THE BUTLER

by Bill WENHAM

  In the lobby he went up to the desk, asked for the key and paid for it from a wad of cash, a big wad of cash. The desk clerk was so busy eying the roll of bills that he didn’t pay any attention to the face of the man holding it.

  He asked for and received a receipt and told the desk clerk he didn’t have a credit card for an imprint for possible phone calls and other charges. Put this with the bill copy he said, and take it out of that if there are any charges. He peeled off a hundred dollar bill and handed it to the clerk.

  The whole transaction had taken no more than three minutes and had been conducted in a thick, heavy German accent.

  Raphael Cervantes put the key in his pocket and returned to the same casino washroom. The washroom was empty when he went in so he immediately dropped the ball cap into the waste bin. Then he went into the stall, put the moustache and wig back on and left immediately. No one else had come in while he’d been inside.

  He sauntered by the Craps table where Emilio was now playing and appeared to accidentally bump into him. In that moment the room key was transferred from one to the other. Raphael apologized and moved on.

  During the night, one of the hotel’s housekeeping maids made the fatal mistake of responding to a call from the top floor. The guest had requested two additional pillows.

  When she got off the elevator, she saw a tall man standing in the open doorway of his room. It was 3.35 in the morning. He gave her a casual wave to indicate it was to his call she was responding. She hurried forward with the pillows.

  A moment later she’d been dragged inside and laid on the bed, but she was already dead by then with her head twisted at an odd and unusual angle.

  Emilio Cervantes removed the maid’s master key from her pocket. He waited about half an hour and then the phone rang. It was housekeeping enquiring if he’d received the extra pillows that he had asked for. Yes, he had, he’d replied very irritably, and he had been trying to sleep on them, so please don’t make any more of these damned fool calls at this time of night. He hung up in the middle of the flustered caller’s apology.

  As soon as he’d hung up the phone he slung the maid’s body over his shoulder and opened the room door. He’d already checked that he’d left no evidence of his stay. He’d worn surgical gloves for the whole time.

  With the maid’s key in his hand, he carried her the short distance down the end of the corridor and opened the door leading to the roof. It was a good job the girl was young and slim, he thought as he carried her body up the stairs.

  He opened the roof door and made his way carefully past the rooftop air conditioning fans to the parapet at the edge of the roof. There he set the girl’s body down and leaned it against the parapet wall. Then he quickly went back over to the door and propped it open with a discarded piece of lumber lying by the door. It had obviously been used for that purpose before.

  He hurried back over to where the girl’s body was and grasping the girl’s ankles, he upended her over the parapet. A moment later she’d crashed to the sidewalk below and he was on his way back down the stairs to his original room, four floors further down. He didn’t want to risk using the elevator. When he reached his own floor he made a point of buying a can of pop from the machine there. If someone saw him now, he had an excuse for being in the hallway. He walked unhurriedly to his room and let himself in.

  As soon as he was back inside, he removed the surgical gloves, pulled the fingers off of them one by one, and flushed them down the toilet. A few minutes later he heard the wail of sirens from the street below.

  The Butler smiled to himself. His mission had been easily accomplished. He knew that Spicer and the Todd woman were in this hotel and now, thanks to the maid’s master key, he had the means to access their room to plant a bug in it.

  Then with no remorse whatsoever, he got himself ready for bed and slept soundly for the rest of the night. He knew there would be a police investigation, naturally, but just as naturally, he also knew both his and his brother’s false ID was absolutely foolproof.

  Early the next morning, the hotel was in an uproar, with the local police swarming all over it. All of the registered guests had been asked to make themselves available to be interviewed by the police.

  Apparently one of the hotel maids had either committed suicide or had been murdered in the early hours of the morning, having either jumped or had been pushed, off the roof of the hotel.

  I didn’t envy the local cops their job. The guest interviews were a bit ridiculous, I thought, since many of the people in the casino and who also had unrestricted access to the hotel, were not necessarily guests. They could easily be from any of the hotels or from none of them. They would need to interview everyone on the whole casino strip, for God’s sake and they still wouldn’t be any further ahead.

  Ellie and I could’ve told them who they were looking for but we didn’t. This was our game, as the Chief had pointed out to us and we didn’t want any other cops muddying the waters for us. One of the cops confided to me it could have been a suicide but they couldn’t be sure. Damned right they couldn’t, I thought.

  We’d told them who we were, cops from up North. On our honeymoon, Ellie had added shyly. I asked if it would be okay if we left because we had a lot of traveling to do, and the cop in charge said it would be no problem. Have to look after our own and all that, he’d said, nudging me in the ribs and winking.

  I walked away thinking, why kill a maid? I asked Ellie what she thought. Without a moment’s hesitation, she said, “For her master key, Lover, what else? There are a lot of rich people in some of these rooms, I’ll bet. Not us, unfortunately, but I bet some of the other guests are loaded.”

  I pondered on what she’d said as we took the elevator back up to our room.

  After he saw Spicer and his woman being interviewed by the police, the Butler hurried out to the hotel lobby. He went straight up to one of the clerks at the front desk.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, I certainly hope so,” the Butler said, “I was talking to Mr. and Mrs. Spicer earlier and now I can’t find them.”

  “And how can I help you with that, sir?” she said, trying to hide the sarcasm in her voice. Did this idiot expect her to leave her position and go looking for them, for God’s sake?

  “Oh, yes, of course, how stupid of me. They invited my friend and me up to their room later for drinks and to watch the game,” he said.

  “Yes?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

  “Mr. Spicer told me his room number but with all this police nonsense going on this morning, I promptly forgot it. I’m the same with names too. I will be forgetting my own one of these days, I expect,” the Butler said pleasantly.

  “Are you registered in the hotel yourself, sir?” she asked him coolly.

  “Oh, yes, yes, of course. My friend and I both are. Phelps and MacDonald. I’m John Phelps,” he said.

  The woman typed something on to her computer keyboard.

  “Ah, yes, there you are, and Mr. and Mrs. Spicer are in room 217, sir.”

  The Butler placed a twenty dollar bill on the counter in front of her.

  “Thank you so much…” he peered at her name tag, “Marissa. You’ve been most helpful,” the Butler gushed.

  The woman reluctantly pushed the bill back at him.

  “We’re not allowed to accept gratuities, sir, but thank you. I hope you and your friends have a nice evening and that your team wins,” she said, much more warmly now. The woman smiled at him and he turned away, leaving the twenty on the counter in front of her, and headed for the elevators.

  He actually didn’t have a clue whether there was a game on or not, but wasn’t there always a game on somewhere? He liked the way the woman had hoped his team would win too. Of course it would. His team always won.

  It took him no more than five minutes to place the listening bug in Spicer’s room.

  This was just like a tennis match. The score in this set had just changed. It w
as now advantage Butler!

  Chapter Twenty Two

  I’d been thinking about what Ellie had said and when we got to the room, I had an idea. We went inside and I tapped her on the shoulder. When she turned towards me, smiling and expecting to be kissed, I put my finger to my lips.

  She looked puzzled but nodded as I went over to the night table and took out a thin pad of hotel notepaper and a pen and picked up the TV remote as well. I beckoned her to follow me and led her into the bathroom.

  She looked even more puzzled.

  I put the pad down on the vanity top and wrote on it. The message said, ‘Talk to me normally. Make small talk. Lots of it. I think the room may be bugged.’

  She nodded again, understanding now, and started to prattle on about how much fun she’d had in the casino. I grinned at her and gave her a thumb’s up sign. I wrote again on the pad as she looked over my shoulder, still talking, this time about the wonderful buffet and how she would have to watch her figure. I told her not to worry about that because I’d be quite happy enough to watch it for her.

  My message on the pad said, ‘Did you get a make on either of them?”

  I made a couple more smart remarks as she took the pen from me and wrote, ‘Blonde guy, brush cut, small moustache. You?’

  I nodded and took back the pen and picked up the remote from where I had put it on the vanity.

  ‘Ask me to turn on the TV.’ I wrote.

  “Put the TV on, will you, Lover, so we can catch the news. I want to see if there’s anything about that poor girl on it,” she said.

  I pointed the remote at the TV from the bathroom and the bedroom filled with sound. Ellie took it from me and tuned the TV to the news.

  I wrote on the pad again, ‘Guy with long black hair, pony tail, droopy moustache, Lennon glasses?’ and handed her the pen.

  ‘Same for me. Both of them,” she wrote.

  ‘Got them made, Babe,’ I wrote and hugged her. Her grin after I wrote that was even more radiant than usual.

  I tore all the pages of the pad, including the backing cardboard, into tiny pieces. I didn’t want anything left that could show writing indentations on it. Then I flushed the whole thing down the toilet. After checking everything had flushed, I returned to the bedroom and we resumed speaking normally, commenting the news items.

  Suddenly, I had another idea, a good one this time for a change. I regretted flushing all of the rest of the notepad down the toilet, since I still had something more to tell Ellie.

  Once again, with my finger to my lips, I indicated for her not to say anything for a moment. I went over to her and leaning really close, I whispered in her ear.

  “Go along with what I’m saying and doing, okay, Babe?”

  She nodded and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. I backed away from her and returned to the bathroom. I ran the water in the sink for a moment as though I was washing my hands and yelled out to her, “Hey, Babe, you fancy a walk? Check out some of the other casinos. Maybe the two creeps are in one of those.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Right now?”

  “Well, no. I thought we’d go after we’d had lunch, if that’s okay with you?”

  “Good Lord, Lover, don’t you ever think of anything else but your stomach?” she said.

  “You know I do, if you want to make some time for that as well,” I said.

  “Oh, go take a cold shower, pal. We’re going out walking, okay?”

  “After we’ve eaten though, right?” I said.

  Ellie grinned at me as she heaved an exasperated sigh.

  “Fine, Hon, whatever you want to do,” she said.

  “Does that include…?” I started to say, grinning back at her.

  “No, it doesn’t, buster, so move your ass if you want to eat before we go out,” she said, blowing me a kiss. ‘Later’, she mouthed.

  She looked questioningly at me as I put our suitcases on the bed. I mouthed at her, “We’re checking out. Be busy.”

  She nodded, catching on immediately.

  “You’d better have a shower first anyway,” she said. “I’m not going out with you looking like that.”

  The sound of the running water and the TV should cover up any noise we made packing.

  “Don’t be too long. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m getting hungry too now,” she said. “What going on?” she whispered.

  “Tell you later, Hon, but pack as fast as you can. We’re out of here,” I whispered back.

  Ellie and I packed quickly and carried our own bags down to the lobby. I looked around hastily but saw no sign of the brothers. Although I’d turned off the water, I’d left the TV on, as though we were still in the room.

  Once we’d spotted the Butler and his brother in the casino, it was a relatively simple matter to find out their registered names and which rooms they were in. We only needed one of them anyway, preferably the Butler’s but it really didn’t matter which one it was. All we needed was to be able to contact them.

  We found out they were registered as John Phelps and Andrew MacDonald, but we didn’t know which one was which.

  We had finally come to the conclusion the only way the Butler could be keeping track of our comings and going was by some kind of tracking device on the new Jeep. Somehow, he must’ve been able to install it before we’d picked it up at the dealership. It obviously wasn’t a listening device and we felt fairly confident about talking to each other in the Jeep.

  Now we believed it was there on the vehicle somewhere, it was up to us to use that knowledge to our best advantage.

  We hurried out to the Jeep, started it up and took a leisurely drive over to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where we checked into a small but clean looking hotel there.

  Once we were settled in, I called the hotel in Biloxi. Choosing one of them, I asked if Mr. MacDonald was still registered and was advised he was. I asked if I could leave him a message since we needed to meet up with him. I was assured I could. The message I left was:

  ‘Round two to me as well, I believe, Butler. We’re in Baton Rouge. Where the hell are you?”

  I didn’t need to say who it was from. I had a feeling the Butler would be able to guess that quite easily!

  Ellie giggled as I hung up the phone.

  We’d turned the tables on him very nicely. The hunters were now the hunted for the time being. The Butler wouldn’t be at all pleased with this turn of events though, I thought.

  The only way to stay ahead of him and to eventually win this game was to goad the Butler into making a move before he was ready to do it. That way he might make a fatal mistake. Our own lives ultimately depended on it!

  “What do you mean, they’re gone!” the Butler screamed at his brother. Raphael had just listened to the message on his room phone, and had just called his brother to tell him about it.

  “They can’t be gone. Why would they just leave like that? That doesn’t make any sense at all,” the Butler yelled into the phone.

  “Calm down, Emilio. They’re gone and I’ve no idea why,” his brother said.

  “Don’t you dare tell me to calm down,” the Butler screamed at him.

  “Call me back when you’re in a better frame of mind. I don’t need this kind of crap from you,” Raphael said and abruptly hung up on him.

  As expected, Raphael’s phone rang a few minutes later.

  “Yes?” he said coolly.

  “Sorry, Bro. I was badly out of line there,” the Butler said contritely.

  “You most certainly were but your apology is accepted,” his brother told him. “Now, without any more crap, what are we going to do about it?”

  There was a silence on the line for a couple of seconds and then the Butler spoke.

  “If they’re no longer here, then we have no further need to act with caution here. I’ll see you in the casino bar in five minutes. Be there.”

  At his end of the line, Raphael Cervantes scowled. His brother just had to have the last word. To prove he was running things, didn’t
he? Oh, what the hell, Raphael thought. It was Emilio’s vendetta. Let him run however he saw fit. He just hoped his brother wouldn’t get him killed in the process.

  Raphael was about to leave his room when the phone rang again. It was Emilio.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “How far do you reckon Baton Rouge is from here?’

  “Couple of hundred miles, I’d think, at a rough guess, why?”

  “Then let’s get out of here. Pack now. Downstairs in ten minutes. Move it!” his brother snapped and hung up again.

  Raphael shrugged. Someone else was going to die as a result of today’s happenings. Two losses like this wouldn’t sit at all well with his brother. So far it was good guys two and bad guys zero.

  After they’d checked out, Raphael said he’d drive. He couldn’t trust his homicidally furious brother behind a wheel. Road rage would only be a tiny part of it!

  It would be a long and very dangerous couple of hundred miles, even with himself driving, Raphael thought. The only saving grace was that they’d be able to locate Spicer very easily when they got there.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  “FIRE!”

  Probably the one thing anyone would not want when awakening from a dream about fire and opening their eyes, would be to discover that it wasn’t a dream at all but reality!

  That’s the way it was for me.

  As I became conscious, I was already choking, and the room was filling with smoke. Perhaps the smoke had triggered my subconscious mind to manufacture the dream.

  Somewhere outside, I could hear someone yelling ‘Fire’ and the alarm bells were clanging in the hotel. Ellie was asleep beside me but she started to cough as she awoke.

  I leapt out of the bed, raced around the other side of it and dragged Ellie roughly out. As soon as she was aware of the smoke, she immediately realized the danger.

  As a matter of course now, and not knowing what might be awaiting us outside our door, we both snatched up our guns from the night tables. Ellie grabbed her handbag and thrust her gun into it. I grabbed my wallet and the Jeep’s keys and we both headed for the door.