The owner’s suite had remained empty – and in rather horrendous condition – for decades until I mentioned the idea of rehabilitating it to Tom. My theory was that a certain M.O.D. (ahem) could reside there, since said M.O.D. already lived on the premises. Tom however, seeing the opportunity to rid himself of a mortgage as he neared retirement age and ditch hefty Chicago real estate taxes, jumped at the chance to take the space for himself. I wasn’t one to complain though. My own little suite on the 23rd floor, one of two hotel Honors VIP levels, was more than sufficient. And with free rent, the price was certainly right.
Just to be polite, I called Tom again on my way up to let him know I was coming. Of course he didn’t answer his phone, but I was sure he was there. Tom rarely left the hotel anymore, often choosing to seclude himself in one of his two little hideaways from the world, his rooftop suite or his office.
Exiting the elevator, I made my way down a short, brightly-lit hallway that ended before a single door. I rang the buzzer and waited.
Several seconds later, I could hear rustling behind the door and then a garbled voice call, “Who is it?”
It was Tom, and I could tell that he was eating, which wasn’t unusual for our hotel’s figurehead.
“It’s me, Tom!” I called. “Robert!”
“Bobby my boy!” he cried, swinging the door open, a dripping Italian beef sandwich sagging in his hand.
It was a rare occasion when Tom referred to me by my given name. And I knew it was serious when he did. Most of the time it was ‘Bob’, ‘Robbie’, ‘Bobby’, ‘Roberto’, ‘Bobert’, ‘Hobby-Bobby’, ‘Umberto’, or some variation thereof. The odd nicknames had taken me a while to adjust too, but now I expected them.
Last year, Tom had offered to have me replace him in the Lanigan’s top spot, but I had respectfully declined the position, preferring to allow the old duck to remain at the hotel and reap its many benefits – free rent, free utilities, free food, free laundry service, free transportation, and a company credit card and expense account. I pretty much ran the place anyway. And old Tom loved it at the hotel. Tom was always happy to see me since he knew that even if I was the bearer of troubling news, I’d be the one to rectify the situation anyway. Other department managers often expected solutions from Tom. But poor Tom hated having issues dumped upon him and often buckled under the pressure, so I did my best to deflect any problems away from him whenever possible. A murder on the premises though was something I couldn’t quite sweep under the carpet.
Tom took one look at me and his shoulders began to sag while his face grew red. He could tell just by looking at me that something was wrong.
He put the back of his non-sandwich-holding hand to his forehead. “Oh no…what is it Bobby?” he sucked wind and took a wobbly step back.
“Come on, Tom” I took hold of the portly fellow’s arm and guided him over to a nearby sofa where he could sit. Tom loved food, and over the past few years, he had packed on the pounds with delicious Chicago eating, and plenty of it. Now he was about as wide as he was tall. I plopped him down on the sofa so I could relay the bad news.
“It appears there’s been a murder,” I explained.
He took a large bit of his sandwich from which a few hot peppers, chunks of juicy beef, and a glob of melted mozzarella slid out its back end and plopped onto the floor.
“Have the police been called?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yes,” I nodded. “Detective Marino is handling the case.”
“That’s the one from last time?” Tom frowned.
“It is,” I confirmed.
“You informed Steve?”
“Yes…he’s happy to let the CPD handle it.”
“Good,” Tom nodded. “Good. That’s the way it should be. Yes, let the police department handle it.” He took another bite. His face still worried, he said, “Who’s working with them?”
“I am,” I nodded.
Tom suddenly looked as though a two-ton boulder had been lifted from his shoulders. “Ah…” he breathed, “…good. You’ll get them everything they need?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. I didn’t want him worrying about this. His poor pudgy body had other concerns, like trying to digest the wad of fat he was currently ingesting. Therefore, I attempted to lighten the mood. “But we have bigger issues,” I told him.
I watched Tom’s face as it went from a look of placated panic to one of sheer terror. “Bigger issues than murder!” he cried, having to double-clutch his sandwich as he nearly lost hold of it.
“Yes,” I nodded gravely. “We have to ensure that you’re ready for tomorrow,” I told him.
He eyed me, confused.
“The Christmas party,” I reminded him.
“Oh yes,” he sighed, taking another monstrous bite of his sandwich in relief. “I almost forgot about the Christmas party,” he mumbled around the bite.
“You have your suit ready?”
“Just got it back from the cleaners yesterday,” he beamed, glad to be rid of the topic of murder that had dampened his Christmas cheer for almost an entire sixty seconds.
“Good,” I nodded. “You know the drill?”
“Been doing it for more years than I can count. I ought to have it down by now,” he chortled heartily, taking another bite and then washing it down with several humongous gulps from a giant soda sitting on the coffee table before him.
“Alright then, I’ll leave you to it,” I smiled, standing to leave Tom to work on inhaling the rest of his sandwich.
“Mmmkay…” Tom mumbled over another mouthful while he continued to chomp noisily as I departed.
How Tom had managed to stay the general manager of a major downtown Chicago hotel all these years continued to elude me, but he was our GM, and we loved him.
* * *
Later that night, Detective Marino called to fill me in on our dead guest’s name as well as to request his room be “locked out,” a process in which all access to the room was restricted to a single key that would remain in the police department’s possession.
At my office desk, I pulled up the guest’s room in our computer system. The detective had told me that our murder victim was a 29-year-old male named Derrick Statler. I could see from the information we had in the system that he hailed from nearby Merrillville, Indiana and had booked his room for a total of two nights.
“Twenty-nine,” I mumbled to myself, shaking my head sadly. “So young.”
CHAPTER THREE
To: [email protected]
Subject: 12/24 MOD Report
THE LANIGAN HOTEL
CHICAGO, IL
MANAGER ON DUTY REPORT
Saturday, December 24th
Weather: 29/21 Snow
Occupancy: 32%
Arrivals: 343
Departures: 72
Event Resume:
Blue Velvet Room (12 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.) – CNA Consulting luncheon
6th Floor Meeting Rooms – Oak, Elm, Sycamore – (4 p.m. – 8 p.m.) - Dept. pre-event parties (Housekeeping, Property Operations, Sales and Marketing)
Carlisle’s Whiskey Lounge (6 p.m. – 2 a.m.)
Lake Ballroom (6 p.m. – 8 p.m.) – Live jazz for Lanigan holiday party
Grand Ballroom (8 p.m. - midnight) - Lanigan Hotel all-staff holiday party
Notes:
* The entire 21st floor will be placed out of order for deep cleaning and a quarterly maintenance check.
**All non-scheduled staff: Please enjoy the annual Lanigan holiday party! **
***All department managers: Please remind employees not to burden the front desk staff with requests for rooms in addition to the one they have been allotted for the holiday party.***
***
The Lanigan Hotel’s annual holiday celebration was an event not to be missed. Anyone who wasn’t scheduled to work, and typically a good number of those who were, enjoyed letting loose for a few hours. It was one of several times throughout the year when employees were allowed to stay i
n the hotel overnight. Those few wild hours celebrating with co-workers in the Grand Ballroom were just the beginning. The rollicking times that ensued would ultimately move upstairs to multiple blazing-hot after-parties in employee rooms and that typically took several calls to security to extinguish.
I personally tended not to partake in the raucous events that the holiday party brought with it. Someone had to remain sober to handle any incidents of which there were usually a few. Plus, watching the chaos unfold among the usually tame hotel staff was often far more entertaining than any amount of alcohol I could consume or dancing I could do.
With my regular date for the event already scheduled, I was able to take a little extra time in my preparations for the evening. I donned my formal tuxedo and then headed down to the Polynesian Restaurant located on the Lanigan’s first sub-street level – or “1B” for short – to pick up provisions for the evening’s entertainment.
The Polynesian had opened at the Lanigan in 1948. It offered tantalizingly tasty island fare and was famous for its tiki bar and dinner show that included dancing hula girls and fire twirlers on Friday and Saturday nights.
Having called my order down in advance, it was ready and waiting when I arrived at eight. The holiday bash also started at eight, but things never really got rolling until closer to nine. In my to-go bag, there was an order of popcorn shrimp with a Hawaiian dipping sauce, scallops with a honey teriyaki glaze, and fried calamari along with several Mai Tai travelers. The drinks were mostly for my date, not me, although I was known to sneak a sip or two occasionally just for taste.
I then rode the elevator up to the fourth floor where the party was being hosted in our magnificent Grand Ballroom. Rather than coming in through the main entrance where arriving guests were formally announced by name as though they were meeting royalty, I snuck around to the ballroom’s rear employee entrance. There, I made my way up a flight of stairs to a balcony that overlooked the stage and gave me a full view of the entire ballroom below.
My date was already there waiting, a half-finished bucket of beer sitting on the floor beside him.
“You finally made it,” Jason Altman, our director of the front desk and my best friend inside the hotel or out, greeted me as I set our bag of treats down on a small table that sat between several chairs Jay had hauled up for us. He was also tuxedo clad. “Fashionably late?” he asked.
I adjusted my bow tie and sat. “No…just late. But I come bearing gifts, so I hope that helps.”
“Oooh,” he perked up, eyeing the containers as I dug them one-by-one from the to-go bag and set them on the table. “Smells awesome!”
I gave him the rundown of what lay in wait inside the containers as I handed him a Mai Tai.
Jay and I had made this our holiday party tradition for the second consecutive year. We found our box seats the perfect spot for observing all the rigmarole and hub-bub below while staying safely out of the fray. I’d gotten a black eye trying to break up a fight between several room attendants at my first holiday party shortly after I’d started working at the hotel, and that’d been enough for me. Since then, I’d learn to defer my party participation until after the celebration had moved upstairs and I was forced to get involved to protect our guests from unruly or overly-boisterous staff members as well as our staff members from themselves.
Sitting high in our balcony-box perch, safe from the madcap goings-on, I felt like Statler and Waldorf – the two grizzled old timers on The Muppet Show – watching, commenting, and laughing at the scenes, sights, and sounds below.
Right now, the music was tuned to a holiday medley being soothingly piped through the ballroom’s speakers as employees continued to arrive and pick at hors d’oeuvres laid out on a massive multi-table buffet-style spread. But I knew this restrained inhibition wouldn’t last long.
I looked at my watch. It was 8:57 p.m.
“Three minutes and counting,” I told Jay as the rumble of voices below us started to build and more people began to pack the ballroom.
“Awwww yeaaaah,” Jay drawled, rubbing his hands together. “It’s about to get good.”
“Yup,” I nodded, sneaking a sip of Mai Tai and then popping a sauce-laden shrimp into my mouth.
By the time I was done chewing, things had started with a bang. As the lights went down, a blast of mega-sized party poppers sent streamers and snowflake-shaped confetti blasting out across the stage and dance floor where party-goers were gathered. Across the stage from us, Santa Claus descended from the sky in his sleigh, spotlights scanning the ballroom’s ceiling around him as though searching for bombers in the sky over London. Santa was of course played by Tom, our costume-festooned general manager who had somehow managed to squeeze into his Santa suit for the umpteenth year.
“One year those cables are going to snap and Tom’s going to come down, sleigh and all,” Jay muttered over a mouthful of calamari.
“He’d wipe out half the crowd in the process,” I nodded.
From above, Santa Tom threw handfuls of dollar bills and lottery tickets from a big bag in his sleigh. The crowd beneath screamed and shouted and scrambled for the cash.
Tom loved playing this roll each holiday season. It was probably the highlight of his year. Who could deny that free cash was a great employee morale booster?
With the crowd’s pockets padded with some free green, Tom and his sleigh were carefully lowered to the stage where he was pried from within and then guided to the buffet tables by several members of security.
Then the music started.
Bombastic bass came blasting through the speakers, and it was on.
I looked out across the dance floor awash in elegant evening gowns, gleaming sequined dresses, high heels, suits, ties, and in many instances, canes, top hats of various sizes and colors, and a mixture of other evening attire that did nothing to stand in the way of the Lanigan employees busting out their best moves on the dance floor. Young, old, big, small, new to the hotel or fixtures for forty years, it was all good tonight.
We continued to sit in our balcony booth where we could observe, eat, drink, and comment upon the events of the evening as they unfolded. We saw Marvin Garish, the head bartender at Carlisle’s Whiskey Lounge arrive with an apparent new boyfriend in tow. Then we noticed Linda Evans, a multi-decade employee of the hotel whose knowledge regarding the history of the Lanigan had helped solve our last hotel murder. She wiggled her rear in an eye-shatteringly tight, blue-sequined gown out on the dance floor. Both the dress and moves took decades off her retirement-age body.
We tried to pick out couples among other employees as they danced. The holiday party was where secret lovers around the hotel often sprung their relationships upon the world, sometimes with disastrous and unintended results. Banquet and facilities department employees were seen bumping and grinding with front desk agents. Property operations staff was seen with members of the sales department. Room attendants rubbed elbows with security guards. And of course there was the constant swapping of inter-department couples that never ceased to amaze me from one year to the next. Sometimes the cycle moved so fast that a couple we’d observed last year might have had several interim intra-hotel romances before re-coupling for this year’s party.
Most of the time, disputes of the heart were settled amicably, or at least without punches being thrown, but not always. And one never knew if it would be the men or the women who would be throwing down when it came to blows. Some of housekeeping’s female room attendants were just as dangerous – or more so – than their male lovers, although by the short skirts, high heels, and shapely bodies that were toned and honed from hours spent in rigorous room-cleaning workout routines five days a week, one would never have guessed it.
Kristen Sparks, the front desk evening supervisor and close friend, arrived just after ten, once she’d finished her shift. We had worked third shift together for a time last year, and while we got along like two peas in a pod, there’d never been anything physical between us. It wasn’
t that I didn’t find Kristen physically attractive. In fact, she was a knockout looking gal with brains to boot. But a sizeable age gap, paired with our positions in the hotel hierarchy, made anything more than a good friendship somewhat inappropriate. Plus, Kristen had just ended a nearly year-long relationship with Tommy Philstein, our hotel currier, and in her own words, she was “ready for a break.”
“Hello,” she bounced perkily onto the balcony, settling into a spare chair I’d brought up for her. “So what have I missed so far?”
“Too much to tell. Lot’s of new couples out there,” I mouthed over a teriyaki-glazed scallop. “Help yourself,” I motioned to the remnants of the food that were laid out on our small table and that Jay and I had already pretty well decimated.
“Oooh, treats!” Kristen’s eyes lit up, her shock of blonde ponytailed hair dancing behind her as she grabbed a small plate and loaded it with goodies.
“Here,” I handed her a Mai Tai.
“Service with a smile. Thanks,” she added, giving me a wink.
“My pleasure,” I beamed. “Happy to serve.”
“I feel so under dressed sitting here with you two gentlemen all done up.”
“Don’t,” I placated her concerns. “No one sees us up here anyway. We’re like the two guys in…”
“Ooo! Ooo!” Kristen interrupted, pointing down at the dance floor. “Something’s going on!”
We turned our attention back to the ballroom happenings. Below us, we could see a small crowd gathered around Marv and his new beau who had moments before been bumping and grinding down on the dance floor. From what I could gather, it appeared that one of the front desk agents had tried to cut in on their grooving, and while the new boyfriend or gentleman escort or whatever he was, had apparently been receptive to the idea, Marv definitely was not.
The Case of the Linen Pressed Guest (The M.O.D. Files Book 2) Page 3