Weekend

by Tania Grossinger

  Halloran’s office was just to the right. When he got there, he found it empty but the door was open so he walked in.

  It was a small windowless office, overcrowded with one desk and chair, certainly not a pleasant place to work. A folding chair was placed against the right wall, giving the impression there were never more than two people in the office at one time. On the wall immediately behind the desk were series of charts depicting employees schedules, shifts, rotations, etc. He was about to leave when he heard footsteps.

  “Can I help you?” Bob Halloran asked as he walked into his office.

  “I’m Bruce Solomon and—”

  “Yes. Mr. Lawrence told me you’d be around. Something about insurance. Last inspection we had a couple of weeks ago, everything checked out okay. What’s the problem now?”

  “I’m involved with health, not property insurance,” Bruce said quickly. “I understand you had a worker here get sick, Tony Wong?”

  “Yeah, Tony the Chinaman. He’s in the hospital. What about him?”

  “I just need a few facts, actually.” He eyed the folding chair and when Halloran took his seat, Bruce sat down too. “Do you know if he was off the grounds at any time immediately before he took sick?”

  “I doubt it. He just came over from Hong Kong and I don’t think he really knows anyone away from the hotel. He’s only been here a week. But if anyone would know it would be his roommates.”

  “Roommates?”

  “Yeah. Two of them. In fact, I just left them. They’ve been shacking up down the road because Tony was sick and when they came back and saw the condition of the room, the way Tony left it full of shit and everything, they wouldn’t move back until I got it cleaned up. Had a helluva time getting a chambermaid to do it, too.”

  “Someone cleaned it? When?” He was starting to pick up a clue that pleased him not at all.

  “She started when I was leaving … might even be finished by now.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Who’s who?”

  “The chambermaid. I’ve got to see her right away.”

  “Margret Thomas? I don’t see what …”

  Bruce stood up. “Is she still in Tony’s room?”

  “Hold on. I’ll call over and see.” He lifted the phone and dialed an extension. “I still don’t understand what this has to do with insurance. “Hey,” he said into the receiver. “This is Mr. Halloran. Is Margret Thomas still there? She’s cleaning Tony the Chinaman’s room.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “You wouldn’t believe some of the weirdos we wind up hiring over the summer.” Okay, thanks,” he said. He turned to Bruce. “Nope, she already left. And to think I’m paying her a whole day’s overtime. She must have done some job.”

  “Where do you think she would be now?”

  “Maybe back in her room, that is if she’s not already out celebrating her extra pay.”

  “Can you call there? Please,” he added, sitting back down on the chair.

  “Sure.” Jonathan had instructed him to cooperate, but this wasn’t making any sense. What could Margret have to do with—“It’s ringing. How is Tony, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Bruce lied. “Those roommates of Tony. What do they do?”

  “Dishwashers.” He held up his hand. “Hello, who’s this? Graciela, this is Mr. Halloran. Would you do me a favor, please, and see if Margret Thomas is in her room?” He waited for an answer, then hung up. “No go. She’s not there either.”

  “If she was the last person to touch any of Tony’s things, it’s imperative I find her immediately.”

  Halloran tried to get a grasp on the situation. He was smart enough to know that something was going on that had nothing whatever to do with health insurance, but just exactly what it was—

  Bruce plunged ahead. “And Tony’s roommates. Are they in the kitchen now?”

  “They aren’t due for a couple of hours.”

  “Let me use the phone,” he said, not waiting for a reply. He dialed the switchboard and asked for the general manager. Jonathan’s secretary picked up immediately. “Hello, Suzy, this is Mr. Solomon. I have to speak to him right away.”

  There was a slight pause, then Jonathan’s cool hello.

  “I need three of your people rounded up right away and a private place to interrogate them.”

  “You’re not panicking already, are you?”

  “No, Mr. Lawrence, just doing my job. Bob Halloran will give you their names.” He handed Halloran the phone. He listened for a moment, then gave Jonathan the requested information.

  “You can meet with them in a storeroom down the hall.”

  “How long will it take to round them up?”

  “Security should find the Puerto Ricans within a matter of minutes. There’s not many places they hang out around the hotel. With Margret, it might prove more difficult. She tends to get involved with lots of people,” he said with a wink.

  Each minute seemed like an hour. For Christ’s sake, Bruce thought, I hope they hurry up. We could be playing with fire and it might already be too late.

  “Thar she blows,” Charlotte Fein said, pointing to the Congress hotel a few miles away. The slim brunette stood up from her seat near the front of the bus and raised both hands toward the ceiling. Then she bent forward in a “Praise be to Allah” fashion and there was a roar of laughter from the crowd on the Shortline’s Catskill Express. Her girlfriend, Fern Rosen, tugged on her skirt.

  “Sit down, you idiot.”

  “Idiot? Have you no respect for the temple of love? If Mohammed could have his mountain, there’s no reason we can’t have ours too!”

  Fern shook her head incredulously and looked out the window, still not believing she had let her mother talk her into this mishigas in the first place. Less confident and shyer than most girls who came to the Congress, it was not an experience she particularly looked forward to.

  “Why not just relax and enjoy yourself,” Charlotte said. “Don’t be so nervous all the time. Remember our mission,” she whispered, loud enough so that everyone within twelve rows could hear, “We’re under orders. We’re to find two nice Jewish boys, fall in love and get engaged before the end of the weekend.”

  “Or else they won’t let us back across the George Washington Bridge,” Fern added, surprised at her own contribution to this inane conversation.

  “Ah,” Charlotte said, “you had the same lecture before you left, too, I see.”

  “What do you think? Here I am, twenty-three years old, a book-keeper at Mutual Life and date an average of once a month. In my mother’s and her neighbor’s eyes, that makes me a social retard.”

  “It’s the same with me,” Charlotte volunteered. “The whole time at dinner, every night, I sit and listen to what my mother was doing by the time she was my age. There she was, twenty-five years old, raising three kids, slaving like a shvartsa to keep a clean house, and sacrificing her life so her husband could get ahead with his. Why is it, do you think, that according to Jewish wives, no Jewish husbands ever made it on their own?”

  “At the rate I’m going,” Fern said, “I doubt I’ll ever find out.”

  “Well,” Charlotte went on philosophically. “I don’t think we can lose anything by trying. I’ve been here a couple of times before but never came away with anything worthwhile. But that was when I lived in the Bronx and was considered GU—Geographically Undesirable. Who knows, now that I’m in Manhattan …”

  “Yet so many marriages and romances are supposed to get started in the mountains. I just read about it in Coronet. Time had a story on it, too.”

  “I read an article also,” Charlotte laughed. “It was in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. With me it always ends up Not.” She gestured toward the bus driver with her eyes. “Who knows, we may have to settle for him on the way back.”

  Fern hid her smile in her copy of the Post.

  “How come you’re still reading? We’re almost there. Aren’t you even a little bit excited? After all, it’
s your first time.”

  “I’m excited, I’m excited,” Fern pretended, actually not the least bit excited at the prospect of being typed as just another of a number of women that her friends at work liked to call “on the make.” Being aggressive was foreign to her personality and it certainly didn’t help when a girl at the next desk told her the day before, “The Congress is such a meat market. Everyone out to try before they buy, looking for the best piece.” It was definitely not Fern’s style. The not unattractive, but certainly not striking, blond preferred dealing with men on a one to one basis. To be just a face in a crowd, to have to be so competitive …

  Charlotte pulled out her compact and took one last look before the bus pulled in. Not bad, she thought, not bad at all. A little more tan would have helped, but a few hours at the pool would rectify that in no time. She tipped the mirror slightly so her bosom was reflected. Her breasts protruded evenly, the Bali’s wireframe making her look bigger than she was. That’s fair play up here, she thought. She’d take all the help she could get.

  Fern watched her girl friend inspect herself. Despite the act Charlotte put on, always the girl with the quip, a laugh a minute, Fern knew she was deadly serious about finding a man. It was the most important thing in her life.

  “Watch your step, everybody, watch your step,” the driver sing-songed as he opened the exit door. “The bellhops will take your tagged luggage to the lobby so you can go directly to the registration desk and get your room assignments.”

  Charlotte followed Fern down the steps. “I don’t see him,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “My Don Juan. I thought I’d step off the bus and fall right into his arms. My mother promised it would happen like that this time.”

  “So much for mother always being right,” Fern said, feeling not a bit unlike Daniel getting ready to enter the lion’s den. “Well, here goes nothing!”

  They headed through the main door and for a few minutes, simply stood in the lobby taking in the scene. At the top of the stairway to the right, large billboards featuring the faces of entertainers were hung just above the round double doors that led toward the nightclub. From their perspective, Charlotte and Fern could make out that Buddy Hackett and Alan King would be featured Saturday and Sunday nights.

  Things had quieted down quite a bit at the reservations counter. What an hour ago had seemed an impossibility, that the right people would get their right keys and right luggage to their right room, had actually come to pass.

  Early check-ins had already changed into their resort outfits—women dressed in colorful cotton blouses and pedal pushers and men strutting around in brightly designed shirts to match their plaid or striped bermuda shorts. Some of their kids ran around wearing polo shirts with the name “Congress” emblazoned across the chest.

  A gust of cool air swept across their faces. Fern brushed back her bangs and looked around for the source. Air-conditioning came out through vents carefully hidden in the wall paneling. It was part of the hotel’s unique heating system that permitted cool air to circulate through the ducts in the summer and hot air in the winter. They were about to move forward when a bellhop turned his cart too sharply and spilled half a dozen pieces of luggage on the floor. A number of people began clapping and shouting Mazel Tov, all to the extreme embarrassment of the bellhop who worked frantically to right the cart and restack the luggage.

  “Let’s get going,” Fern said, “before we get run down. It would be a heck of a way to start a holiday.”

  “You’re right. We’ll check in, change and go straight to the pool. And don’t forget, if any strange men approach you, be grateful.”

  “I’m a strange man,” Manny Goldberg said, overhearing her last words. He had just come out of the Flamingo Room and was headed for some fresh air. The ever present cigar twirled in his mouth as he rolled the end of it with his tongue. Saliva formed disgustingly at the corners of his lips. Charlotte moved away as he put his arm around her shoulder.

  “Honey,” she said, “that strange we don’t want.” She took Fern’s elbow quickly and moved closer to the reservation desk.

  “Independent bitch,” Manny mumbled. He knew the type. They’re all alike, he thought, play hard to get and then, when you spend some money on them, they spread their legs so fast you could fall right in. He looked about for a moment as if he had lost his way. Then he remembered he needed air and headed for the exit.

  “What’s going on?” Jonathan asked. Bruce got up quickly and followed him into the basement corridor. “Why this panic over a chambermaid?”

  “She hasn’t been located yet.”

  “So?”

  “Look,” Bruce said, lowering his voice some, “here’s what I’ve come up with so far. Tony’s only been on staff a week. If he did have cholera, he probably picked it up on the ship.”

  “Then he didn’t get it here at the hotel?”

  “It doesn’t look that way.”

  “Well then,” he said, obviously starting to relax, “that pretty much lets us off the hook, doesn’t it?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I gather that when Tony got really sick the second night, his two roommates moved out. But the first night, when he might have been contagious, it’s possible they contracted a mild case and are carrying it themselves. More important, when they returned, the place was so filthy they refused to clean it up themselves.”

  “And Margret Thomas was the one who cleaned it,” Jonathan said quietly.

  “That’s right, probably handling all sorts of contaminated material in the process. We’ve got to be sure we know exactly where all the linen went and where she’s been with those soiled hands. If she touched any food—”

  “Hey,” Halloran stuck his head out of his office. “I got Margret on the phone. We finally found her.”

  “Is she on her way down?”

  “Yeah, and she’s plenty pissed. Says we’re screwing up her whole day.”

  “What exactly have you told the dishwashers?” Jonathan asked, turning back to Bruce.

  “Nothing yet. Look, here’s what’s got to be done. They’ve got to get to a hospital for tests and observation. From what I’ve determined so far, they’re the only ones who might have picked it up. It’s a standard procedure to isolate possible carriers.”

  “What hospital?” Jonathan’s eyes narrowed.

  “Well, as Sid would be the first to admit, the hospital in town isn’t at all equipped to handle this. We need a place where cholera antisera are available. I would have brought some with me but we didn’t have any in the lab. I immediately put it on order.”

  “In other words, you want to send them to Mt. Sinai.”

  “I see no reason why not.”

  “There’s a damn good reason why not. We need a place where we can control, as much as possible, anyone talking about it.” He scribbled something on his memo pad. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll call Ellen Golden’s New York physician and have him put them in University Hospital. I’m sure if they don’t have antisera, they can get it. We’ve called on this doctor for favors before. I trust him and he knows when to keep his mouth shut.”

  “All right,” Bruce said reluctantly, “but if we had them in Mt. Sinai, I could ride closer herd on things.” Jonathan was not about to budge. “Okay, do it your way. You should also know, incidentally, that Sid sent one of Tony’s specimens to my lab for diagnosis last night.”

  “So quickly?”

  “There was no point in wasting time. We should get some results in a day or so and at least have his case diagnosed one way or the other. Now I’d like to be sure of the whereabouts of this Margret Thomas every minute since she left Tony’s room.”

  “I’m sure security will get her here soon enough,” Jonathan said. “Once she gets here, why don’t you keep all three of them down here and I’ll get hold of my driver. He’ll bring the hotel car up to the basement entrance and will be ready to drive them to t
he city as soon as you’re through asking questions. Don’t bother explaining why you’re asking. I’ll take care of that.”

  “They’re probably not going to like being whisked away like that.”

  “Don’t worry, that’s my problem. I’ll make it worth their while. Just give me a few minutes alone with them before they leave. I’ll also take care of Halloran.”

  Bruce nodded. For reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on, he was suspicious of all this cooperation. Then he went back into the room with the Puerto Ricans. Jonathan remained in the hall. He took out a cigarette and lit it, exhaling the smoke slowly.

  Just lucky, he thought, that he had come down to Halloran’s office when he did. This medical hustler might’ve really fucked things up by making his own arrangements. New York hospitals, isolation, specimens, all this noise over nothing. No one else in the whole hotel was complaining of stomach ailments and here this Solomon was, panicking over a chambermaid and two Puerto Rican dishwashers. Even if the Chinaman did have cholera, and he strongly doubted it now, it was obviously a one-shot.

  He’d send Margret and the two spics to New York, all right, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be to any hospital. “I’ll give them each a hundred bucks,” he mumbled to himself, “and tell them to take a few days off … at least until after the weekend. By then this imaginary crisis will have ended and it won’t have made a damn difference. It’s the only way to handle it.”

  He hurried on to speak to Halloran and give instructions to his driver.

  He was proud of the way he took control of the situation. He could imagine what Ellen Golden might have done; probably burst into hysterics and then close the place for a week “just to be sure,” cost and reputation be damned. He smiled smugly, feeling quite justified in his drive to wrest control from her.