The Girl in the Hotel

by Gregory French

  Kazu looked up.

  “I feel sad,” he said. “Very sad.”

  “You should,” Constance said. “Do you know what Mexican prisons are like?”

  He watched her take a long puff on the unlit cigarette.

  “I’m a very intelligent woman,” she exhaled. “I see Jappy el Asesino fitting into my business plan. You’re my Jappy now.”

  “That’s not me in the photo.”

  “Stop. I know things. I’m often brilliant. You’re now one of my right-hand men. Oh, I made a funny, ar ar ar.”

  Kazu folded the newspaper over, having seen more than enough, not the least bit curious about the rest of Carson Staines’ breathless article.

  “Go now. I have my important things to do. Go pump gas or whatever Marlaina has you doing.”

  Kazu stood, watching her place the newspaper inside a manila folder and set it on top of a stack of files. Closing the door behind himself, he stepped to Ed at her desk.

  “She could cause me a lot of trouble,” he said softly. The male secretary was back at his centered desk.

  “Trouble? Oh, more than that. Know what I think?” Ed looked to the secretary who was watching them, but out of whispered earshot. “I think she needs to be extinguished.”

  31

  At 9:00 p.m. that night, Kazu sat on his loveseat at the edge of the top-deck party. Ed snuck up behind him and placed her hands on his shoulder and whispered into his ear. “My puzzle’s coming along, but I need your help.”

  He turned from the low table where he had been working ice cubes on a cheese grater, a can of Pepsi and a glass were to the side.

  “Any idea what your puzzle picture looks like?”

  “Looks to me like a motorcycle.”

  “Explain?”

  Ed circled and sat close beside Kazu.

  “My life is like a motorcycle. My past is in the mirrors. Flames and wrecks and bad things. I don’t look back often. I’m keeping my eyes forward.”

  “You on it alone?”

  “Right now, I am, but the seat is for two.”

  When Kazu turned to her, she gave him her distant smile, the missing teeth showing.

  “I’m in,” he said.

  “On,” she corrected. “You’re on the motorcycle.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Going to ram a stick in Constance’s spokes. Her bike’s already damaged. Her own fault. Plus, she’s a drunk driver. Her brain’s a mess, a swirl.”

  “Like a blender?”

  “Yes, that works. Lies and terrible crimes and still thinking she’s in control. I want you to help me… push the ‘High’ button on the blender.”

  A shrill cackle of laughter interrupted the two, tearing through the music and voices of the partiers out before them. There was a pause, then Constance’s familiar, “Ar ar ar.”

  “Let’s wait an hour,” Ed said taking Kazu’s hand. ‘She’ll be curb crawling soon. Earlier today, I was called to her suite. She was on the shower floor spewing from both ends. I got her cleaned up and into bed.”

  “That’s ugly.”

  “It sure was. Not the first time, either.”

  “So, what are we going to do?”

  Ed leaned forward and scooped shaved ice into Kazu’s glass. He watched her pour soda into the glass slowly.

  “We’re gonna raid the zoo, set the animals free. Can you get us some flashlights?”

  “Yes, sure. Casimir’s hut has a few.”

  “Good. Go get them, and I’ll meet you in your room in an hour. Put on shoes, okay?”

  “Okay. Why?”

  “I suspect we’ll be walking the rails.”

  Ed raised Kazu’s glass, took a sip, and handed the glass to him. As the sparkling soda bubbles tapped his nose and lips, she leaned and kissed his cheek.

  He watched her rise and wade into the noise and chaos of the reveling men and women.

  Ed and Kazu stood in a tangle of vines and green tree limbs, their flashlight beams sweeping a path of shattered and torn-up trees and scraped rocks at the back of the hotel.

  “As I expected.” Ed turned her beam up the rise.

  Kazu did the same and his flashlight shown on the steel edge of a rail track.

  “I paid the invoice for resetting the mining car. Another for its engine and brake repairs.”

  “A mine car? Where is it now?”

  “That’s the good news. Marlaina took it.”

  “Where to?”

  “The Hotel Or.”

  “Where we’re going?”

  “Yes. I’m glad you pulled on shoes. Shall we?”

  They climbed up through the tunnel carved by the crashing mine car, up onto the thin gauge rails. Fifteen minutes later, their flashlight beams shown on the mouth into the mountain where the track disappeared.

  “Thank you, Kazu,” Ed said softly in her breathy voice. “You’re a good partner, friend.”

  He took her free hand and led the way from the moonlit outdoors into the timber-braced entrance.

  Twenty-five minutes in, Kazu stopped to study the stone walls and the sides of the tracks. Walking with her eyes to the rhythm of passing ties at her feet, Ed bumped into his back. The tool-chipped walls appeared to be closing in. Three dust-covered PVC pipes ran alongside the rails. The rough, curved ceiling was gossamer thick with spider webs. Further up the tunnel, the scratching sounds of rats and larger animals could be heard. The air was rich with the sulfur smell of rotten eggs.

  “This is how you got to the yellow hotel?” he asked.

  “Going a lot faster, yes.”

  At the edge of the spray of flashlight, a second set of tracks spurred off into a side tunnel.

  “Know where those go?” he asked.

  Ed tiptoed and looked over his shoulder. “Another dark and scary place? Let’s keep moving.”

  “What is this place?” Kazu asked, “Looks like a forgotten cowboy town.”

  Moonlight entered the cavern from a crack in the rock ceiling over by the iron work elevator shaft. Off to their left were two crudely built wood buildings. The rocky ground before them was a maze of rails splitting off in many directions into a half-dozen tunnels.

  “Mining camp? It’s where they loaded the elevator with silver.”

  Kazu stepped down from the rise supporting the tracks and formed powdery dust clouds walking across to the wood steps to the first work building.

  “I’d like to keep going,” Ed said.

  “I’ll be quick,” he replied, stepping through an eddying stream of dust-covered, foul-smelling water.

  “A time capsule.” He looked in on the mining office. Wood tables with chairs were in a row before a wall of empty shelves. He washed the rough planked floor with his flashlight, passing along the desks to a sink and hand pump on the far wall.

  “Kazu?” Ed said from the doorway.

  Setting his flashlight on a side table, he used both hands to pull on the pump handle. After shaking it and rocking it side to side, rust was released. He pumped up and down some more. The water from the spout ran a solid rust color like a rope of dull orange. He continued working the handle until the flow began to clear.

  “Kazu?”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “So am I, but eww.”

  Continuing to pump, the flow cleared, and he placed his cupped hands into it. He splashed the first handful onto his face and wiped it off with his shirt hem. He rubbed his hands in the flow before cupping them and taking a drink.

  “Smells suspicious, but tastes okay,” he told Ed, who stepped further inside. He drank again, this time fully.

  “It’s safe?” Ed called over.

  Kazu nodded, wiping his lips with his shirt sleeve.

  “Okay, I’ll try some.”

  She was three strides from the sink when he began to twitch and thrash about.

  “What?” she yelled.

  Kazu crashed to the boards, shaking and sputtering and kicking his legs with his hands to his throat.

/>   “No, no…” he moaned.

  “Barf it out.” Ed raced to his side.

  His hands went to his belly and neck.

  “Turn over. Get it all out.”

  He rolled over and rose to his hands and knees.

  “I knew better,” he groaned and spit.

  Ed pounded his back with her fist.

  “Kazu, no,” Ed cried.

  “I ordered Pepsi.”

  When he laughed, she scowled before giving him a vicious shove. He toppled over, grinning.

  “Have some, it’s fine. Be better with ice,” he said.

  She stepped over him and gave the pump a strong push and pull before taking her first drink, holding her hair to the side and her lips to the stream. The water had a mineral taste and was cool and refreshing. She drank more until her thirst was quenched.

  “That wasn’t funny.” She wiped her mouth. “Well, actually it was. Thanks.”

  “Good. Let’s get going. Know how far we have left?”

  “Seems like this place was more than halfway down the tunnel.”

  Five minutes later, the last of the rock ceiling light dimmed as they continued up along the same pair of rails they had entered on.

  Over the next hour, they crossed two wood bridges over streams of stagnant water. The bridge ties felt uncertain under foot, shifting inches side to side but supported their crossing.

  A mile further, Kazu’s leading flashlight swept a level where the tracks ended in a box space beside a landing where the mining car was parked. A steel door waited for them up on the backing wall.

  “It’s the hotel basement,” Ed explained.

  Kazu cranked the doorknob and shouldered the door open. Stepping inside, he held it for Ed, who scanned the basement, squinting into the electric lighting. Placing her hand on Kazu’s chest, she studied the side window of the workers’ hut to the right. Waiting two minutes and seeing no moving silhouettes, she took the lead jogging across to the steel stairs to the hotel lobby. On the landing, she held the door for Kazu and stepped inside, watching his eyes as he got his first glimpse of the Hotel Or.

  A few yards before him was the swimming pool littered with floating lounges and inner tubes of banana yellow. Beyond the pool stood the four-story-tall Christmas tree. The expansive lobby was midnight quiet except for music coming from deeper in the hotel.

  “Yea for us,” Ed breathed deep. “All I smell is pool chemicals.”

  “What was it before?”

  “Sick, fruity stupid. I think it’s blaster night. Come.”

  “No idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You will.”

  Rounding the large tree, Kazu followed Ed to the reception desk.

  “Hey, Lendall,” she spoke to the young man in his dirty shirt and hotel vest. He looked incapable of speaking—his eyes wide and red, his mouth and teeth chattering. Placing a used paper bag on the counter, he looked to Ed and pointed to it.

  “No thank you, but enjoy.”

  Kazu watched Lendall’s shaking hands raise the bag to his lips and suck from it. He listed to the left, head swinging from side to side.

  Ed turned away and led Kazu around the back of the desk to a hallway entrance. They both heard Lendall crash down and strike his desk under the counter. Kazu looked back but didn’t question.

  The European acoustical music was coming from behind the double doors in the hall. They entered stepping one step inside. Kazu was taking in the party of formally-dressed dancers. Across the room, a violin-playing singer was spotlighted in yellow before his fellow musicians. His face and theatrical gestures added a dramatic flavor to the song as he leaned to one side of his microphone and bowed a cascade of melodic notes.

  “Come for a twirl?” a male voice spoke in a British accent.

  Kazu turned.

  A man in a green corduroy suit and burnt orange tie stood to their side, watching Ed instead of the dancers and musicians.

  “Hello, Gordy. No thank you.”

  Gordy glanced at Kazu, taking him in quickly and quickly dismissing, his hungry eyes aimed at Ed.

  “Where’s your ex?” Ed asked him.

  His leer was disrupted, replaced with a gorging on distaste.

  “Her office, I suspect. The residents look happy now, but it’s been near mutiny the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Change is in the air,” Ed said and turned to the hallway.

  “I’ve no idea, lovely, but something—”

  She closed the door cutting off his last words.

  Ed and Kazu walked along the hallway to the office door that was lit from underneath. He raised his hand to knock.

  Ed turned the knob. “Sod that.”

  He recognized Marlaina’s voice from the second door. Ed also opened that one.

  “The hell you doing here?” Marlaina greeted Ed. Seeing Kazu, she added, “Bringing trouble?”

  “Want to start some,” Ed answered. “For Constance. You in?”

  32

  Marlaina pointed to the chairs before the desk. Casimir was on the leather couch against the right wall. The lawnmower man stood, and Marlaina waved him to sit with her bandaged stump.

  “Stay. Let’s hear what ‘Never Ever Eddie’ has cooked up.”

  Casimir sat.

  “I’ve gone through all the files I could find at the yellow hotel,” Ed said. “I think what I want must be here.”

  “Which is?”

  “Constance’s personal docs. Banking records. Her private info and numbers.”

  “Like what? Social security numbers, account numbers?”

  “Yes, all that.”

  “Well, her finances are a nightmare. She’s not only ripping off both hotels but doing things like that wet dream of a yacht. The fool bought it, sight unseen. Telex came in. It’s missing the engine.”

  “We can stop all that.”

  “Go on. Love to be rid of her cruel and demented sideshow. It’s a movie only the slow-witted can stomach.”

  “The hotels have a lawyer?”

  “Of course. He hates her as much as I do. Does cash the checks…”

  “Think he’d be willing to help us?”

  “I bet he would for a hefty payment. I’m doing the books now since that infected witch had the last bookkeeper done away with. What’s your plan?”

  “The puzzle isn’t complete, but I have a lot of the pieces placed.”

  “Explain.”

  “The first was killing the pipes for the sleepy, spacy air.”

  “You? I wondered who. The residents were climbing the walls until we treated the water. She’ll repair whatever you did.”

  “I need a list of names and contacts for everyone on the black floor.”

  “The second floor?”

  “The black floor?” Kazu asked.

  Marlaina looked to him with narrowed eyes of distaste. “Why is he here?”

  “Don’t read the newspapers? He’s got a past in situations like this. A taste for it.”

  Ed took Kazu’s hand and raised it to her heart. She didn’t meet his questioning gaze.

  “Why Hotel Or? The name,” Kazu asked.

  “The last husband of that snake Constance named it. A rich gypsy with an artistic mind. All his hotels are Or’s. Places for wealthy eccentrics offering choices, options for lifestyle. Or’s, if you will. Very successful scheme. This one offers the attraction of an isolated location. A recluse’s ideal place to live.”

  “She played him,” Kazu observed.

  “Yes. Two decades past her seductive prime and still able to snatch him. Made him her rescuer and likely screwed his brains out. She was about to be dragged off the grounds of one of his hotels. To a bug house. Crazy as an insect. He intervened. Love at first hump. What she needed was a spray of Raid. Enough on that. What do you have in mind?”

  Ed released Kazu’s hand and looked at Marlaina’s stump, another result of Constance’s madness and cruelty. Looking first to Kazu, she said, “Before she has her acciden
t…”

  Marlaina leaned forward. Both she and Kazu took a breath of clean tropical air.

  “She’s gonna become my mommy.”

  After an hour of talking through the how’s and when’s, Ed and Kazu left Marlaina with her list of tasks. Casimir followed them from the office.

  “Thank you for protecting my clan’s interests,” he said. “Are you heading back to the Surf Or… Hotel?”

  They stopped before the reception desk. No Lendall in sight.

  “Yes,” Ed answered. “That’s where the big puzzle pieces are.”

  “I’m headed there myself. Want a ride?”

  “On the mower?” Kazu asked.

  “Yes, there’s room for three.”

  “We’ll walk the rails, thank you,” Kazu answered for Ed and himself. “We need to talk.”

  33

  The trek along the tracks to the yellow hotel was made easier by the gradual downhill run. Ed and Kazu stepped from the tunnel mouth and into the fresh air of dawn’s first brush strokes of lavender under the dark blue sky.

  Back inside his apartment, Ed asked, “Wake me in two hours? Just need a little sleep.”

  She took to his bed and Kazu, equally groggy, sat at his desk with a blanket over his shoulders.

  His story ideas and images were firing on less than all cylinders from lack of sleep. Working on a new page, he drew the seven loyal pirates defending the captain from the mutiny. The seven were ghosts—their faces people Kazu had murdered in his prior life. The sailors who had joined Jappy and Kiki’s mutiny followed them into the battle for the helm. Knives and swords sliced and stabbed.

  The violent and deadly battle was on. The advantage swayed back and forth, thrust and retreat. Jappy and Kiki and their fellow mutineers turned the tide of battle in their favor. At the ship’s bow, in a tight space between barrels and crates and nets, the captain was restrained—a cutlass at his neck in Jappy’s hand. Kiki and the mutineers were shouting and cheering.