by Lee Thomas, Gary McMahon, S. G. Browne, Michael Marshall Smith
I nodded, not understanding where this was leading, but sensing things weren't getting any worse, at least.
"So... What happens now?"
"What happens now is that you're going to stay here, while I check out the account that you're about to give me of your movements for the last twenty four hours."
I took another lug on the cigarette, indicated that the lit end was beginning to get uncomfortably close to the end of my nose, and he took it.
"I got up around 7a.m. yesterday," I said. "Then I had breakfast with Jon, the producer I'm here with, and we went to a meeting at Bottom Line Productions."
"Time?"
"Nine-thirty," I said. "Then Di Marco Pictures in Santa Monica, at 11:00. We came back to the hotel around 12:30. I had lunch on the sun deck, again with Jon, we had a meeting at Showtime all afternoon, and then a meet-and-greet with Running Time Entertainment, on Sunset."
"What did you do then?"
"Walked back to the hotel, showered, called my girlfriend, in England, and then a dinner meeting with Jon and a guy somewhere in West Hollywood."
"What was the name of the other guy?"
I wracked my brains. I'd been very tired by that stage, jet-lagged, and keeping myself going on a string of Budweisers. It was hard to remember anything about the evening at all. Then, thank God, it came to me.
"Jack Simons," I said. "He's an agent at Douglas Jenson. He supposed to be helping us package some project which is clearly never going to happen."
Considine scribbled some of this on a pad, and then looked up sardonically. "Got to love the power of positive thinking."
"Sadly it's not as convincing as bitter experience."
"What time did you finish eating?"
"Around nine. Jon went off to meet some other contact. I think. I'd had enough schmoozing for one evening, so I took a cab back to the hotel."
"Did you get the driver's name, name of the car firm?"
"No. The cab was green. The driver was stoned. It wasn't a relaxing ride."
Considine wrote some more stuff down. "What then?"
"Back to the hotel. I checked at the concierge's desk because a parcel was supposed to have arrived for me during the day, and hadn't. They still didn't have it. I went up to my room. I ordered coffee on room service."
"Time?"
"I don't know. I guess about ten-thirty. Then I watched a movie."
"On television?"
"No, on the, you know, the in-house service thing. I watched The Grudge again, which I think started at eleven. It wasn't any better the second time, but I needed something to stop me crashing too early. Then I went to bed, I guess around twelve-thirty, one o'clock."
Considine stood up. "Don't go anywhere," he said. I guess it was a joke.
Two hours later he was back, with a uniform in tow. The uniform undid the handcuffs and left. I brought my arms slowly round in front, wincing all the way. I took a cigarette from my own packet and lit it.
"Mr Simons has verified that you and Jon Nash had dinner with him," Considine said. "We traced the cab driver, who remembers your 'Hugh Grant' accent and the fact you tipped high. He was still wasted when we talked to him. You're lucky he didn't crash the cab. Room service at Ma Maison has a record of your order for coffee, and the girl who delivered it identified your face from the composite. The hotel media system has a record of a movie being charged to your room, commencing at 11:05."
My insides felt like they'd turned to water.
It had to all check out, because it was all true. But by then it was mid-afternoon, and parts of my head were beginning to believe I must have done something, or at least that the information I'd given would inexplicably turn out to be untrue. That someone would have lied, to put me in trouble. That... I don't know.
That all this would all keep on happening, for ever.
"What does that mean?" I said.
"That you can't have killed one of the victims, the one we have a witness for. She was killed between 9:30 and 10:30 p.m. last night."
I suddenly felt completely fucked. My arms started shaking, and I went dizzy. It must have been relief I was feeling, but it felt like malaria.
"What were the other two things?" I asked, when I could. "The other reasons you left me in here?"
He turned from the window and looked at me, appraisingly.
"Your reaction on seeing the photo fit. Any normal guilty person, when they see something like that, denies the resemblance. They pick on something small, because there's always some inaccuracy. They invent twin brothers, they say space aliens have a mask of their face and they use it when they're down here impregnating Earth women, yes suh, that's how it is. They don't just sit there and go 'Yep, that's me.' Okay, you could have been bluffing. Trying to be clever. But I don't think you were. Your eyes popped out your head when you saw it."
"It's an amazing likeness," I said. "My girlfriend's an artist. She draws me all the time, but she's seldom got as close as that. What was the other reason?"
"I can't tell you," Considine said. "Just there's something else about you which gives cause to reasonable doubt that you are the guy I'm looking for."
"What happens now?" I asked. I felt hot, tired, as if all of my blood had turned sour, or dried out.
"You can go," he said, and opened the door.
* * * * *
He got someone to call me a cab, and I picked it up outside the station. The driver wanted to talk, but I didn't. The ride went slowly, far more slowly than the journey to the station had seemed to that morning. My face hurt a lot, and I knew that I'd missed two important meetings. Jon was going to be pissed off.
It was only as the cab was pulling up outside the lobby that it occurred to me how I had left the premises – cuffed and dragged out by two cops. I tried to remember if there was some other way into the hotel, but my head ached and I couldn't come up with one.
I paid the cab off and walked towards the entrance. One of the bellhops reached over and opened the door. He hadn't been there when I'd made my unusual departure earlier, and he gave me a cheery smile as usual.
Inside I turned left and went to the Concierge's Desk. The tall woman was still on duty, and I stood in front of her for a moment, letting her eyes flit over my face, willing her to make something of it. I was finally beginning to become cautiously angry about the events of the morning, and realising that had I been American, I'd be filing suit against the LAPD already, hiring a publicist, and planning my own reality show – WHEN SCREENWRITERS ARE WRONGLY ACCUSED.
I asked if my package had turned up yet. She looked down quickly, as if suddenly aware she'd been staring, and consulted her list. I noticed, pointlessly, and not for the first time, how attractive she was.
"Yes," she said, nodding. "It's already been taken up to your room."
That at least was something to be mildly happy about: Cheap American-priced software for my laptop. I was about to go, when on impulse I turned back to her.
"It wasn't me," I said. "They made a mistake."
"I know, sir," she said, quickly, her face transparently apologetic, as if grateful for the chance. "The police called here to check some information. The man sounded angry when we told him."
I bet myself that the man was Mr. Tan Suit, and nodded. "Okay then."
Up on the eighth floor I walked slowly down the corridor and let myself into 805. The room was frigid, blessed by the hotel's exuberant air-conditioning, and it felt good.
I walked over to the window. I always choose a room on the North side, because they get a good view over the hills. On a clear day, when the smog isn't too heavy, you get a good view the Hollywood sign, which feels symbolically like a good thing. Inspirational, I guess.
The view seemed different today, an
d didn't make me feel better. The sign just looked like something off a postcard, as if it had no bearing on me at all.
You're a tourist, it said. That's all.
As I turned from it, I caught sight of myself in the mirror on the wall. My right cheek looked lumpy and was beginning to discolour, and a couple of other spots looked unusual. It didn't look anywhere as bad as it felt, however, which was galling. I hurt like hell, and I wanted the outside world to know it.
The message light on the phone was flashing. There were four voicemails from Jon, spaced at regular intervals throughout the morning, inquiring as to where the fuck I was, with increasing urgency and irritation. The last message said he's gone to the eXpow meeting by himself, and wouldn't be back until mid-evening, and WTF???, and on and on.
I thought about calling Anne, then remembered the time difference and realised she'd be asleep. Suddenly I felt very alone, a Brit scribbler in a city which evidently didn't like me a whole lot.
With an air of vague defiance I walked to the window, lit a cigarette and smoked it in the city's general direction.
* * * * *
At five o'clock I was sitting in the room's armchair, dressed in a post-shower bathrobe and staring out at the sheen over the hills. I was drinking a bottle of cranberry juice from the minibar. A half-finished jug of coffee sat on the table, surrounded by the chaos of my loose change (I never seem to be able to tame it when I'm in America – it just grows and grows). I'd felt a curious gratitude when the room service had arrived, and fought the urge to ludicrously overtip the waiter. These guys had alibied me. Even though I was innocent, that felt like a big favour. By now I'd calmed down enough to be tremblingly furious with the two cops who'd arrested me. There was a red welt across my chest, from my collision the pedestal in the lobby. My cheekbone had started to come up in earnest now, one eye was blackening, and all in all I looked like crap.
I'd been unarmed.
Christ, never mind that – I was innocent.
Considine's spiel at the end was most likely an attempt to stop me pressing charges. It had been unnecessary, of course. My policy in foreign countries is to keep my head down, get on with my work, and not antagonise the natives. It's my policy when at home, too. I was inexpressibly glad that the whole situation had gone away, but I was angry that I'd needed someone else's efforts to clear me, that I hadn't just exuded innocence. It was irrational, but I felt both used and stupid, and was rehearsing after-the-event strategies, things I should have said, ways I should have been.
Pointless. I remembered that at least I had my software. I find new bits of software genuinely exciting – not least because it's written in a language I don't understand at all, and so there's no chance of some fucker wheedling me into rewriting it to a stupid deadline, and for not enough money. Normally I left the stuff shrink-wrapped until I got home, but today I felt I could do with something to get my mind off current events. I was going to have to deal with Jon later, which would be trying. At the moment I felt as if any lip from him could result in a fight, which would not a good idea for my career, or anything else. Punching out a producer in the bar of Ma Maison – even a no-hoper like Jon – would be a bad move on any number of grounds. Though the Writers' Union might put up a statue to me.
So I poured myself another coffee, swore mildly at the fact that they'd brought cream, rather than the milk I'd explicitly asked for, and looked around the room for the package. A first trawl didn't bring anything to light, so I stood up and poked around for it.
It didn't take long to establish it wasn't there. My jaw clenched. I reached out for the phone. Then I stopped, turned abruptly and walked over to my suitcase. Rather than bawl someone out down the phone, which would do me no good, I'd go down to the desk, gently enquire as to where the fucking Christing Hell my software was, and then sit in the bar reading a book and drinking Budweisers. Many, many Budweisers. Not only would that be preferable to staying in a room which was beginning to develop a smog of its own, but it might mean I was in a more receptive mood when Jon returned to the hotel.
I dressed, left a message on his voice mail, and went downstairs. The tall woman was about to go off duty when I got down to the desk, a man shaped like a small hairy fridge poised to take her place. He turned toward me as I approached, ready and able to assist, but the woman – whose badge I noticed, for the first time, declared that she was called Alicia (staff don't have surnames at this hotel) – saw me coming, and seemed to impress upon the man that she would like to deal with me. At least that's what I thought happened, but it could have been wishful thinking. At that moment I was prepared to leap at the idea that someone wanted to be nice to me. More likely she'd flagged me as a "problematic and demanding" guest.
I smiled, to show I wasn't going to bite, and told her my package wasn't in my room. Instead of rolling her eyes and generally implying that Sir was a bit of a retard, she reached for her ledger.
She ran her finger down the day's deliveries, then held it politely out to show me that a package for N. Williams had been received, and ticked as delivered to the room. I bore this patiently.
"Right," I said, "That's as may be. But it's not in my room, unless the guy hid it somewhere."
"He would have put it on the bedside table."
I was aware of this, having had stuff delivered to the room on previous trips, and nodded with a resigned smile. "It's not there." I repeated.
She turned to her terminal. Her long, slim fingers pattered over the keys for a few moments, and then she smiled brightly.
"Ahh!" she said contentedly. "There are two of you."
I stared at her. The woman saw my confusion, and angled the monitor towards me. On the screen, in little green points of light, I saw my own name. And under it, in the lists of guests, there it was again – Mr. Williams.
"The boy has delivered your package to the wrong Mr. Williams."
She seemed pleased at having solved the mystery, but I wished she'd phrased it that way in the first place. Being in a hotel with another person of the same surname was a possibility I'd considered before, having once ordered an "adult" CD-ROM. After making the order I'd spent twenty-four hours plagued with the complete and utter Fear, fully expecting the porn to be delivered to someone else, opened, and then brought irately back down to reception. I pictured the staff mounting the disc on a plinth, pointing spotlights at it, and standing around with their arms folded waiting for me: none of them knowing or caring it had been my girlfriend's idea to buy the bloody thing in the first place.
Thank God this time it was only Photoshop plug-ins.
"Good," I said. "So..."
"I'll call Mr. Williams," Alicia said, and pattered the keyboard again. She frowned. "He is called Nick too," she said. "That's a coincidence. He's in Room 805."
"That's my room," I said.
"Oh. Then this must be your information I'm looking at. I'll check the other one."
A few more seconds of typing, and then she frowned at the monitor, her fingers still.
"There must be some mistake," she said.
She swivelled the monitor toward me again. Two guest record windows were open side by side on the screen.
Both were for a Mr. Williams, first name Nick. And both were registered to room 805.
"Someone must have entered your information twice," she suggested, eventually.
"Wouldn't the system notice that both were allocated the same room?" My throat felt dry. I needed a beer quite soon. And another cigarette. Always another of those.
"Not necessarily," Alicia said, blushing slightly. "The two Mr. Williams could be... good friends."
"Okay, I hear what you're saying, but there is no other Mr. Williams," I said. "Take it from me. So... where's my package?"
"I'll look into it right now," Alicia said, suddenly businesslike. I d
on't know whether it was because she found the problem genuinely absorbing, or if she was nettled about not being able to clock off. "Perhaps you could sit in the bar, and I'll come to you when I've found out what the problem is?"
I thanked her, and trouped over towards the bar area on the terrace, where a semi-talented pianist was playing jazz standards, thankfully fairly quietly. I found a nook as far away from him as possible. After a moment a waitress came over, and set a bowl of nuts and a napkin down on the table in front of me.
"Hello, Mr. Williams," she said. "What will you be having this evening?"
I didn't recognise her. I was a little surprised at being addressed by name, and immediately paranoid, wondering if news of this morning's events had spread through the staff. More probably she'd just served me on some previous evening, when I was already a little too beer-relaxed to notice faces and remember them.
I ordered a Bud and she strode off, leaving me to my book. I lit a cigarette and tried to settle down to it. After no more than a few seconds I heard a tutting sound, and looked up. A young American couple were sitting at the next table, and both were frowning shrewishly at me.
"Excuse me?" I said.
"Would you mind not smoking?" the man said, loudly.
"Yes I would," I said. "We are outside, and the requisite distance from an open doorway. There are ashtrays on the tables. I am a smoker, and I am smoking. If you don't like it, you're welcome to sit somewhere else. Have a nice day."
They gawped at me like a pair of affronted owls. I stared back, not in the mood to back down. I'd about had it for one day, and especially had it on the subject of smoking. LA is fucking insane on the subject. You can't even smoke where you like on the street, but have to traipse a sufficient distance down the road and lurk with other social misfits, losers and criminals. If you're a smoker in LA you feel like you're always being watched, as if some dread force is after you, one which has taken protection of the body to the level of psychosis. LA's going to be the first city where you can't smoke at all, I'm sure, and yet half the time you can't even see the celebrated sign for all the car fumes, and you're swimming neck-high in smog that's thicker than water and sparkles and fizzes in the dark.