Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief Sammy Keyes

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  Just then the doorbell rings. Grams puts a finger to her lips and I do a quick check for anything of mine lying around; then I duck into the closet. Two seconds later Grams calls, “Who is it?”

  Normally I shut Grams’ bedroom door when I dive into the closet, but this time I didn’t. I just dived in, made myself some room in the middle of Grams’ shoes, and got ready to wait for whoever rang the bell to go away.

  Then I heard something I couldn’t believe.

  I opened the closet door just a crack and sure enough, it was the voice of Officer Borsch. He was saying, “Yes, ma’am, I’m aware of that, but your neighbor insists that she’s the one who left the note and it’s my duty to follow up. It is a threat, you know.”

  Grams says, “Of course it’s a threat! And if you’d catch that fella my granddaughter saw across the way, you’d have the person who left the note!”

  “Ah, so you’re the grandmother.” It’s dead quiet for a minute, then he says, “And I suppose it’s your granddaughter who told you the note under your neighbor’s door was left by the hotel thief?”

  “That’s right, and—”

  He snorts. “With all due respect, ma’am, maybe this is just her way of getting some attention?”

  By now I’ve pushed the closet door open a little more so I can hear better. And I’m dying to jump out and tell Officer Borsch a thing or two, but I can’t. I have to just sit there, getting madder and madder, listening to him make fun of me. Then all of a sudden his voice starts to get louder and I can hear him creaking and jingling my way. He says, “Would you mind if I took a look out the window? I’d like to see if it’s even possible to see the hotel room from here.”

  Now I can tell that the last thing in the world Grams wants is for Officer Borsch to go nosing through her apartment, but what can she do? He’s already nosing.

  His feet walk right past the closet, so I scrunch back as far as I can and hold my breath. I hear him mumble, “Mm-hm...” like he just doesn’t believe it. Finally he says, “Where is your granddaughter, ma’am?”

  “Home from school, I suppose.”

  “Ah, yes. She does have a very nice home, doesn’t she?”

  I can tell Grams doesn’t quite know what to say to that. “Uh…yes, yes she does.”

  “So why does she come here so much? Your neighbor seems to think this is her home.”

  Uh-oh is what I’m thinking. Uh-oh. And I just know that Grams is out there sweating, but what she says is, “Oh, Daisy. She’s...lonesome, if you know what I mean?”

  Officer Borsch is quiet for a minute. Finally he says, “What’s the name of the street your granddaughter lives on again?”

  Well, my heart’s going full speed ahead. I can see the Big Lie just crumbling away in front of me. Then, very quietly, out of Grams’ mouth comes “East Jasmine.”

  Let me tell you, I felt like whooping. There’s nobody in this world like my grandmother. Nobody.

  And I’m sitting there, with my hands in fists, going, Yes! Yes! Yes! as loud as my brain can shout, when something brushes against my shoulder. Not Grams’ coat. Not one of her dresses.

  Something alive.

  THIRTEEN

  I had company. And I’m not talking a clothes moth or something. I’m talking big company. All of a sudden my heart’s exploding and I can’t breathe, and what I want to do is jump right into Officer Borsch’s arms and cry, Help!

  I turn my head just a little bit and crank my eyes over as far as they’ll go, and there, staring at me from behind Grams’ winter coat, are two of the biggest eyes I’d ever seen. I tried screaming but nothing came out. Nothing.

  Then in a flash, he jumped out from behind all those hemlines, knocked over a stack of shoe boxes, clawed across my back, and high-tailed it out the door. My little buddy, Dorito.

  And he left the closet door wide open.

  Now it’s one thing that he scared me to death. It’s another that he made all that racket. But in the middle of all those adult shoes, sticking out like raisins in a chocolate-chip cookie, are a pair of high-tops. A pair of high-tops with legs coming out of them.

  Officer Borsch jumps a few feet off the ground himself. He creaks and squeaks and says, “What the—?”

  The next thing you know, Grams is going on and on about her mischievous cat, and the closet door is swinging closed. And I’m in the dark in the middle of an avalanche of shoes, safe again.

  Now sitting there in the dark waiting for Grams to come back and tell me the coast is clear, I started thinking. First about Officer Borsch and how he didn’t believe me. And he didn’t, I could tell. Something about the way he looked at me when I was over at Marissa’s—something about the way he said, Mm-hm...when he was looking out Grams’ window at the Heavenly Hotel. Officer Borsch thought I was a liar.

  Then I thought about Mr. Caan not believing me about Heather Acosta, and how even Grams had almost believed Mrs. Graybill over me. Why did everyone think I was a liar? Being trapped in the closet was starting to feel like being stuck in the Box, and suddenly all I wanted was to bust out from under all those shoes and hemlines and prove that I wasn’t lying.

  And tickling the back of my brain was this feathery kind of feeling that everything I needed was in there, just kind of spinning around in my skull, looking for a way to line up. And when it did line up I’d know—I’d know why the guy at the Heavenly Hotel looked so familiar, and why it was taking me so long to remember.

  * * *

  Marissa called me that night. She told me how all anyone at school wanted to talk about was how I’d broken Heather Acosta’s nose.

  “I broke it?”

  “Yeah, she’s got it all bandaged up, and brother, is she milking it for all it’s worth. She’s saying how you should’ve gotten expelled instead of suspended.”

  Now what I really felt like doing was laughing. Not because I’d broken Heather’s nose, but because I could just see her running around with her torch top and earrings and a taped-up nose.

  “She told me to tell you she hopes you learned a lesson. Can you believe that?”

  “She hopes I learned a lesson?”

  “Yeah, and this girl Tenille went around all day trying to get people to donate to the Help Heal Heather Fund.”

  “The what? Who’s Tenille?”

  “Some copycat friend of Heather’s. I saw her in the bathroom before school, clamping on a bunch of earrings. Someone told me she’d do anything for Heather ’cause she thinks she’s the coolest.”

  “And what’s this fund for? They gonna buy her crutches for her nose or something?”

  Well, that got Marissa laughing, and hearing her laugh made me laugh, and pretty soon we’re just busting up, talking about two little crutches hanging out of Heather Acosta’s nose.

  Then, when we’re both catching our breath, Marissa says, “She asked me for money.”

  “Heather did?”

  “No, Tenille. She said it was partly my fault that Heather’s nose was broken, so I should contribute to the fund.”

  I almost didn’t ask because I was afraid of what I might hear, but I couldn’t resist. “Well, did you?”

  “No! I told her to drop dead. I told her you were my best friend and anyone who pricked you in the butt with a pin deserved to have her nose broken.”

  I tossed that around some and decided that what Marissa probably said was “Sorry, I don’t have any money today.” So I said, “Thanks, Marissa, but what did you really say?”

  “What do you mean? That is what I said. Exactly!”

  Well, I couldn’t help smiling. I mean, Marissa McKenze finally told someone to bug off and she did it sticking up for me.

  Then Marissa says, “So what did you do today? Did you have fun on your day off?”

  Grams was taking a bath, but I still kept my voice down when I told Marissa about going into Madame Nashira’s House of Astrology.

  “No way! Without me? That’s no fair!”

  “So next time you punch Heather
in the nose!” Then I told her about running into Brandon and snooping around on the roof of the mall, and how I’d discovered Grams at Hudson’s, and about how Mrs. Graybill called the police. And I’m in the middle of telling her how Officer Borsch mm-hmed while he looked across at the Heavenly Hotel, when she pipes up with “We should go there!”

  “What do you mean? Go where?”

  “To the Heavenly—we should go there!”

  Well, I know exactly what Grams would say if she knew we were talking about going over to the Heavenly Hotel—it would be a very short conversation starting with the letter N and ending with the letter O.

  I stretched the phone cord as far as I could get from the bathroom. “No way!”

  “Why not? You said it was cool!”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Come on. Just for a minute? We’ll just go in, check it out, and leave.”

  I twisted the cord some and huddled up to the wall. “Now?”

  “Sure! I could be there in ten minutes.”

  “How about after dinner?”

  “Cool! Meet me in front of Maynard’s at what, seven?”

  “Okay.”

  I got off the phone feeling like I’d just made a big mistake. I wandered into Grams’ room and peeked through the curtain at the big pink “Heavenly Hotel” sign coming on across the street. And I started thinking: of all the rooms at the hotel, why did the guy pick Gina’s? Did he know there was money in it?

  And standing there, staring at that pink sign buzzing in the air, it hit me—Marissa and I were going into the Heavenly Hotel, all right. Only it wouldn’t be for just a minute.

  * * *

  Marissa’s never on time. Unless she’s waiting to see the inside of the Heavenly Hotel, I guess, because there she was at seven sharp, waiting for me in front of Maynard’s.

  I said, “Hey! You ready?”

  She starts biting a nail. “Are we really going to do this?”

  “Sure. C’mon! This was your idea, remember.”

  When we get to the Heavenly Hotel I say, “Now listen. This is no big deal. Just act like you belong.”

  She whispers, “What do you mean, like I belong?”

  “You know, like it’s your house.”

  “Oh, okay,” she whispers.

  So I whisper back, “Do you talk like this in your own house?”

  She blinks. “No...”

  “So stop whispering!”

  I open the door and march right in, and there’s the same guy, chomping on a cigar, keeping an eye on the other people in the lobby from over the top of his newspaper. There are two men in the pope-hat chairs. One is wearing a corduroy coat and old Nikes and is sitting near the window reading the last few pages of a tattered paperback. The other is wearing a jogging suit and has his feet up on a coffee table. He’s leaning way back, blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling.

  But the cigar chomper isn’t watching the two of them as much as he’s keeping his eye on two other men huddled up near the staircase. They’re both dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts, one of them’s carrying a small paper bag, and even though they’re keeping their voices down, you can tell they’re having some kind of an argument.

  A man with blond hair and a goatee comes out of the elevator, and as he’s passing by the front desk the cigar chomper nods at him. The blond guy stops and says, “Ed says to send up his mail if any’s come. I’ll be back in a day or two to check on him, maybe bring him some smokes.”

  So while Cigar Man is busy listening to him, I give Marissa a nod and head for the stairs.

  She grabs me by the arm and whispers, “Where are we going?”

  “Up. C’mon.”

  Her ears move back a little like someone’s pulling her by the hair. “Really?”

  I just smile like I know what I’m doing, but my heart’s starting to skip around inside because it knows I don’t. “Sure. Come on.”

  When we’re about five steps away from the staircase the blond guy takes off and Cigar Man growls at us, “Going somewhere?”

  I look at him and say, “Mmm,” in a way that could mean yes or no—who knows? I sure didn’t.

  He folds his paper and kind of pushes his lips out with that cigar right smack-dab in the middle. He shows his teeth and says, “What was that?”

  All of a sudden Marissa walks right up to him like a wind-up toy that’s about to pop a spring. “This is such a cool hotel! It’s awesome!” She notices the funny green tiles on the counter. “Sammy! Come here. Have you seen these?”

  Well, the guys by the stairs quit arguing, the man by the window puts down his book, and those smoke rings seem to just hang there in the air. I move over to the counter and keep my voice down as I say to the guy, “We were just going to visit someone we know.”

  He throws his head back and laughs. And that cigar’s bobbing up and down, about to fall out, when all at once he stops laughing, puts down the paper, and growls, “Don’t mess with me. You’re not here to visit anyone.” He rolls the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “You’ve had your little look-see. Now skedaddle!”

  Marissa makes a beeline for the door, but I grab her by the shirt and kind of bungee her back. “Actually, sir, we are here to see someone.”

  He raises an eyebrow and Marissa looks at me like, “We are?” He gives me a hard look, then says, “Hey…you’re the gal that was here the night of the ruckus.”

  I smile at him. “Yes, sir. And I was on my way up to see Gina.”

  “Gina, hmm?”

  I shrug. “Or Madame Nashira...whatever you want to call her.”

  He chomps on his cigar for a minute, staring me in the eye. Finally he picks up the phone. “Let me see if she’s in.”

  She’s in all right. He tries to keep his voice low so we can’t hear, but we can anyway. “Gina? Yeah, there’s a couple of kids here to see you—the girl that was here the night you got hit, and some friend of hers…You sure?...All right, I’ll send ’em up.” He puts the phone down. “She’s in four twenty-three. Fourth floor, turn right. Knock twice.”

  I say, “Thanks,” and off we go.

  Now from the lobby, the Heavenly’s stairs look like just an ordinary staircase. But after the first four steps you turn left and all of a sudden you’re in the middle of all these mirrors. No kidding. There’s a wall of mirrors on both sides and they’re a little bit warped, so you’re surrounded by a lot of mutant reflections of yourself. And all those reflections kind of go on and on forever, because one wall’s bouncing them off the other.

  Anyhow, we make it up to the fourth floor, head down to 423, and knock. Twice.

  Gina answers the door, looking like she just got up. She wraps the tie of her bathrobe and says, “Come in, come in,” with a cigarette wagging up and down in her mouth.

  By now I’ve gotten the idea of what Grams meant by “seedy.” The wallpaper’s peeling off, the paint’s pretty dirty, and looking across the room I can see the bed’s lopsided and the mirror on the far wall’s cracked in two places.

  Marissa and I are standing there staring at each other, each wishing the other one would just say, “C’mon, let’s go,” when Gina says, “Well, are ya comin’ in or what?”

  So in we go.

  She says, “Sit!” and points her nose at the bed.

  So we sit, kind of on the edge of the bed, and watch as she tries to rake her fingernails through her hair. And I’m wondering, How do you start over in the morning with a hairdo like that? It’s all kind of clumped together and sideways and strands of it are sticking straight out in places looking like something a plumber would find in your pipes and say, “Aha! Here’s your problem, ma’am.”

  Marissa nudges me and flicks what’s left of her fingernails with her thumb. “Wow.”

  I don’t know if she’s thinking, Wow, has she got a lot of chewing to do! or Wow, that’s some paint job on those nails, because Gina’s fingernails aren’t black with moons and stars anymore. They’re silver with black comets shooting across
them.

  Gina takes a long drag off her cigarette, then rakes the hand with the cigarette through her hair.

  Now I’m starting to worry about fire. I mean, she’s whipping that cigarette around right next to about a gallon of hair spray, and I can just see them coming together to light up her head like the Fourth of July.

  She rakes a little more while she’s looking at us gawking at her, and finally she says, “So. Here you are. Wanna tell me why?”

  “Well, actually, I was wondering—do you think whoever stole your money knew it was there?”

  She blows some smoke straight up and it kind of gets lost in her hair for a minute before floating away. “I don’t know how he could’ve.”

  “Well, was anybody else’s room broken into?”

  She shakes her head. “Just lucky little me.”

  I look over at the door. “Is that a new doorknob?”

  She smiles out of one side of her mouth. “That it is. The creep snapped the other one right off.”

  “He snapped it off?”

  She taps some ashes into a Styrofoam cup. “With a vise grip or pliers or something. At least that’s what the cop said.”

  “Officer Borsch? He was up here?”

  “We’re talking about the fat one, right?”

  I nod.

  “Yeah, he was up here. For all of thirty seconds.”

  I stand up and look out the window, watching the cars go by for a minute. Then I check out the Senior Highrise and decide it’s easy to get mixed up on which apartment’s ours and which one’s Mrs. Graybill’s.

  Finally Gina says, “Whatcha lookin’ for?”

  I look down to the intersection. “Nobody knew about the money? Nobody?”

  “Nobody.” She’s shaking her head but all of a sudden she freezes. “Wait a minute—” Then she shakes her head again. “Nah.”

  “What? What were you thinking just now?”

  She rakes her hair again. “Never mind. It’s nothing.” I stare at her and she says, “I ran into a girlfriend of mine, all right? Down by the corner store. I didn’t even know she was in town. We got to talking, that’s all.”

  “Well, what were you talking about?”