“Of course, poultry will never replace beef on the American table, but chickens have been grossly underexploited in this country,” she says. “You could say there’s a lot of scratch to be had from chickens.”
The bellman gestures the doorman over. “Please hail a taxi for the lady and the gentleman. They’ll be dining tonight at Ernie’s.”
“Well, I’m not exactly sure we’ve made that decision yet,” the woman says. “Do they have a good steak at Ernie’s?” she asks the doorman.
The bellman turns toward where he last saw Jack, but Opal calls him as she pushes open the sweet-shop door. “Why, Mr. Sinclair,” she says, “have you seen Jack Fair? He just bought a box of chocolates, and he left without his change.”
“Chocolates? For whom?” the bellman asks.
“Beats me,” Opal replies. “His aunt, I’d guess. At least, he got the biggest box of the kind she likes—without the coconut creams.”
“Well, find out for certain next time,” the bellman snaps.
“Listen, Bub, I thought I already made it clear that you are not my boss. Why don’t you just ask Jack? Isn’t that him over there?” Opal points to a column across the lobby.
The bellman quicksteps toward Jack, noticing that the torchère next to the column casts the shadow of an unseen person. The shadow faces Jack, evidently a woman, her hair in disarray. The bellman watches as a be-ringed hand reaches from behind the column and picks chocolates from the box Jack is holding. Then the shadow pops them one, two, three into its mouth.
The bellman picks up his pace, but a man in a gingham shirt and a buckskin vest steps in front of him. Who let all these dratted cowboys in? the bellman might wonder.
“Excuse me,” the cowboy says, but when the bellman moves to the left, so does the man.
“Sorry.” Both move right.
“Pardon.” Left.
“Well, dang. If I knew this was goin’ to be a dance, I’da brung my fiddle,” says the man.
Sinclair pushes the man aside and runs toward the column, but a woman in a calico dress sets her suitcase right in front of him. He trips and falls.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman says. “Of course, this really isn’t a good place to be running.”
The bellman gets up and steps over her bag. “Out of my way, you stupid woman.”
“That ain’t no way to speak to a lady,” she says, pushing up her sleeves and raising her fists.
A man in a white Stetson hat now steps between them. Two other Stetsons come up beside him. The men herd Mr. Sinclair in a direction so he can’t quite see behind the column.
Sinclair sidesteps the men. There’s a clear path to the column.
But Jack is gone. Two half-eaten chocolates rest in the black sand of the ashtray there. Their gooey white centers are mixed with what looks like lipstick. Bright pink lipstick.
Over near the elevator Mr. Sinclair spots Jack walking with a woman in a white dressing gown, but the bellman loses them behind a group of men and women wearing cowboy boots.
“Excuse me,” he says when he gets there, but the crowd doesn’t part until the elevator door slides shut. Through the last few inches of closing door, he sees a large woman in a white dressing gown. She’s holding up an animal and giving it little kisses.
“Oh, Poopsie. Mumsy was so afraid,” she says
“Going up,” Shen says. “Step to the rear, madam.”
“OH, POOPSIE. MUMSY WAS SO afraid,” Hitchcock said.
“Going up,” Shen said. “Step to the rear, madam.”
The elevator door snapped shut on the exasperated face of the bellman.
“That was close,” Jack said.
Shen dropped Hitchcock and Jack off on the second floor. She continued to the fifth floor, in case the bellman was watching the elevator’s indicator.
Jack beckoned Hitchcock down the second floor hallway. The staircase near Shen’s elevator was open and visible as it wound down to the lobby. So the pair trotted to the south staircase, which was easier to sneak down unnoticed. It came out near the bell desk. Once they’d descended the stairs, Jack spied around the corner. Hitchcock joined him, still in the dressing gown and blond wig. The end of a pink leash dangled from his handbag.
The Shakespeareans were to keep track of the bellman, keep him away from the south staircase, and report on his movements to Jack. But the bellman stood at his station. He held up a ring of keys. These he slipped into his pocket. Then he walked briskly down the hall away from the main lobby, past the shops that lined the California Street side of the hotel.
“Let’s go,” Jack said, and cat-pawed into the lobby.
“Quietly,” Hitchcock whispered.
The bellman turned left, into the hall that ran parallel to the main entrance, but at the back of the hotel. The rear entrances of the bars and restaurants that dominated the center of the main lobby were on his left. The Venetian Ballroom was on his right. He passed the framed pictures of Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald by the entrance that announced their upcoming dates. Just past these he came to a door panel that was painted the same charcoal gray as the wall. He touched a button, and the panel slid away. It wasn’t exactly a secret entrance, but it was certainly unobtrusive. The bellman descended the stairs inside.
Hitchcock and Jack ducked in before the panel slid shut. All the elegance of the grand hotel vanished. They were on a sort of landing. The lower wall was painted a sloppy dark blue and was a stained white above. The narrow stairway descended to the left. Ahead was a freight elevator. A half dozen buckets and mops were shoved against the wall opposite it.
Jack pointed to the elevator. “Maybe that’s how they moved Aunt Edith,” he whispered.
Hitchcock nodded. “How would they get her there from the room, though?”
“Maybe they rolled her,” said Jack.
Hitchcock looked puzzled. “Like a bowling ball?”
“No! On a luggage cart!” Jack said.
“Oh.”
They followed Sinclair down the stairs, which were fine marble incompatible with the shabbiness around them. The pair nearly lost the bellman several times as they followed him through a labyrinth of sagging plaster ceilings and cracked, peeling paint, down more stairs, through more hallways. The back of the house was a city unto itself. They walked on the balls of their feet to keep their shoes from squeaking. Stacked along the walls were all sorts of things the hotel might need—chairs, old furniture, banquet tables. An antique washstand stood alone in one corner.
They steered around another corner and found themselves in a large room. Rollaway beds, made up with white linens, stood on end like tombstones, row after row, six wide and at least twenty deep. Standing directly in an aisle between two rows, Jack could see all the way to the far wall of the room. But if he weren’t centered in an aisle, the beds appeared to be a solid wall of white from his perspective, behind which the bellman had disappeared.
Jack carefully picked his way from row to row, afraid each time he stepped into an aisle that he would be exposed and be seen by Mr. Sinclair. Once or twice he caught a glimpse of the bellman, and quickly jumped behind a bed, pressing himself into the bleachy smell of the mattress.
The sound of keys being dropped, and then a mild curse, came from the far end of the room. A door swung open and hit a wall. Jack risked exposure and dashed down the aisle past the last five rows. Three doors pierced the moldy plaster wall at the end of the room. One was slightly ajar.
Hitchcock ambled up behind Jack, slightly winded.
“It’s too risky to peek in,” he whispered. “We’ll have to wait.”
“But we may never get that door open again,” Jack said. The door was opened into the next room just enough that he could see the strike plate with the rectangular hole in which the spindle of the door latch would catch. Jack smiled and opened the box of chocolates he still carried. He selected several of the caramels—his favorite, and just right for what he had in mind.
“What—,” Hitchcock bega
n, but Jack put his finger to his lips.
He jammed one of the caramels into the rectangular space on the strike plate. The caramel disappeared into the hole, and Jack pressed it farther in until it smashed into the doorjamb. Then he added another and another, until the hole was filled with them.
The doorknob rattled. Jack had just enough time to slide behind a rollaway before the bellman emerged, a sneer tattooed on his face. He closed the door and pocketed the keys. He looked into an old mirror leaning against the wall, combing his hair over his Formica-smooth dome. He turned his head this way and that, then kissed his fingers and touched them to the mirror. “Perfect,” he said. Jack and Hitchcock slid around their respective beds as the bellman headed back toward the lobby, doing a little skip step as he disappeared around a corner.
Jack returned to the jammed door and reached for the knob. Had the caramels done the trick? He turned the handle.
Click. The door opened.
“We’re in,” Jack said.
Hitchcock tapped the little sign affixed to the door as they passed through.
“Lost bags,” Jack read. “Hmph. I might have known.”
Old luggage filled the dusty room. Bags of various types and sizes stretched along an entire wall, from floor to ceiling. Three large trunks crouched in the center of the room.
Otherwise the room was empty.
“She’s not here,” Jack said, and sank down to sit beside one of the trunks. He leaned his head up against it and closed his eyes. “I really thought we’d find her.”
“She must be here,” Hitchcock answered. “Why else would the bellman come here with such urgency?”
“Then where is she?” Jack asked.
Hitchcock paced a circle around the room, scratching his head beneath the blond wig. His eyes fell on the three large trunks. Jack followed his gaze.
“They’re not big enough,” Jack said.
“Even all three together?” Hitchcock asked.
“But even you said there wasn’t time to . . . make her fit.”
“They have had several days since then.”
Jack gasped, jumped away from the trunk, and backed up against the wall of bags. Hitchcock opened the center trunk.
“Good heavens!” he said.
“Is it Aunt Edith?” Jack asked.
“Not unless she was Miss January 1944,” Hitchcock replied, holding up a magazine called Pinup Girl. He removed the open padlocks from the other trunks and threw back their lids. “Same thing,” he said. “A few old magazines to remind the troops what they were fighting for.”
“Pinup magazines!” Jack said. “The bellman came down here to look at pinup magazines?”
“Of course I didn’t,” an oily voice said from the direction of the door.
The bellman entered the room and slid home the chain lock on the inside of the door.
SINCLAIR FACED JACK. “Did you think I didn’t see you in the mirror?”
“Where’s my aunt?” Jack said.
“Why, she’s right there beside you,” the bellman said, pointing at Hitchcock. His mustache covered his mouth like a mud flap, but Jack could sense the smirk there.
The bellman drew a knife from his pocket. He tilted his head and tapped the point of the knife on his chin, considering. “But, no. That isn’t really her, is it?” He closed one eye and used the knife to trace Hitchcock’s outline in the air before him. “A reasonable facsimile, though, I’ll give you that.” He went back to tapping, point to chin. Tap. Tap. Tap. “Too bad for her she’s a loose end.”
“I want to see my aunt,” Jack said.
“Well, we all have wants, don’t we, boy?” the bellman said. “Wants are wanterful things. Get it? WANTerful? Ha! You can do a lot of things with wants. Sometimes wants can be exchanged. I have something you want. And you have something I want.”
“That’s blackmail,” said Hitchcock.
“That’s quid pro quo,” said the bellman. He made a little arc in the air with the knife point. “And the knife makes my quid more valuable than your quo.”
“What do you want from me?” asked Jack.
“Just seven little numbers,” the bellman replied.
Jack nervously tugged at the chain beneath his collar. “So you know about the lost heir trust,” he said.
“Know about it?” the bellman replied. “I found it. That money should be mine. I was sent down to help the ladies from the Earthquake Celebration Historical Committee. A job, I might add, that should not fall to the head bellman. But there I was. I found the paper and was just reading it, when one of those committee females shrieked in my ear. She’d been reading over my shoulder. I got a glance at those seven little numbers, but before I could memorize them, I was surrounded by a gaggle of lady historians, honking like wild geese.”
“And now you want the numbers,” said Jack.
“My life would be so much easier if I had them,” said the bellman. “And yours would be so much longer.” Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Don’t you think it is going to look kind of fishy if the first person to find the will also claims to be the heir?” Jack said.
“Ah, but I didn’t find it. Not officially. Those honking geese took all the credit.”
“But you have no papers or documentation,” said Jack.
“Of course I do,” said Sinclair. “All faked. That’s easy enough to do. In fact, I thought you and your aunt were working the same con at first. Imagine my surprise to find that after spending time with your aunt, I am now convinced you’re the real McCoy.”
“Where is she?” Jack said again.
“Seven.”
Tap.
“Little.”
Tap.
“Numbers.”
Tap.
Jack hung his head. “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Nine, one, three, four, three, six, six,” he said.
The tapping stopped.
“You really should not have done that,” the bellman said. He slithered around the trunks, advancing on Jack and Hitchcock. “Is it possible after all these weeks together that you think I am stupid? I said I didn’t memorize the numbers, but I do remember that right up front was a two.” He sighed. “I suppose your fate was inevitable. It wouldn’t do to have both of us possessing the right ID papers and the numeric code.”
“If you hurt him, you’ll never get the numbers,” Hitchcock said.
“Then I’ll start with you. Then his other aunt,” the bellman said. “I’ll get what I want. What I deserve.”
“I daresay you will,” said Hitchcock. He launched himself toward the bellman. For all his bulk he moved swiftly. And he held a keen advantage over the bellman, being taller by a head and heavier by a hundredweight. But the dressing gown, as one might expect, proved his downfall. He stepped on the hem and tripped, just as the bellman brought down the knife. It plunged with a squelching noise into Hitchcock’s chest. A sickening stain appeared on the white dressing gown, spreading from the knife hilt. Hitchcock’s fall wrenched the weapon from the bellman’s hands.
“Mr. Hitchcock!” Jack screamed. The director couldn’t be dead. Not after all they had been through. It couldn’t end like this. Jack felt sickness curling like a snake in his stomach. Then he wished he hadn’t screamed, for he’d caught the attention of the bellman, who turned toward him. Fear ran electric claws up his back. The bellman was between Jack and the door. But he was also between Jack and a large empty trunk. Jack didn’t think twice. He flew toward Sinclair. He threw all his weight against him.
“He stuck with me!” yelled Jack. “He stuck with me, and you took him away!”
Had the bellman been firmly planted, Jack’s full-body thrust might have done no good. But Sinclair had been turning, and a large belly in a white gown was right behind him—at knee level. The bellman fell backward over Hitchcock and tumbled right into the open trunk.
Not entirely, of course. His hands and feet splayed over the side of the trunk. Jack circled to the back of it and pushed the lid closed.
He leapt hard onto it. With a yelp the bellman turtled his hands and feet inside. Jack tried to latch the trunk, but the bellman kept pushing the lid up. He was bigger than Jack. With each push the lid was raised a little higher. Each time the lid went down, Jack tried to slam home the latch, but before he could, the bellman would push again. Jack feared he would fly off the trunk and the bellman would get out.
Jack pushed down one more time, and suddenly it was as if he were the heavyweight world champion. The lid shut with a firm, decisive thunk. Jack reached for the latch, but found a ring-covered hand was already there, slamming the latch into place and adding a padlock from one of the other trunks.
“That should hold him,” Hitchcock said, bouncing up and down a bit as he sat on the trunk.
“Mr. Hitchcock!” Jack said. “You’re alive!” He looked at the stain on the dressing gown. “But how . . .”
Hitchcock pulled the knife from his chest and removed something from beneath the gown. “I’ve never been partial to cantaloupe,” Hitchcock said, “but I assure you, from now on it shall rank as my favorite of fruits.”
Jack grabbed the cantaloupe from Hitchcock and kissed it, then threw it aside and launched himself toward the director. He wrapped his arms around the ruffle-covered neck and hugged him tightly. Hitchcock’s arms embraced him just as tightly. They sat there for a moment, neither one saying a word.
A knock from the trunk reminded them they had some issues to attend to.
“Think he can breathe?” Jack asked.
In answer the director pushed against the trunk lid to find a springy section. “I don’t suppose anything crucial is pressed up against here, do you?” he asked. He stabbed the knife into the trunk and cut a little hole. A squeal came from inside.
Jack pressed his lips against the air hole. “Where is my aunt?” he said.
There was no response. Hitchcock thumped the trunk with the hilt of the knife. Threats of more air holes did no good. The bellman wasn’t talking.
“He’ll be of no more help,” Hitchcock said. “But she must be here somewhere. Why else would he come down here?”
A Hitch at the Fairmont Page 17