“That’s my aunt,” Jack lied. “See. I knew she’d like that one. It would be okay, wouldn’t it, if I bought it for her?”
“Well, I suppose we could allow that. We’ll just need to call your aunt to confirm.”
“But that would ruin the surprise. Oh, please,” Jack said.
Mrs. Brown chewed her lower lip.
“Hmmm . . . all right. Just be sure to give it to her before Friday, when she’s due to come pick it up. It would be so awkward if she showed up and we hadn’t got the gown.”
“Oh, thank you,” Jack said. “Auntie Sarah will just love it.”
Outside the store the pigeons had moved on to better hunting grounds.
“The real Sarah will be terribly disappointed,” Hitchcock said.
“Not if everything works out,” Jack said, hoisting the red-and-gold box from Ransohoff’s onto his shoulder. “We can return this on Thursday, with a day to spare. Just don’t take off the tags.”
THE SUBSURFACE SHAKESPEARE troupe arrived at the hotel early Wednesday morning. They had driven all night, and most were still in their costumes from the previous evening’s performance. Shen and Opal, who’d been expecting them, escorted them immediately up to Jack.
Jack opened the door to Hitchcock’s suite. In swept a man sporting dusty leather chaps and a Stetson. “A bed, a bed, my kingdom for a bed!” he called.
It was George Barrister, lead actor and sometimes director of the troupe. Opal stood next to him, ducking a little as he threw his arms wide in a gesture of imploration. A group of other actors followed, all friends of Jack’s mother—family, almost. Maybe a full orphan was less alone than Jack thought.
But it was the last person to enter who most surprised him.
“Schultzie!”
“Hello, Jack,” Schultzie said. The floor beneath Jack’s feet suddenly seemed more solid, more secure, as if the fulcrum of Schultzie’s presence had made it pivot from a dangerous incline to perfectly horizontal.
“We needed a substitute stage manager,” George said. “Our own has a diner to run and a wife who is expecting. Now, about that bed—”
“Sorry, Mr. Barrister. No time for a nap,” Jack said. “We have rehearsing to do to make this work. And remember, everything depends on this going exactly as planned.”
“Coffee, then,” called George. “My kingdom for a cup! An actor with caffeine is made of sterner stuff!”
“I’ll go get a pot from the store,” Opal said. She flattened the sides of her skirt against her moon-round hips. “On the house. And maybe a little something to eat. A big strong man like you needs to keep up his strength.”
“George seems rather dramatic,” Hitchcock whispered to Jack.
“Uh-huh . . . more than usual,” Jack said. “I think he’s auditioning for you.”
“Tell him he already has the part.”
Jack pulled Schultzie to the side, as the actors settled in.
“I’m glad to see you,” Jack said.
“Like Mr. Barrister said,” Schultzie replied, “they needed a stage manager.” There was something odd and reserved in his voice.
“I didn’t get any of your letters,” Jack said.
“Jeez,” Schultzie said, “I wrote to you every week.”
“I just found them last night. In shreds.”
“Shreds? I told you how Dad said we’d love for you to move in with us, but he doubted your aunt would allow it. She claimed she had legal custody of you.”
“Aunt Edith tore up your letters,” Jack said. He would throttle her if they ever found her.
Schultzie’s reserve immediately broke. “I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t sure what to do until last night,” he said. “Dad and I were at Wild West Hamlet when the call came for Mr. Barrister. Did you know they stopped the show so he could take the call?”
“Really?”
“There weren’t too many people there anyway. Mr. Barrister called us backstage and explained things. I told my dad I had to come. He made Mr. Barrister promise that I wouldn’t do anything dangerous.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I guess that’s why I’m stage manager.”
Jack put his arm around his friend’s shoulders, even though he had to stand on his toes to do it. “Look, I’m just glad you’re here,” he said.
“Me too,” said Schultzie. His heart was big as ever.
Soon Opal returned with trays of coffee, tea, and two boxes of Blum’s special Coffee Crunch Cake. She carried two particularly large pieces over to George.
“ ‘Sweets to the sweet,’ ” she said, handing him one.
George accepted the cake, but his eyes never left Opal’s. “Hamlet, act five, scene one,” he said.
“That’s right, sweetie,” said Opal. “My daddy ran Southern Fried Shakespeare for donkey’s years. Let’s just hope it’s happier circumstances now than in the play.” She gently touched George’s buckskin sleeve.
George took her puffy hand in his. “ ‘Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand,’ ” he said.
Opal blushed. “Oh! That is a happier circumstance,” she said, and bit into her cake.
When the actors were fed, Jack pulled out the storyboards he had drawn. He searched for somewhere to spread them out.
Hitchcock pushed aside the remaining papers on his desk. “Put them here,” he said.
Each sketch was a rectangular frame depicting the hotel’s lobby. In the lower-right corner was a time. The first one was at three p.m.
Jack looked at Hitchcock. He’d practiced what to say with the director. Hitchcock smiled reassuringly and nodded. Jack spoke. “These sketches show how each of you must move, making sure Mr. Sinclair, the head bellman, sees enough but not too much. The times must be followed as closely as possible, though of course some improvisation will be required.”
George stood. “Ah. The play’s the thing wherein we’ll break the bellman’s evil scheme.” He took the storyboards and assigned the actors their parts.
Meanwhile Hitchcock proceeded to Aunt Edith’s suite with Jack and Maxine, who had a bit part in every play but was especially good with makeup. There Hitchcock donned the dressing gown from Ransohoff’s.
“Will I pass as your aunt?”
Jack looked Hitchcock up and down. “Your hair,” he said.
“Oh, no!” Hitchcock said. He covered his head as if protecting the thin coating of hair left on it. “But my dear boy, there’s not much to be done. I fear I don’t have enough hair to be a convincing aunt.”
“No,” Jack conceded, “but Aunt Edith does—by the boxful.” Soon he offered the director several wigs in fancy boxes.
“Blond is always to be preferred, Jack,” Hitchcock said, snugging the wig onto his head.
“Hmph!” said Maxine, a redhead. “Come on. Let’s get started on the makeup.” She herded Hitchcock toward the bathroom, its countertop filled with Aunt Edith’s beauty supplies.
Jack gave her a picture of Aunt Edith from the dressing table. “Are you sure you can do it?” he asked.
Maxine looked from the photograph to Hitchcock. “Piece of cake,” she said. “He’s halfway there already.”
“One more thing.” Jack went to his aunt’s dresser and pulled on the embroidered elastic strap sticking out of a middle drawer. “Ah. There it is. We’ll need you to look a little more . . . What did you call it? Noteworthy.” He held out the brassiere. “I’ll need you to fill this.”
“Alas,” Hitchcock said, pressing his hands to his chest, “I’m afraid I cannot.”
Jack tossed it to Hitchcock, who caught it. “Please, Mr. Hitchcock. You’re almost perfect.”
As Hitchcock struggled into the behemoth brassiere beneath the dressing gown, Jack picked up the phone. “Hello. Room service,” he said.
“You’re hungry at a time like this?” Hitchcock asked.
“Shhh,” Jack said, then spoke into the phone. “Yes. This is Edith Smith’s suite. Could you send up a couple of grapefruits? Whole.” Jack looked over a
t Hitchcock, who had managed to don the gargantuan undergarment. “Better make that cantaloupes,” he said.
When Schultzie gave the half-hour call, Hitchcock was still in the bathroom with Maxine.
“Is he ready?” Schultzie called.
“You can’t rush art,” Maxine said.
“This has to run like clockwork,” Schultzie replied. “Some of the actors have already gone down. We didn’t want them all to get off the elevator in a gang. So when ‘places’ is called, this thing is happening whether he’s ready or not.”
“You sure you weren’t a stage manager in another life?” Maxine asked.
“Clockwork,” Schultzie said again, and went to the other suite.
Jack fidgeted for a while, wishing he had given himself more to do. But he knew it was best to rely on his friends. They were professionals. His job was to see that Hitchcock was where he needed to be when the deception began, and to play his own part in it. Jack decided to pop over to the other suite and see how the actors there were doing.
He was in the middle of the hallway when the door to Hitchcock’s suite swung open. Three actors emerged, followed by Schultzie. “Break a leg,” Schultzie called as the actors trooped toward the elevator. He turned to Jack. “I was just coming to give you the fifteen-minute call. . . . He ready yet?”
Jack shrugged. “Who’s left in there?”
“Just George and Marie. They’ll go down when I give the five-minute call, but they won’t be able to see if Mr. Hitchcock is there when I call ‘places.’ They’ll start whether he’s there or not.” Schultzie pointed to his watch.
“I know. Clockwork,” Jack said. “I’ll go see if he’s ready.”
Before Jack reached his room, the elevator arrived with a ding to take the three actors down. The door slid open, and Shen, seeing him, began to gesticulate, waving her hand and pointing to his room. Jack didn’t have time to work out what she meant before the passenger in the elevator pushed her way out from behind Shen. Alice Trapp emerged, clipboard first. And she had a policeman with her.
Clockwork, Jack thought. But a bureaucrat has just been thrown into the gears.
ALICE TRAPP TROTTED DOWN THE hall, already making notes on her clipboard.
“Now isn’t really a good time,” Jack said.
“We have to keep your best interest in mind,” Alice Trapp replied, pushing into his room. “This is Deputy Whatley from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office.”
“Police?” Spiders of fear crept up Jack’s neck as he remembered the kidnapper’s demand for no police.
“I’m afraid I need to make positive contact with your aunt, and verify her identity, or the deputy will have to remove you from the home,” said Alice Trapp.
“But—”
“And if she isn’t here at the moment, we’ll also need to remove you from the home.”
Jack glanced at the clock on the side table. Hitchcock had better be ready.
“Aunt Edith, that social worker is here,” Jack called. Then he said to the deputy, “My aunt is in the bathroom.”
“She seems to spend a lot of time in there,” Alice Trapp said. The deputy said nothing but made a circuit of the living room, peering behind the curtains and under the tables. Did he expect to find a hidden assassin? A dead body?
The clock on the table showed nearly three. Jack had to dispose of Alice Trapp and shuttle Hitchcock into place right away. Soon the curtain would go up on the scene, and the star still primped in his dressing room!
“Can you come back a little later? My aunt is doing her beauty routine, and it can take a while.”
Alice Trapp consulted her clipboard. “We’ll wait.”
Jack had never noticed the ticking of the clock on the table before, but now it thundered in his ears like the bass drum of a slave ship beating out time. Each tick rowed his plans closer to failure and his hopes of finding his mother farther from reality.
“Perhaps you’d be more comfortable waiting in the lobby. We could come down and meet you when she’s out,” Jack said.
Alice Trapp clicked open her pen. “I don’t think so. There are some legal papers that need to be signed, among other things,” she said, and bowed her head to her clipboard to make a few marks. The deputy was examining the couch cushions.
The quiet snick of a door opening and then closing sounded in the room.
The afternoon sun blazed through the curtains to cast a green haze on the door to Aunt Edith’s bedroom. There stood Hitchcock, the very reflection of Aunt Edith in the white ruffled dressing gown, holding a tray with her handbag, a manila file, and a gold-wrapped box.
“Why, Jack, dear,” he said, his voice two octaves higher than usual, “why didn’t you say we had company?”
Jack could not speak. Maxine was destined for fame, if her current work was any indication. Jack thought people, like snowflakes, were never alike, but any difference between Hitchcock and his aunt was imperceptible. Seeing his “aunt,” a shade of fear whipped through Jack.
“This is Deputy Whatley,” Jack said when he’d found his voice, “and Miss Trapp you’ll remember from yesterday.”
Hitchcock made as if to put the tray on the table. Jack removed the clock to make room, and tapped its face as he passed in front of Hitchcock, who gave an almost undetectable nod.
Hitchcock held out his hand to the deputy, palm down. When the deputy moved to shake it, Hitchcock pulled back so that the deputy had only his fingers. Then he navigated their clasped hands to the deputy’s lips. What could the deputy do? He kissed one of the giant rings Hitchcock was wearing.
“Charmed,” Hitchcock said. “And, Alice! How nice to see you again.”
The deputy dropped Hitchcock’s hand. “You the boy’s aunt?” he asked.
“Guilty.” Hitchcock giggled. “Has he done something wrong?”
“We’ll need to see some ID,” Alice Trapp said.
“Of course.” Hitchcock reached into the handbag and produced Aunt Edith’s passport. The deputy picked at the loose corner of the photo affixed to it. He stared at the image, then at Hitchcock.
“You’ve lost a little weight,” he said.
“Well, thank you, you charming man,” Hitchcock replied. “I’ve been trying so hard. A girl’s got to watch her figure, or no one else will!” He handed the deputy the file from the tray. “And here are the papers establishing me as the boy’s guardian.”
Deputy Whatley scanned the papers. He gave them to Alice Trapp. “I’m satisfied,” he said.
Alice looked through the papers and identification as well, then handed them back to Hitchcock. “It looks like everything is in order,” she admitted. There was a knock at the door.
“Five-minute call,” Schultzie shouted.
“Five minutes to what?” asked Alice Trapp. “Who is that?”
“Just the maid, dear. She’ll want to clean the room in five minutes. Well. So nice to have seen you again,” Hitchcock said, and graciously indicated that Miss Trapp should precede him to the door.
But the social worker planted herself on the couch and dragged the deputy after her. She withdrew six or seven pages from her clipboard and clipped them on top. “We just need to fill out a little paperwork to document our visit.”
Jack caught Hitchcock’s eye. He said nothing, but his head inclined toward the clock. Hitchcock smiled calmly.
“Paperwork. Of course,” Hitchcock said. “But first a little refreshment. The management was so kind as to send these up to celebrate the earthquake anniversary.”
He offered the gold foil box.
“Chocolate?” he said.
“PLACES,” SCHULTZIE CALLED. “Hurry up! You two should already be down there.”
Shen held the elevator, waiting for them to arrive.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t keep that woman away. The policeman seemed suspicious when I tried.”
“It’s all right,” Jack said. “We . . . managed them. Let’s just get downstairs, quick.” The deception
had likely already started. It had been carefully blocked out in the storyboards, and the actors were well rehearsed. Jack closed his eyes. “See as the camera sees,” Hitchcock had told him. Even now George and Marie would be harassing Mr. Sinclair.
See as the camera sees.
Jack did.
• • •
“Yes, madam. I believe Ernie’s would meet your dinner requirements quite well,” Mr. Sinclair would say. The woman corralled him by the front door some time ago, after he’d quelled a disturbance there caused by a different woman with a lasso and a man with a fake human skull.
“I just need to be sure we can get a good steak there,” the woman says. “My husband made all his money in cattle, so he’s quite the expert. I wouldn’t want to go to a place that thinks dressing up cheap cuts with a little parsley is acceptable.”
“No, madam, of course not. Ernie’s has several steak offerings that use only the finest-quality beef.” She’s been prattling on for quite some time now, while her husband in the Stetson keeps chiming in with, “My kingdom for a steak.”
“I mean, any cut may be just fine for average people, but as I said, my husband is quite demanding about his steak, as he well has a right to be. When you look at my husband, you’re looking at over sixty percent of the meat in this country.”
“Yes, madam.”
“And next year he’ll be expanding into poultry.”
Just then a commotion starts across the lobby. The bellman sees Jack running out of Blum’s. Jack nearly knocks over a baby carriage and is headed for the marble column closest to the elevator. He is running so awkwardly because he is holding something large, a jumbo box of assorted chocolates.
“Chocolates,” Sinclair mumbles. “But who’s going to eat them?”
“Chocolates?” the woman says. “No, chickens. Chickens! Next year he’ll be getting into chickens.”
“Yes, madam,” the bellman says, though his eyes never leave Jack as the boy crosses the lobby and disappears behind a column. When the bellman moves in Jack’s direction, the woman catches him by the arm and walks him over toward Blum’s.
A Hitch at the Fairmont Page 16