Slow Burn

by G. M. Ford

  “What about the women?”

  “Mr. Tolliver tends to hold the eye.”

  She had a point.

  “What about in the theater itself?”

  “Perhaps you haven’t been in a while, Mr. Waterman, but it’s rather dark at the movies these days.”

  “I need to see the tape.”

  “What tape?”

  “The hotel surveillance tape.”

  “I just told you, the tape conforms to the deposed departure and arrival times. We made a copy and spliced together a sequential record of the comings and goings. The times are right there on the videotape. I have a copy in my office, if you’d like—”

  “No. I want to see the other part of the tape.”

  “What other part of the tape?”

  “The part where nobody is coming and going.”

  “You want to look at film of an empty hallway?”

  “I’m easily amused.”

  “Not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we returned the original film canister to the hotel.” She read my expression. “It was enormous.” She held her arms in a giant hoop over her head.

  “I sure hope they haven’t recorded over it yet.”

  “Why would that matter?”

  I told her what I thought. Halfway through, she reached over on the table in front of her and began to leaf through a document.

  “Did George remember to tell you that?”

  She pointed at the papers in her hand. “Yes, right here.”

  “Don’t you see, Lawrence? It’s like the Sherlock Holmes thing when he figures it out because the dog didn’t bark, only here the dog is an elevator button.”

  “Assuming that Mr. Paris has his facts straight.”

  “I’m betting he does.”

  “And this entire elevator button theory of yours hangs on Mr. Paris’s word.”

  “So far,” I admitted.

  She was shaking her head. “I’m a lawyer, Waterman. I look at things like a lawyer. You tell me that this whole scenario hinges on Mr. Paris, and I begin to picture Mr. Paris on the witness stand, and I can tell you right now, it’s not a pretty sight.”

  “He looks pretty good when he’s cleaned up,” I said.

  “He has a drinking problem.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” I said. “As a matter of fact, what he has is a stopping problem. He drinks; he gets drunk; he falls down. It’s no problem to him.”

  “That’s an old joke and it’s not funny.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be. You can’t operate when you’re drunk because it’s a state of consciousness you’re not accustomed to. Everything seems out of whack. For them it’s exactly the opposite. Drunk is what they do best. It’s what they’re used to. It’s being sober that they can’t handle.”

  “Was Mr. Paris drinking at the time?”

  “Yes,” I said. “If he can help it, Mr. Paris is always drinking.”

  She shrugged. “It’s the law, Mr. Waterman. Impaired witnesses have no standing in court. Witnesses who merely have a history of habitual impairment have been excluded. None of these people of yours are credible witnesses. If I’d had any idea who these so-called operatives of yours were, I never would have expended the police manpower to bring them in.”

  “Let’s go look at the tape.”

  She scooped her stuff into a disorderly pile. “Get out, Waterman. I’ll cut you some slack for effort. Be glad I don’t lock your butt up with the rest of them.”

  “What about my crew?”

  “Mr. Paris is already back on the street.”

  “And the rest of them? I thought we had a deal.”

  “The deal was that you give me something I can use. You gave me nothing. All you did, assuming Mr. Paris is telling the truth and that his information is accurate, is give me more questions than I started with. Get out, Waterman, before I change my mind.”

  “Don’t you want to hear the rest of what I know?”

  “What you and the rest of that ragged assemblage know, Mr. Waterman, is of absolutely no interest to me.”

  I smiled inwardly. I’d done my end. I’d given her the key, but she refused to use it. I felt like Pontius Pilate. If I’d had a basin, I’d have washed my hands before leaving.

  “Come on, Marty, don’t be an asshole. If the tape was so goddamn important, they wouldn’t have given it back to you guys.”

  “Nice talk, Leo. Are you always this charming when you want something?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Your carte blanche status is a thing of the past around here, Leo. I got brand-new orders about you. Straight from the top. You’ve gone from the preferred list to the suspect list. From the penthouse to the outhouse. Just like I knew you would.”

  “I’m not a suspect, Marty.”

  “Then ask the cops to see their copy.”

  “I don’t want to see the part the cops have.”

  “You’re not well, you know that?”

  “Can you wind up the tape to a specific minute?”

  “Sure. But I’m not going to.” He looked at his watch. “It’s six-fifteen, Leo. I’m having one of the worst weeks of my life. I’ve been here since six this morning. I had better hours at the precinct and the bennies were better. I’m out of here.”

  “Come on, man. With a little luck, maybe I can get this whole thing out of your hair once and for all. Maybe get you a few strokes from the suits while we’re at it.”

  Marty took a deep breath. “For all I know, we’ve already run back over the tape. Those are ninety-six-hour canisters. We’ve only got three of them. When they gave it back, I put it back into service.”

  “Could you check?”

  He was gone for a full ten minutes before he poked his head into his office and hailed me. “Come out here, Leo.”

  The outer room had been empty when I’d come in, lit only by the blue flickering of the banks of screens. The overheads were on now. Marty had separated Stimpy from whatever he was up to. The kid sat at the console, his stubby fingers poised.

  Marty said, “We’re going to do this one time with feeling, Leo. Just so you’ll leave me the hell alone. Then I’m going to go home and beat my dog. What minute of scintillating hall view did you have in mind?”

  “Wind it to two twenty-five,” I said, “just in case the time in the elevators varies from the time in the cameras.”

  “It can’t. It comes from the same source,” Stimpy said.

  “Then wind the tape all the way to two-thirty.”

  He typed for a moment on the keyboard and then pushed Enter. The tape console on my left began to hiss. Stimpy sat back. Marty went into his office. The tape machine clicked to a stop.

  “Here we are,” said Stimpy. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Real time or fast forward?”

  “Real time.”

  He pushed a button and the screen above our heads came to life.

  The bottom of the picture had the date and the time. Two-thirty and twelve seconds, thirteen. I closed my eyes and pictured it in my head. Imagining the doors closing in the lobby and the trip up to the eighth floor. The slight shudder as the elevator locked in place. The doors opening. They step out; they jump back in; the doors close again. The car moves up one floor. Same deal. George gets off. The doors close.

  I opened my eyes. Stimpy was measuring me for a straitjacket. The time on the screen reads two thirty-four. Nothing but blank hallway. I concentrated on the grainy image, but nothing appeared. Then a shadow flickered.

  “Stop,” I said. “Go back.”

  “How far?”

  “Maybe ten seconds’ worth.”

  He pushed some buttons. The screen went blank and then popped back to life. I squinted at it.

  “There…see that?”

  “See what? I didn’t see anything.”

  “Go back again.”

  When the film started over, I put my finger on the screen.


  “Watch right here,” I said, pointing at a section of carpet directly in front of the elevator. “Watch the light.”

  Our heads nearly touched as we pressed our faces to the glass. Again, a trapezoid of light swept across the section of carpet from right to left, then stayed there.

  “What is that?” Stimpy asked.

  “It’s the light from the inside of the elevator. They’re lined with mirrors and reflective as hell. Somebody is standing in there with the door open. Can you go back to the beginning so we can time how long they’re standing in there?”

  “Easy.”

  It took no time at all to return to the moment when the door began to open. Two thirty-four and fifty-two seconds. Stimpy released the button and the tape began to move.

  At two thirty-nine and five seconds, the door began to close. A little over five minutes of standing in an elevator with the door open.

  George had been right. They’d gone up. And then stood there for a little over five minutes before going elsewhere. Presumably to the movies. Maybe they’d used the five minutes to decide which movie to go to. All nice and neat, except for two things, one of them minor and one of them major.

  On a minor note, I had a small problem with the idea of them walking out of Bound because they didn’t like it. Bound was, as a matter of fact, one hell of a good movie, and I had some difficulty imagining anyone who wasn’t experiencing chest pains or some other life-threatening incident walking out in the middle of it. That one was minor, because, like the man said, there’s no accounting for taste. I know noids who didn’t like Pulp Fiction.

  The other one bothered me more. Why the earlier trip to eight? Digital spasticity was not an option. If they’d pushed a button, it had been on purpose, because, as we all knew, there was no button for the fourteenth floor.

  Finding Marie was easy. I spotted her behind the registration desk as soon as I came downstairs from the security office. She was sorting registration cards and entering the information into the computer when I approached the desk. Her small mouth was set in a weary grimace, as if she were either right at the end of a long, tiring shift or, even worse, just beginning one.

  She looked up and gave me the most dazzling smile she had left.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Waterman.” She semi-beamed.

  Ah, the perils of top-down management! It seemed that the news of my complete loss of status had not as yet filtered down to the rank and file. “Good afternoon, Marie, and how are you?”

  “Tired. It’s been so busy. Usually, it comes in spurts, but today, it seems like it hasn’t let up since I got here.”

  “Jeez, I almost feel guilty asking you for a favor.”

  “No problem, Mr. Waterman.” She looked down at the desk. “I’ve only got another half hour. What can I do for you? Whatever it is will be better than this,” she said, indicating the cards.

  “On the eighth floor…” I began.

  She stiffened at the sound of the words.

  “Mr. Reese’s room was the second door on the right, if you turned left out of the elevators. That was number eight-fourteen.”

  She nodded slightly, so I kept on talking.

  “In that same section, down that same hall, what’s the room number of the last room on the left?”

  It took her a moment to realize that I had finished speaking.

  “I’d have to look,” she said after an awkward silence. From a cubbyhole in the right side of the desk, she produced a brown plastic loose-leaf notebook with the hotel’s name and logo printed on the front,

  I watched as she thumbed through a series of plasticencased pages. Finally, she began to count. “Six,” she said, turning a page. “Seven and eight.” She swiveled the notebook my way. The elevators were on my side of the page. I mentally turned left and let my eyes walk to the end of the corridor—859. It was room 859.

  “Can you look up room eight fifty-nine on your computer?”

  “What did you want to know?”

  “Whether it’s been rented this week and by who.”

  I was tempted to say “whom,” like a credentialed person, but caught myself in time.

  She pushed buttons and squinted myopically at the screen.

  “It was in service Sunday through Tuesday.” She pushed another button. “Wednesday night we had a reservation, but it was a no-show. Last night the room was empty, and tonight we have a reservation for a Mr. and Mrs. Collins, and there’s a visa number.”

  “Who rented the room Sunday through Tuesday?”

  “A Mr. Brad Young.”

  “Is there a card number?”

  Another button, another screen.

  “He paid in cash.”

  “What about the reservation for Wednesday night? Is there a credit card number for that?”

  It took her a moment. “No, which is a little odd.”

  “Because you guys don’t take reservations without a valid credit card number, right?”

  “Right,” she said. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless, say, the party was already a customer.”

  “Like this Mr. Brad Young.”

  “Exactly…a customer like Mr. Young, who’d been paying cash by the day. That’s a good example. If somebody like that called the desk and said he wanted to extend his stay, we’d generally just do it for him, you know, as a courtesy. It’s not strictly according to policy, but we do it anyhow.”

  “Did Mr. Young cancel?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “Can you tell who it was that registered this Brad Young?”

  She put a fingertip on the screen. “Ginger.”

  “Is Ginger on duty?”

  “Ginger’s on vacation. Tahoe for a week. It’s their tenth anniversary.” Marie read my mind. “Not much help, I’m afraid.”

  “The hotel employs a room-service waiter named Rodrigo something. Is he working?”

  “You mean Rod Tavares. I’d have to check the schedule.”

  “I’d really appreciate it,” I said.

  I waited as she opened the door at the rear of the registration area and stepped inside. She was gone for less than a minute.

  “Rodrigo’s off till Monday. Twelve to eight.”

  “Could you by any chance get me his address and phone number?”

  She’d begun to shake her head before I’d even finished. “Staff information is confidential. We just had a whole workshop on that. I’m sorry, but…”

  I took a chance. The way I saw it, the only other time she’d ever seen me, I’d been in tight with the boss. I figured I could milk the halo effect. I pulled Gloria Ricci’s business card from my pocket and flipped it over to the back.

  “That’s Ms. Ricci’s home number. How about if you give her a call? That way, you’ll be covered.” I handed her the card.

  I never thought she’d do it. I’d have bet a body part that, rather than have to call Ricci at home, she’d just give me the info. I was wrong.

  She picked up the phone in front of her, then thought better about talking about me in front of me and put it back down.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said and exited again through the door.

  The minute the door closed, I leaned over and swiveled the computer monitor my way. The top of the screen read, “Rooms By Number.” I pushed the return key until I was back at the main menu. I quickly read my way down the laundry list of options. F was “Hotel Personnel.” This got me a database search page. I had two search options, “Job Title” or “Name.” I chose “Name,” entered Tavares, Rodrigo, and pushed the button. In fifteen seconds I had what I needed.

  Before leaving, I returned the computer to the main menu screen and screwed it back in Marie’s direction. I think I heard Marie call my name just as I stepped onto the escalator, but I was in a hurry and couldn’t be sure.

  Finding Rodrigo Tavares was a bit harder. The address was up on the hill, just south of Madison, in what I’d call a transitional neighborhood. As a g
eneral rule, the farther south of Madison you go, the funkier the neighborhood gets. Nothing too crazy. Seattle hasn’t got a Cabrini Green or anything. Just one of those areas that gives a guy the urge to whistle and maybe have a little something extra in his sock.

  In that part of the city, isolated pockets of postwar homes sprout like dandelions among the innumerable, multistory medical buildings which have, in recent years, devoured the once solidly middle-class neighborhood. The result of this encroachment has been to inflate the tax rate to commercial levels, offering the mostly elderly natives one of two choices. They can either pay their taxes or maintain their property. Most pay the taxes.

  It was a duplex just off Ninth Street. In the front yard, this summer’s weeds waved like the proverbial “amber waves of grain.” Unit A was on the left, and Unit C was on the right. I’ll admit it. I was stumped. The address hadn’t included a unit number. I didn’t have any more idea of which door to knock on than I did about what in hell had happened to Unit B. When in doubt, left to right.

  Unit A opened her door a crack. At least three chains, maybe more. It was hard to tell, because it was dark in the apartment, and I had to look down into the darkest of it because she was so short. She had thick salt-and-pepper hair. Mostly salt and very long for a woman her age, the hair formed a kind of mantle around her face. I stuck my foot in the door.

  “I’m looking for Rodrigo Tavares.”

  The words were perfect English, but the rolled r’s and machine-gun delivery were pure Spanish. “Rodrigo is not here.”

  “Could you tell me where I might find him?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Are you his mother?”

  “He is not here.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  All she had to do was say no. I would have pressed her again and then given up. Contrary to rumor, on Thursday nights, I no longer beat up on old ladies. Thursday is puppystrangling night.

  Instead, she said, “Why doan you people leave him alone?”

  Which, of course, immediately brought to mind such questions as: “What people?” “How come she’s seen these people so often she assumes I must be one of them?” and “Why are they bothering her Rodrigo?”