The Hotel Detective

by Alan Russell

  There is a multiplying factor to pent-up rage. It explained why Hazleton was out to shoot bear in nothing but his raincoat. Am let him have his say.

  “Why is it,” he continued, “that your property can't manage a simple thing like delivering the damn laundry to the right room?”

  The situation called for sympathetic noises, which Am offered. Hotel managers are good at soothing sounds. Anyone who works in hotels doesn't need to use a thesaurus for the word sorry. They live the listings. Mr. Hazleton continued to bemoan his missing laundry, and Am continued to make sounds. For want of anything else to do, Am also shuffled exhibits A and B, the pink laundry slips. Belatedly he gave them a closer glance and decided they were friendly to the defense. He passed them over to Hazleton.

  “I'm just guessing,” he said, “but the bellman might have misinterpreted your writing. I happen to know you're in room 338, but from these slips I can see how the items might have been taken to room 328. Or 358. Or 339. Or 388. Or even 329.”

  At the Hotel, guests fill out their own laundry slips, and Hazleton's writing should have gotten him into medical school. Hazleton examined his own writing and was faced with the numeric indictment. “Hmmmm,” he said.

  “I'm sure we'll have the laundry to your room in a matter of minutes,” Am said. “In the future, though, we'll take pains to make sure this never happens again.”

  Hazleton nodded, a much more timid man than the one who had entered Am's office. He stood up, paused to give an embarrassed little wave, then started for the door. As he passed by, Am couldn't help but notice that he wasn't wearing any socks with his black shoes. Stockings had been part of his missing laundry consignment.

  “Mr. Hazleton?”

  He turned.

  “Why so much cleaning?”

  Am violated his own rule by voicing his curiosity. It's okay to be nosy if you work in a hotel, as long as you're silent about it. Twelve suits, fourteen ties, three sports jackets, and five pairs of pants had been sent out for dry cleaning and the laundry ticket included bags of dress shirts, underwear, and socks.

  Hazleton's expression both pleaded the Fifth and told Am to go to hell, but a bending of the Constitution prevailed. “I don't like to travel,” he said. “The company knows it. So I save my laundry and dry cleaning and wait for them to send me out. There are per diems on most things, but not laundry. I make them pay.”

  He shuffled out, black shoes and no socks, Willy Loman gone anarchic. Jimmy Mazzelli met him just outside the door. “Found your laundry, sir,” he said. “Delivered all safe and sound to your room now. We'll make sure it don't happen again, you can be sure of that.”

  “Jimmy,” Am called, stopping the bellman before his Boy Scout act got on track. Canadian Mounties can learn a thing or two from bellmen. They not only get their man, they usually get a tip at the same time. An experienced bellman in search of a gratuity is about as easy to shake as a pit bull with a good hold.

  Jimmy reluctantly left his game. Maybe he realized a man wearing only a raincoat wasn’t likely to be carrying a wallet, or maybe there was something in the tone of Am’s voice that activated his self-preservation instinct.

  “Yes, Am?”

  “Bring me the delivery logs.”

  Hotels are great believers in signing everything in and out. The rationale behind the paperwork is sound. Whenever a hotel accepts anything through its employees, a bailment relationship is established, which means if a hotel employee agrees to hang up a sable coat on a hanger in the back for a few minutes, and that coat disappears, the hotel is liable for the loss. Be it mail, deliveries, messages, faxes, or laundry, all items at the Hotel were supposed to be accounted for, both coming and going.

  With Jimmy watching over his shoulder, Am opened the log book to the laundry and dry cleaning entries. Mr. Hazleton’s clothing had been signed in and out. The correct room number had been entered, and Wrong Way had initialed delivery to room 338. The bellman’s mistake was that he had trusted to the scrawl of a laundry slip rather than checking off the tag with the room number entered into the log. Incompetence can always beat any system.

  More for Jimmy’s sake than his own, Am flipped through several pages of the log book, an obligatory reviewing of the troops that was supposed to be a reminder of management’s watchfulness. A few initials hadn’t been entered, enough for Am to be able to grouse. Not that such shortcomings were ever noticed until a package turned up missing. Or until laundry was taken to the wrong room.

  Because room 605 had so occupied Am’s mind, he noticed what would have otherwise been an innocuous entry on one of the delivery sheets. Two days ago there had been a delivery to the murder room, a bottle of Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon and a wheel of cheese. The delivery had been accepted at 4:40 P.M., and the receiving clerk’s initials were T.K. The log showed the intended recipient was David Stern. The signature of whoever had dropped the wine and cheese at the desk looked indecipherable, but T.K. had noted “Card attached.” The final notation showed that delivery had taken place at 4:45 P.M. by A.S.

  Am tapped at the initials, brought Jimmy’s eyes to them. “Who’s A.S.?”

  Jimmy didn’t even have to think: “Albert Slocum. He in trouble?”

  Am didn’t answer. McHugh had put the time of deaths at late afternoon or early evening, which would have been about when the wine and cheese were taken up to the room. The delivery bothered Am. The murdered lawyer had wanted his anonymity protected. Who had known he was there to send the wine and cheese?

  He’d have to talk with T.K. and with Albert. He wondered what they had seen and what they remembered.

  And he wondered if the couple had clinked wineglasses together and made a final toast before being murdered.

  XXXVII

  “McHugh.”

  “I have a request,” said Am. “Would you please fax me a list of everything that was inventoried in room six oh five?”

  Just getting through to McHugh had been difficult. Am had been transferred and put on hold half a dozen times, had been forced to plead his case to one skeptical voice after another. Now he finally had an audience with the greatest skeptic of them all.

  “Why?” asked McHugh, sounding even less ready than usual to suffer fools.

  “A bottle of wine and some cheese were delivered up to that room just before five on the day the murders took place. There was a card with the delivery. I’m curious as to who did the sending.”

  “You’re curious about a lot of things.” McHugh didn’t say anything else for half a minute, but Am heard him rustling papers. Finally: “We didn’t find any bottle, or cheese, or note in the room.”

  “Has an alcohol blood level been done on the victims?”

  “Jesus. I suppose this couple opened their honor bar and out popped a dwarf hooker whose MO was putting Mickey Finns in the airline bottles.”

  Am made a dignified attempt at blackmail. “Was it my imagination, or did I hear on the news that the police were interested in receiving any and all information that might be useful to them in the Hotel double-murder case?”

  “I’ll put it on the list,” said McHugh.

  He didn’t have to say it; Am knew about where it would be positioned on the list. As if defending himself against that unspoken charge, the detective said, “They probably ate the cheese, and drank the vino, then stuck the empty bottle outside the door for one of your monkey suits to pick up.”

  “Probably.”

  Still, even McHugh couldn’t ignore the matter entirely. “Who delivered the stuff to the room?”

  “The wine and cheese were dropped off at the front desk and a bellman took them up. I have a call in to both the clerk who accepted the delivery and the bellman who took them up.”

  McHugh asked for their names and telephone numbers and when they were next scheduled to work. Before supplying the information, Am exacted a price. “I’d still appreciate that inventory. It might help if I knew what was in the room and what wasn’t.”

  �
��Why, sure,” said the detective, his tone unusually conciliatory. “What’s your number? I’ll fax it right over to you.”

  Surprised, Am gave him the number and his thanks. As promised, the fax arrived soon after their conversation. There was a long list of inventoried items, but only one entry was circled: condoms. That explained the detective’s alacrity. Next to it, McHugh had written: “Do you think there’s a connection?”

  Out loud, Am announced, “Asshole.” To himself he made a vow: I’m going to show that man.

  His imprecation hadn’t gone unheard. Barbara Terry had walked in on it and now stood in the middle of his office, looking uncertain as to whether she should proceed. “Is this a bad time, Am?”

  “Is there ever a good time, Barb?”

  She chuckled. Barb had been a housekeeper for more than forty years, had cleaned about everything and seen about everything, and yet she still didn’t despair. There are people who reaffirm your faith in humanity. Barb was one of those. One of Hercules’ twelve labors was the cleaning of the Augean stables in a single day, a matter of clearing out thirty years of deposits left by three thousand oxen. To Am’s thinking, Barb had to perform a similar feat every day. White-haired and round, she didn’t look like Hercules, but she wasn’t one to shrink from combat, either—if the cause was just. Over the years Am had learned to read her eyes; usually they were a laughing blue, but when joined to battle, there was a fierceness to them. They now carried that look.

  “I’m told Mr. Harmon will be checking in today, Am.”

  The name didn’t mean anything to him. “Mr. Harmon…?”

  “I’m sure Chief Horton must have mentioned him to you. The Chief was on the case this last year. He said that Mr. Harmon made him, that is, gave him gas like a…Well, never mind. Suffice to say, Mr. Harmon put a bee in both of our bonnets.”

  “What’s Harmon’s crime?”

  “He’s an adulterator.”

  Barb liked her food and her words plain. She was direct, if not always grammatical. Am figured her complaint was a few letters off.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said, “since those days when there were signs in hotels saying that because it was improper to entertain guests of the opposite sex in the bedrooms, the lobby should be used for that purpose. We’re not in the morality business, Barb.”

  “Oh, that,” she said, waving her hand to signify the inconsequential. “I said adulterator. Not adulterer.”

  “Adulterator? Of what?”

  “Of our honor bars. It wasn’t easy to track him, Am. Oh, no. He liked to drink and then counterfeit all sorts of liquors. If he’d just done the Scotch, or bourbon, or vodka, we might have caught on to him easier. But he seems to have a taste for everything with a proof.”

  Her outrage finally made sense to Am. One of the first tricks you learn as a child is to replace the gum wrapper in its package after the gum has been removed. You generously offer a stick of gum to any and all and laugh at the apparent chagrin of those duped. Usually the luster of such a prank wears off in adolescence. Usually.

  The Hotel California supplies honor bars in all of its rooms. The term honor bar is certainly a misnomer. The guest is supposed to fill out a form for all items consumed, thus the “honor.” Not that any hotel accepts the word of its guests; there are attendants who monitor and restock the portable bars on a daily basis. Those same attendants are supposed to be checking the seals on the liquor to make sure they haven’t been tampered with, a task not altogether easy because of the diminutive bottles. For some guests, there is no honor in honor bars. They do worse than water down a drink; they substitute H2O for Absolut vodka, Johnnie Walker Scotch, and Tanqueray gin, or cola for Jack Daniel’s, or Jim Beam.

  “The Chief and I decided we had to wish more than a hangover on the culprits,” said Barb. “Whenever we received a report of a tampered-with honor bar, we went back and recorded the names of all guests who had been in the room the previous three months. That's about how fast you can count on most of the liquor inventory turning over. Over the last year the Chief documented more than thirty cases of minibar tampering, and one name can be linked to six of those occurrences. Mr. Harmon's been with us six times in six different rooms during the past year, and on each of his visits someone's fiddled with the liquor in those rooms.”

  Am had heard from some of those irate guests. Harmon had, he thought, turned water into whine. Tamper-proof systems had recently been established for honor bars, but Kendrick hadn't yet seen fit to switch. At least Harmon got his kicks only from getting free booze. What if he had decided to adulterate the drinks with castor oil, or worse?

  Indignantly Barb said, “He'd probably switch water for brandy in a St. Bernard's cask.”

  “He's a regular, Barb,” Am observed. Those were words staff groaned at. Hotel managers tend to forgive the idiosyncracies of regulars.

  Barb grimaced. “Am, you're not saying

  “I just need to know what you're up to. Whatever you do, it's sure to end up on my lap.”

  The housekeeper motioned for Am to wait a moment, then she walked out of his office, yelled “Pablo,” and reentered the room. A tinkle of glassware receded Pablo's entrance. The houseman's cart was laden with little bottles.

  “Some is tea,” said Barb, “and some is cola, and some is water, and some is a little bit of everything. It should pass inspection, I think.”

  Carrie Nation wouldn't have hesitated swinging her ax. To all appearances, the bogus booze looked genuine. Trojan horse payback. The housekeeper looked at Am expectantly.

  He knew it violated ABC regulations. He knew it was contrary to city health codes. He knew it meant a guest, a regular, would probably want to chew his ass (or was that liver?) over this. “Okay,” Am said.

  She reached out a hand and touched his cheek, then remembered her task. The housekeeper had a mission from God. She urged her cavalry forward, and Am listened to the charge of clinking bottles.

  It was more fun dealing with adulterated beverages, Am thought, than with murder. Sighing, he returned to McHugh's list and started going over what had been left in the room. When the list stated to blur, he leaned back on his chair and balanced the paper on his nose. That's when Sharon walked in. Am was glad that this time he wasn't feeling a bra. His eyes somewhat hidden by the paper, he was able to take a long and not too obvious look at Sharon. She appeared tired, as tired as he did. Odd. The night before she had left a few hours before he had.

  “Nose to the grindstone?” she asked.

  With the paper still balanced on his nose, a pose that was probably the result of too many visits to Sea World, Am told her about his morning. Then, providing his own gust of wind, he blew the paper toward Sharon, who made a shoestring catch.

  “McHugh's inventory of six oh five,” he said. “And his dig.”

  Sharon looked over the list. Her mouth tightened slightly when she saw what Am was referring to.

  “I've been wondering how many people knew David Stern was in that room,” said Am, “and which one of them sent the wine and cheese.”

  Sharon's brow furrowed. “If he was so intent on privacy,” she asked, “why would he let anyone know he was here?”

  “I don’t know,” said Am. “That was his business. I only wish we had respected his seclusion. The delivery should not have been accepted. There were excuses, naturally. The desk was busy, and T.K. took in the wine and cheese before he noticed Stern’s status. He wasn’t sure what to do, so he asked Roger, who put the whole thing back in his lap. T.K. figured that since the delivery had come with a name and an accompanying note, it was okay to have it sent up.” Am sighed.

  “You don’t sound happy with his decision.”

  “I’m not. The wine and cheese should have been held at the desk just like anything else directed to Mr. Stern. Unless otherwise instructed, he shouldn’t have been disturbed. Even his message light shouldn’t have been activated.”

  “Is that common? Guests asking for complete privacy?”<
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  “It happens. And it’s not always because some hanky-panky is going on. Sometimes there’s sensitive business. Sometimes it’s on doctor’s orders. Sometimes it’s a VIP who needs to find herself and not her press clippings.”

  “But this wasn’t one of those instances, was it?”

  Am shrugged.

  “And neither one of us thinks this was a case of a burglary gone bad. Which means what?”

  His suppositions, if any, were interrupted by yet another visitor, who stuck his head into Am’s office. “Morning, Am.”

  Am introduced Ward Ankeney to Sharon. Ward was an avuncular sort who often pointed to his thinning hair as proof positive that he had been keeping the Hotel’s books for the last dozen years. His title was controller, but anyone who asked what he did invariably heard him reply, “Bean counter.” Ward never looked comfortable unless both of his hands were occupied. He always had a pipe in one hand, usually unlit, and with the other he was invariably punching away at a computer, or calculator, or a ten-key. This time he had his usual pipe in the one hand, and in the other were some papers. Reluctantly he gave up the papers to Am, leaving his right hand without a task.

  “Copies of six oh five’s charges,” Ward said, his free hand coming to life with operatic gestures and then waving goodbye.

  Am had forgotten that he had asked for the room charges. Perhaps subconsciously he was trying to black out as much as possible from the day before. Convenient amnesia. As if attempting a jigsaw puzzle, he laid the charges on his desk and bent over them. Sharon came around behind him and joined in the scrutinizing.

  “They sure ate well,” she said.

  Am didn’t comment. He picked up one of the pages, punched it slightly, and said, “That explains it.”

  “What?”

  Without answering, he punched into his computer, called up 605’s charges, and handed Sharon a printout. “Last night,” he said, “I called up this account. And that’s when a room service charge caught my attention. This one.”

  Am passed Sharon the copy. “I thought it must have been a large order, but it wasn’t. Just a solitary bottle. I was curious because of the time of delivery. Death arrived shortly after room service. It must have been some party up there, fine wine, cheese, and, to top it off, Dom Pérignon. Then a double murder. With our staff going in and out of the room, I figure there’s a good chance either the bellman or room service waiter saw something.”