasped. "Hack! Hack!"
"You'll have to speak up. I didn't hear the answer to my question."
Meskin could not recall a question being put to him, but he signaled with his flailing free hand that he would be delighted to answer.
"Let me repeat it," the skinny guy was saying. "The Iraiti ambassador was dropped off at the Embassy Row Hotel two days ago. The front desk there told the FBI that he never checked in. I double-checked, and what do you know, it was true. Since the FBI understood he was in the habit of being dropped off at the Embassy, according to the ambassador's driver, that means he was pulling the old duck-and-dodge-something that should have occurred to the FBI, but didn't. Your establishment is the closest to that one. Ergo, your establishment goes to the top of the list."
This made perfect sense to Marvin Meskin, so he nodded in agreement. The action scratched the man's shiny shoes. Meskin's five-o'clock shadow appeared around noon. He hoped the desecration was not noticed.
"Okay," the guy in black was saying, "now I ask you if you'd know the Iraiti ambassador if you saw him." And the shoe withdrew.
"I'm a faithful watcher of Nightline," Meskin said hoarsely. He started gulping air in case the shoe returned. It did not.
"He check in two days ago?"
"Yes, he did."
"Check out?"
"I'd have to examine our records."
At that moment the bellboy stepped off the elevator. He started at the sight of his employer being held down on the royal-blue rug.
"Mr. Meskin, should I call the police?" he asked from behind a potted rubber plant. "Say no," the skinny guy said flatly.
"No," Meskin said, really wanting to say yes. But those deep-set eyes promised certain death if he disobeyed.
"Did you hear that?" the skinny guy asked, directing his deadly eyes toward the bellboy.
"I don't work for you," the bellboy said bravely.
"Go look for that maid!" Meskin yelled.
"I found her. I found all of four of them. In the storage room."
"All? What the hell are they doing-playing strip poker?"
"No, sir, they appear to have been strangled."
"Did you say strangled?" the skinny guy demanded.
"Union dispute," Marvin Meskin said quickly. "Nothing for you to concern yourself with. We run a discreet hotel."
The skinny guy frowned. "I'd say this is more than union trouble. Let's look into the ambassador first. I see dead bodies all the time."
"I'll bet you do," Marvin Meskin said as he was hauled by one arm to his feet. Weak-kneed, he stumbled back behind the counter and went to the computer. The skinny guy followed close behind him.
"There's something wrong with this computer," Meskin said, trying to call up the name. The amber screen was misbehaving. The letters and symbols were wavering as if written in disturbed water. "I can't get it to straighten out," Meskin complained, banging the terminal.
"Just a sec," the man said, stepping back.
The amber letters reformed, readable once more.
Meskin looked over his shoulder. The skinny guy stood, his bare arms folded, about twelve feet away.
"Hop to it," he said.
And Meskin hopped to it.
"We have an Abdul Al-Hazred in Room 1045," Meskin called out.
"So?"
"So that's the name the Iraiti ambassador uses whenever he takes a room here."
"He do that often?"
"Quite often. Usually for only an afternoon, if you know what I mean."
"I know. What floor is 1045-tenth or forty-fifth?"
"Tenth," Meskin said, "the same floor we've been having trouble with. Oh, my God," he croaked, his own words registering in their full impact.
The skinny guy came back. The amber screen broke apart like water that had been disturbed by an idly swirling stick. He took Marvin Meskin up by the scruff of his neck and on the way to the elevator collected the bellboy.
"Are we going to be killed too?" the bellboy asked as the elevator shot up to the tenth floor.
"Why?" the skinny guy asked while Meskin felt his stomach contents turn acidic.
"Because I'd like to call home and tell my mother goodbye," the bellboy said sincerely.
"Tell her good-bye over dinner tonight," the skinny guy growled. "I'm in a big rush."
Stepping out into the corridor, Meskin recalled that he had forgotten to bring along a passkey.
"No problem," the skinny guy said, releasing them on either side of Room 1045. "I brought my own."
"You? Where did you get . . . ?"
The question was answered before it was completed. The skinny guy answered it when he took hold of the knob, flexed one monster wrist, and handed the suddenly loose knob to Marvin Meskin.
It was very, very warm, Meskin found. He tossed it from hand to hand, blowing on his free hand by turns.
The door fell open after the man tapped it.
Marvin Meskin was shoved in first. The bellboy stumbled in, propelled by the skinny guy, who had such an irresistible way about him. They collided.
While they were picking themselves up, the skinny guy went for the bed, where the late Iraiti ambassador, Turqi Abaatira, AKA Abdul Al-Hazred, lay spread-eagled, his dark manhood dominating the decor like an overripe banana.
Ambassador Abaatira made a very colorful corpse. His body was a kind of brownish-white, his natural duskiness bleached by his lack of circulation. His tongue was a purpli
shblack extrusion in his blue face. His manhood was at full mast, a corpsy greenish-black.
The skinny guy looked over the body with a dispassionate eye, as if used to seeing corpses that were lashed to hotel beds by yards of yellow silk. He seemed most interested in the late ambassador's throat. The cords and muscles of his thick neck were squeezed by a long yellow silk scarf.
"Was he into bondage?" the skinny guy asked, turning from the body. His face was two degrees unhappier than before.
"We do not pry into our guests' affairs," Marvin Meskin sniffed, averting his eyes from the ugly but colorful sight. They kept going back to the swollen member in a kind of mesmerized horror. The bellboy was on his knees in front of the wastepaper basket. From the sounds he made, he was straining hard to throw up-but not hard enough. All he did was hack and spit.
When he at last gave up, the bellboy found himself being hauled to his feet by the tall skinny guy.
"Let's see those maids," he ordered.
The bellboy was only too happy to comply. On the way out of the room, the skinny guy paused to shove Marvin Meskin back.
"You," he said in a no-nonsense voice. "Mind the dead guy."
"Why me?" Meskin bleated.
"Because it's your hotel."
Which somehow made perfect sense to Marvin Meskin. Meekly he went into the bathroom and closed the door.
Remo Williams let the nervous bellboy lead him to the storage room.
"I found them in a corner, behind some stacked chairs," the bellboy was saying. "They . . . they were just like that dead guy."
"If they were, medical science is going to have a field day with them. Not to mention the National Enquirer, Hard Copy, Inside Edition, and Copra Inisfree."
"No, I didn't mean exactly like him," the bellboy protested, his face actually reddening with embarrassment. Looking at him in his tight-fitting hotel uniform, Remo decided he would be embarrassed too. "I meant they were killed the same way. Strangled," he added in a hushed voice as he unlocked the storage-room door.
The room was a dark forest of stacked chrome-and-leather chairs and great round folding tables. The bellboy led Remo to a dim corner.
"This was a smart place to hide them," the bellboy was saying. "All the damaged chairs and broken tables are stashed in this corner. Here."
He stepped aside for Remo to get a good look.
The maids were seated on the floor, their legs straight out, facing one another as if posed in a game of pat-a-cake. Their heads lolled drunkenly off the shoulders of their starched blue uniforms and their arms hung down off their drooping shoulders, elbows and wrists folded stiffly.
Their faces were almost-not quite-the same delicate blue as their starched uniforms. A few stared glassily at nothing.
Each maid was marked by a purplish bruise at the throat. Something had been tied around their necks very, very tightly. Tight enough to seemingly force their tongues from their open mouths. Tight enough to cause at least one of them to defecate into her underwear.
Remo went among them, kneeling at each body, making certain they were gone. They were. He stood up, his high-cheekboned face grim.
"What do you think, sir?" the bellboy asked, getting the idea that the skinny guy was not a dangerous maniac, but something much, much more.
"I don't like that yellow scarf upstairs," he muttered.
The cryptic comment called for no response, so the bellboy offered none. He stood there feeling angry and helpless and wondering if there was something he should have seen or done or heard that might have averted this tragedy.
Then it struck him.
"You know," he said slowly, "I saw a girl walking around the hotel yesterday who wore a scarf like the one we saw."
"Yellow scarves are pretty common," the man said, regarding the bodies dispassionately.
"She also wore a yellow dress. And yellow fingernail polish."
The skinny guy looked up suddenly.
"Did she look like a hooker?" he asked.
"I got that impression, yeah. More like a call girl, though. This is a classy place. The manager doesn't let streetwalkers in."
"If he lets the Iraiti ambassador frolic in the afternoons," the skinny guy said, walking off, "you shouldn't feel so damn proud of this fleabag."
"Should I call the police?" the bellboy called after him.
"No," the skinny guy said. "Wait here."
And even though he never returned, the bellboy obeyed.
He was still standing watch over the bodies when the FBI came in en masse and sealed off the hotel.
The bellboy didn't get a chance to see his mother that night, but he was allowed to call her to say that he'd be home after the debriefing. He made it sound important. It was. Before it was all over, the world would edge toward the brink of a sinkhole of sand from which there was no return.
Chapter 9
Harold Smith accepted Remo Williams' telephone report without any expression of regret. The loss of the Iraiti ambassador was not exactly an affront to humanity. But the political fallout could be significant.
"If it wasn't for all the strangled maids," Remo was saying grimly, "I'd say it was a kinky lovers' tryst gone bizarre."
"The ambassador was quite a ladies' man," Smith was saying in a half-audible voice that usually meant his attention was divided between his conversation and his computer.
"Who do you think this girl in yellow is?" Remo wondered.
"The possibilities are endless. A Kurani spy out to avenge her homeland. An Isreali Mossad agent out to send a message to Abominadad. Even the U.S. CIA is a possibility, but highly unlikely. If this were sanctioned, I would know about it."
"The bellboy had her pegged as a call girl."
"That is my thought as well. I am checking my file on Ambassador Abaatira even as we speak. Yes, here it is. He is known to prefer the services of the Diplomatic Escort Service."
"Good name," Remo quipped. "You know, you might have mentioned this before."
"I hadn't thought the ambassador's sexual appetites would play a role in this."
"Believe me, Smitty," Remo said airily, "sex was uppermost in the guy's mind when he cashed out. He had a ringside seat to his last hard-on. In fact, if you get to see the morgue photos, you'll notice he had his eye on the ball right to the bitter end."
Harold Smith cleared his throat with the low, throaty rumble of a distant thundercloud. "Yes . . . er, well, those details are unimportant. Listen carefully, Remo. The FBI is going to suppress this entire matter. For the moment, the Iraiti ambassador is still on the missing-persons list. His death would cause who-knows-what reaction in Abominadad. We cannot afford that."
"Screw Abominadad," Remo snapped. "After all the hostages they've taken, how much of a stink can they raise over one flagrante delicto diplomat?"
"The stink I am thinking of," Smith said levelly, "is not diplomatic. The stink I fear is the stink of nerve gas in the lungs of our servicemen stationed in Hamidi Arabia."
"Point taken," Remo said. "I still say you should let me cash out Mad Ass. I'm sick of seeing his face every time I turn on the TV."
"Then do not turn on the TV," Smith countered. "Investigate the Diplomatic Escort Service and report on what you find. "
"Could be an interesting investigation," Remo said with relish. "I'm glad I brought my credit cards."
"Remo, under no circumstances are you to procure the services of-"
The line clicked dead.
Harold Smith returned the receiver to its cradle and leaned back in his ancient executive's chair. This was worrisome. This was very, very worrisome. It would be better-although not good-if the Iraiti ambassador had fallen victim to a common criminal, or even a serial killer. If this had an intelligence connection, no matter what nation was involved, the unstable Middle East was about to become even more precarious.
Remo Williams found a yellow police-barrier tape in front of the office building that was the base for the Diplomatic Escort Service. It was the same yellow as
the silk scarf around the late Ambassador Abaatira's neck, he noticed without pleasure.
"What's going on?" Remo asked the uniformed cop who stood by the main entrance.
"Just a little matter for the D.C. detectives," the cop returned without rancor. "Watch the evening news."
"Thanks," Remo said. "I will." He continued on his way, slipped around the corner, and looked up at the dingy facade.
The side of the building wasn't exactly sheer. But it wasn't a ziggurat of brick and gingerbread, either.
Remo walked up to the facade, placing his toes to the building's base as Chiun had taught him so long ago. Raising his arms, he laid his palms flat against the gritty wall.
Then, somehow, he began ascending. He had forgotten the involved theory, the complicated movements, just as he had his old fear of heights. He had mastered ascents long, long ago.
So he ascended. His slightly cupped palm created an impossible but natural tension that enabled him to cling and pause while he shifted his footholds and used his steelstrong fingers to obtain increasingly higher purchase.
Remo wasn't climbing. Exactly. He was using the vertical force of the building to conquer it. There was no sensation of going up. It felt to Remo as if he were pulling the building down, step by step, foot by foot. Of course, the building wasn't sinking into its foundations under Remo's practiced manipulations. He was going up it.
Somehow, it worked. Somehow, he found himself on the eighth-floor ledge. He peered into a window. Dark. He walked around the six-inch-wide ledge with a casual grace, pausing at each grimy window-sometimes scouring pollution particles from the glass the better to see inside-until he found the office window he wanted.
The medical examiner was still shooting pictures. He was shooting into a closet. Remo could smell, even through the glass, the odors of death, sudden perspiration, now stale, bodily wastes, both liquid and not. But no blood.
He took that to mean the bodies-there were at least two because the M.E. turned his camera toward the hidden desk well-had been strangled.
Remo listened to the idle talk of the M.E. and two unhappy detectives.
"Think it's a serial creep?" the M.E. asked.
"I hope not. Damn. I hope not," one detective said.
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