Meanwhile, George waits patiently in my trunk.
Part 24
$1500. That’s how much money was in the Other Goddamn Hotel’s safe. I don’t count it until I wake up in the afternoon. Once I got home and managed to sneak George’s gargantuan lifeless body into my apartment, I was useless. I passed out for a solid six hours. I would have probably slept for the rest of my life if my cell phone hadn’t woken me up. No, not my cell phone. George’s.
I fish the phone out of his pocket. The caller ID reads DON’T ANSWER, which must mean it’s his boss calling. I obey the caller ID and click the ignore button. His phone has been attacked with dozens of missed calls and text messages. All of the messages are from his manager, demanding to know his location and letting him know the police are looking for him. Of course they are. Not only is he missing, but the money inside the safe is also gone.
And it’s not even two months worth of rent. I don’t know what I expected. Most guests don’t pay cash anymore, and the safe is emptied at the end of every week, so what the fuck, I’m no Al Capone—hell, I’m not even Owlcapone. What I should have done was instead of freaking out and bringing George to my apartment, I should’ve gone directly back to my hotel and cleaned out whatever little was in our safe, then hightailed it directly to Mexico before anyone could figure out what happened. But now I have to return to work tonight. I have to continue like everything is normal. Until…until when? Until I regain the courage to rob my own hotel, then flee to a country that speaks a language I don’t understand? What the fuck is wrong with me? What do I know about Mexico?
What I need is an actual plan. I can’t go into this sleep-deprived and desperate. That’s how George ended up dead. No more half-assed schemes that inevitably backfire. If I’m going to get myself out of this mess, I’m going to have to use my brain.
There are two key issues currently ruining my life: One, the corpses decomposing in my apartment, and two, the Hobbs brothers. Realistically, the first issue will solve the second issue. I just have to smuggle the bodies into their room. Except the only time John ever seems to leave his shoe lab is either for a smoke break or to give me shit about something. If he sleeps, it’s when I’m off the clock. But, knowing what I know from the plethora of trashy crime books I’ve read, it’s doubtful he ever sleeps. The meth works as a superpower, disabling the need to rest and turning him into a constant work machine. Only death will stop this force—death, or a riot squad acting off an anonymous tip about some dead bodies in the man’s closet.
George’s cell phone continues ringing as if its owner hasn’t expired, as if he’s just oversleeping and any second now he’ll wake up and give it the love and attention it believes it deserves. The caller ID still says “DON’T ANSWER.” I pace around my apartment, holding the cell phone and listening to it ring while exchanging glances with George. I can’t just leave him on the carpet. Not only will it ruin the material, but I’ll eventually trip over his body.
Yates is beyond thrilled to receive a new friend. It gets lonely, hanging out in a closet all day. Sometimes you need someone to talk to. Sometimes you need to know you aren’t the only person in the world, even if you’re both dead.
I try not to eavesdrop on their conversation. I wash dishes that haven’t been cleaned in weeks but the hatred in the corpses’ tones is loud enough to drown out the sink water. I suppose I can’t blame them. I am not only their imprisoner, but also their murderer. At least they have stuff in common.
I am not losing my mind. I am not losing my mind. I am not losing my mind.
The phone goes off again, except this time the ringtone is different. Weirder. Distorted. The caller ID reads: “OWLBERT”.
I answer.
“Uh, hello?”
“You stupid fuck. They can track the phone.”
It hadn’t even occurred to me. First thing the police probably did was track down George’s cell phone signal. He is, after all, currently their best suspect.
But there’s a more pressing issue at hand. “How did you dial my number? You…you don’t have thumbs.”
Owlbert sighs and calls me a mean name, then the phone goes dead. The phone that’s going to lead a firing squad straight to my front door. This thing might as well be my executioner. The microwave above the sink sings my name. A sexy siren guiding me to my unavoidable crash. I feed it George’s cell phone and click the POPCORN button. Radiation seduces and penetrates its new lover. The phone sizzles and pops and bursts into a tiny ball of flame, and the sound of its death carries a better rhythm than any rock song I’ve ever heard, and I can’t stop head-banging to the beat. Because this is real. Destroying phones. Hiding evidence. Disposing corpses. I am no longer a person. I am a movie character. I am a John McClane. I am a James Bond. I am a superhero and the hotel gig was my origins story. Every great character hatches from someplace horrible. From someplace totally repugnant and evil. The hotel serves both as my birth and my death. It is my Uncle Ben and my Venom. I can’t leave it behind for the same reason Batman can’t leave Gotham. I am its protector and its destroyer. The only way to save it is to let it burn. I am the hotel’s savior. I am the hotel’s death sentence. I am the hotel’s everything. I am the hotel. I am the hotel. I. Am. The. Hotel.
The doorbell rings.
The world collapses.
The rock song in my end ceases.
Somewhere, an owl is laughing.
“Isaac?” a voice shouts from outside. “This is Detective Garcia. Please open the door. I know you’re home. I can hear you.”
Hear me? I’m not making any—oh shit, wait, I’m the one laughing. I’m the goddamn owl. What’s so funny, anyway?
What’s so funny?
“One minute,” I tell the detective. “I’m naked.” Which isn’t true, but it buys me some time to change out of my dirty work uniform and throw on something clean. I had thought the smell of death was coming from my uniform, but taking it off doesn’t seem to help. The smell is coming from inside me. My soul is tainted with violence. Whatever the fuck a soul is. Whatever the fuck anything is.
The detective looks the same as the first time we met. I only open the door a crack and peek my head out. Does my face show any guilt? Do my eyes tell her all my little secrets?
“Can I help you?” I ask, and I realize I’m already acting suspicious, and I realize I am unable to act any other way.
Detective Garcia starts to smile, then frowns and strains her nose. “What in the world is that smell?”
“Uh.” She tries to push her way inside, but I refuse to budge. “I don’t know anything else about Mr. Yates, I’m sorry.”
But she doesn’t care about dead bodies. She nods to my apartment, grimacing. “What is that? Good lord, it’s horrendous.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But of course I know. The stench of Yates and George’s decaying corpses can be detected for miles. I’m more obvious than a child with cherry pie smeared across his face. I fake an expression of recognition. “Oh, yeah, my popcorn.”
She raises her brow. “Popcorn?”
“Yeah. I just burned a bag of it in the microwave. Wasn’t paying attention.”
“I see.”
She’s a detective. Obviously she’s able to determine the difference between burnt popcorn and decayed corpses. It is her job, after all. Garcia nods. “Ugh. I do that all the time. Why don’t you step outside so we can talk without having to choke ourselves to death?”
Of course, I’m not very good at my job, either.
I suck in my groaning gut—when was the last time I’ve eaten?—and slip through the crack in the door without risking to open it any wider and possibly reveal evidence of my unintentional wickedness.
The elderly lady across the pavement waves at us as she attempts to unlock her front door. “Good morning!”
The detective waves back. “Good morning, ma’am.” She lowers her voice. “You think she realizes what time it is?”
I nod. �
�Yeah, it’s morning.”
She squints. “I need to ask you some questions about the gentleman who works the night shift at the hotel next to yours.”
“George?”
“So you know him?”
I scratch the back of my head, hair dripping sweat. This being-out-in-the-sun bullshit isn’t meant for me. “Yeah, we gotta call each other every night to compare rates and occupancies. What…what’s going on? Did something happen to him?”
Detective Garcia nods. “I’m afraid he’s currently missing. Do you remember talking to him last night?”
Last night was a decade ago. Did I call him before heading over? Surely the police will check the phone records to confirm my story, either way. “You know, I don’t recall if I did or not.”
“You don’t recall.”
I shrug. What does she want from me? “Most nights tend to just blend together, it seems. Almost like my entire time employed at the hotel has been one long shift that’ll never end.”
“Sounds like you need to reconsider careers.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Before I joined the academy, I was an overnight cashier at Walmart, so I understand what you’re feeling. Trust me when I tell you it doesn’t get better.”
“What?”
Her eyes seem to darken and her voice deepens. “Face it, Eye Sick. You’re two steps away from tripping in your own grave. The universe is collapsing and you are the magnet guilty of annihilation.”
“Uh.”
Her eyes return to normal. The demonic tone in her voice disappears. “Did you notice anything strange last night?”
“Strange like how?”
“Strange like anything.”
I try to clear my throat but my mouth is too dry. “No. Not really. It was just a regular night. I came in, I checked in guests, I did my paperwork, and I left.”
“Do you think it’s sort of strange that two people have gone missing from the same area within a month?”
“Uh, I suppose.”
“Do you suspect these two disappearances are related?”
“Um.” I rub sweat out of my eyes. The burn is torture. “Why are you asking me this? You’re the detective. I…I don’t know anything.”
“Just brainstorming, I guess. Hearing myself think.”
Across the walkway, my neighbor waves again and tells us good morning. She’s still fighting to unlock her door.
“Look,” I tell the detective, blood boiling in this Satanic heat, “I don’t know where George is. He didn’t exactly tell me he was planning on robbing his hotel. Shit just happens. One day someone’s here, the next day they’re gone.”
I realized halfway through talking how much I just fucked up, but it was too late to stop. The words spat out of my mouth beyond my control. But maybe she wasn’t listening. Maybe her detective skills really are as poor as my customer service skills.
“I never mentioned anything about a robbery.”
“Excuse me?” Now’s the time to strategize: do I flee or attempt to smooth the situation over with my charm?
“You just said you don’t know why Mr. George Wilk robbed his hotel. But I haven’t said anything about a burglary.”
“What? Uh. Yeah you did. It was one of the first things you mentioned when I answered the door.”
“How do you know the hotel was robbed, Isaac?” The detective steps forward and I know if I try to flee now she would probably just shoot me in the back. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe that’s the solution I’m been searching for all this time.
“I, uh, I…”
Detective Garcia nods at the door. “Is he in there? Are you hiding him in your apartment?”
“What. No. What.”
“Is he armed?” She draws a pistol from her hip holster. “Is he?”
“No.”
She hesitates. “Did you guys partner up, or what’s the story here? Is he forcing you to hide him?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“What.”
I can’t talk, can’t think. It’s too hot. It’s too cold. Reality continues disintegrating as she slaps a pair of handcuffs around my right wrist and connects the opposite cuff to the stairwell. She approaches my apartment holding her gun like all the cops do in movies. Her approach is so authentic it doesn’t seem real. And that’s because nothing is real. Detective Garcia is a figment of my imagination just as Owlbert and Chowls are figments of my imagination. Everything is a figment of something else’s imagination. It is the way the world works, and only when you begin doubting this universal truth does nothing make sense.
The detective shouts, “I know you’re in there! I’m armed, so don’t try anything funny. I’m coming in. Again, I am armed. I will shoot you. Keep your hands up.” She kicks the door open and storms into my apartment, waving her pistol in every direction. From my handcuffed angle, I’m still given enough of a clear view of the apartment’s interior. She frantically explores inside, yelling for George to surrender himself before an accident happens. Then she opens up the closet door and she’s no longer yelling, no longer running around in search for the dead.
The detective is frozen in time. The contents of the closet have struck her dumb. I desperately try to pull free of the handcuffs, but only succeed in bruising my wrists. Fuck. This is bad.
Out of view, the sound of spurs rustling gives birth into the wind, and before I can piece together why the melody is so familiar I am greeted with Hobbs’s brother rounding the apartment building. He tips his cowboy hat at me as he passes and calmly enters my apartment. Despite the spurs, the detective doesn’t even notice his presence. She’s too distracted by the sight of two corpses in my closet. Too distracted by how dumb she had been to not have suspected me of being capable of absolute evil. Too distracted to realize she’s no longer alone.
Helpless, I watch as the cowboy unsheathes a large hunting knife from his boot and slices the detective’s throat. The pistol falls from her grasp as she collapses to her knees, hands jerking to her neck in a worthless cause to prevent the flow of blood. I want to scream but I don’t know who I would be screaming for. I want to cry but I no longer remember how.
The cowboy wipes off the blade of his hunting knife with a towel and slides it back into his boot. He kneels at the detective’s body, still draining of life, and searches through her pockets, then strolls out of the apartment and unlocks my handcuffs. He’s smirking like this is all a game and he knows he’s the world champion. Smiling like he’s my buddy and he just did me a big favor.
I rub my wrist, now raw from my uneventful escape attempts, and glare at him. “What the fuck.”
His expression is of genuine confusion. “What are you so pissed about?”
“Why did you kill her?”
“Why do you have two bodies in your apartment?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He doesn’t know what Yates looks like, and he isn’t even aware of George’s existence. These bodies could be totally unrelated to the hotel.
“I reckon one of ’em is the guest you tossed off the roof.”
“…Yeah.”
“And the other?”
I shuffle my feet. “It’s kind of complicated.”
“What was the cop doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t fuck with me, kid.”
“She had questions about the missing night auditor from the hotel next to mine.”
The cowboy pauses, then recognition hits. “That’s the guy in the closet, I assume.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I was nearby to save your ass. You’re welcome.”
“What were you doing here?”
He winks. “Keeping an eye out on my new friend.”
How long had he been outside, watching me? Does he have so much free time in his day that he can just hang around apartment buildings on the off chance that he’ll have to murder a cop? Is he the only one watchin
g?
Does he know the owls?
Across the pavement, my neighbor tells us both good morning. One day she’ll figure out that lock and release all the demons waiting to burst from the underworld.
The cowboy stares at her like he’s considering getting out his hunting knife again. Then he nudges my arm. “C’mon. Let’s go inside and discuss matters in private.”
Inside the apartment, his cool-guy character breaks and he slams me against the wall. His nails dig around my throat and I’m too startled to fight back. “There’s things you aren’t telling me, boy.”
“What? No. I promise.” The words come out as a series of gargled chokes.
His grip tightens. Oxygen abandons me. “Tell me why the cop was really here. What have you told her about me? Who else knows?” He pauses, glances over his shoulder at the opened closet, and bounces my skull against the wall. “And why do the contents of your apartment contain so much death?”
It takes him another twenty seconds or so to realize I can’t answer him when my air supply is cut off. He releases his hands and steps back. “Answer me, boy.”
I gag and spit and kneel over, still unable to properly breathe. The toes of his boot sink into my gut and I fall to the floor. A mouthful of vomit drips down my chin.
“You best not start telling me stories of wires attached to your chest, either. And that includes your little ballsack, too.”
“I don’t have a wire. Jesus Christ, please stop.” I sit, holding my hands up in a plea for mercy. “I didn’t tell the cops anything. You said so yourself. You were watching. You saw her handcuff me. She was in the process of arresting me when you arrived. Why would I be fucking around with a cop when there’s dead bodies in my apartment? I want their attention even less than you do.”
The cowboy seems to contemplate the facts. “Why did you kill the fat boy?”
“It was an accident. He’s a friend.”
“A friend.”
“Yeah. And I killed him. It…we were just messing around. But it looks like I murdered him. I didn’t know what else to do.”
The Nightly Disease (Serial Novel) Page 21