by Alan Russell
OTHER NOVELS BY ALAN RUSSELL
The Forest Prime Evil
No Sign of Murder
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by Alan Russell
All rights reserved.
Originally published in hardcover by Mysterious Press
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
The Grand Central Publishing name and logo are registered trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56565-3
To Sully—who laughed too hard at my hotel anecdotes. And to Marc and Kirk, good friends for a long, long time.
And to everyone who has ever worked in a hotel, especially to those who worked at the Sea Lodge at La Jolla Shores during my tenure there as manager.
Contents
Other Novels by Alan Russell
Copyright
Introduction: Check-In
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Chapter LII
The Hotel Detective
Introduction: Check-In
There was a part of Am Caulfield’s consciousness that knew this was Scrooge time, a time when the spirits took him to his past. The vision came to him as more than a dream. It was as if he lived once more through his entrée into the hotel world. Am’s dreamscape always brought him to 1972 and the Pelican Inn, when he was eighteen, and life was the next wave, and immortality was a good set.
“Graveyard’s usually quiet,” said Mr. Wells, the general manager.
The GM’s body was fifty, but his eyes were more bloodshot than not and looked a little older than Methuselah’s.
“You just gotta stay awake,” he said. “You’ll take bags, answer the phone, do rounds. Whatever. Just show up. The night auditor will tell you what to do.”
Third person, Am watched his head do a “red, red, robin,” but Mr. Wells was more interested in scratching his beard than in acknowledging any posturing. The GM’s five o’clock shadow belied the half-past-noon time. Only his world-weariness matched the time frame of his beard.
“No drinking. No drugs. You'll be gone faster than a hotel towel if I even suspect you. At night you got a lot of rope to play with. Don't hang yourself.”
Wells tossed a brochure at Am. In his dream, Am tried to will himself to catch the brochure this time, but again he missed.
“Read,” the GM said. “Tells you about the place. Guests are going to ask you questions. Nothing I hate more than the answer 'I don't know.' Our guests don't pay to hear a stupid parrot imitation. You got any idea of what a room goes for here?”
Am caught himself just before doing that parrot imitation. “Plenty,” he ventured.
“Damn right,” said Wells. “But that's not something I'll have to remind you about. They'll remind you.”
If Hitchcock had made the movie of Am's dream, he would have echoed those words, probably put organ music around the “they'll.”
Wells closed his eyes and for a minute didn't talk. When he finally broke his silence, his eyes remained shut. “One hundred and twelve rooms, kid. Couple hundred people staying the night sometimes. This is called the hospitality industry. Contradiction in terms, I've always said, but what the hell. Home away from goddamn sweet home.”
Wells lifted one eyelid, looked at Am, then said, “Welcome to the wonderful world of hotels, kid.”
There was a shifting in Am's dream, a slight awakening, an acknowledgment among some of his synapses that he was looking back. Am had never pictured himself as being a part of a historical photo, of looking—quaint. Everyone wants to think they're the latest model—not a Model T. In 1972 there was a naiveté to the hotel business, a ma-and-pa sensibility to the trade, at least in San Diego, which was still a backwater city then. Nixon and the Republican National Convention were set to come to town that year, or were before somebody who could count realized that San Diego didn't have enough hotel rooms and facilities to handle the event. That changed the course of history. Watergate would never have happened in San Diego. Back then the city was on military time and was used to letting its sleeping sacred cows lie.
The window of Proust passed. Am Caulfield, again submerged back into Scrooge time and his first night on the job, remembered how he had reported to work a half hour early. The night auditor knew better than that. He made his entrance at 10:59 P.M., grunted out something that might have been a greeting, then started counting the cash drawer. Bill was about forty, had a pallor that a ghost would have envied, thick glasses, and oily hair that called out for a premium shampoo. While he punched in figures, the clerk and the PBX operator were silent. He commanded that kind of respect. They knew they were in the presence of a maestro of the audit, of someone who knew more about hotels in his unconscious fingers than they could ever imagine. Or would want to imagine. Everyone watched as Bill's fingers danced over the ten-key. In less than a minute he had his tallies finished. He looked up to the expectant clerk and nodded his head once.
“Nothing to report, Bill,” the clerk said, already halfway out the door. “Except you got a new night man.”
In his bed Am stirred uncomfortably, felt the spotlight turn on him again.
The clerk gave Am a sympathetic glance, said that he hadn't caught his name, but then he didn't stay to hear it, either. Bill apparently wasn't keen on introductions. He held up his hands before Am could speak.
“Stay here six months and then I'll learn your name,” he said. “This last year I trained five new people. I'm tired of learning goddamn new names.” He scowled. “Ever work in a hotel?” he asked with the slightest bit of hope in his voice.
Am shook his head.
“Christ,” said Bill. “Another virgin.”
There is no harsher word than “virgin” to an inexperienced young man. The embarrassment traveled through the years, through the dream. Am was still grateful that Bill didn’t observe his red face. The auditor was already immersed in his work, pushing buttons on a large machine that the clerk had introduced as the 4200. Ker-chunk, went the 4200. Bill fed it folios and hit more buttons, while Am listened to ker-chunks. Bill’s speed with the machine made the front desk sound more like a canning factory than a hotel. Between his postings, he finally deigned to talk to Am.
There wasn’t much difference between dream rounds and what had been actual rounds. Am again felt like a big shot. This was a real job, with real responsibilities, not like mowing lawns. His footsteps sounded loud, important. One hundred and twelve guest rooms, he thought, and in them all sorts of people. At eighteen, hormones are usually more active than brain cells. Am imagined that within all those rooms lurked women who wanted him desperately. His hour away from the desk passed quickly. When he returned, it was clear Bill hadn’t missed him.
Sighing, Bill drew himself away from some figures he was scrutinizing, then pointed to the switchboard. The Japanese hadn’t microprocessed the world back then. The Pelican Inn had a cord board. Bill grudgingly started to explain its workings. His teaching methods wouldn’t have gotten him nominated for educator of the year.
“Use the inside cords for incoming calls,” he said, “and use the outside cords to connect them to the extension they want. Before connecting calls, check to see if the extension is busy. You do that by testing the line. It makes a little static sound if it’s busy. Got it?”
Bill’s thick glasses magnified his hard snake eyes. They captured Am, mesmerized him into nodding. The phone rang, and Am reached for a cord. Wrong cord. He was pushed aside and heard Bill mutter something about God and brains and trains before he answered the call, “Good evening, the Pelican Inn.”
When Bill explained the routine a second time, he exaggerated his speech in a slow and sarcastic manner. Bill asked Am if he knew his ABCs and said that most of the staff didn’t. Then he showed Am where the phone rack was and how to look up the guest names. When Am returned to his work he felt a little more confident. With each call handled successfully, Am’s assuredness increased exponentially. After half an hour’s work, Am felt ready to lecture Alexander Graham Bell on telephones. It was about that time the guest came to the desk.
He was white and perspiring, exhibiting textbook signs of shock. He looked at Am, stuttered a few unintelligible words, then managed to light a cigarette with shaky hands.
“The p-phone,” he said.
Even in his dream, Am remembered the feeling. It was something akin to when a plane encounters turbulence and your stomach drops with the vessel. Am desperately looked for Bill, but the auditor had moved to the side of the front desk, out of sight of the guest. He was watching what was going on with interest. Later, Am was to learn that Bill was fascinated by car crashes.
“What about the phone, sir?” Am asked.
The guest took a long pull on his cigarette, but it didn't help relax him. “I was talking with my girlfriend,” he said. “She was ready to come over here. We were giggling and laughing. And then suddenly my wife was on the line.
“My wife.”
He looked to Am for an explanation. Self-preservation camouflaged Am's face. Too late Am remembered about checking the lines to see if they were busy.
The man inhaled on his cigarette again, sucked for dear life. “It was my worst nightmare,” he said. “My wife, my girlfriend, and me, all on the same line. I started yelling that we must have a crossed connection. I told everyone to hang up. And then I hung up.”
Am sneaked a look at Bill. He wanted to believe that the worst was past. But Bill's rapt expression, and the way he was settling in, clued Am that there was to be more. Bill knew his pileups.
The man tried to smoke, but his hands were shaking so much that he had trouble bringing the cigarette to his lips.
“I picked up the phone a few seconds later. I was going to call my wife. I was going to explain. But she was still on the line. And so was my girlfriend. They were talking. It was like a nightmare out of hell. I couldn't get them to stop talking. I couldn't get them to hang up. For all I know, they might still be talking.”
The man looked at Am, the pain clearly on his face. Like Job, he wanted an explanation for his suffering, for having to pay the penance of being human. “What happened?” he whispered.
Another Am came out then, a person he didn't know existed. With a pained face, Am said, “Who knows? That damned phone company. That goddamn phone company.” Am shook his head in disgust and offered the guest a reassuring look of sympathy. The man took Am's alms and echoed his curse.
“That goddamn phone company,” he said. He finished his cigarette in silence, stamped out the butt in an ashtray that Am offered, then left the desk. As soon as he was out of sight, Am disconnected all the active cords at the switchboard. He didn't care that he was terminating several conversations. He knew the callers could ring back and also knew that this time he'd check for a busy signal.
There are some long breaths you take in your life that suck in everything around you and make a photograph forever on your viscera. Am took one of those breaths. The bullet had missed him.
Or had it? Had a spell been struck then? Had he been enchanted? Am almost awakened. But the play wasn't quite concluded.
Am heard strange sounds. It took him a few moments to identify them as laughter. Bill wasn't used to laughing. The auditor started choking, but that seemed to please him all the more. When he finished, after he wiped away some tears, he looked at Am with true admiration.
“Kid,” he said, “I think you were made for hotels.”
That's when Am awakened from the dream. As always. And he wondered his usual Scrooge-time muse: Was that an anchorite night auditor talking, or was that the fates?
I
Damn fine knife, was David’s first thought as he cut into the filet. If they ordered in a few more times, he just might try to collect a set of the cutlery and slip them into his luggage to take home with him. Hotel life. There was nothing like it.
He cut into the meat again. Not for the first time, David thought he should have been a surgeon. Except that doctors had to pay too much for malpractice premiums. He should know. He had sued enough of them.
“This is a great hotel, Deidre,” he announced. “At great hotels they don’t give you the usual butter knife with a hint of a serrated edge. They give you a real steak knife. A cutting instrument.”
David demonstrated for the woman, sliced off a particularly rare and juicy morsel, and then dangled it in front of her face, unmindful of its dripping on the bedspread. From the oversize bed, she leaned over and opened her mouth, took a bite, and let the juice dribble down her chin. Deidre’s robe fell open, and the man reached for her breasts. The couple hadn’t—except to raise themselves for room service—risen from the bed since they had arrived the night before. It was now late afternoon.
The knocking at the door stopped their groping. “The belated bubbly,” the lawyer announced. A minute before, a bellman had made a surprise delivery of wine and cheese, no doubt from his secretary. He rose, stretched languidly, then reached for a towel. “Hold that thought,” he said to Deidre.
She reached over and swatted at his bare bottom. The knock came again. He postured for her for a moment, then wrapped the towel around his waist, positioning the blue-and-gold Hotel California logo directly in front of his privates. As he walked out of their bedroom, David paused at the full-length mirror and admired himself. There were lots of mirrors in the suite, but not too many for his taste. That damn personal trainer cost him a fortune, but he sure delivered the goods. Forty-five years old, and he had the body of a twenty-year-old athlete. You swim with sharks, he thought, and you better look like you can bite. Business had never been so good. Clients liked his bait.
He had worked up a thirst, and was looking forward to the Dom Pérignon. There was nothing better than ordering a hundred-and-fifty-dollar bottle of champagne, especially when someone else was paying for it. These were billable hours, he thought. When Deidre got her settlement, there wo
uld be enough zeros in it that she wouldn’t object. The room was registered under his name, of course, but for all practical purposes everything would eventually be part of her legal expenses. For consultation, he thought. And for services. Especially that. The getaway was their little secret. Their precelebration.
David took a breath and pushed out his chest before opening the door. There were more and more women room service waiters these days, and he always liked to look his best for the ladies. Head lowered, he motioned the cart inside, waving his towel like a matador leading on a bull. “Ole,” he said. But when he looked up, he could see there was no room service cart, no display of Irish linen and crystal glasses, no rose in a vase, no iced champagne. There was only a man. Given a choice, David might have preferred the bull.
The man stepped inside the suite. He was of average height and had thick glasses. Over the years his red hair had grown thinner, while his waist had grown thicker. For once the lawyer was short on words. “C-Carlton…”
The man didn’t answer. He started walking toward the bedroom. David was at a loss as to what he should do. He was too surprised even to articulate a threatened lawsuit.
In the bedroom, Deidre waited. She didn’t know anything was amiss. The suite was well insulated, the walls designed to keep the noises of the world at bay. She was laughing to herself at what David had said. “Hold that thought.” She was holding more than that. He liked her vamping, but that wasn’t what he said he liked best. The door opened, and Deidre raised her lashes in her best come-hither look. Then she screamed.
The scream moved her lover to action. David didn’t like it that their privacy had been violated and that his client was upset. He felt wronged, transgressed upon. But he chose to ignore one salient point: the man who had entered their hotel room was her husband.
“Get the hell out of here,” David said.
Carlton took a swing at him and missed. David was almost amused. His assailant was lumpy and slow, already red-faced and puffing after just one attempted blow. David figured he could beat him with one hand tied behind his back, and he was glad of that, because his left hand was holding up his towel. With his right, he shoved.