“I’ll settle for that,” she said with a grin that made it clear she had been this route too. “Make it Scotch on the rocks, but not too many rocks. We don’t want a shipwreck. I’ve got to get to work myself.”
The bartender indicated that he had heard the conversation and showed up with the drinks, as the trio did to “I Guess I’ll Have to Dream the Rest,” what we’d all like to see them do to the Nazi fleet. We all clapped our hands and I launched into my second beer, feeling better about them and our chances of coming out of the war a winner.
“You got a problem?” the woman said, the slight tinge of a South-of-the-Border accent in her question.
“I’m working on one,” I admitted as one of the people in the darkness called for “Old Rocking Chair’s Got Me.” The sailors obliged with a heavy dose of dah-de-days in place of Hoagy Carmichael’s words.
“Maybe I could help,” she said, looking into her glass at a melting ice cube.
“Don’t think so,” I said, considering a third beer.
As she returned to face me on her stool, the light from the bar hit her face, and either two beers or a new perspective said she wasn’t as old as I had thought. She looked as if she really wanted to help. There are people like that in the world. They sit around in bars, waiting to hear sad stories and give their sympathy and understanding. Most of them are women. I don’t know why.
“I’m a good listener,” she said. “I’m a professional listener. I’m on the switchboard of this hotel five nights a week, eight hours a night, listening to people, helping people. Makes me feel like …”
“… you’re helping people,” I supplied.
“Something like that,” she agreed.
“Maybe you can help me,” I said, moving my stool closer to hers. She smelled like Scotch and poppies. I motioned for another round and we talked. Three beers is my limit. I switched to Pepsi, punctuated by two trips to the men’s room.
Her name was Pauline Santiago. She lived in Brooklyn with a man named Paul, who may or may not have been her husband. Pauline and Paul seemed to have nothing in common but their first names. He was Polish. She was half Mexican and half Italian. He was a Republican. She was a Democrat. He grunted a lot. She talked too much.
“It’s an old story,” she said.
“But a true one,” I toasted with my Pepsi.
“True one,” she agreed, finishing off her third Scotch on the rocks.
“You’re going to walk out of here and go to work?” I said.
“Why not?” she asked, turning to see what was going on at the piano. A man in a tuxedo, who I guessed might be Charlie Drew come to amuse us, wanted to get to the keyboard. The three sailors were reluctant to give up their conquest. They might not be able to take Midway, but by God they were going to hold onto this enemy Steinway. Charlie protested, joked, pleaded, appealed to the crowd with no success and finally, in a fair but unconvincing display of support for our men in uniform, agreed to let them keep up their concert for a few more minutes.
“I’ve got a living to make too, boys,” he said, looking at the crowd and not the boys. The crowd didn’t seem to give a damn about Charlie’s living. A drunk called for “Sleepy Lagoon.” Charlie Drew volunteered to help. The concert went on.
“Let me get this straight.” Pauline Santiago tried turning from the show to my smiling face. “You want to get a look at the hotel register for the last three weeks.”
Since I had said this at least four times in the last five minutes, I had nothing to add. I just nodded.
“And you say it’s because you’re looking for the handwriting of someone trying to scare Albert Einstein?” she asked with a twisted smirk. “Who are you trying to kid? I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”
“It’s the truth,” I said, crossing my heart.
“Truth,” she sighed, looking into her own empty glass. “I could tell you some truths that would curl your fingernails. You wouldn’t believe the things people say on the telephone.”
“I don’t listen in on many phone calls.”
“I do,” she said, looking around for someone to dispute her claim. No one did. The sailors sang and sounded a little better with Charlie Drew’s help, but not a lot better.
“It’s almost five,” I pointed out. “You said you had to be at work at five.”
“Be right back.” Holding up a finger, she eased her way off the bar stool, showing a not uncomely pair of legs under her short skirt. In spite of two-inch heels, she made her way with near dignity into the darkness near the rest rooms. The bartender offered me another Pepsi. I turned it down and listened with the growing audience to “Stardust.” All we needed was Bogart and a bunch of Nazis and we could have half the room sing the French national anthem while the Nazis belted out “Sonny Boy.” When Pauline returned, I had trouble recognizing her. Gone were the heels and the tight dress. Gone was her tightness. Her hair was pinned up and ready for business.
“All set,” she said. “I went back to my locker, changed, and soaked my face in icewater.”
“Miracle.”
“All on the surface,” she confided, taking my arm with a grin. She had a nice grin and a large mouth. “You’re my husband,” she said.
I pulled away. We were almost at the door.
“No,” she explained. “I’m going to tell them you’re my husband. They’ve never seen him. I’d never bring Paul around here. I don’t want anyone to see the Abominable Snowman of Brooklyn. Just follow me.”
We went into the lobby, which was full of people coming in to register, going out for dinner, or waiting for a good time that would probably never show up. I followed Pauline through a door, looking at her in good light for the first time. A little overweight, but not much. Good skin. Nice teeth. Fine legs. Her dark hair was piled high to show her small ears. The face had seen a bit too much but it was a nice face. I didn’t think I could hold up as well to her inspection, but I guessed I did. At the door she turned to look at me and grinned.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” I answered and we went in. I was worried about running into Sudsburry, who might take some time from the desk to have a smoke or a Coke with the behind-the-scenes staff, but it was soon clear that the phone room was far from the lair of the keeper of the registration book.
“A minute.” Sitting me on a folding chair outside of a door marked PHONE CENTER, Pauline came out in about ten seconds. “Adella will cover for me. I’ll be right back.”
Beyond the closed door I could hear Adella’s voice from time to time, a pleasant tinkle of a voice over the buzz-buzz of the phone lines. Pauline was back in no more than five minutes with three ledger-sized books in her hands. She dropped them in my lap. “Couldn’t get the current one,” she apologized.
“Probably won’t need it,” I said. “I’ll take them up to my room, five-fourteen, and bring them down as soon as I can.”
“I’m off at midnight,” she whispered. “I’ll come up and get them.”
She kissed me, Scotch and poppies and something else knowing and warm and sweet. I couldn’t kiss back. My arms were filled with ledgers.
“I can do better,” I said.
“See you at midnight.” She laughed and went into the phone room. Her laugh was raw, deep, wading right through the trough of time. She had to be drunk, but she held it better than the kids at the bar.
I skulked back to my room, turned on the light, threw my jacket on the bed, and dropped the ledgers on the desk in the corner. Pulling the letters to Einstein out of my suitcase, I commenced comparing handwriting. I took a breath to call Gunther back in Los Angeles. Luck was with me. Mrs. Plaut didn’t answer the phone. Joseph P. Hill, the mailman, picked up and told me that Gunther was out. Hill took down the name of the Taft Hotel and promised to pass it along to Gunther. I hung up and made myself comfortable.
While I worked, I listened to the standard white hotel radio, an Arvin. Fred Allen was the guest on the “Quiz Kids.” The kids were a little surprised when the baggy-eyed co
mic with the thin reedy voice beat them to a couple of answers. Their respect and mine increased even further when Allen identified Lorenzo Da Ponte as the librettist of Don Giovanni. I didn’t even know what a librettist was. I was almost at the end of the first ledger, with no match to the handwriting, when “Junior Miss” came on at nine on WABC. I’m a sucker for Shirley Temple. It took me almost an hour to finish that first volume.
I was midway through the second volume, MARCH 15–30, when I spotted the name Alex Albanese. I turned off the radio and realized for the first time that I needed glasses. It was a depressing thought. I squinted at the signature, checked and triple-checked it against the letters. It was possible. I checked again and decided it was certain. Alex Albanese in Room 1324 had written the threatening letters to Albert Einstein. I was buttoning my shirt when a knock came at the door.
“Toby?” It was Pauline’s raspy voice. “You in there?”
I opened the door and she stood, grinning. Her grin dropped when she saw my face.
“You sobered up,” she said. “I understand. Happens.”
“I was never drunk,” I said, holding the door open for her to come in. “I just didn’t realize it was midnight.”
She pushed the door closed behind her with her rear. “Counting the hours and minutes,” she said. “I came for the registration books. Did you get what you want?”
“Not everything,” I said, taking a step toward her.
“You’ve got a way with words,” she said, showing big white teeth. They were great teeth, and with Alex Albanese almost in my pocket a little delay wouldn’t cost me anything.
“There’s a war on. Paul is maybe waiting at home and I’ve got to get these books back,” she said, throwing the big black purse she had been wearing over her shoulder onto the bed. “Let’s get in bed and talk later. What do you say?”
I took off the shirt I had just finished buttoning and made a mental note to see an optometrist when I got back to Los Angeles.
An hour later someone knocked on the door. It was a little after one in the morning. I asked who it was and three bullets came through the polished walnut door and cracked the window.
4
“Abraham Lincoln,” Pauline screamed, looking at the broken window. I figured shock had conjured up the image of Honest Abe hovering over Seventh Avenue. I tried to move her off of me, expecting the guy with the gun to come through the door and improve his aim. Pauline was not easy to roll but I managed, and dived over the foot of the bed, glancing at the door. The lights were out in the room and thin rods of brightness jabbed through the bullet holes. There didn’t seem to be anyone on the other side of the door, but I still fumbled for the .38 in my suitcase and came up with it and some underwear. Throwing the underwear and caution to the wind, I went across the room, unlocked the door, and stepped back against the wall. No one shot at me. I stepped into the hall, looked right and saw nothing, and then looked left and saw a bulky male figure with short white hair about to go through the exit door near the elevator.
“Hold it,” I yelled, leveling my pistol, not sure if he was the shooter or an innocent resident running from the madness that had broken out. He settled my dilemma by wheeling and taking a shot in my general direction that thudded into the already punctured door about a foot over my head. That was better shooting than I could do. I didn’t bother to fire.
The white-haired guy went through the exit door and down or up the stairs. I thought about going after him but two things changed my mind: the broom-thin woman in a nightgown and hair curlers, who stepped out of the room across from mine and screamed, and the realization that she was probably not screaming at the destruction and gunshots but at the fact that she was facing a somewhat scared naked man, carrying a gun. I ducked back in my room, closed the door, and flipped on the light.
Pauline was staring at the broken window. The bullets from Whitey had created what looked like a jagged silhouette of Abraham Lincoln. It was worth calling in to Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not.” I could even imagine a little cartoon drawing of me and Pauline in bed, with the outline of Lincoln over our heads and the words below us reading: “This amazing outline of Abraham Lincoln was formed in the window by bullets fired into the hotel room of Private Detective Toby Peters, as he lay in bed with a hotel switchboard operator.” Since we were in the Taft, it would have been more amazing if the outline had been of William Howard Taft, but who the hell would recognize Taft’s profile? While I pondered these questions, I put on the underpants I had thrown on the floor.
“What does Paul look like?” I asked.
“Paul?” she said blankly, finally turning from the window.
“Your husband. Is he big, white hair?”
“No, he’s … There isn’t any Paul. I just made that up,” she said.
“You made him up?”
“I live with my mother in Queens,” she said, sitting heavily on the bed. Her hair tumbled over her face and down to her over-ample but nicely freckled breasts. “I just go from Queens to Manhattan, Manhattan to Queens, and Louise has dinner ready.”
“Louise is your mother?” I asked, slipping my pants on, with my .38 tucked under my chin.
She nodded.
“Nobody shoots at us in Queens,” she said sadly.
I couldn’t tell whether she was excited or disappointed by the events of the last few hours, but I didn’t have time to find out.
“Time to get dressed, Pauline,” I said gently but urgently as I shifted the pistol to my pocket and put on a shirt. “We’re going to have company in a few minutes and you have to get out of here and get those registration books back.”
“My name isn’t Pauline,” she sighed without moving. “And it’s not Santiago. My name is Mary Louise Caldoni. I made up the name Pauline Santiago.”
“It’s a beautiful name,” I said, buttoning my shirt, “but I haven’t got time for any more confessions. You’ve got to get dressed and out of here or you’re going to lose your job.”
“The police,” she said and then stood up to scream. “The police. Oh my God. The police will be coming here.”
I handed her her dress and urged her into it without a word. Hotels don’t send out for the police until they have to and until they’ve checked to be sure it is absolutely one hundred percent necessary. Having a squad of cops tracking through your hotel is not top-notch promotion. Hotels like to keep things as quiet as possible. I’d worked enough of them to know.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Pauline or Mary Louise finally realized, throwing her hair back and looking around for her stockings and shoes.
I found the stockings but didn’t hand them to her. I shoved them in her purse and grabbed the registers.
“My … Someone shot at us,” she said, standing. “My hair. I have to brush my hair.”
Her hand went up to her hair. I took it down and put the registers under her arm. She was dazed. No one had ever shot at her before. I had no time to explain things to her, explain that the fear would never really go away, the memory would always be ready to come back. But that was only the bad part. There was also the part I was feeling now. The jumpy, crazy realization that I was still alive, that maybe I had come a cold breath from being dead. It was like being reborn and suddenly appreciating things you hadn’t noticed before—the smell of the cool air through the outline of Honest Abe in the window, the feel of the rough carpet under bare feet—which reminded me to put on my shoes.
“You’re going to be fine, Pauline,” I said, ushering her to the door. “Get books back and get home to Louise. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“I told you my name isn’t really Pauline,” she said, stopping, wiping away her falling hair, and looking into my eyes as if great importance were attached to my accepting her sin. “It’s Mary Louise Caldoni.”
“To me you’ll always be Pauline,” I said, opening the bullet-pocked door. No one was in the hall, not the guy with the white hair, not the woman in the curlers, no one.
&
nbsp; “But,” Pauline pleaded, standing in the hall with her black purse dangling over one shoulder, the registers under her other arm and her hair a dark bundled mess, “I’m a Catholic.”
“I figured that out,” I whispered. “Better get going. We don’t want anyone to know you were here.”
“It does look like Abraham Lincoln,” she said. “I’m not crazy or something.”
“Just like Lincoln, right off a new penny. Amazing likeness,” I sighed. “Take the elevator. Get those books back. Go home.”
I stepped out of the doorway, still holding my pistol, gave her a hug, and led her to the elevator. I pressed the button, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and padded back to the door to my room. She looked at me, a damp dishcloth of a confused woman, and then turned as the elevator arrived. The night operator, a pencil of a woman, gave us both a look that made it clear she had seen everything and we were nothing special. Pauline staggered into the elevator and I waited till the door closed before I hopped back into my room and reached for the telephone. It had been a few minutes, maybe two or three, since the white-haired guy had decorated the window.
“Hello,” I said indignantly. “Send someone up to five-fourteen. Get the police. Someone just shot at me through my door.”
I hung up before the person on the other end could ask any questions and then I sat down to wait. I was sure that the hotel already had someone on the way up to see what was going on. The call would simply cover me, in case someone asked. Someone knocked at the door no more than half a minute after I hung up the phone.
“You all right in there?” came a man’s voice, even, calm, not too loud, with a distinct Irish accent.
I crossed the room and opened the door. The man who faced me looked as if he were on the way to a costume party, dressed as the police sergeant from a cheap gangster move. He was about five foot ten, slightly overweight, face like a bulldog, grey hair, and a shaggy brown suit. Two cigars protruded from his vest pocket. Hotels liked to let con men and women pickpockets know that they had a visible pro on duty. The really sharp hotels had a backup pro who didn’t look like a cop. The backup’s job was to catch the ones that didn’t scare away.
Smart Moves Page 4