A Hitch at the Fairmont

by Nick Bertozzi

  “This meal is half finished,” she said. “Where exactly is your aunt?”

  Jack couldn’t help it. His eyes flipped toward Aunt Edith’s bedroom before he could stop himself.

  “Is that her room?” Alice asked. “Let’s just see if she’s in.” She started down the hall.

  “No!” Jack called. What if she saw the wrecked bathroom? What if she saw Hitchcock? Or worse! What if she saw the chocolate message on the bed? He’d be orphanaged, and that would be that. He rushed past her and blocked the door. “My aunt doesn’t like people in her room,” he said, “not even the maids.”

  The woman took another sniff of her pen, then tapped it against her clipboard. “If there is something wrong with your aunt, I’ll need to make a note,” she said.

  Jack shrugged.

  “The rules say I must make positive contact with the parent or legal guardian.” She read directly from her clipboard now, “ ‘If no positive contact can be made, the minor is to be removed into temporary custody pending investigation of parental or guardian status.’ Do I need to remove you?”

  Jack stepped aside and watched helplessly as she reached for the doorknob. Soon it would all be over. She pushed past Jack and into the room. Jack followed.

  The spread had been draped over the bed, covering all evidence of the chocolate message. The crystal bowl sat clean on the dresser. The bathroom door was closed. Water was running.

  “I told you she was unavailable,” Jack said.

  The woman walked around the room. Making checks. Jack maneuvered between her and the bed. She knocked on the top of Muffin’s cage. She leaned in close and sniffed it. When Muffin hissed at her, she shook the head in her sensible hat and made a note on her clipboard.

  “Did you know rodents can be filthy and carry disease?” she asked.

  “So can some people,” Jack said.

  “What’s this?” she asked. She pulled the sketchpad from behind the television. She flipped through the storyboards of Mission Dolores and stopped at the mug shots.

  “Did you do these?”

  “Mostly.”

  She scribbled a word or two on her form. “We have another boy in the system who thinks he wants to draw pictures for the funny papers.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll outgrow it. We’ve enrolled him in mechanics’ school.”

  “What’s wrong with drawing?” Jack asked.

  “It isn’t practical,” the woman replied. “Orphans can’t be artists.”

  A muffled gasp came from the bathroom. The woman’s head snapped toward the door. “Mrs. Smith?”

  There was a cough. Then . . . “Jack darling,” a falsetto voice called from the bathroom. “To whom are you speaking?”

  “I’m Alice Trapp,” Alice called into the bathroom, “I’m from social services. I have to make positive contact with you before I can leave.”

  “Oh—I didn’t hear you come in. I had the water running just a moment ago.”

  Alice opened the bathroom door.

  “Hey!” cried Jack, grabbing for the knob. But Alice had already crossed the threshold.

  Inside, the shower curtain had been rehung and the bathroom straightened. Hitchcock was nowhere to be seen.

  “Mrs. Smith?” Alice said.

  “Yes, dear,” came from behind the shower curtain.

  “Mrs. Smith, I need to ask you about that brandy glass in the living room. Do you often drink with lunch?”

  “Oh, my dear, that is strictly medicinal.”

  “It looked like a double,” Alice said.

  There was a moment when only the quiet lapping of water could be heard. “Are you saying I’m a lush, dear?”

  “No . . . no . . . ,” Alice said, “but . . .”

  A pasty bare leg snaked its way from beneath the shower curtain, covered in a mash of hair and foam, followed by a hand with an open straight razor.

  “Just between us girls,” the voice said, “today is my beauty day. Could a lush do this?”

  The hand swished across the leg in three quick even strokes, leaving a bare expanse of smooth, clean flesh.

  “Oh,” said Alice Trapp.

  The hairy toes wiggled. “Well?”

  “I suppose not. Still, I must make positive contact. . . .”

  “Surely speaking to me, even through the shower curtain, is contact enough. I’m too negatively dressed for anything more positive.”

  Jack could see the slow rotisserie of Miss Trapp’s brain trying to decide if talking to a hairy leg could be considered “positive contact.” Her no-nonsense hat seemed to vibrate with the effort. She consulted her clipboard, but apparently found no answer there, for she backed out of the bathroom and left the suite, calling, “I’ll be back.”

  JACK QUIETLY CLOSED THE BATHROOM door, then pulled back the shower curtain. Hitchcock hunkered down in the tub with his sleeves and right pants leg rolled up. His brightly polished right shoe was floating in an inch of water, little fluffs of shaving cream stuck to its sides. The closed razor sat in the tub tray.

  Jack offered his hand to help Hitchcock up but didn’t let go once he was standing.

  “That was great,” Jack said. “I—”

  “A gifted artist like you turned into an auto mechanic. Rubbish!” Hitchcock said.

  “You heard?” Jack asked.

  Hitchcock held up one of the hotel glasses and pressed its bottom to his ear. “I listened at the door,” he said. “A good director never misses a chance for observation.”

  “Look, I don’t know what to . . .” Jack paused. He felt a little dizzy. He released a deep breath that took with it a tightness that had infected his body since the knock on the door. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Well. I couldn’t let my brandy be your downfall. I’d never get over the guilt of it.”

  Jack’s shoulders slumped. “Oh . . . is that all?”

  Hitchcock placed his free hand over their joined ones. “My dear child,” he said, “no, that is not all.” He squeezed Jack’s hand more tightly, then let go. Jack stuck his hand in his pocket hoping to trap the warmth of Hitchcock’s grip.

  “Now, let’s see what we can do about finding your aunt,” Hitchcock said. He stepped out of the tub, dripping onto the marble floor.

  “But you said it was dangerous . . . maybe deadly, even.”

  Hitchcock nodded to the door. “Our Miss Trapp convinced me there are worse things than a bit of danger.”

  “But worse than death?” Jack asked.

  “I intend to see it doesn’t come to that,” Hitchcock said. “Today I was distressed when a scene got out of my control. But any good director gets right back in the chair. Any good director”—he grabbed the closed razor and waved it before Jack—“can ad-lib as well as any actor.”

  “So you aren’t leaving me?” Jack whispered.

  “And not see how it ends?” Hitchcock asked. “Besides, I have a song to teach you.”

  Jack’s eyes stung a little. A small sense of certainty flowed back into his limbs. Bits of sudsy foam merged together in the puddle at Hitchcock’s feet. The bits came to rest on the sole of his left shoe. Jack handed the director a towel from the shelf above the tub. “Better stay here for a minute, while I check that Miss Trapp is gone.”

  In the sitting room he found the social worker gone, but Shen was there, bent over the desk, with her back to him.

  “Shen?” Jack said.

  Shen sprang upright and faced him. She held a little pink box. “Blum’s Coffee Crunch Cake,” she said. “Opal sent it up. For your beatnik friend, she said. The door was open. Who’s your beatnik friend?”

  “I think she meant Mr. Hitchcock, next door.”

  “Oh,” said Shen. “He’s a beatnik?”

  “Sometimes.” Jack said. “You can leave it here. I’ll see he gets it.”

  Shen left the cake, then left the room. “All clear,” Jack called to Hitchcock. He closed the door behind Shen. The puff of air made s
omething flutter down from the silver tray near the door.

  It was an envelope. Letters cut from a newspaper were glued to the front. The blood rushed from Jack’s head, and at first he couldn’t read them. They seemed to be disjointed lines and circles, dancing around in no particular order. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, and when he looked again, he read, “Open Immediately.”

  Hitchcock came in, blotting himself with the fluffy hotel towel. “I’m afraid my suit is ruined. I’ll need to go to my room for a fresh pair of trousers.”

  “But you’ll be back—right?” Jack said. “I mean . . . Look, I think we’ve been contacted.” He held out the envelope to the director.

  “I see . . . ,” Hitchcock said. He brushed his bulbous lower lip with a fleshy finger. “Well, then. We no longer need to keep vigil in your suite. Let’s go to my rooms, where I can change out of these wet things, and we’ll consider what this latest note says.”

  As they opened the door to the director’s suite, the phone was ringing.

  “Hello,” Hitchcock said. “Oh, Joan . . . Yes. . . .” He combined the photos and papers on his desk into fewer stacks. Some of the stacks went to the side, some to a drawer, clearing a small space. “The actresses? Later. . . . Scripts? Later. . . . Joan, you’ll just have to handle it yourself. I’ve something else on my plate at the moment.” He looked at Jack. “Just a commitment that suddenly came up. I’ll call when I can.” He hung up, then pointed to the letter and tapped the space on his desk. “I’ll change while we see about that letter.”

  Jack carefully opened the envelope. Inside was an irregular-size piece of newspaper, folded in half. Visible was an ad for Colgate Dental Cream (with Gardol!) and another for hair tonic (with V-7). What Jack found when he unfolded the paper was more interesting.

  “It’s a newspaper article,” Jack said. It was from a couple of years ago. A yellow brittleness marred its face, but the edge was white, as if it had been torn out recently from an older paper. It gave off a musty smell. “I wonder where they got this. It’s old.”

  Hitchcock came into the sitting room, tying a black tie over a fresh white shirt. He looked over Jack’s shoulder. “From the library?” he said. “What does it say?”

  Jack read the article:

  Birds Terrorize Coastal Town

  Capitola—Sheriff’s deputies don’t know how to explain the arrival of an enormous flock of Sooty Shearwaters in this small seaside town, and, although the flock has departed, residents worry that the strange event could be repeated. No injuries were reported, though a significant number of plate glass windows were broken by the flock, estimated to number 5 to 10 thousand individual birds.

  Local resident and ornithologist ‘Sweet Betsy’ Turner says she’s concerned. “I have never seen such a mess. I live here for the fresh air. Now what a stench,” she said. “Shearwaters, or more precisely Puffinus griseus, aren’t dangerous, but neither are they housebroken. I doubt the garden will recover. They’ve covered my Calycanthus floridus in guano.”

  The local fire department used high-pressure hoses to disperse the flock. Most of the birds have only retreated to the cliffs east of town, causing those owning or renting houses near the ocean to remain fearful of their return.

  Firemen say they will ‘toil at the hoses’ until sunset today then check the situation each day following.

  “We may need to bring in some men from neighboring departments, what with the size of the flock,” Fire Chief John Saint-Robert said. “But I want to assure the good people of Capitola and Santa Cruz that the birds’ numbers will soon be back to normal.”

  “They better be” was the reply of Jackson Small of the Santa Cruz tourist board. “Right now, if not sooner.” When asked how this event might affect the tourist season, his reply: “Either you’ll recognize this for the freak accident it was or you won’t. We’ll probably never, ever see the like of it again, but who knows? Either way, this is a great place to come for vacation. Again and again.”

  Here’s hoping those Sooty Shearwaters don’t agree.

  “Jeez,” Jack said, “that’s weird. All those birds in that little town. It must have been pretty scary for the people there.”

  “No doubt it was much more frightening for the birds,” Hitchcock said. He leaned in toward the scrap of newspaper. “I believe we are meant to read the underlined words.”

  Jack did. “ ‘Don’t worry. She’s alive. the cliff house. men s toil at.’ Men s toil at? Hmmm . . . ‘Men’s toilet,’ I guess. ‘The cliff house men’s toilet sunset today. Bring what I want, and the numbers better be right. Or you won’t ever see her . . . again.’ ”

  “It appears we have a ransom note,” Hitchcock said.

  “To spare,” said Jack, “but we only just left the kidnapper.”

  “It’s as if he’s trying to drive us, like cattle—or worse, actors. How dreadfully disrespectful. It’s the director who directs!”

  “There are a lot of houses on cliffs around here,” Jack said.

  In answer Hitchcock thumbed through a pile of photographs. He pulled out one that showed a building on the edge of a cliff. A sign above it read CLIFF HOUSE.

  “What does he mean—‘the numbers better be right’?” Jack asked. “Do you think he saw that we only had some of the money?” What would happen if he found out they had tricked him? Jack didn’t need to close his eyes to call forth the image of the pistol’s steel cylinder. It was well burned into his mind.

  “Perhaps. Or he suspects we won’t give him all of it until we have your aunt secured,’ ” said Hitchcock.

  “Weird.” Jack turned the article over, then over again. He ran his finger along the roughly torn edge. He held it up to the light.

  “How did he find this article, work out the words of the note, and deliver it in such a short time?” Jack asked. “We weren’t at the bank that long.”

  “Most peculiar,” Hitchcock said. “Well, we shall have to work it out when we have time. For now we must plan our next scene. Sunset is just a few hours away, and our kidnapper will be waiting.”

  “Does he think we’re crazy?” Jack asked. “I mean, look, we might as well paint targets on our shirts if we’re going to walk into another trap.”

  “Agreed,” said Hitchcock. “Though we cannot control every scene, we do not want a replay of this afternoon. He got the better of us.”

  Grim resolve pressed Jack’s lips together and crinkled the corners of his eyes. He felt different than he had this morning. Then he’d been alone, grasping with a full orphan’s thin hope to the director. Now there was no need to grasp. He had a friend who stood by him.

  “Mr. Hitchcock, does the director ever learn from the audience?”

  “In some ways. We may recut a film based on audience reaction in test screenings, for example.”

  “Wait here.” Jack left the room and returned with the pad he’d used to sketch the Mission Dolores storyboards. He flipped past the mug shot to a clean page. “Can you hand me that pencil?”

  In large block letters, he wrote, “I MUST SEE OR HEAR FROM HER BEFORE I CAN AGREE TO ANYTHING FOR YOU.” He tore the note from the pad and folded it into the empty makeup case.

  “There,” Jack said. “We have the message about our requirements. Now we just need a hiding place to watch the men’s room at the Cliff House without being seen, to see what the kidnapper does.”

  Hitchcock strode over to the bulletin board marked “Possible Locations.” He ruffled through the layers of photos and notes pinned there.

  “In the cinema,” he began, “locations of interest can be used for dramatic purpose—a drowning in a lake, an avalanche on a mountain. After all, what is the point of building a skyscraper in New York, if not to have someone fall off it . . . or be pushed? Aha!” He’d found the picture he wanted and tore it from the board. It was the odd camera-shaped building at the cliff’s edge that Jack had noticed earlier. “And what is the point of a camera obscura if not to give us a place to see while
remaining unseen?”

  “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” MANIACAL LAUGHTER drifted to the heights at Point Lobos, the cliffs at the northwestern point of the city, where the ocean tumbled through the Golden Gate to the bay of San Francisco. The cackle came from Laughing Sal, the ghastly automaton who guarded the entrance to the fun house at Playland at the Beach, as she doubled over in weird mirth. Jack had never seen her in person (Aunt Edith didn’t approve of amusements for kids), but he’d heard children at the Fairmont trying to scare each other by imitating Sal’s creepy laugh after a day at Playland.

  Jack shouldn’t have been able to hear it up on the cliffs, but some trick of the wind made the sound swirl in his ears, an undertone to the din of the amusement park below. Jack wondered if she were laughing at him for coming within striking distance of the ocean that had stolen his mother. That same wind made the waves peak and flash in the sunlight, like a semaphore mayday from a thousand drowned souls. Then it blew against Jack’s chest with such a steady force, he could close his eyes and imagine he was plummeting off the cliff. The sea spray and fog gathered on his eyelashes and hair like dew, and dripped beneath his collar, leaving a chill trail down his spine.

  “There it is,” Hitchcock said, pointing to the building perched on a cliff buffeted by waves and blanketed by spindrift. A rectangle of redwood and glass, the Cliff House had a restaurant and was surrounded by terraces from which locals watched the gulls wheeling and crying above Seal Rocks. Like most of this corner of the city, the Cliff House had an air of shabbiness and neglect about it. The fog and sea spray coated wood and corroded metal.

  The ruin of the Sutro Baths at the base of the cliff reinforced the forsaken feel of the area. A pretty façade had been maintained at the clifftop to lure in visitors to the ice rink and the museum of oddities. But the three-acre, multistory, glass-and-steel natatorium that hulked like an iceberg beside those small, maintained areas sported empty pools and danger signs. There wasn’t an unbroken pane within a stone’s hurl from the beach.

  Or maybe it was that mad laughter, mingled with the cries of thrill-seekers trying to stop their hearts on the Playland roller coaster, that made things feel so desolate.