Dig Ten Graves

by Heath Lowrance

  When Graham had sufficiently recovered, he said, “So sorry, ma’am, how can I help you?”

  “One of your guests. Mr. Allen Vox. I’m here to see him.”

  “Right. Is Mr. Vox expecting you, ma’am?”

  “Of course he’s expecting me,” she said, very haughtily. “I’ll have you know I’m not given to dropping in on men unannounced.”

  Graham reddened, fumbled for the registration book. “Of course not, ma’am, I didn’t mean… I mean to say… I’ll just find his room number and ring him up.”

  The woman gave him a cold stare and I found that I was growing annoyed with her, and with Graham for being so intimidated. Graham found what he was looking for, exclaimed, “Here we go! I’ll just let him know he has a visitor.”

  He picked up the desk phone and dialed 405. The woman watched his fingers, noting the number. And I noted that she noted the number.

  While the line rang, Graham cleared his throat, drummed his fingers on the desk and smiled polite patience at the woman. After a moment, he said, “Sorry, ma’am, Mr. Vox appears to be out.” He cradled the phone. “If you’d like, I can deliver a message when he comes back?”

  The woman bit her lip angrily and said, “I’ll wait in his room,” and started for the elevator.

  “Uh, ma’am, I’m afraid that’s, uh, excuse me…”

  She completely ignored him, blew him off like dust on her shoulder. That tore it. I stepped in front of her and said, “Sorry, lady. I can’t allow you to do that.”

  She said, “It’s vitally important that I see him right away. I must go to his room.”

  “Not gonna happen, lady. Besides, you don’t have the key. Did you plan on busting the door down?”

  She sized me up, probably wondering if I was fast enough to stop her if she made a break for the elevator or the stairs. She wound up making the right decision. Trying a different tact, she said, “Please. If you only understood how important it is. I’m terribly concerned about Allen… Mr. Vox. I haven’t heard from him in days and I fear the worst. He could be hurt. Or… or he could even be dead!”

  She added a dramatic sob to the last word.

  I said, “The maid cleans the rooms every day, ma’am. She’d notice a dead body. She’s very thorough that way.”

  “I beg you,” she said, moving in closer to me than was necessary. “Can’t we at least check his room? I’m so worried about him.”

  I looked down at her and knew then, without a doubt, that this was all wrong. She was all wrong.

  And suddenly I was interested in what her story was. I said, “Okay. You win. We’ll go up and check Mr. Vox’s room.”

  In the elevator she composed herself a bit and made a show of dabbing at nonexistent tears. I didn’t ask her any questions about her relationship to the guest in 405; why would I? I knew anything she told me would be a lie.

  The elevator at the Carson is notoriously goddamn slow, and the silence got to her before it got to me. Seeing that I wasn’t going to respond to the sniffling, she sighed, put away her handkerchief and eyed me. “You’re a big one, aren’t you?”

  I looked at her sideways and didn’t say anything, waiting to see where this one was going.

  “What are you?” she said. “Six-four, six-five?”

  “I’m six-four.”

  She nodded, looking at me like you’d look at a show horse. “Right. And about 270 pounds, I’d say. Mostly muscle.”

  “You seem unduly concerned with my personal proportions.”

  “Don’t get excited, Frankenstein. I said you were big, not good-looking.”

  “Look, lady, I didn’t ask your opinion. Why don’t you—“

  “Allen’s not big, but he’s smart. Very, very smart.”

  “Good for you and Allen. Honestly, lady, I’m not interested.”

  “Yes,” she said, completely ignoring me. “He’s very smart. He’s a scientist, as a matter of fact.”

  The words were an awful lot like those of bored society women talking about how important their husbands were, but something dark in her tone of voice made me look at her. She was scowling, probably unconsciously, her green eyes fixed on the elevator door.

  Some trouble between her and her Mr. Allen Vox?

  She looked at me and smiled in a way that made me uneasy. “They’ve made a point of calling him ‘mister’ instead of ‘doctor’, but he’s a doctor just the same. Yes, he’s quite brilliant. Everybody seems to want a piece of my Allen Vox.”

  Against my better judgment, I said, “Who’s ‘they’?”

  She didn’t answer, only looked away from me, still smiling that strange little smile, and I faced front again and wished to hell we’d arrive on the fourth floor and the elevator door would open.

  The irony of that wasn’t lost on me three seconds later, when the door slid open and five men greeted us with guns in their hands.

  “Hands up,” one of them said. “And out of the elevator, both of you. Slowly.”

  Two things kept me from complying right away. Five armed men was the last thing I expected to see standing there in front of the elevator, so that took about a second and a half to process. The other thing, the thing that took up more like two seconds, was the quick assessment of what sort of chance I had of taking them down.

  The answer: no chance at all. Five guys with guns? I’m pretty tough and I’m pretty quick, but I’m not Superman. By the time the guy hissed his order a second time I was raising my hands and stepping out of the elevator.

  The black-haired woman did the same. I noticed she seemed remarkably calm, and her face gave away nothing.

  All five men wore dark suits and needed shaves. Their eyes were uniformly red and sleepless and the pallor of their faces said they hadn’t seen the sun in awhile. The one who did the talking had a salt and pepper mustache slapped on a long thin face. He said, “Okay. Now both of you, move down the hall here. Do exactly as I say and you won’t be hurt.”

  I said, “Are you gentlemen registered guests? Because we don’t allow firearms in the Carson Hotel.”

  Mustache said, very calmly, “Do yourself a favor, big fella, and keep the trap closed. Just move.”

  We moved. One of the gunmen stayed in front of us, walking backwards very slowly and setting the pace. Two others flanked us, and Mustache and the fifth walked behind. All of them kept their guns pointed at us.

  “This is fine,” I said. “I meant to do my rounds anyway. Thanks for the company, boys.”

  No one answered, but the woman looked at me curiously. I couldn’t tell if it was admiration or pity. Maybe both. I said to her, “Would these guys be the ‘they’ you were talking about?” She didn’t answer.

  We passed room 405, reached the other end of the hall and stood in front of the emergency stairway. In his calm, sleepy voice, Mustache said, “Okay. Mrs. Galtry, you’ll be coming with us. As for you, Mr. Hotel Detective, would you kindly step into the landing?”

  The gunman in front held the door open and Mustache pressed his gun barrel into my spine. I didn’t like where this was going, but I went through the door. All the possible scenarios played through my head, all the possible means of taking control of this situation and knocking the teeth out of these guys.

  But every scenario ended with me catching a bullet in the gut.

  Three of them joined me on the landing, and behind me Mustache said, “Take care of him. Now.”

  And so what if I took a bullet in the gut? Better to go down fighting, right?

  But as the old men say, some days you get the bear and other days the bear gets you. I crouched low, ready to pop up with a haymaker on the jaw of the gunman nearest me, when something thumped hard at the base of my neck and pain jolted through me and everything went black.

  In case you didn’t know, I’ll tell you: being knocked unconscious doesn’t hurt particularly, but waking up from being knocked unconscious… that’s a different matter entirely. First, there’s the headache, so bad it makes the worst hango
ver you’ve ever had seem like a day at the beach. You can hardly move without little sledgehammers pounding at your temples from the inside. Then there’s the nausea. The first thing you want to do is vomit up everything you’ve eaten for the last three years.

  And if you’re really lucky, you don’t have brain damage and after a few minutes you’re able to stand up without falling down and go after the sons of bitches that did it to you.

  Which, wobbling on my feet and gripping the stair rail, I made up my mind to do at the earliest possible convenience.

  There was no sign of the gunmen, or the woman. What had Mustache called her? Mrs. Galtry, that was it. With the black spots slowly beginning to fade, I opened the door from the stairwell and onto the fourth floor.

  No idea how long I was out, but it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes or so. A lot can happen in ten minutes, though; like the complete disappearance of everyone involved in this little drama, except me.

  My head still throbbing, I made it to the door of room 405 and tried the knob. Locked. I didn’t bother to knock, just pulled out my key ring, found the master key for the fourth floor, and went in.

  The room was empty, just as I knew it would be.

  Some signs of recent habitation, however. The bed was unmade. Three chairs were pulled around in a circle near it. In the bathroom, a shaving razor lay open on the sink and some recently shaved chin whiskers hadn’t been washed down the drain. There were ashtrays everywhere, packed with, from what I could tell, three different brands of smokes.

  Mister—or Doctor—Allen Vox had some company. The gunmen?

  In the room upstairs, the guest was walking around and the floorboards squeaked and groaned under him. The Carson is a respectable hotel, but it’s also pretty damn old and sad to say you can hear strains of conversation from room to room and floor to floor sometimes, through the vents. The person in the room above was talking to someone, and the someone answered, but their voices were too low to make out.

  And as long as they weren’t doing anything out of line it was none of my concern anyway.

  Then I heard a weird metallic noise, screechy feedback like from a radio, and something went ching ching ching very loudly and one of the someones upstairs said, “Sonofabitch!”

  I rubbed the back of my sore neck and eyed the ceiling as if x-ray vision would suddenly kick in and I’d be able to see what was going on up there. I’m not the smartest guy around—otherwise I’d be something other than a lousy hotel dick—but I was beginning to get some ideas.

  When I came out of the elevator, Graham said, “Hey, where ya been? I was getting’ ready to call in the marines.”

  “Never mind that. Lemme see the registration book.”

  I didn’t wait for him to hand it over; instead, I pushed in behind the desk and found it myself and flipped through the pages. I grabbed the bottle and took a long pull and my headache started to ease right away.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “When did that Vox guy check in?”

  “Geez, I dunno, what do I look like, the manager?”

  “Well, find out, damnit.” I shoved the book at him. “Right now.”

  “Oh come on, Len. I work the night shift so I don’t have to do stuff like that.”

  “Stop bellyaching and do it, I can’t make heads or tails out of your system. I need to know when Vox first came here and I need to know now.”

  Grumbling, Graham started flipping through the registration book. I said, “And one other thing. While I was upstairs, did anyone come through the lobby?”

  He looked at me curiously. “Well, yeah. Mr. Martin came in, you know, in room 810. Drunk as the proverbial skunk, too. I think he was down at the—“

  “Did he ring the desk bell?”

  “Yeah. Did a little dance too, you should’ve seen—“

  “Keep looking for Vox, damnit, why are you staring at me?”

  “Geez-o-pete, what’s got into you?” He turned his attention back to the book and after a moment said, “Okay, here he is. Allen Vox, room 405, checked in three days ago. Had a reservation, pre-paid via Western Union.”

  “Who else checked in that day?”

  “Come on, Len, at least twenty others that day, checking in and out, you know how it is.”

  “Okay, I’ll make it easy for you. Who was in 505 that day? The room directly above Vox’s?”

  He glanced down at the book again. “Let’s see… oh, that’s easy. A Mister Beale checked in that same day in 505. He paid cash, up front.”

  “Have you seen this Beale guy since he checked in?”

  “No, Len. I don’t see anyone on the nightshift, ‘cept Mr. Martin sometimes, when he comes in loaded.”

  “Forget about Mr. Goddamn Martin, will you? Something’s going on in this hotel and I don’t like it.”

  He looked at me with a mixture of confusion and irritation. “What? What’s going on? Jeez, Len, I wish you’d tell me—“

  “Later,” I said. “I got some stuff to take care of. If I’m not back in twenty minutes, call the cops.”

  His eyes got wide. “The cops? What the hell, Len?”

  I walked toward the elevator, knowing full well I seemed unreasonable. But my head still hurt and the more I thought about how those bastards got the upper hand on me the angrier I got. The Carson was my domain, and damned if I planned on letting a bunch of pasty-faced gunmen call the shots here.

  I pushed the button for the fifth floor, then jumped quickly out of the elevator and headed for the stairs. If I was right, they’d be waiting for me up there, expecting me to come out of the lift.

  I took the stairs two at a time. It played hell with my bad leg but I dealt with it. It took me less than a minute to reach the fifth floor. I opened the door a crack and peeked into the hall.

  Two of the gunmen were there at the far end, in front of the elevator. The indicator on top said 4, which meant the elevator would open in about ten seconds. Both of them had their guns drawn and their attention focused entirely in front of them.

  I let the door close gently behind me and walked quickly to room 505, two doors up the hall. It was unlocked. Without pausing, I slid in and shut the door behind me.

  The room was an exact duplicate of the one below it—just a bed, a couple of chairs, a beat-up desk in the corner and a small bath attached. The only difference was the radio set on the desk, attached to a big reel-to-reel machine, and the guy with headphones in front of it.

  He was just beginning to turn and face me when I closed the door, and it seemed to take him a second to realize what was going on. He started to scramble for a gun that lay on the bed but got caught up in the wire from his headphones. I crossed the room in two strides and slammed my fist into his temple. He dropped without even making a sound.

  From out in the hall, I heard the ding of the elevator door opening. The two gunmen would find it empty and no doubt rush right back to the room. I grabbed the gun off the bed and positioned myself behind the door.

  Three seconds later, the door crashed open and they came rushing in.

  I’d like to be able to tell you now that I cleaned their clocks without even breaking a sweat, but lying doesn’t come easily to me. These guys had a bit more up their sleeves than I’d guessed.

  I slammed the door behind them and grabbed the collar of the closest one, meaning to throw him into his partner. But the little bastard apparently had eyes in the back of his head. He whipped around, ducking low, and swept his leg around without missing a beat. The leg caught me at the ankles and since my footing was off I stumbled into the wall and nearly fell.

  The other one hopped over his partner like a spider and slammed his fists into my solar plexus piston quick—one two three four—and the breath wheezed out of me as my gun went spinning out of my hand.

  What the hell kind of fighting was this? The two gunmen bounced around like deranged cats, punching and kicking so fast I couldn’t keep up with them. I’m a pretty seasoned fighter, that’
s no lie, but I’d never seen anything even remotely resembling the crazy chaotic attack they mounted against me.

  They punched and kicked me around the room like I was a toy, managing to duck or sidestep every time I swung my fists, moving with eerie fluidity. None of their attacks hurt much, but they managed to keep me unsteady and on the offensive.

  I finally managed to connect one punch, a solid hit to a jaw, and the guy went down in front of me. Then the other one came out of nowhere with an impossibly high kick that caught me right in the upper chest. I went flying backwards with the force of it, toward the window.

  I just managed to catch myself before pitching through the glass, breathed a sigh of relief that only made it halfway out of my mouth before he attacked again with another kick.

  The glass shattered behind me and I felt myself falling back, felt the bitter sting of the winter air, felt my feet leave the floor and my body tumble over as I fell from the fifth floor of the Carson Hotel.

  I remember every second of my descent, recall vividly every sensation. The wind rushing past my ears, my tie snapping in the air in front of me, the seasick feeling in the pit of my stomach as I tumbled end over end. No, my life didn’t flash before my eyes and thank God for that. The thought of being seconds away from death was depressing enough.

  And it seemed to go on forever, not the few seconds it should have taken. Halfway down I got a good look at the street rushing up at me, the front entrance to the Carson Hotel, before my vision zoomed around to the building again, and I remember thinking well come on already.

  The blue and white striped awning that covered the front entrance of the hotel broke my fall. And by ‘broke my fall’ I don’t mean it did anything that made me overly comfortable. Air exploded out of my lungs and I bounced like a 270 pound rubber ball off the awning and toward the sidewalk.

  I hit the pavement and everything went black.