Parking the Buick off to the left of the hotel beside the trucks and vans of the reconstruction crew, he walked through the lobby to the ocean view beyond the evening diners and partiers. He descended the stairs to the beach. Taking off his boots, shirt, sunglasses, and hat, he pulled his egg-shaped surfboard from the private rack beyond the loaner boards.
The tide was up and the waves sloppy and languid. He surfed by himself for a few waves before joining three surfers also finding the small sets preferable to the noise and party on the top deck and pool.
His short, egg shape lacked speed and the ability for aggressive hard turns which suited him well. He enjoyed some of Bill Hamil’s renown smooth style of clean lines and turns.
An hour later, he got in line at the outdoor grill. Although famished, he waited patiently, scanning the evening crowd through his dark tinted sunglasses.Sand spotted him and stood up from an L-shaped couch where surfers were talking and laughing. He stepped alongside Kazu.
“How’s a bro?” Sand’s handsome face was warmed by his grin.
“Good. Starving. The guests happy?”
“Always. We see to that.”
The two surfers in front of Kazu and Sand stepped away with full plates of beef and buttered asparagus. Kazu picked up a plate beside the barbecue. The sweating, smiling cook glanced at him, “The usual?”
“Yes, two please.”
“Marlaina’s waving to me. See you around.” Sand left Kazu watching his two grilled cheese sandwiches browning on the side griddle, the thick cheese oozing from the sides.
Kazu carried his plate to his preferred loveseat and low table set back from the crowd. Halfway through greedy bites, Kazu’s favorite waitress knelt before his table. She had his order on a tray even though they hadn’t spoken that night—a cheese grater, a bowl of ice, a frosted glass, and two cans of Pepsi.
“Anything else?” she asked not rising, staying at eye level, smiling warmly, her lovely eyes brilliant with kindness. “Your napkins and pens like last night?”
“Please and thank you.”
Though she was a older, possibly in her early twenties, they were again sharing an eye-to-eye pause and lingering smiles. Not looking away, she took a stack of white napkins and a black pen from her apron and set them on the table.
“You dance?” she asked, rising.
“Badly, yes.”
“We should sometime. Badly, of course.”
After the sun sank into the ocean, Kazu drew in the golden light from the torch behind his back, wishing he had white light for better black on white contrast.
“It’s okay,” he spoke to the pen and napkins.
With the image-novel on the desk in his apartment almost finished, he worked the resolution of Jappy and Kiki’s final challenge—getting all three trunks of cash and coins ashore in their lifeboat as the pirate ship went ass up and sank. He had discovered through the pen tip how to tinge the side of Kiki’s lips to show sarcastic delight.
Small claws gripped into his upper writing arm as Ed’s spicy and citrus scent and breath warmed his neck. Without turning, he raised his arm so Miss Fifty-Six could grip his shirt front and climb into his lap—the monkey’s black and white face rubbing his upper chest.
“Should I be jealous?” Ed asked from behind.
“I think so, yes.” Kazu stroked his fingers softly along the small spider monkey’s spine.
“Join you?” Ed stepped back and circled the loveseat.
Sitting at Kazu’s side, she and Kazu both petted a nestling and content Miss Fifty-Six.
“I’m going to ask again,” Ed murmured.
“It’s okay. Used to it.”
“Marlaina and I were talking. I think we’ve gotten rid of the insurance creeps, but you never know what trouble they might start.”
“I bet you two can fool them.”
“Probably. Still, it would help to know where she is. What if they send another investigator?”
“They’ll never find her.”
“Still…”
“Okay. Let me shower, and I’ll take you.”
36
Kazu backed his Buick from the construction parking area and steered out to Federal Highway 200. Ed was beside him, and Miss Fifty-Six was climbing around in the back seat. He turned left, and they motored up the highway. Coming up on the Or Petrol y Restaurante, he steered to the left into the dirt tunnel road.
Exiting the jungle canopy and seeing that the Hotel Or bridge was raised, he turned onto the green grass and drove around to the rear of the imposing stone hotel. He parked just back of the torch-lit wood bridge where the two gypsy sentries were relaxing. They nodded to Kazu in recognition and let him cross with Ed and the monkey following.
Entering the hotel basement, Ed said, “Kazu? Where are we going? My guess was the moat or the suicide garden graves.”
“Somewhere better,” was all he said as they climbed the basement stairs to the Hotel Or lobby.
The first-floor swimming pool was filled with warm and clear water and a naked woman floated on a yellow inner tube. Her face was under the surface, a snorkel pipe poking up from the side of her head. Her hands were treading the water gently.
“Normal, right?” Ed quipped following Kazu around the pool to the stairwell.
When Kazu turned to the blackness of the second floor, Miss Fifty-Six held back. Ed scooped her up and watched Kazu walk into the darkness. She followed hesitantly at first, not understanding. Turning the corner to the left, she asked, “Flashlight, by chance?”
Kazu was four doors up along the landing. With her eyes adjusting, he was a black silhouette in the dark gray light. She heard his feet stop and the brief sound of a pocket struggle. A warm cone of light from a flashlight appeared. He waited until she was beside him, and they walked in the sweeping beam. Two more doors down, he stopped, waving the light across the number nine next to the door frame.
“What did you do? Bury her in a wall?”
A key appeared in his hand from his front pocket. He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and stepped aside.
Ed flipped the light switch and looked in on the narrow front room. It was a spotless and nondescript living room of impersonal décor. “Just like Rose Clair’s room. I used to bring her books. She had my suite before she died.”
Kazu set the key on the entrance table and crossed to the bedroom door.
“Let me go first. Never know what mood she’s in,” he said over his shoulder.
“Kazu? She’s what? Alive?”
He stepped through the next door without answering.
Ed remained where she stood with Miss Fifty-Six held close to her chest in an embrace.
A sound like angry gargling rose up from the second room.
“Kazu?” she called forward, staying in place.
Thrashing sounds and bed springs bouncing joined the watery, wordless voice. Ed gently lowered her monkey to the couch. She took two steps closer to the other door, calling again.
“Kazu?”
She waited.
No reply.
“Stop it. Eat,” came from the second room. Kazu’s voice was patient but firm.
Ed stepped to the door frame and pressed her shoulder against it.
Gagging came from the gargled other voice.
“There, that’s better,” Kazu said, followed by more bed thrashing.
“Kazu, what did you do?” Ed asked. She stepped into the room.
Constance’s eyes were wide in a vicious snarl aimed at Kazu. She was strapped to the rickety and old small bed by coarse ropes at her ankles, wrists, and mid-section. Her mouth was twisted in furious rage but also open.
Ed’s wide eyes turned away in revulsion. She looked at the bedside table. It was stocked to the edge with two rows of unopened bottles of Constance’s favorite gin—Tanqueray. Little bottles of equally tempting narcotics filled the rest of the tabletop. All so close to Constance’s side but out of reach.
Ed turned back to the bed, to Kazu’s hand
s on a rubber tube and plastic medical bag of a gray-white, thick liquid. He slid the edge of the tube in between Constance’s dry, chapped lips.
“Kazu… What have you done?”
Constance stopped swinging her head from side to side and took a suck. She coughed and let out a muffled scream before sucking in a bit more.
“It’s a bit worse than dead,” Kazu explained calmly, adjusting the raised bag for an easier flow. “Now that she has detoxed, it’s up to her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve dug her grave in the suicide garden. She can have peace. Only needs to say two words. Been asking her to do so for weeks.”
“Two words? Kazu?”
“Two simple words but said sincerely, if she can do that.”
“Which two words?”
He ignored that.
“Not to me, but to everyone.”
“Which two words?” Ed demanded.
“I’m betting they’re the hardest ones she has ever had to say.”
Glaring at Kazu with the porridge sliding in between her lips, a new wave of distaste and murderous hostility consumed Constance’s expression.
“Can tell she’s not up to it today,” he observed. “No rush.”
“What two words?” Ed pressed, stepping back from the room.
His hand rose to Constance’s mouth and pressed on the tube, clearing a blockage. Constance swung her head violently to the side, spitting out the tube. Kazu raised it away and leaned forward, studying the woman’s wild killer eyes.
“We’re listening,” he breathed onto Constance’s face.
She let out a slick growl followed by a stream of unclear words, loud and harsh.
“I was hoping she would say it when you were here,” he spoke to Ed behind him.
“What in the hell does she need to say?” Ed yelled.
Kazu leaned back and set the bag and tube on Constance’s pillow.
“I’m sorry.”
37
Two months later…
Sand hurried through the dinner crowd and across the new dance floor where happy faces were rising and falling like beach balls on the swells. Gone was his easy and always ready smile. His gaze was tightened down and zoomed in on Kazu.
“Ever heard the name Carson Staines?” he asked, sitting down on the top deck loveseat. “If not, you will. Some journalist feeding shit to the Federales and locals. It’s in the papers.”
“I know him,” Kazu folded his drawing napkins and pocketed them.
“He’s led a detective and who knows who else to the Hotel Or. They’re up there now,” Sand handed over a yellow card, adding, “They’re looking for you.”
Kazu smoothed out the card on his thigh.
Kazu,
The authorities are here in my office. Please come immediately.
They’ll start tearing this place apart if you don’t show. Ed and I really don’t want that.
Quickly,
Marlaina
Kazu handed the card back, “Tell Marlaina in front of them that I’ve already left. Hitchhiking north. Probably to the airport. Did you see Ed up there?”
“No, the offices were closed up when they arrived.”
Kazu stood up and looked across the crowded top deck and over the wandering swimming pool. The white sand beach had dabs of colors from clothing and umbrellas. A wave was forming beautifully with two surfers paddling hard to catch it.
“I like it here,” he spoke to the view. “Too bad.”
“What do you need?” Sand asked.
“Can I keep the borrowed boots?”
“You can keep borrowing them, yes.” Sand put his arm around his friend’s shoulders.
Kazu drank off the last of his Pepsi over chipped ice.
“Thank you. You taught me a lot and have been a good friend.”
Sand remained seated watching Kazu weave into the crowd before disappearing.
Kazu maintained a casual stride until starting down the basement stairs where he began to run. He dashed to his simple apartment and opened his backpack and loaded all his belongings—his artwork and art supplies and beat up Nokia. Pulling on the borrowed black work boots and a fresh shirt, ball cap, and sunglasses, he checked for his car keys before leaving his apartment for the last time.
He departed through the rear service doors, saw Casimir in the shadows of the maintenance hut and paused to consider another thank you and goodbye. He continued walking for the corner of the tall yellow hotel, to his car parked in the southern construction lot.
“No you don’t, not yet,” Ed’s voice came from the large potted palms on the shadowed landing before the hotel’s open doors.
Miss Fifty-Six appeared first, the black and white child monkey padding out of the shade on the tiled landing.
Kazu stopped, scanned the entrance road, and climbed the stairs. He turned past the first potted palm, and there was Ed looking as beautiful as ever. She had tinted her skin a balmy pale and wore a simple long, black dress and a tangled black wig. Her expression was a new one to him—sad eyes and a reserved smile. They hadn’t seen much of each other since the day he revealed Constance’s death to her. They hadn’t avoided one another but had kept away from any situation where they might talk or be alone.
“There is a piece of me…” Ed said softly, “… Saying go with him. Might be interesting. But it’s a small piece. I feel safe and cared for here.”
“I agree. You’re safe here. Have a good thing going.”
He went to his knees and gathered up Miss Fifty-Six and embraced her, using his fingertips to lightly rub the monkey’s sweet spot—the back of her neck and the small between her shoulders.
“Not going to ask where you’re going because they’ll be asking me,” Ed said.
“Sand’s going to say I went north to the city and airport.”
“Okay, I’ll go with that.”
Miss Fifty-Six climbed his shirt and hugged Kazu’s neck.
He stood.
“Come here,” Ed asked. “And put her down, please.”
Kazu looked up the road a second time before stepping to Ed. He set Miss Fifty-Six gently down on the tiles. Ed held out both of her hands, and he took them. She pulled him close, released his hands, and put her arms around him. Warming his neck and ear with her oranges and spices scent, she breathed.
“You were right.”
“About?’
“What Constance could have, should have said.”
He turned his head, his face pressing into her fragrant, careless black wig. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.
“She never did say it,” he whispered.
“Be surprised if she had. People like her, not sure they know how.”
“I can say it,” he said.
“For what? Not needed. What you did saved, helped, and avenged so many.”
“Not about Constance. I’m good with what I did, but to…”
“Yes?”
“To Ed ‘Never Ever Eddie.’”
“I don’t…”
“I’m sorry.”
“For?”
Kazu took a last breath of her hair. He leaned and kissed her fragrant creamy shoulder, his lips tasting her smooth, warm skin. His sunglasses came off, and the side of his injured thumb wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath.
“I wanted to be that odd-shaped last piece in your puzzle, the guy on the back of your motorcycle.” He stepped back from her.
She watched him closely, her eyes welling but no tears falling.
“Could happen someday,” her voice was husky.
He nodded his head up and down slowly as he backed away, gazing at her saddened, beautiful face. He stepped to the edge of the landing before turning around. Descending the stairs slowly, he began to run when his boots were on the driveway.
Keeping his backpack on to help him reach the pedals, he started the Buick. He backed from the nearly completed reconstruction of the yellow Surf Or… Hotel’s southern side.
<
br /> Steering onto the long driveway, he kept his eyes averted from the mirrors and kept the Buick to the shoulder in case police vehicles raced in.
Reaching the highway, he looked up the northern road for flashing lights. Seeing none, he remembered to use the blinkers and turned to the right, to the south.
The highway climbed a long hill with trees and vegetation pressing from both sides. Taking his first glance into the rearview mirror, he saw a string of blue and red lights racing a mile back. The idiot bell was dinging from the dashboard, and he pulled on his seat belt and cinched it tight. Then he weighed down on the accelerator with the toe of his borrowed black work boots.
The End
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About the Author
Gregory French earned a Master of Arts in Writing from the University of San Francisco and lives in the very small town of Ormond Beach, Florida. When not writing, he is a student and researcher of historical crime, primarily those of the 1800s.
The Girl in the Hotel Page 20