I said this last as matter-of-factly as possible. If I didn't come out and ask for the room number, I reasoned, the desk clerk might just slip and give it to me.
The young woman smiled. “Actually, no. We gave her room one thirty-five. It’s down the hallway on the other side of the reception desk.”
The phone on the counter in front of her started ringing. It was after five o’clock and this was a busy hotel.
“Great!” I said. “Thank you. That’s convenient. I’m going to bring the car around.”
“You’re welcome, sir. Excuse me, I have to get this.” She tilted her head at the phone.
“Thanks again!” I gave her a wave as I walked away.
I looked over my shoulder. The clerk—probably a new hire who was unfamiliar with the rules—hadn’t noticed her lapse in protocol. Nor had she taken particular notice of me.
Rather than going out to the parking lot, as I had indicated, I swung back into the hallway where I had hidden a few minutes earlier.
The hallway terminated not in a wall, but in an L-shape. The two main hallways of the first floor were connected by a rear hallway.
All I had to do was walk to the end of this hallway, hang a left, walk the next hallway, and hang another left. Then I would be on a straight line to room 135.
Chapter 65
I rounded the last corner on my way to room 135 and almost met with disaster.
Bethany was standing out in the hallway in front of the room, talking on her cell phone. She was facing in the opposite direction. Had she been facing my direction, we would have looked directly at each other. Hello Bethany, don’t mind me. I just happened to be here!
"Are you almost here?" I heard her say into the phone. "I don't want to sit by myself in this hotel room all night.”
I stepped into the alcove of the room closest to me. There wasn't much space, but it would shield me unless Bethany decided to conduct a reconnaissance of the hallway.
"Are you bringing champagne? Oh, that's good. I can't wait. Yes, I'll get some ice."
I had a thought: Even in the most desperate and depressing times, there are moments of irony. Sometimes that irony is of the black kind, though. It might be that I had gone to all this trouble to follow Bethany, only to spy on her engaging in a tryst with a man who had absolutely no connection to the conspiracy.
“…and we'll talk about the money, too, of course," I heard her say.
That swung my thinking back in the other direction. If Bethany wanted to talk about money, then her companion for the evening had to be someone who was involved in the matter that I’d uncovered. She wouldn't need to discuss money if the guy was a random meathead she'd met at a bar.
Nor did I expect Donnie Brady to show up. Bethany and Donnie we're an established pair, an item. They would have no need to rendezvous in a hotel room. This was an illicit meeting, whoever the other party was.
“All right, I’ll see you soon. Don’t keep me waiting.”
She ended the call.
I heard Bethany open the door of room 135 with the hotel keycard. I remained in the alcove of the other room. I peeked out, calculating, trying to decide what to do next.
I didn't have much time for calculation. The door of room 135 opened again. It was Bethany with the room’s ice bucket. I could barely see her. I dared not venture out from my hiding place.
Bethany paused in the doorway. Then she did something that would shortly turn the evening in yet another new direction.
She had apparently left the keycard in the room. She quickly gaged the distance to the little concrete-walled room that housed the ice machine. It was not far up the hallway, in the direction opposite me.
Instead of going back into the room and retrieving the keycard, she shrugged off her coat and placed it between the spring-loaded door and the doorframe. Then she continued on her mission to provide whomever was on his way, champagne in hand, with a bucket of ice.
I wasn't completely surprised by her spur-of-the-moment maneuver. I have spent my fair share of time in hotel rooms over the years, and I’ve found hotel room keycards to be almost universally frustrating. Most of them are touchy, and it often takes two or three tries to get the red light on the electronic lock to turn green, so you can reenter your room. I’ve similarly propped hotel room doors open while I go down the hall for ice, or items from the vending machines on the same floor.
I started as I heard the door directly behind me click, followed by voices. I hadn't taken refuge in the alcove of an empty room, after all. They didn't seem to be aware of my presence yet, but that would quickly change.
No problem, no problem, I told myself. I stepped out into the hallway, toward room 135. I would hide myself in another room’s alcove, and hopefully spot whomever Bethany was meeting when he arrived.
That entailed risk, of course. I could be seen and recognized. I said a silent little prayer that Bethany wasn't meeting with either Sokolov or Kuznetsov.
But I thought the odds were good that Bethany, devious as she was, was meeting with yet another member of the conspiracy whom I wasn't yet aware of. Or maybe someone she was bringing into it, in an attempt to double-cross the others. That old saw about there being no honor among thieves—it was probably true.
Such a person—a new conspirator—wouldn't be looking for me; and even if it was someone else from Thomas-Smithfield, I could easily evade his notice.
I was about to duck into another room alcove when I heard Bethany’s cell phone go off from the ice machine room. It was a Lady Gaga tune that I knew to be her phone’s default ringtone. (Bethany received more than her fair share of personal calls at her desk at Thomas-Smithfield.)
“Are you almost here?” she implored.
Right after that, I heard the sound of the ice machine churning, then a few ice cubes dropping into Bethany’s ice bucket. Only a few. I heard her curse the machine and repeat the process.
“I’m actually in the building right now, on my way to room one-thirty-five,” I heard Sid Harper say from behind me.
Sid Harper.
I turned around. I couldn't yet see Sid, but I heard him continue the banter as he traversed the short sub-hallway that connected the two main ones.
Sid Harper!
I could not go back the way I had come. Sid, meanwhile, would be able to see me within seconds.
“Well, I’m on my way back to the room right now!” Bethany said into her cell phone. “With a bucket full of ice for that champagne!”
I was walking double-time down the hall, away from Sid, toward the ice machine room.
I now knew that Bethany was meeting with Sid. They had something going behind Donnie’s back. Mildly interesting, yes, but I now knew what I had come here to learn. All I wanted to do now was get out of that Best Western without one of them seeing me. A few more yards, and I would be in the lobby. I could simply walk out the way I had come. Neither of them would ever know that I had been here.
And I almost made it. Then I saw Bethany, emerging from the ice machine room. She was momentarily looking into the ice bucket, listening to Sid.
A realization hit me: I wouldn't be able to get past her.
I was at room 135. It was immediately to my left. I saw Bethany’s denim jacket on the floor, propping the door open.
I had a split-second to decide, and make my next move.
I chose. I pushed open the door of room 135, and slipped inside.
Chapter 66
Once inside the room, I had a matter of seconds to decide where I was going to hide.
As I stepped through the door, I had a fleeting image of myself taking refuge in the closet. But the closet was a cramped affair that was made for storing coats, not people. A quick glance told me that the closet was a nonstarter.
Room 135 was a standard hotel room, with two twin beds. I made a quick guess: Sid and Bethany would use the bed nearest the door.
There was a gap of two or three feet between the far wall and the distant side of the second bed. I had no othe
r option. As quickly and as quietly as I could, I stepped across the room, then knelt and worked myself into the small space.
I was barely ensconced between the second bed and the wall when I heard Bethany and Sid come through the door.
Bethany was giggling, Sid was whispering to her, something mildly lewd. They were absorbed in each other. They had not noticed me.
The door clicked shut.
“I’ve been waiting for us to do this again,” Bethany said.
“You’re not the only one.”
I heard the ice bucket drop onto a hard surface—probably the table at the front of the room. There was the distinctive pop of a cork.
“Glasses?” Sid asked.
“Just these plastic ones from the hotel. Best Western’s finest crystal,” Bethany replied with a chuckle.
There were a few moments of silence while they drank a little champagne. But hotel room trysts typically proceed in an economical fashion. This one was to be no exception.
“It’s good champagne,” I heard Bethany say.
“Forget the champagne,” Sid replied.
I heard the sounds of them coupling. I didn't have to see anything to guess the progression of events: First they were kissing while standing up. Then the springs (of the bed nearest the door, thankfully) groaned as they worked their way into a horizontal position.
Aside from my infrequent glimpses at online pornography, I had never heard two other people make love before. Under other circumstances, I would have been embarrassed. Under these circumstances, I was merely thankful that Bethany and Sid had, per my expectations, used the other bed.
Plenty of things were going through my mind, though, as I listened to Sid and Bethany moan, sigh, and utter incomprehensible words at each other. Did Donnie have any idea? Were Bethany and Sid planning to cut Donnie out of the embezzlement scheme?
Before long they were done. Then they started to talk.
“How much longer are you going to stick with that loser?” Sid asked her.
“Oh, I’ll be glad to break up with him. All you have to do is move me into that nice big house of yours. A ring on my finger would be nice, too. Oh, what’s that you say? You don’t want to hitch your cart to your subordinate from the wrong side of the tracks?”
Sid laughed, good-naturedly, I thought. “All right, all right. I get it. But you’re wrong about my house. Melissa wrung me out to dry when we divorced. My house is nothing special.”
“A lot better than the dump I live in.”
“You know how it is with you and me. We both know the score. I don't have a right to tell you that you can’t have a proper boyfriend, though I have no idea what you see in that idiot. But that’s none of my business, is it?”
“No, it’s not, actually. I should also mention that you and Donnie have a lot in common, really.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m just sayin’”
“Well, don’t say. And Donnie is too much of a wild card. He has no common sense. We should never have gotten him involved in this.”
“Sid, dear. Do I need to remind you whose idea all this was in the first place? I think I should also remind you that Donnie, whatever his faults, is at least on our side. He can be controlled. But those damn Russians scare me. And let’s not forget about Ellen Trevor and Frank.”
“Frank won’t be with us much longer.”
I felt a sudden chill. What did Sid mean? Was he talking about firing me? Or killing me?
“What about Ellen Trevor?” Bethany persisted.
“Ellen is more complicated. I don't have any authority over her. Her manager is pliable, but not that pliable. I can’t have her fired.”
“Listen to you: Not long ago you were talking about ‘eliminating’ people. Now you’re going back to your corporate mode.”
I heard Sid, or maybe Bethany, roll over on the bed.
“You can thank the Russians for that,” Sid said. “They don't want anybody to be taken out if we can avoid it. Sokolov said it brings down the heat. I think we should listen to them. They know what they’re talking about.”
“And you don’t want to cross the Russians.”
“Do you?”
Bethany laughed nervously in response. “No.”
“But seriously,” Sid said, “we do need to find a way to get Donnie out of this. I don't trust him.”
There was a mild undercurrent of alarm in Bethany’s voice. “You don’t mean—”
“No, relax. I mean we need to politely tell him that his services are no longer needed. We give him a lump sum payment, and we send him on his way.”
“I don’t think Donnie is going to go for that,” Bethany said. “He sees himself as the mastermind.”
“That’s the problem.”
“Donnie also now thinks that we should take more drastic action—with Ellen and Frank. I do, too.”
“So you’ve said. But Donnie has no idea of what he’s saying. The Russians are right, for what it’s worth. You make somebody disappear, and you take things to a whole other level. You can’t be invisible anymore.”
“We’re not really invisible now, if they know. Are we?”
They continued back and forth like that for a while. What I surmised was that Sid—out of a sense of self-preservation, if nothing else—now wanted to show restraint. He really didn't want to kill either Ellen or me. But Donnie and Bethany apparently saw themselves as hard-boiled, modern-day gangsters. Bonnie and Clyde, maybe.
I was grateful when I heard Sid say that he had to leave. But newly nervous, too: They had been mutually distracted while they were on the bed, and largely stationary. Once they started to put their clothes on, they would be moving about the room more.
Thankfully, neither one of them thought to look behind the other bed. I was sure I would be a goner while they were getting dressed. It would have been so easy for one of them to glance back there and see me.
But neither one of them did.
After they got dressed, they made vague promises to get together again. Sid asked, “Are you going to Donnie’s now?”
“Of course I’m going to Donnie’s. He’s expecting me. Come on, Sid, like you said, we both know the score.”
Sid didn't sound too happy with this explanation. Nothing about his unhappiness caused him to look behind the far bed, though.
Finally the lights went out, and the door clicked shut. I was alone in room 135. I lay there for a while, perfectly still in the darkness, before I dared to get up.
Chapter 67
And then I went to Ellen’s. Sitting in my car in the Best Western parking lot, I texted her, informing her that I would be there, but I would be late.
“OK,” she texted back.
I arrived at Ellen’s condo. As my story unfolded, her reaction approached disbelief.
“Let me get this straight: You were laying there on the floor, while Sid and Bethany—”
“That’s right.” I shook my head. “What would Donnie Brady do, if he only knew?”
“Donnie Brady deserves it,” Ellen said.
I had by now come to suspect that Ellen was withholding something. This last remark of hers was especially odd, coming from someone who had no obvious ties to Donnie Brady. But I couldn't argue with the sentiment.
“Well, I’m glad it worked out,” Ellen concluded. “It could have been much, much worse.”
Ellen was right, and then some. Sid might be more prudent than Bethany or Donnie, but what would he have done had he discovered me in that hotel room tonight? I wondered if he carried a gun with him all the time. During our bizarre business trip to North Carolina, he had seemed completely comfortable with the gun he had used to threaten me.
Given the nature of our adversaries, I had probably come close to real injury tonight. A few days ago I had been beaten by a Russian mobster. A few days before that I had been threatened by my boss—not merely with firing, but with physical violence. To have been caught in that hotel room would have been very, very bad.
My existence, prior to this, had certainly not been without pain and disappointment. First and foremost there had been my divorce, my separation from my child. But even that had been basically civilized. The past few weeks had subjected me to more stress than I had faced in a lifetime, and stress of the life-or-death variety.
Thus far, I had handled it all with equanimity, I thought. But now I felt it suddenly overwhelm me. I was acutely aware of how fragile my existence was. Then, on the heels of that, I was struck by what a fool I had been to give my blind trust to the benevolence of men like Sid, to the ethics of corporate bureaucrats like Anne Hull.
My old sense of security had been nothing but an illusion. Every minute of my life, it seemed to me, I really was going for broke.
Or maybe I should be.
I reached for Ellen and took her hand. I drew her near me. Despite what she had said the last time this happened, she seemed amenable to my kissing her now, in this moment. So I kissed her.
Again she responded—briefly—only to have second thoughts.
“I can’t,” she said, pulling away.
I threw up my hands, walked away from her, toward her kitchen.
“Fine, fine. The bad guy in your past. I get it.”
“No, Frank, you don’t. The bad guy in my past is—Donnie Brady.”
“What?”
I was astounded, angry, floored.
“Impossible.” First Sid with Bethany. And now—Ellen Trevor with Donnie Brady?
“Why do you think it’s impossible?”
That was a good question, I supposed, and not one for which I had a ready, cogent answer.
“Because Donnie Brady—he isn't your type. He—he can’t be. And besides, Donnie has been with Bethany for as long as I’ve been at the company.”
Ellen exhaled. “Frank, you barely know me. How could you possibly know what my ‘type’ is? And yes, I know about Donnie and Bethany. They’ve been an on and off thing. Donnie and I dated for a short while—not long ago.”
“What happened?” I asked. “With you and Donnie? You’re not with him anymore, after all.”
The Eavesdropper Page 17
