by RA Chandler
I sprung off my feet and speared him with my left shoulder hitting him hard in the solar-plex. I used my right hand to knock the gun out of his hand and under the couch. I rolled off him and as I got to my feet I grabbed a handful of his dreadlocks and dragged him up, I had a lot of strength in my core.
He squealed in pain, but I wasn’t done.
Motherfucker tried to shoot me.
I employed some dirty boxing, punching him twice in the jaw with right hand, my left twisting his locks like dried out mop. I turned my hand violently as I hit him a third time.
Then I let go.
Stupid.
He should have got the message but I’d hurt his pride, so he hit me in the jaw with as much force as he could. The look on his face suggested he’d hurt his hand.
I grinned.
I caught his hand; goose necked his wrist so that he bent over, and punched him three in the stomach.
I had a nasty short punch.
I let go.
This time he vomited.
A lot.
I stepped back, picked up the gun and went to the bathroom, got him a towel and threw it at him. Next I went into his bedroom. Threw his clothes and accessories in his holdall and dragged it back to the lounge area.
Marley One was wiping his face with the towel, but still coughing. He braced himself against the back of the couch, his face wet with sweat.
“Get dressed,” I said. “And do it fast or go out now as you are, makes no difference to me but I'm not sure how your fans on Facebook and Instagram would take to a picture of you in this state.
He looked at me with hate and stumbled into the bathroom.
2
Quinn gave me one of those looks that said ‘what the hell have you done?’ when I came out of the elevators. His face was even paler than usual and scarred. Marley One came out of the elevator ahead of me dressed in designer jeans, designer walking boots, a fleece made from alpaca wool and pea coat made of unicorn hair. He walked like someone sulking, which he was, but his face didn’t look beat up. It was more like he’d been crying.
Despite his behavior I thought I was being nice pulling his holdall behind me, I’d even taken the time to enlist the help of Sebastian the night porter and computer whizz to assist with two further bags and the guitar Marley One probably learnt to play during his amateur dramatics days.
We arrived at the front desk with little drama, Quinn just stared.
“Is there a bill for a Mr. Marley One?” I snapped at the night manager, Veronica looked like she was stifling a giggle.
An image of her top bursting open flashed through my head.
“I don’t think…” Quinn began, trying to avoid eye contact with Marley One.
“Good, right, this way please Mr. One” I said and walked towards the front doors. The automatic doors slid open; an S-Class Mercedes was waiting in the valet area. I’d text Veronica ahead to arrange safe transfer to wherever Marley One desired, which was hopefully a plane to Idaho.
The driver hoped out in a nicely pressed navy blue uniform and loaded Marley One’s stuff into the trunk. Marley got into the car and put the window down.
“I’m sorry,” he said slowly, but it didn’t sound like an apology, so I waited for the rest. “I’m sorry for you man; you should have let me play my music. Shit ain’t pretty after this motherfucker.”
I went back into the hotel after that and back to Marley’s room to make sure he didn’t have some overdosed girl in his bathroom and used condoms blocking up the toilets u-bend. I didn’t look at Quinn as I walked to elevators; there wasn’t anything he could say to me that would useful right then. I used the passkey to let myself back in and looked around the room for the spent shell from the stupid little boy’s big gun. It had ended up in the trashcan, I bent down and reached into get it but I didn’t get up straight away. There was something more interesting than a discarded bullet shell in it.
I took the small bin and emptied its contents onto the coffee table, bits of torn paper that had once been a letter with words from newspapers pasted onto it, tumbled out. It was like putting a puzzle together for the few minutes I spent figuring out which piece matched which. When I was done the letter read:
A HUNDRED GRAND BY FRIDAY DONALD. DAY AFTER YOU PLAY AT HUMMINGBIRD OR ITS BYE BYE. FROM HER BROTHER.
“Wow,” I heard myself say quietly. I put the pieces into one of the hotels survey envelopes and put that in my pockets.
I locked the room behind me and waited in the silence of the hallway for a while, then went to Coco and her friend’s room. I knocked gently and put my ear against the door, I could hear someone getting off a couch heavily then cursing as they misjudged the coffee table in the dark.
“What?” said the skinnier of the two guests in the suite.
“Garvey, head of security, can I have a quiet word?”
“Go on, I can hear you clearly.”
“The door makes communication less personal.”
“So let yourself in then,” she said and I heard her walk away from the door, flick the lights on and drop heavily onto her bed. As I entered she was just turning on a program on the Discovery Channel about poisonous frogs.
“You’re not sick, and you’re not drunk,” I said coolly. “Were you and your friend looking to run some kind of game on Marley? Perhaps film him raping you or your friend, steal from him, maybe threaten his family?”
She didn’t bite. It was a stab in the dark anyway. The likelihood that someone left what was essentially a blackmail note and then stayed the night a few doors away was a remote one.
“Guys like that are easy to manipulate.”
“How so?”
“They just want sex, and most of the time a promise is enough to get something out of them. In most cases it’s unlikely you’ll get anything after they’ve got what they wanted.”
I admired how calculated she was.
“Was it your friend’s turn tonight?”
“Something like that, what do you care.”
“He drugged and intended to ass rape your friend with a few of his buddies riding shotgun in her mouth and, well you know.”
She winced, “they drugged her?”
“Slipped something in a drink I think.”
“Wouldn’t have happened to me, I’m too paranoid. Silly girl. I usually work with far more experienced talent.”
“Any way, that show is over.”
“Why?”
“He decided to check out and seek accommodation elsewhere,” I said and watched her for a reaction.
“You men make me sick; think you know all the angles. Well fuck you,” she the feminist in a sudden rage and stormed off to the bathroom slamming the door loudly. Then she locked it from the other side.
I decided then would be a good time to look around the place for glue and offcuts from newspapers. Coco slept on one of the twin beds, I checked her pulse and her breathing, she was okay. I lingered longer than I should have looking at her body, one of her heavy breast had moved in such a way to be almost leaving through the top of her dress.
There was a bag at the foot of the bed, it was wrong.
In the bag was an invoice, a book by Leo Sullivan and a Beretta, I took out the invoice and slipped it into my jacket pocket.
“Jesus, you still here?” she barked as she came back into the room. “You know what happens to pervy security that decides to let themselves into the room of single young females scantily dressed?”
“Don’t know, maybe they get shot.”
Her face lost all its humor and she glared at me, then looked to the bedroom where the bag was.
She knew.
“Did you know he was in Chicago you know Marley One hasn’t played in New York for about two years and back then he was a support act for Jay-Z or someone?”
She wrinkled her nose then flared them, took a deep breath and said, “Coco knows that kind of thing.”
“Did she know he’d be in this hotel?”
; “Why?”
“I'm trying to figure out why a guy like that would come here, it’s a quiet place with rules. So I can’t think why someone would come here to get a piece of him.”
“Well you can do you figuring out elsewhere,” she said and removed her t-shirt.
I stared; it seemed the thing to do with when presented with lovely breasts.
“Yeah I sleep naked,” she said slipping out of her thong to reveal and perfectly trimmed bush.
I averted my eyes from her striking bosom and said to her face, “good night sweetie, keep the door locked and the heat up.
There was a man waiting at reception, I saw him from time to time. He had a thin face, was in his fifties and had manicured hands that were rapping away on the counter of the reception desk. Quinn was behind the desk standing to attention like a scolded corporal, he didn’t look well. The thin faced man looked like he’d just come from the hotel restaurant dressed in a dinner jacket and cravat with a diamond pin in it.
I smiled at the cravat wearing man when I got to the desk. “Marley One’s keys, there’s also a broken mirror,” I said passing the passkey to Quinn.
Then I turned to the other man.
“I assume you're here to speak with me Mr. Carter.”
“What happened Mr. Fields?” he said in with a slightly effeminate voice, a voice that said I know I'm not going to get the truth but I have to go through the motions before I take any action.
“Marley One and a couple of his boys thought it would be good to keep the residents on the eighth floor up. I knew there was some support staff on five but they went home at 1.30 because the company pays them so well. A couple of girls looking for a hustle managed to get rooms on the same floor as Marley One. They used their charms to introduce themselves and the hall entertainment was part of the act to get invited into the room for some more fun. The plan I think was to drug the girls and abuse them, I don’t think that was part of the girls hustle. Unfortunately I could only maintain the peace and avoid further discord by getting a little tough.”
“There appears to be blood on your cheek,” he said and handed me the handkerchief from his breast pocket.
I cleaned my face. “So I got the girl back to her room, it appears the other one was waiting for something. His boys waddled off; although I think they had intentions to come back because Marley One had order up some hookers and turned the music back up. Anyway he didn’t want to turn it down and glassed me, so I gave him a slap and he pulled a gun and shot at me. Here his Dessert Eagle.”
I took out the gun from my pocket and deposited it on the counter, then put the spent shell next to it. “So I gave him little more medicine and encouraged him to leave this fine establishment.”
Carter sighed and spoke as though I were a child who’d got a disappointing grade, “well I see your usually modus operandi is in full effect.”
“He shot at me,” I heard myself saying again. “Bullets kinda hurt if they don’t miss.”
Carter’s furrowed eyebrows became more furrowed. “You don’t throw any guest out of this building without consulting me; I am the hotel director, not you.”
“I should have consulted the police, but I was told as a point of my contract that I should not call the police unless someone is dead and then only if they died of natural causes. Apparently the place is like the House of Parliament and no one is allowed to die in it. So when the little shit tried to kill me I took what I believed to be appropriate action. I'm not paid to get shot at; I am not on the president’s personal detail.”
“Well Mr. Fields,” Carter said. “Well here’s something to ponder. This hotel as you know is owned by a large conglomerate, the controlling interest is owned by Mr. Grover W. McKinley. He also owns the Hummingbird club at which Marley One will be headlining on Thursday, it’s the opening night and they are trying to corner a particular demographic. He believes it has been ignored for too long and investing in a popular club with this demographic specifically will encourage a higher yield than the previous owners could get. That’s why Mr. One was kind enough to bestow his custom on us. Now what should I add?”
“From hence forth I am to be cast into the wilderness, a scourge…”
“Enough of that,” he snapped.
“I’m fired?”
“Very good, I bid you goodnight.”
He turned and walked to the elevators and the lift attendant took him up to his apartment.
I looked at Quinn.
“McKinley, really?” I said. “From what I know of the man he’s not stupid enough to think this place and the Hummingbird would get the same kind of customers. Do you think Carter actually asked Marley One to come here?”
“Guess so,” said Quinn.
“Then why not put his dumb ass and buddies up in the clouds with a whole roof terrace to fuck about on. He’d pay more, be as loud as he wanted, and call up a gang of whores. It makes no sense putting him on a floor with residents and people with flights in the morning. And why in god’s name did Hobart let those girls get so close to him if he knew the score?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well it’s my last night,” I said. “Wonder how much trouble I can get into before I leave. Imagine that, losing a decent job because I wouldn’t let someone shoot me and I put the hotels reputation first. I’ll miss these happy times.”
“We’ll miss you too,” said Quinn.
“Ah shooks, you're goanna make me well up,” I said playfully.
“Well I’ll miss you in a week; my brother has a lodge up in Monticello.”
“You never mentioned any siblings before.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t do New York often, used to think he was going to be heavy weight champion of the world.”
I nodded, “well I’ve only got five hours of the shift left, might as well make sure this place is secure before I wonder off into the great beyond.”
“I’m off in the next thirty minutes, anything you need before I go?”
“Yeah, put the gun in the safe and call the cops about it when you get back, tell them security found it and you assumed they had called it in already. The last thing you want to do hold a gun that’s killed someone.”
Quinn took the gun and locked it away.
I looked at the receipt I’d taken from the bag in the girl’s room; it was made out to Gloria Jefferson, Apt 69, Dodell Apartments, 227 67th Avenue in Pomonok.
“What you got there?” said Quinn on his return.
“Gloria Jefferson, one of the girls on the eighth came to party with the Marley One.”
“Party?”
“Well more like set his ass up on some kind of rape charge, twisted fuck would probably over obliged though.”
“Why so?”
“Drugged the other girl and was going to get all medieval and shit on her.”
“You goanna look into it.”
“Why?”
“In case they try it elsewhere?”
“What do I care?”
“The hotel will pay you.”
“Under what guise?”
“You know technically speaking you get a months’ notice?”
“Yeah.”
“Well I’ll write a termination of contract letter with your notice period and advance you your holiday pay which is an extra month wages because you never take any.”
“Sounds good.”
“Aren’t you a private detective?”
“Business has been slow…”
“What else you got to do?”
“Nothing…”
“So why not pass the time while you’re trying to drum up business.”
“Fair enough.”
I tucked it into my wallet and looked around the lobby. I’d miss this place but it looked like I had a new job, if that’s what I could call it.
PART ONE
NIGHT CAP
1
Sometimes principles are too expensive. They can cost you money, dignity and pride. But being true to one’s s
elf isn’t something you can put a price on, being free from the metaphorical master’s whip means setting the pace of you own work and rewards.
After leaving the college I’d had dreams of becoming Spenser, Marlowe or Easy Rawlins, solving people’s problems for money, but I needed my P.I license first, so that’s why I found myself at the Mayflower Hotel not too far from JFK, as the chief of security.
I’d been hired because I had a look, a pent up tension that looked like I could release all of my potential energy at once and go off like something from the Manhattan Project. I was a lean, strong specimen of man whose ancestors picked cotton in the South and cut sugar cane in the Greater Antilles. My face was usually bright, but on a work night it slowly turned to stone. They liked me because I was an ex-investigator for the D.A with a gun license who could be trusted not to steal the hotels silverware.
It was late, about two in the morning, but a few guests were still mulling around the hotel lounge waiting to take expensive conquests to their rooms to spend more money in their room’s mini-bar. I’d caught many a man chained to their beds hours after they should have checked out, too embarrassed to report being robbed after a blowjob in case their wives used it in a court of law.
“Getting late,” said Veronica the night receptionist.
“Yep,” I said. “Soon enough I’ll be out of this place.”
“Yeah.”
“Private detective work.”
“You don’t sound too infused.”
“I like the work, but poor humble people don’t hire detectives, poor people don’t need someone they pay to confirm infidelity and the like.”
“So why not change the target demographic.”
“Demographic?”
“Yeah that means…”
“I know what it means sweetie.”
“Well why not aim for the rich folks? They have a far larger amount of disposable income and usually acknowledge they have to pay a premium for good service. Paychecks will be higher but perhaps not as frequent.”