After cranking up the heat, I ambled over to the windows, slid aside the jumble of drapes that shielded my room from the dull light, and looked out upon the steely late-fall day. It was raining.
In the distance, I could see the cold blue waters of Lake Michigan. Far below me, people rushed like ants, scurrying haphazardly along the street. A sea of tiny round blobs denoted the ants savvy enough to carry umbrellas today as they hustled along their routes to toil, collect food, and build and maintain their ant-farm city.
Beads of water trickled down the outside of the window, some getting stuck partway along, taking a break from their journey before building enough mass to continue their way down, down, down, to the ledge, to the street, to the sewer system, then out to the great gathering grounds of Lake Michigan.
I looked back down to the street far below. An open umbrella tumbled its way along a sidewalk. A yellow taxi rounded a corner. A huddled group of ants crossed the street. An ant ran, chasing after the fleeing umbrella. The cab stopped and an ant got out. Another ant got in. Two ants ran together in an angled jaywalk across the street. Lost newspaper pages went fluttering in the wind. An ant lost his hat. An approaching ant stopped to retrieve and return it. I never had an ant farm as a child, but I had always wanted one. Now I had one. A world of ants, toiling, walking, running, waiting, helping, moving, watching, eating, sleeping.
I observed them, yet I participated in their efforts as well. Really, my life, my world, took place in one big ant farm. Ants came, went, ate, slept, worked, played, lived, and died, all in the giant Lanigan ant farm, just one small section of the thousands that comprised the larger downtown Chicago colony.
A hotel was really just a microcosm of the world. It made me wonder if we humans were being watched, studied, observed by some greater being or beings, just as we did with ants.
The ringing of my M.O.D. phone ripped me away from the thought. I walked over to the nightstand, picked up the phone, and walked back over to the window, looking down again to the street.
“This is Robert,” I answered.
A brave little ant on a bicycle rode past below me.
“Bobeo; it’s Tom. Where are you?”
“Just woke up, boss. What can I do for you?”
“Can you stop by my office as soon as you’re dressed and ready?”
“I can do that. Would you prefer to have lunch though?”
“Oh…well, since you mentioned it, that’s not a bad idea. The Boardwalk?”
“Sounds great. Twelve-thirty work?”
“Mmm…” he pondered, “I guess I can wait that long.”
It was always best to deal with Tom when food was present. It helped keep his mind occupied with something other than things he wanted me to handle.
I hung up the phone, placed it back on the nightstand, and flipped on the local news for some background noise as I got ready for work.
As I shaved, I caught bits and pieces of various sound-bites and segments. There was something about corruption within the city’s transit system, sports highlights (or lowlights if you were a Chicago fan) from the weekend’s game. The quarterback was injured, as usual, and some no-name was filling in, ensuring the demise of the season, and a cold front was currently sweeping in with gusty winds out of the west – nothing new there. Local police were running a new patrol system to cut down on gang activity on the south side, and there was talk of property tax increases and city budget shortfalls.
Pretty much business as usual in the Windy City.
I showered and dressed, selecting a bright orange tie with tiny laughing pumpkins on it that I had purchased specially for the occasion. It was a far as I would go. While I thoroughly enjoyed Halloween fun and festivities, someone in the hotel had to retain at least some semblance of decorum.
Tom on the other hand had taken his costume to a whole new level. Last year, he had entertained the troops by adorning himself with bandages confiscated from several department first-aid kits, playing a not so emaciated mummy. In fact, he looked more like Santa after a bad sleigh ride accident. This year, he’d gone all out and actually rented a pumpkin costume. I guessed it was probably the only outfit he’d found that would actually fit his curvature.
Inside the Boardwalk Café, I spotted him sitting at one side of a square table for four…a big orange blob, half off its chair. A curly green vine sprouted from his head, held in place by a strap that barely stretched beneath Tom’s multiple chins. Thankfully, the restaurant wasn’t too busy today. Most of the gamers must have been sleeping in or still duking it out in their efforts at world domination.
If people wanted a real Halloween fright, just seeing Tom in his costumed-finery eating would have provided them with enough brain-etching images to last a lifetime.
“Great costume,” I said, sitting down at the side of the table to his left.
I’d learned that when able to select my own seat when eating with Tom, it was best to take a spot that didn’t face the full-frontal horror of his culinary sideshow.
He was busy going back and forth between a salad and a bowl of lobster bisque, cramming in wads of leafy greens followed by vast spoonfuls of creamy bisque, half of which ended up seeping through the un-devoured lettuce in his mouth and dribbling down his chin to be absorbed by the cushiony orange bib his costume had become.
I could only imagine the stink of aged lobster bisque the costume shop would encounter when Tom had it returned and the ensuing cleaning bill the hotel would receive.
“Sorry I didn’t wait for you,” he spluttered.
I was immediately glad that I hadn’t sat directly across from him as chunks of lobster and corn spewed from his mouth, flying across the table and splattering on the back of the empty chair opposite him. I felt for the person who would have to clean up the table after his meal.
“You never seem to eat much anyway,” he slobbered, “and I was half starved.”
I didn’t bother to mention why I never ate much with Tom around.
The server approached warily. She stayed close to me and out of range of Tom’s line of fire.
I typically loved lobster bisque, but after watching Tom, I just wasn’t in the mood.
“Roast beef on rye with a side of mayo and a kosher dill. Just water to drink,” I said to the server.
She jotted the order, gave me a nervous smile, and made off quickly before Tom could order anything else. I was sure he probably had a four-course meal coming anyway.
“What’s new with the situation we had up on eleven?” Tom managed to get out between his chomping, gulping, slurping, and gasping for breath.
“The detective’s main suspects are the R & T group VIPs, and they’re still in house,” I said, staring straight ahead.
“Good, good,” Tom nodded. “Still getting revenue from them, that’s the important thing.”
Actually, solving the murder that took place in our hotel was the important thing, I wanted to say, but I let it go.
“I spoke with the detective yesterday,” I went on, “but there’s really not much to report as of yet. I think it’s going to be a tough case to crack.”
Tom looked more concerned with the bits of lobster he was now trying to dig from his costume to pop back into his mouth than with the fact that little progress was being made in regards to the corpse that had been stuffed inside one of our hotel armoires.
I glanced over at him. Around his mouth had grown a light beard of orange fibers that had accompanied the lingering bits of lobster he had picked from the costume.
I looked away again, shaking my head. “What a mess,” I mumbled.
“What’s that?” Tom said absently, still foraging for tasty bits in the orange fuzz.
“I said, what a mess…this whole incident has become,” I lied.
“Oh well,” Tom seemed truly unconcerned now, “it seems to have blown over, and we aren’t getting any bad press or publicity from it, so I think we should move on. Let the professionals handle it.”
He didn’t seem to care that a man had been killed, just so long as there wasn’t any trouble or bad publicity for the hotel. It seemed like the less he cared about it, the more I began to.
“What I wanted to see you about was the employee costume contest today,” Tom said. “Can you judge it? I was supposed to, but I have a meeting with our regional vice president regarding budget updates and our revenue forecast.”
And you’re going like that?! I wanted to yell.
“Yeah, but are you sure you don’t want to do it? I think it would be a ton of fun, and you’re dressed perfectly for it. I can handle the regional VP if you want.”
“No, no. You do the costume contest. You’ve been working hard lately and deserve a little fun.”
I had to admit that for all his faults, Tom could sometimes be a pretty decent guy. At least he tried. I’d worked for general managers before who didn’t give a hoot whether you were on your last leg as long as you were making their job easier.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
My sandwich arrived, and in an effort to be quickly on my way, I ate it almost as fast as Tom consumed his medium-rare sirloin, baked potato, side of fries, and coleslaw. I kept my eyes locked on my food or the restaurant’s buffet area just to avoid seeing anything that might ruin my appetite.
I was done and out of there by 12:50 p.m.
I stopped by the office to say hello to Jay, who was dressed as Julius Caesar, complete with toga, sandals, and laurel wreath.
He was at his arcade games again.
“You going to be able to tear yourself away from those games long enough to come down to the costume contest?” I asked.
“You’d better believe it!” He looked at his watch. “Jeez! It’s almost one!”
“How long you been at this?” I asked.
He frowned, thinking, “Well, I got here a little before eight, got a cup of coffee, checked email for about fifteen minutes, so that would be about quarter after…” he paused, calculating.
“You’ve been here over four hours?” I cried. “Jay, what the heck, man? You’ve got to get rid of these things! They’re going to end up getting you fired!”
“No,” he shook his head, continuing his game, “I just have to get over the initial obsession. Then it’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know,” I wondered aloud. “Come on, let’s get going.”
“I’ll meet you there…right after I finish this game.”
“Yeah, right,” I said disgustedly as I left to prepare for my judging duties.
***
The cafeteria was jam packed. At one end of the room, several of the tables had been moved aside and a small stage erected. Room attendants, sales managers, front desk staff, facilities and catering employees, members of property operations, bellmen, cooks, restaurant servers, and more all crowded together, leaving standing room only.
In some office buildings, the number and variety of uniformed Lanigan staff would have been a costume contest in itself. There was the Iranian cafeteria cook who slightly resembled Chef Boy-ar-dee. There was the German front desk agent whose uniform and hair were both pulled so tight, and her lipstick so red, she looked like she’d just swayed her way out of an 80’s rock video. Then there was the room attendant who could have passed for J-lo had we given her a microphone and put her up on stage.
I got things started by quieting the crowd, thanking everyone for coming, explaining how the costumes would be judged, and assembling the participants in an on-stage lineup.
To make a long story short, the judging of the costumes quickly disintegrated into a good-natured round of heckling, raucous department-centric shouting matches, and rowdy popularity contests that I soon realized would not be settled by one judge alone. Therefore, I left it up to the roars of the crowd to decide which costumes they liked best.
Jay-lius Caesar made it just in time to see a female room attendant dressed as Tom (complete with puffy body-suit), be crowned victorious as Halloween Queen. Our Halloween King was a property operations electrician outfitted as Marylyn Monroe as she appeared in the movie The Seven Year Itch. He came complete with white high-heels, blonde wig, lipstick, and even carried a remote-controlled portable fan with which he could blow his voluminous white dress up around his hips upon command and then feign coyness as he tried to push the billowing material back down. Thankfully, he was wearing Scooby-Doo boxer shorts underneath.
Jay took one look around at the packed house and headed back to the office for more electronic entertainment.
My duties complete, I followed close behind. In fact, I followed so closely that I beat Jay back due to his stopping along the way to speak to a particular sales manager he seemed to be getting rather friendly with lately.
Turns out, he got lucky…and I don’t mean with the sales manager. As I headed for my office, a cape clad, fang-tooth wearing vampire desk agent grabbed me.
Desk agent Dracula looked flustered.
“I have an issue with several guests,” he said, taking out his pointy fangs. “I’m
not quite sure what to do. They’re saying that CPD says they have to stay here and that the hotel should cover the cost of their rooms since it wasn’t their choice to stay.”
“Are they with the R & T group?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
The desk agent nodded. “I pulled up their room history and it says they’re VIPs with the group, but the rest of the group has already checked out.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing really. I just listened to them and told them I’d check with a manager.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”
Actually, I was kind of glad that Jay wasn’t around. It’s not that I particularly enjoyed dealing with these sorts of issues, but I have to admit that I was curious and somewhat intrigued by the possibility of interacting with suspects in a murder case – a potential murderer among them!
When I made it down to the front office, three tall men in suits – one with a gray mustache, one with salt-and-pepper hair, and another with no hair at all – stood glaring at me from the other side of the desk. I’d say they were all in they’re early to mid-50s, nicely dressed, and well-tanned. They looked the part. They looked like company executives. The one with the salt-and-pepper hair, who stood in the center of the three, spoke first.
“I’m Alfred Svetski, president and CEO of R & T Plumbing Supplies. Are you a manager here?”
I could tell he liked hearing himself rattle off his title and took himself seriously.
“Yes, I am. Robert Haze, hotel manager on duty. A pleasure sir,” I said, extending a hand.
Begrudgingly, he shook it.
He nodded toward the bald man next to him on his left, “This is our vice president of operations, Henrick Jaharlsburg,” then he motioned toward the other man on his right, the one with the gray mustache, “and this is Paul Gerhardt, vice president of research and development.”
I wanted to ask him what exactly an R & D guy did with a plumbing supply company. A comment about testing out new toilets quickly came to mind, but I kept my mouth shut.
Mr. Svetski of course started off trying to take the upper hand in the conversation.
“I’ve got a real issue with the way things are being handled here,” he jabbed a finger at me.
Svetski had hard, piercing eyes that drilled into me as he squinched them up into what I took to be his “angry face,” which had already started turning red. I loved seeing people’s angry faces. It was kind of a curiosity of mine, observing people in their various stages of anger. It was interesting to watch their expressions, ticks, twitches, color changes, and other odd little things that happened to them when they were upset. On the other hand, it was sometimes the things they said that I enjoyed most such as, “That really crumbs my cracker…” or “I’m so mad I could spit nails…” or “I’m going to call the Channel 6 news crew to run an investigation of your operation…” and even, “I’ll take you to court�
��”
Really? Did these people actually think that the news crews of Chicago had nothing better to do than investigate the “No Show” charge for a reservation that wasn’t cancelled, or that the courts had nothing else on their dockets than to hear arguments regarding an extra parking charge? Was that the best thing these people had to do with their time and money?
And if they really wanted to spit nails at me, then that was up to them. I just hoped they didn’t sue the hotel for the resulting damages to their mouths.
“How can I be of assistance, sir?” I asked pleasantly.
“Your hotel…”
It always “burned my bridges” (another good one), when people called it “my” hotel. Yes, I worked here, but I was not the owner.
“…is charging us for being held here against our will, and I’m not going to stand for it. Our group brought you tens of thousands of dollars worth of business, and I will not pay to be held captive here. This is ridiculous, and I demand that the charges for our extended stay be covered by the Lanigan Hotel.”
I could see little bits of white frothy stuff start to build at the corners of his mouth as he spoke. It was hard not to stare.
“As you can see, I’ve brought witnesses,” he said, nodding to either side of him, “should I have to dispute the charges or take any sort of legal action.”
Oh boy, here we go, I thought.
I never understood why some people couldn’t at least start off disputing charges in an affable or at least a reasonable way. It made me want to help them so much more when they did. However, starting off the way Mr. Svetski did only made me want to make his life more difficult.
“Please give me a moment to pull up your rooms in our system,” I said.
I made sure it was an extra long moment so that I could observe Mr. Svetski and his cohorts huffing and puffing.
As they stood there, they would mutter little comments back and forth to one another under their breath.
“This is ridiculous!”
“I’m calling the sales manager about this!”
“I’m reconsidering ever staying here again.”
The Case of the Guest Who Stayed Over (The M.O.D. Files Book 1) Page 15