The Fat Innkeeper

by Alan Russell

  “What?” Jack was awakening to the question. He smiled, a gentle smile. Jack looked like a poet. Not a good poet, but one of those people who while away their time hanging around coffeehouses and occasionally, but only very occasionally, scribbling around the edges of a piece of paper. Jack was about thirty, blond and blue-eyed, but he didn’t so much exude Nordic stock as he did white bread.

  “She asked,” said the old woman, “if the only thing that Doubting Thomas said was, ‘Be positive.’”

  “That was it,” said Jack. “He was on the ground, and I went to him. He could barely get those words out. And then he died.”

  He said it as if the dying part were a happy ending. Judging from the little noises of his listeners, they agreed.

  The arrival of the paramedics interrupted Jack’s storytelling, but not the festivities. “Ah, the belated cavalry,” said the woman in the red hat.

  “A day late and a dollar short,” said Prince Albert in the Can.

  “You needn’t bother,” advised Bette Davis, not meanly, but more as a matter-of-fact observation to the uniformed figures rushing by her.

  “I remember watching the paramedics work on me,” said the bearded man.

  “So do I,” said the tall man.

  At least, thought Am, the big guy wasn’t flapping his arms anymore.

  “They worked so hard. I thought it would be wrong to leave with their putting in so much effort. But everything was such a glorious show.”

  The words sounded wistful, spoken as you would of a first love.

  “Thank God you arrived,” said Helen Dunning, giving up her breathing station to one of the paramedics. Helen was the manager on duty that night, and it showed. Her forehead was soaked with perspiration, and her long, sandy-blond hair clung to her head as if she had just showered. Helen’s makeup was gone, but even had it been in place it wouldn’t have masked the look of loathing she gave to the crowd.

  In her hand she held the plastic resuscitator tube she had tried to breathe life through. Helen looked at the object blankly, then, without really thinking, tossed it high over her shoulder. Several people vied to catch it.

  Am wasn’t one of them. He shouldered his way through the crowd and reached her side. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “I’m just giving them the bridal bouquet,” she said, her voice somewhere between weepy and hysterical.

  Am put an arm around Helen, and moved her away from both the living and the dead. “What happened?” he asked.

  She took a few moments to swallow and focus. “A guest called the operator from an elevator. Apparently him,” she said, pointing to Jack. “He said he needed someone to come up right away to Dr. Kingsbury’s room, said he thought he was having a seizure or something.

  “I told T.K. to run up to the room and check out the situation, and the next thing I know T.K. is calling me and saying that we’ve got a man dying. I could deal with that, or I thought I could, but what really unsettled me was this group. Macario from maintenance was nearby, so I grabbed him. He was doing heart massage, and I was doing mouth-to-mouth, and all the while these people kept wandering in. This man’s death seemed to be an excuse for a party. A few of them even had the nerve to call their friends and tell them to come over. Armchair quarterbacks are one thing, but these are armchair morticians. Some of them told me to relax, that he was dead already. Others were more blunt. One man said my ‘huffing and puffing’ was disturbing the vortex. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all ghouls.”

  Her accusation was loud, but with all the conversations going on, no one seemed to notice. “Let’s go outside,” said Am. “Get a breath of fresh air.”

  Helen didn’t argue, let herself be led through the room. Out in the hallway she took several deep breaths. Some color started returning to her face. “It’s not going to be a happy ending for him, is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” said Am.

  Long sigh. “I think I need some coffee, or something.”

  “You want company?”

  “No. Thanks, though. But stop by later, okay? We’ll need to compare notes before writing up our reports.”

  There would certainly be enough of those, thought Am. “Will do,” he said, offering her a last comforting hug.

  Helen walked away, albeit a little unsteadily. When she turned the corner, Am started back to the room. He needed statements, and witnesses. It was time to take control of the situation. A clatter of wheels and a shouted “Step aside” made Am jump out of the way of the gurney. The elevator, he thought, kicking himself as he ran after the paramedics. He should have positioned someone to hold the elevator doors open for them. But his guilt, and his running, proved unnecessary. A familiar figure was already holding the elevator doors. When the gurney was safely inside, the doorman gave up his post and started slowly walking toward Am. It was the walk of an old west sheriff ready for a showdown. There was no love lost between Am and Detective McHugh of the San Diego Police Department. McHugh considered Am the worst kind of amateur sleuth—a lucky one.

  As the detective approached him, Am was sure that McHugh’s sky blue eyes were seeing too much: Am’s still wet shoes and trousers, his unbuckled belt (damn, thought Am, I forgot to fasten it back in the spa), and his disheveled condition. McHugh had the unhurried pace of a man who has been on the planet for a half a century, and seen enough not to be in a rush to see any more.

  Behind Am came the sounds of laughter and convivial conversation. The closer the detective approached, the more his frown intensified. He paused before continuing toward the room, stood next to Am and said, “Isn’t it a little early to be throwing a wake, Caulfield?”

  Then, seemingly puzzled, he sniffed the air, disdainfully snorted, and walked by.

  Chapter Four

  Whenever anything unpleasant happens at a hotel, be it accident, injury, or even death, some manager somewhere has the undesirable job of asking questions. Am knew the difficulties of such interrogations. Offering sympathy was important, but not to the point of endorsing any liability on the part of the property. Though obtaining answers in the face of pain or grief is often difficult, it is also necessary. It is amazing how frequently a story changes, especially after a consultation with a lawyer. A guest that admitted to breaking his leg after tripping over his own feet suddenly remembers that the fall didn’t occur in his room, but over a loose section of carpeting out in the hallway. Filling out an accident report and getting a signed statement are often safeguards against a lawsuit.

  This wasn’t the first time Am had encountered death at the Hotel. With seven hundred and twelve rooms, four restaurants, six lounges, and fourteen meeting rooms, it wasn’t surprising that death sometimes called. But this was not like any other death that Am remembered. There was no weeping, or gnashing of teeth. No one seemed particularly bothered, or even put on a pretense of being mournful. Getting anyone to talk about the late Dr. Thomas Kingsbury was not a problem. Stopping them was more difficult.

  Am had heard of Kingsbury. He was one of those figures who popped up every so often in a magazine like People, or on some television interview. Kingsbury was a doctor and a scientist of not a little fame, but the general public knew of him not so much for his own discoveries, but for his crusades into exposing the deceits of what he called “pseudo-science.” Kingsbury did not believe in much. He doubted saints, but not sinners, and liked nothing better than debunking the paranormal. The doctor had made a career of exposing bogus telepaths, evangelical healers, and mediums, and relished taking on what he called “the modern witch-doctor establishments,” targets which ranged from tarot readers to government economists.

  It wasn’t a vacation that had brought Kingsbury to the Hotel California. He had been attending the Union of Near-Death Experiences Retreat (UNDER). Belatedly, he had something in common with its other attendees.

  UNDER had officially welcomed Kingsbury’s scrutiny, had promised they would do all they could to facilitate his inquiries. They were certain he
could root around all he wanted and still not denigrate their collective experience. Lazarus wasn’t the only one with a story to tell. They had been dead, all of them, and were convinced they had glimpsed their afterlife.

  Kingsbury had sent lengthy medical questionnaires to all of the attendees of the UNDER conference, and had scheduled “post-mortem interviews” with sixty of the conventioneers. The questionnaires had delved into physical histories, with emphasis on the circumstances of their “deaths.” The medical questions stretched over a number of pages, “an inquiry,” one participant told Am, “that was a good precursor to being a medical cadaver.”

  The doctor had died halfway through the four-day conference. Although he had attended some of the workshops and heard some of the talks, most of his time had been spent interviewing what he liked to call “zombies,” or “the undead.” Am had the feeling he would have gotten along very well with Dr. Kingsbury.

  “He was a funny guy,” said the Bette Davis voice, whose real name was Norma, “not what I expected. In the middle of a bunch of serious questions he asked me, ‘Now, how many fairies do you think can dance on the head of a pin?’ And when we finished up, he said, ‘Does anyone else in your family besides you suffer delusions, or visions?’ I kind of figured he’d be a stuffed shirt, but he wasn’t.”

  If you could forgive the anticlimax of Norma’s eyes (they were close-set and dishwater brown—the antithesis of Bette Davis’s), she was rather attractive, an athletic-looking forty with a quick smile. “Do you think he was flirting with you?” asked Am.

  “I would hope so,” she said, flashing a smile. “He mentioned to me in a very professional voice that there were tangible and consistent changes with those who had had near-death experiences, changes that didn’t seem to be gender-related, except in the preferred manner of dying. Men, he said, almost universally professed to wanting to go out with a bang, and I don’t mean dynamite.”

  “And that’s not a female goal?”

  “Not according to Dr. Kingsbury,” she said, being purposely ambiguous.

  “So you thought his observation was inappropriate?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Norma. “I’m just saying he raised a flag. When men talk about sex, no matter what the guise, I think there’s often an ulterior motive.”

  Am didn’t know how he should respond. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. “So,” he said, “at the risk of sounding like a pickup line, just how did you die?”

  She laughed. “The pickup line would have been: ‘Didn’t we meet once? Wasn’t it at Saint Peter’s gate?’“

  “I’ll have to remember that.”

  “Car accident,” she said.

  How, wondered Am, had Kingsbury died? Heart attack, probably. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one interested in that question. He could hear McHugh questioning several people, among them T.K. Why was the detective taking such an interest in this death? And how was it that McHugh had arrived at the hotel so soon after Kingsbury’s death?

  As if to emphasize that riddle, McHugh announced, “I want all nonessential personnel to clear the room.”

  That’s the tone of voice, thought Am. That’s it exactly. The one that says, police business, goddammit.

  “See you later,” said Norma.

  “In this life, or the next?” asked Am.

  The room rapidly cleared, leaving only McHugh, T.K., two uniformed officers, and Am. The detective offered Am a less-than-hospitable side glance that clearly signaled he was not one of those considered essential to the case. For several seconds Am stood his ground, time enough to realize he was in an untenable position. He couldn’t force McHugh to tell him anything, and he wasn’t about to truckle. If the detective didn’t want him there, then he would have to gather information in a roundabout way. Slowly, and with what he considered dignity, Am began his exit from the room. His departure didn’t go unnoticed.

  “Do me a favor, Caulfield,” said McHugh, walking up to him.

  Willing to be wooed, Am stopped to listen.

  “I understand two of your staff tried to revive Kingsbury,” said the detective. “I’d like to talk to them.”

  Gofer, thought Am. Glumly, he nodded.

  “Oh, and Caulfield?” asked the detective. Am stopped in the hallway, just outside the door to the room. He looked at McHugh with what he thought was the appropriate disinterest, but the detective, intent on applying some plastic coverlets to the doorknobs, spoke to Am without even looking at him.

  “The next time there’s a murder at this hotel,” he said, “do me a favor and secure the crime scene.”

  “Murder?” asked Am, but he was too late. The door had already closed on him.

  Chapter Five

  McHugh’s announcement was an effective attention-getter. Am wondered whether his remark was a hateful joke, a way for the detective to get back at him by playing with his mind. If that was his intent, the ruse was an elaborate one. Room 374 had been sealed off to all but SDPD with yellow crime-scene tape that prevented entry. The display was not a motif in keeping with a five-star hotel, especially not The Hotel, which was always written in the uppercase, and pronounced the same way. The Hotel had been around for more than a century. It epitomized Southern California class, if that wasn’t an oxymoron. Murder at the Hotel was about as acceptable as franks and beans being offered as the nightly special in one of its restaurants. Maybe with a French name, thought Am, you could get away with the franks and beans, but murder allowed no euphemisms.

  Should he call the Fat Innkeeper? Am had been debating that for the half hour since room 374’s door had been closed to him. He had delivered Helen Dunning and Macario Lopez to the room, and had almost asked McHugh to allow him participation in the investigation, but pride had held back that request. Am had settled down the hallway within viewing range of the door, anxious to hear the goings-on from T.K., Helen, or Macario as soon as they were released. It was a difficult wait because he couldn’t do anything in the interim, not even share his worry.

  Am started pacing again. At least he wasn’t squeaking anymore, even if his shoes and socks were still wet. It felt as if there were something wet and gummy between his toes, but though he had probed with his fingers he hadn’t found anything other than a matted sock. There was really no recourse but to take the damn sock off.

  Leaning against a wall, Am removed first his shoes, and then his stocking. Massaging his toes was the highlight of his evening. He didn’t want to put the sock back on immediately, especially in its wet state, but neither did he want to wring it out on the carpeting. There wasn’t a bathroom nearby, but there was a terra-cotta ashtray not tea steps off. He hopped over, then started squeezing the water out of the stocking. The droplets did a good job of making a puddle out of the Hotel imprimatur minted into the fine sand.

  His other foot demanded equal time, so Am repeated the process. His toes started to come to life again. If only he could discreetly remove his underwear. Murder at the Hotel was bad enough. Facing it with wet underwear was next to unbearable.

  “Am! Hey, Am!”

  T.K.’s voice was unmistakable, catching Am between rubbing his toes and dreaming of a thorough scratching. Socks in one hand, shoes in the other, Am felt like a hobo posing for some artistic brush. T.K. wasn’t the only witness to the spectacle; Helen and Macario were also walking toward him.

  His first impulse was to try and put his socks on while standing up, but he thought better of that. The Hotel was rife with intimate sitting areas, benches usually sandwiched between a decorative urn on one side and a flower display on the other. Am spotted one. It was just outside of room 374, but it was occupied. McHugh was sitting there watching him.

  “Hey, Am,” said T.K. as he pulled up to him. “Big Brother figured you’d be waiting. He says he’d like to talk with you now. That is if you’re done with your laundry.”

  Am couldn’t be sure whether the line was T.K.’s or McHugh’s, but he didn’t appreciate it either way. Everyone was standi
ng around watching him with curiosity. There is nothing so difficult as putting on stockings while under inspection. Ask any lover who has ever tried to make a graceful midnight retreat.

  “Perhaps,” said Am, his sock unable to surmount his heel despite his exertions, “it would be better if I was to talk with all of you a little later.”

  The tone of his voice was such as to make them move along and not look back. McHugh was too far away to hear, but not to watch. The more Am struggled with the sock, the more the detective shook his head.

  The hell with it, thought Am. He stuffed the stockings into his pockets, then stepped into his shoes.

  And found that damn piece of seaweed.

  He didn’t pause, didn’t give McHugh the satisfaction of seeing his expression change. Shoes untied, he continued forward.

  Chapter Six

  In the middle of the Fat Innkeeper’s office was a map of the earth. What was disconcerting about this map was that Japan implicitly dominated the rest of the world. The Land of the Rising Sun was set center-stage, and larger than life, its dimensions not drawn to scale with the rest of the planet. Am kept staring at the map. It was hard for him getting used to seeing the United States positioned off to the side.

  Guess I’ll have to orient myself, he thought.

  Like any messenger with bad news, Am waited pensively. Mr. Takei had intercepted his call to the Fat Innkeeper. No one had yet seen Takei smile. He was considered to be the power behind the throne, speaking for Hiroshi Yamada while directing policies and work to be done. It was hard to see his eyes, hidden as they were behind his thick glasses. He was thin and pale, quite the opposite of the Fat Innkeeper.

  Am inwardly winced. That nickname was going to catch up with him. It wasn’t really his fault; it was Richard’s. It was dangerous to have a friend like Richard. The man was entirely too smart, a research scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who habitually applied marine nicknames to almost everyone. Most of the time the nicknames were only used by, and only made sense to, Richard. Though Richard had bestowed hundreds of aquatic nicknames, the Fat Innkeeper was the first to catch on. It was, Am supposed, an improvement on some of Yamada’s earlier nicknames. The staff had initially referred to him as “yo’ mama,” or “the fat Jap”; now, there was something almost nostalgic about those names. Ask a Hotel employee who Hiroshi Yamada was, and you might draw a blank, but ask anyone on staff who was the Fat Innkeeper and they could tell you. Most could even give you his scientific name: Urechis caupo.