by Alan Russell
XI
Am sipped at his third cup of coffee, hoping to find a few operational brain cells. Employees did not drink the coffee for pleasure. The staff brew was a different blend from that offered to the guests. The Hotel’s four restaurants featured haute cuisine in oceanfront dining rooms that were constantly being displayed in slick magazines, while the staff meals were served in an employee cafeteria that had last been remodeled during the Harding administration. Employees were frequently offered fare the chef no longer deemed fit for guest consumption. On a good day, the employee meals were referred to as “road kill.” Usually the raging debate was whether it was fresh road kill, hit by some car that day, or whether it was road kill that had been left to stew in its own juices on asphalt for a few days.
“Ham, Ham.”
Am knew the accent, even if he cringed at the executive chef’s interpretation of his nickname. Marcel Charvet was in his late sixties but was the antithesis of Southern California mellow. You can take the chef out of France but, Mon Dieu, not the French out of the chef. If that were possible, French chefs would be a more popular export item. Am faced Marcel reluctantly. He knew he was in for an oral shower. Marcel had been in America for thirty years but still struggled with the language. What he lacked in words, however, he made up in spray. He enthusiastically spat out his broken English, and he always did it at close range. There was also his ever-present aroma. It was quite clear to Am that Marcel had been preparing bouillabaisse all morning. That, or bathing in it.
The chef's chief claim to fame was that he had served meals to four presidents. His kitchen crew also knew he had served two years in jail. Marcel had once decisively settled a difference of culinary opinion by thrusting his chef's knife—a Sabatier, no doubt—into the stomach of a dissenting cook. His time in jail hadn't tempered his opinions.
Am was surprised that Marcel didn't immediately start in with his talk/spray. He motioned for Am to follow him into the kitchen, which for once was relatively quiet. All Hotel meals were created out of the central kitchen. On a busy night, with all the Hotel restaurants and banquet rooms full, thousands of entrées were turned out. It was always an amazing sight, organized chaos reigning for hours on end, scrambling servers, flying plates, orders shouted out in half a dozen languages, and food with continental names and flowery descriptions being tossed on plates like Big Macs to go. The magic was that the trick usually worked. The food came out and almost lived up to all its cedillas.
“What's the road kill today?”
A busboy with his back turned to Am and Marcel shouted the question to one of the line cooks. The cook pretended not to hear but gave an almost imperceptible signal that alerted the busboy that other ears were present. Marcel might not be making his points with steel anymore, but his temper was still legendary. So was his hearing.
“Ham,” he said, “what is zis road keel I keep herring about?”
“It's just, uh, slang,” Am said.
“Slang,” said Marcel, apparently satisfied. He had worked with Southern Californians for long enough not to be worried about slang. Am hid his relief, glad that yet another Gallic war had been averted.
Marcel's office was his private domain, a holdout from days of old when to enter a chef's lair was to risk the wrath of a butcher's knife. Urging Am inside, Marcel shut the door behind them, then looked around suspiciously.
“I just talk with Misteer Kendrick,” said Marcel. “He tell me our food costs are up. He wonder if zee employeze are stealing.”
That figures, thought Am. Any of a dozen factors could have accounted for the food costs going up. But the easiest scapegoat was always the employees. Employeze.
“Misteer Kendrick said I should talk with you. He say you now are in charge of ze-curity.”
Am nodded reluctantly. He suspected Kendrick had encouraged Marcel to seek him out as a way of having a proxy spit at him. “You have a suspect, no doubt,” Am said.
“Yes,” Marcel said conspiratorially. “Ted.”
Am wasn't exactly surprised. Ted Fellows had the title of sous chef, but he actually ran the kitchen. He worked with a computer more than he did a whisk, much to Marcel's disdain. Ted was reasonable and steady and could turn out consistently good plates while maintaining organization in the kitchen. He was the first to admit he was not a culinary artiste and not the person you'd want to create a repast for heads of state. When it came to the pièce de résistance, that was Marcel's domain. He was the oohs and ahhhs department. Ted was the kitchen's glue, and Marcel always got stuck on that point.
“You’ve seen something?”
“Two night ago, he carry a big bag out. Everyone zee him.”
“But no one saw what was in the bag?”
That point didn’t mean much to Marcel. He was more interested in describing the special he had created on the night in question, going into rapturous descriptions, and giving out the kinds of details that only Nero Wolfe would have considered germane to an investigation. The upshot of his narrative was that truffles, ” ‘eavenly and divine” truffles, had been the key ingredient in his special, a risotto made with white truffle and pork kidneys. Marcel claimed that his stock of truffles had disappeared the same night Ted had walked out with the bag.
“The spezal was saved,” he said, “because zee rice always needs to breath in zee ezzenze of zee truffles a day before you make zee risotto. But zee bag of truffles I not put in zee rice iz gone.”
Am was only half listening to Marcel’s story until he heard how expensive the missing truffles were. The fungi cost more than most illegal drugs. Promising to look into the matter, Am began easing away from Marcel’s theories and fish cologne, but the chef followed him.
“I will zave you a taste of tonight’s spezel spezel,” Marcel said. “I know how you love zee spezel spezel.”
Every night Marcel made a special, but he only made his “spezel spezel” on auspicious occasions. Am tried to think who was in house to merit such a spread, then remembered that one of the country’s leading food critics had flown in from New York just to dine.
“That critic’s coming a long way to try your fare,” Am said.
Marcel’s chest expanded. “I know,” he said. “He will not be dis-a-ppoint-tid.”
Marcel was his own Michelin guide. He had decided a long time back that he was three-star material. Having tasted his creations, Am couldn’t disagree.
If you’ve got it, Am thought, flaunt it. Or better yet, flambé it.
XII
Carlton felt guilty about having slept so well. It would have been more proper if he hadn’t slept a wink. But there was something about the Hotel that lulled and soothed. He hadn’t meant to sleep, had stopped just to listen to the ocean, then had sort of naturally worked his way over to the bed, all the while telling himself that he would only be unwinding for a few minutes. That was ten hours ago.
It would have been the proper thing, he decided, to have never slept again, to have walked around like Lady Macbeth, doing a lot of hand rubbing and making lugubrious speeches. His contrition should have been such that he shouldn’t have noticed earthly things, like being hungry. But he was hungry. That embarrassed him, but not enough for him to forget about the untouched basket of dinner rolls he had put out with the room service trays the night before. For a time, at least a minute, Carlton resisted the urge to seek out the rolls. And even when he did, he was convinced he at least felt guilty about it.
Discovering the trays had already been collected provided him a perverse pleasure. Serves me right, he thought. But his penance was short-lived. Walking back into the room, Carlton noticed the portable bar and soon discovered it offered possibilities far beyond alcohol.
There was orange juice, and mineral water, and tonic water, and club soda, along with dry-roasted almonds, and macadamia nuts, and Swiss chocolate, and crackers, and cookies, and pâté, and cheese spread. Carlton figured if this was to be his last meal before prison, he could do worse, although he was somewhat disappo
inted in the pâté.
The thought shocked him. Was he that uncaring? He wondered if his amnesia was a way of coping. Or maybe he wasn’t that different from a cockroach. He had read that cockroaches didn’t have a memory span that went beyond thirty seconds. A half minute after almost being stepped on, they were ripe for another heel. But was mankind so different? No. He did care. He was sorry. But he still wasn’t quite ready to give himself up to the police. He started pacing, tired of it, then sat down on the sofa. On the coffee table was the Hotel’s guest information directory.
At first thumbing, Carlton knew he had unveiled something better than the Home Shopping Network. He could get a massage in his own room or a mud bath in the spa. There was a tennis pro available for lessons (I always wanted to take up tennis, he thought) or an aerobics class. The Hotel had gift shops of all sorts. He could call for a book from the library (twenty-five thousand titles—so much for the Gideon Bible) or get a video. There was everything. The directory progressed from A to Z, with every letter receiving multiple pages of listings (except for Q, which only had two entries—quahogs, available daily in the seafood salad bar, and the Queen’s Tea, an English high tea served every afternoon in the Royal Room).
It was the letter T that Carlton lingered over the longest. A score of tours were listed. The Hotel tour interested him the most. He was curious about this place, this temporary sanctuary. He wanted to know more about its history, wanted to walk its grounds. But he couldn’t, of course. He was just avoiding the inevitable, and besides, his clothes were an incriminating mess. Anyone who saw their condition might guess at his crime. Missing the tour, Carlton decided, was the metaphor for his life.
Sighing, he started to close the directory when a boxed entry caught his eye. While the Hotel didn’t allow any advertising in the booklet, it did highlight some of its own services. He saw that on-property dry cleaning was available, and that for an extra fee, one-hour service was even offered.
Dare I? thought Carlton. He wasn’t behaving as he knew he should. Sackcloth and ashes were the only appropriate garb for him now. Clothes couldn’t, or shouldn’t, hide his sin. Yet Carlton dialed the boldfaced extension.
“Say,” he said, “I’ve made an awful mess of my suit. I had a bit too much to drink last night, and I suppose you can guess the rest.
“What’s worse is that it’s the only suit I brought along, and I’ve got a meeting this morning….Could you?…You’re a lifesaver….How much?…That’s fine. Thank you very much.”
For a price at which some retailers sold suits, the Hotel California promised to clean Carlton’s. The dry cleaner said they were good at spot cleaning and getting out even the most difficult stains. Carlton stuffed his soiled suit in a laundry bag provided by the Hotel, and less than five minutes later a bellman knocked on his door. The bellman gratefully accepted Carlton’s generous tip along with his bag and promised to return the suit within an hour.
While waiting for his dry cleaning, Carlton studied the guest information directory a little more thoroughly. There was a men’s clothing shop in the Hotel. A crazy thought entered his head.
Maybe I could use another suit.
XIII
The turned-around pictures greeted Am on his return to his office. He wouldn't have minded turning around himself and going home. The incoming already had him ducking: the suicide, the perilous state of his employment, and the truffles. Well, not the truffles, at least not as much as Marcel's spitting. He wondered who had snitched on him to Kendrick. Useless to conjecture, he thought. Or was it? Wasn't he the Hotel detective?
The hotel dick. It was a term half a century out of date, a description that brought to mind a smarmy sort, someone as likely to be looking through a keyhole as protecting a guest from someone doing the same. The title conjured up an image of contraband hooch, poker games, and smoke-filled rooms. The biography of a house dick would have to be a history gone bad and a position by default, not a post to which anyone would aspire. Hotel detectives were the sorts thrown off their police force for petty theft or brutality. Houses of sin were just the place for them, sordid operations where they could supplement their income by running call girls or blackmailing the unwary.
Kendrick had made him the Hotel detective. So be it. There was one place Tim Kelly was still alive. Am turned on his computer and pulled up Kelly's account. At first glance, the display didn't tell him much. Kelly had checked in two days ago as part of the Contractors Association group. His convention had been given a special rate, if you could call $172 a night a special rate. Am scanned the charges. There was nothing unusual about Kelly's bill, except that booze accounted for about half of it, and that certainly wasn't uncommon. The Hotel California wasn't as generous in camouflaging charges as were other inns. Boozing businessmen on company expense accounts usually frequent those hotels that magically convert their bar bills into restaurant charges. “And how was your olive, sir?”
Kelly had closed out his ample bar tab at 1:50 A.M. the night before, had beaten his hangover in the only way possible. His server had been Katherine “Cat” Ross. Kelly had signed a twenty-dollar tip to her. She'd remember him.
A groundswell of noise at the front desk interrupted Am's study. The chaos in progress sounded even louder than usual. Sneaking a peek out at the check-out line, Am saw what looked like rush-hour traffic. He wanted to ignore the pileup but immediately threw himself into the fray. Guests didn't take kindly to having to wait for the privilege of paying over two hundred a night for their rooms.
“Where's Casper?” he whispered, referring to the front desk manager. “Where the hell is Casper?”
Am had Roger paged, but once again Casper's timing was perfect. He appeared just when the last guest had been helped.
“Roger,” Am said in a voice only he could hear, “I don't have time to run your desk this morning.”
Casper was all innocence. “What? Were there check-outs?”
Am tried to match his Academy Award–winning performance. “Yes.”
“Well,” Roger said indignantly, “all they had to do was beep me.”
Casper’s famous retort. The clerks heard his remark, not for the first time, and rolled their eyes, also not for the first time. Whenever Casper was beeped it took him five minutes to respond to the page, and by then most situations had resolved themselves.
“No doubt you were doing something important,” Am said.
“There was a complaint about pigeon dirt on one of the balconies,” Roger said. “I was checking out the situation.”
Am gave him a look that said he thought Roger’s explanation was full of—pigeon dirt. “Look,” he said. “I want you to stay at the desk and shield traffic. Okay?”
“Of course, Am.”
Casper much preferred disappearing to arguing. If guests were disappointed with their room assignment, he always sent out the reservations manager. If anyone wanted an adjustment on their rate, he invariably deferred to another manager. Staff meetings for Casper were Quaker meetings. Kendrick never got anything more out of him than everything was going “fine, just fine.” Maybe that’s why Kendrick liked him.
If anything, Casper was predictable. At least he was, up until last night. He had surprised Am by showing up at the party. Casper lived with an invalid aunt and rarely associated with any other employees outside of work. Now who had Roger come as? Am thought for a moment but couldn’t remember. He turned to ask him, but Casper was already gone.
Tim Kelly’s bill was still flashing on the computer screen when Am returned to his office. He did a printout, then methodically went through all the charges. There didn’t seem to be anything extraordinary about Kelly’s account. Maybe that’s what didn’t feel right to Am. It all seemed too normal—the long-distance calls, the greens fees, the restaurant tabs, even the bar bill. Am would have expected him to have gone out with more of a splash.
Sometimes you get a feel for guests through their hotel bills, but two days of charges didn’t tell Am all that
much about Tim Kelly. Besides, sometimes hotel bills deceived more than enlightened. When people escaped from their routines, they frequently allowed themselves freedoms they wouldn’t indulge in on their home turf. They watched an adult film, or drank too much, or took a nocturnal swim without clothes. “Guests,” said one of Am’s former GMs, “act like Mormons out of town.” Not that religion had anything to do with it. Just human nature.
Tiring of looking at the bill, Am accessed the guest history data base and entered Kelly’s name. This visit hadn’t been Kelly’s first. He had stayed at the Hotel the two previous years, both times with the Contractors Association annual convention. Curious, Am called up the group history. Hotels were getting to the point where they could almost crank out their own TRW credit reports. At the Hotel, group expenditures were tracked more faithfully than baseball scouts analyzing batting averages, and group bookings were prioritized by their spending habits. The Contractors Association was evidently “A” team material. They liked to spend money.
Let me count the ways, thought Am. He scrolled through the file, paying close attention to both individual and group requests. Everything was documented, from room setups to banquet menus. High rollers are catered to, and the guest rooming assignments had been prepared carefully rather than slotted in the usual block of rooms. As a repeat group, many of the conventioneers had known what they wanted and hadn’t been shy about making those desires known. The usual litany of requests were indicated, from bed size to location to type of accommodation, with the usual petitions for everything from feather pillows to special lighting. Kelly hadn’t been among those with requests.
Had he known he was going to commit suicide when he’d checked in? Am started speculating, then chastised himself mentally. It was a moot point, not to mention a waste of time. Maybe Kendrick was right, as much as that possibility hurt him. Maybe he could best serve the dead by “ah-sisting” to the bereaved, sending those all-important fruit baskets. Condolence calls on behalf of the Hotel were also in order. Sighing, Am assembled a list of people who should be contacted. John Leonard, the Contractors Association group leader, was his first call.