“The talk, the one you asked me to have with your daughter?”
I was raising Marisol alone. Sarah had agreed to help explain bras and leg shaving, makeup and high heels, and thank God, menstruation.
“Mike and I should come over this week and I’ll sit down with her, while you two play backgammon.” Mike was a fine chef, with lots of training, but the hotel wanted him to gain more experience. He worked ungodly hours, doing lots of the scut work in the hotel’s kitchen. Sarah and he spent a lot of time apart, for newlyweds. “He’ll bring some sweet something or other,” she went on, as if I needed more enticement. I did. I wanted my little girl to stay a little girl. Forever would be almost long enough. Some of that must have shown on my face.
“Paul, I was her age.”
“I know you’re right.”
“But?” she said.
“But,” I said, smiling, “you’re ready, she’s ready; it’s me who’s the problem. Okay, find out when you and Mike can come over. I’ll cook something, and we can have dinner. I’m no Mike Carpenter, of course.”
“He loves that thing you make, what’s it called?”
“Jag? Rice and beans with linguica? My grandfather used to call it ‘poor portagee food.’”
“That’s it, but I didn’t think it was polite to say ‘portagee,’” she said.
“It’s an insult unless you are one.”
She patted me on the back of my hand, and worked her way around the tables while I walked the bar, checking in with the customers.
For a Tuesday, we did pretty well, so smiling at customers as they left at closing time was natural. At the end of each of our shifts, she’d get the name of a drink from the book under the bar for me to mix. She rarely drank the entire cocktail.
“That old guy was a serious pig.”
To her, anyone over thirty-five was “old.” Whenever she was working, I caught myself checking myself for age spots.
In the “Novelty” section, she’d reached the letter “O.” She asked for an Oreo, and sipped it slowly, enjoying the sweet vanilla schnapps and Crème de Cacao with milk. “This is delightful,” she said, pulling off the high heels she wore for work and sliding her feet into a pair of battered running shoes. Her expression relaxed as if she were wiggling her toes. I didn’t ask if the drink was delightful or the comfortable shoes. Never ask the question if you don’t want to hear the answer, my wife used to say. Sarah sighed and got to her feet with a groan that sounded suspiciously as if she was mocking the noises I made when I straightened or bent over. Marisol did that sort of thing all of the time.
I cashed out, while Sarah started to clean up the table area. I worked the bar melting ice, restocking and wiping down. I put the perishables into the cooler, rinsed the ashtrays and loaded them into the glass washer. Sarah headed into the ladies’ room to get it picked up for the housekeepers.
In the men’s room, I started into one of the stalls and stopped with a tingle starting at the base of my spine, creeping into my crotch and up towards my stomach. It had been a long time or else I’d softened, but I barely made it to the toilet in time. Even emptied out, I still arched and collapsed on hands and knees, like a horse trying to buck a stubborn rider from its back. I felt weak and hot and cold. My throat burned from the vomit and roaring coughs.
He was lying on his right side, facing outwards from the stall, with his head on the base of the toilet and his legs crumpled under him. His right arm lay flat, palm up and barely visible. His left was draped behind him awkwardly. The mind plays tricks; I thought that he’d be cramped and sore when he woke up if he didn’t roll over. The familiar handle of a fine bladed fruit knife stuck out of his left ear.
A tiny trickle of blood ran under his jaw, tributary to the small pool on the floor. He still smelled of melon liqueur, pineapple juice and cologne, but his bowels and bladder had emptied and he smelled of other things. His eyes were open, no longer glaring hate at me or anyone else. They seemed to be looking at something. Thoughtlessly, I followed his gaze. Nothing but the louvers at the bottom of the men’s room door to be seen, and I was getting nauseated again.
When the door had closed in his face, I never expected to see him again. I was wrong; I’d be seeing him, just like this, every night.
Chapter 1
The night manager, the hotel manager and the hotel’s lawyer were all in the bar with me. Sarah sat in a corner, still crying with her husband holding her hand, directing his flat gaze at me. She shouldn’t have been part of a murder investigation. I’d already called the sitter to tell her I was going to be late, and she said she’d just sleep on the couch. Thank God for Mrs. Pina. I wondered if she could stay until I made bail or served my sentence.
There was fingerprint powder, yellow tape, footprints and lots of photos. There was the thermometer pushed into my late customer’s torso through a small cut one of the coroner’s men made. There were paper lunch bags taped over his hands, and the muffled complaining of a criminalist.
“A freakin’ men’s room, for chrissake, know how many pubes and fibers we’re gonna have to put into the envelopes, and label, and mark locations, and log? And who gets to dust the toilets and handles? ‘At’s right, I do. Three-thirty ayem in the freakin’ morning, am I getting laid? Am I asleep?” His voice droned on, but the words faded into the background.
Finally, there was the stretcher, and familiar body bag, covered with a sheet, and the night manager begging them to take the freight elevator.
Sarah and her husband got up to leave. They turned towards me with blank expressions and I wondered if there was a way to make it okay. They seemed to look at me as if they knew I was guilty of something. I didn’t think that they’d be dropping by my house for Jag and backgammon. I wondered who was going to explain sanitary napkins to Marisol.
The night stretched into morning, and there was the “you-have-the-right” speech. I was brought to the bar’s ladies room to take my clothes off. The criminalist held a paper bag for me to drop the tux and shoes, socks and shorts. He handed me a set of surgical scrubs and shower sandals to replace them. When I returned to the bar and we were all seated at one of the glass-topped tables, the detectives began asking question after question, then started again, sometimes changing the order, sometimes alternating with each other. I was tired and to keep my focus, as I had been taught, I started to pay attention to their appearance and manner, building stories and images from small clues.
The older detective was tall and slim, with a neat atoll of dark hair surrounding a lagoon of polished skin. He had steady gray eyes and didn’t seem to blink as often as most people. His raw silk sport coat was better than his slacks and shoes. Maybe the jacket was a gift from a loving wife. When my neck and shoulders began to tense, I forced my mind from that thought and tried to concentrate. He wore a wedding band, a Timex watch, and when his jacket opened, a Smith and Wesson nine millimeter.
He leaned in to ask questions and back to hear the answers. I couldn’t tell if it was habit or technique, but he was listening. He told his partner to “tone it down a bit.” Good Cop, or maybe ready to make the switch at some point, pretending to lose patience and explode.
His partner was just as tall, but with a body-builder’s physique. There was a badge-heavy swagger to him, and his short haircut gave him the look of a state trooper. He had all of the arrogance and surface toughness of mirrored sunglasses and polished boots. He was aggressive and openly skeptical, making me want to either defend each answer or slap him. He dressed better than his partner, with clothes cut to emphasize his inverted mountain peak shape. His jacket was full under his arms to allow for a shoulder holster, which turned out to be an undercover straight draw. He carried a Desert Eagle. Not standard issue, but a heavy, macho piece. Assuming magazine pouches under his right arm, he was toting almost eight pounds in gun and ammunition. Expensive hardware, and he wore no jewelry except a Piaget watch.
My bartender’s eye told me: “No class.” He leaned in to ask questio
ns, like his partner, but never leaned away.
His partner called him “Dave,” but I knew him as “Detective Petersen”. The older guy was “Larry,” but he was “Sergeant DaSilva” to me. They had a gadget to take my finger and palm prints electronically.
I knew what would happen when they ran the prints. I knew what they’d think when they found mine on the fruit knife after they pulled it out.
Mostly, I wanted to go home and see my daughter again, then sleep, for a day or two. I was starving after all of that vomiting, and the thought of grilled English muffins and orange marmalade were a kind of torture. I could smell coffee and food cooking in the kitchen, making my mouth water, and I was swallowing constantly, making me look guilty as hell.
The managers greeted the police request to provide the names of the guests who were in the bar with undisguised horror. Both detectives waited, until the lawyer nodded at me. I reached for the sealed drop box with the receipts and told them that we needed the originals for billing. DaSilva countered, “Sorry, but they’re evidence. We might need prints or get something from them that copies wouldn’t give us. I can get a warrant, but it would take longer and cause a lot of hate and discontent.” He offered to give us copies and a signed receipt.
“I’ll talk with our merchant account carrier,” said our lawyer, “I’m sure it can be worked out, Mr. Costa. I’ll take the responsibility.”
DaSilva took the box and all of its contents with him to the office downstairs. I was picturing the people from the bar and their interviews, sure to be fascinating to the detectives when they heard about the dead man and me. It was small consolation to picture the looks on the faces of any men and women interrupted in the wrong rooms.
“So after this guy, this Congressman Morley, started being an asshole and you tossed him, what happened?” asked Petersen. I realized that this was the first time I’d heard the guy’s name, and learned that he was a congressman. He really was a shitpot more important than I thought he was, just as he said, and the butt-to-balls tingle started again. Things were getting worse, and I felt as if I was being sucked down some sort of huge toilet, circling the drain and spinning helplessly.
I had answered that question, in one form or another a half-dozen times. I took a breath, trying to be patient through the nicotine deprivation, fatigue and hunger. “As I told you, I offered the remaining customers—”
The night manager was interrupting. “He wasn’t an ‘asshole,’ detective, and we don’t want one of our valued customers referred to in that way.” We all stared at him, including the lawyer, who hadn’t said a word since Sergeant DaSilva left. He seemed to recognize his own non sequitur, but pressed on, “Even if he is dead, the poor man, we insist on treating our guests with courtesy, respect and style.”
“Okay, so that includes stylishly and courteously driving a knife into his ear, too, I suppose,” said Petersen, with a smirk. “Or maybe respectfully locking him up and heaving him out of the door?”
“No one has said that he was ‘heaved out,’ as you put it, and we don’t know who drove the knife…” his words tapered off. His ill-timed sense of duty made him come up to look at the dead man as soon as I called him. He’d been even more violently ill than I had.
Petersen waited until it was clear that the interruption was over. He visibly enjoyed embarrassing the man. The young cop seemed to want to be disliked. He turned to face me, and leaned closer, “I have a question out to you, barkeep, care to answer it?”
I had been given time to collect myself. “Okay, again, I set up a courtesy round on the house, cut some limes, threw the knife into the dishpan, went to the men’s room, checked the liquor stock to update our order, came back to the bar and finished the shift. I wasn’t away from the bar for more than five or ten minutes at any point. Then Mrs. Carpenter and I started the light clean-up to get the bar ready for the housekeepers.” Mentioning the cigarette would have given the hotel their excuse to fire me, even though all of the bartenders sneaked an occasional smoke.
“Mrs. Carpenter, the waitress?”
“Yes.”
“Care to talk about your relationship with her?”
“She’s kind of an innocent. We work here. Her husband is a good guy and works here, too. I like them in an ‘older friend’ way.”
“Nothing beyond that?”
“Nothing.”
“Ever want more than that?”
“No. She’s young, in love with Mike, her husband. They were nice to my daughter. Both good with her, not condescending.”
“You married?”
“Yes,” I said, then realized he wouldn’t understand. “No.”
He hesitated. “So which is it, bartender? You married or not?”
For the first time, I was uneasy because of a guilty-sounding answer. I didn’t like the feeling. Maybe I didn’t want him to be talking about it or it still hurt or I just didn’t like him or maybe I preferred “Mr. Costa” to “Bartender.”
“Mr. Costa is a widower, detective,” said the night manager. It had to be uncomfortable for him to speak after the detective’s silent put-down, but he spoke for me.
The lawyer asked, “Detective Petersen, are these questions really helping your investigation? Hm? I’m sure that any personal background is easily found, if you need it. Hm?” If the looking-down-his-nose “Hm’s” weren’t a verbal tic, then they were meant to push a button or two.
Petersen nodded, and got back into his pattern, “Never saw the good congressman return?”
“No.”
“Never saw anybody at all going into the men’s room?”
“No.”
“Never saw anybody go behind the bar and get the knife?”
“No.”
He mumbled into his chest, “Never saw your dick when you were pissing, either, I suppose.”
“Yes, I did,” I answered, “I have to be careful, because that water is cold and deep. I don’t shake it off; I bang it against the side of the urinal.” He’d given me the opening to snap back at him, and break his rhythm. He’d had me automatically answering him, just as he wanted.
He tried to stare me down, but he had blown it by overdoing the coarseness and had to wait for his partner. The lawyer and the managers looked at us, from one to the other and back, as if watching a slow motion tennis match. I was tired, and had seen my first murder victim in a long time, I was hungry, still a little sick and I missed my daughter. Not to mention that I expected to get fired and I wanted to get that over with.
“Detective,” said the lawyer, “I believe the hotel and its staff has been extremely cooperative, and we’re entitled to know your intentions in this matter. Mr. Costa, for example, has stayed beyond his shift for well over three hours. I represent the hotel, but as an officer of the court, I think that you have more than enough information to decide whether or not further interviewing or other action is warranted.” He didn’t “Hm,” that time. His voice was cold, and revealed no doubts.
The door opened, and DaSilva gestured Petersen over to the doorway where they whispered together. Petersen raised his head and turned to stare over at me. Everyone else followed his eyes and watched me, too. After a long moment, Sergeant DaSilva walked over, and made a little speech. “Gentlemen, it’s been a long and trying evening, or morning, I guess, and I’m sure we could all use some rest. You’re all free to go, but please make sure we know how to reach you.” He was looking at me for that part. “We appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Get some sleep, and expect to hear back from us.” Without another word, they were gone.
The lawyer was talking quietly with the hotel manager, shaking his head and they glanced over at me, as I paused at the door. “I guess you’re on tonight,” said the night manager,
“Yes, I am, six o’clock, I’ll, um, be in for my shift then.”
“Of course,” he answered.
They watched me, in silence, with their eyes following me, like the barrels of guns.
Chapter 2
The door closed softly behind me, and there was a glow from the television set. Mrs. Pina’s expensive nightlight was on, even though I had seen the sun rising as I drove to my duplex just on the Newport side of the Middletown line. I nudged her shoulder and her round face came to life, fully awake in an instant. “Paul! What happened? And your clothes? You must be starving, and Marisol was good. She did her homework, ate her dinner,” She counted on her fingers to tick off all of the things my daughter did. I listened, and smiled without trying.
Mrs. Pina usually wore a bun, perched with architectural precision at the crown of her head. At night she released the bun, to wear graying braids hanging well below her shoulders. My grandmother had worn a single long braid at night, and the same bun during the day. Mrs. Pina was my upstairs tenant, and paid most of her rent by acting as a nanny and housekeeper. Her grandson mowed the lawn and kept the bushes from devouring the house, in return for another cut from her rent. I heard stirring in the kitchen and Marisol came out to provide her critique.
“You smell like the bar, daddy. Those pajamas are too small for you. The flip-flops look dumb. You’ve been smoking again, and you promised you wouldn’t. You have big dark circles under your eyes, but I put on coffee and I sliced some English muffins for you. I have to get dressed for school.” I opened my mouth to answer and closed it as she jogged away.
My daughter still had a childish roundness to her face, and huge dark eyes. Lately, in some lights, I’d seen the shape of her face as it would be, the curve of her lips and line of her jaw drawn tight as she turned her head. Her hair would sweep over part of her face, and she used the back of one hand to push it back into place, a chestnut curtain, in a way that was heartbreakingly familiar. She reminded me more and more of her mother.
She sat with me while I ate the English muffins and took sips of her ghastly coffee. How she got it to be so sweet with a stinging bitter aftertaste was a mystery. Her mom had made Cuban coffee, and ‘Sol was trying to learn how. I hoped she’d get it before an ulcer kicked in. “Daddy?”
Last Call Page 2
