by Andrews
I carried my drink with me to the registration desk, where a friendly young girl dressed in a silky bejeweled costume beamed at us from behind a large name tag that said Harem Girl Gloria. She took our names and located us in the vast computer system, informing us that we were in room 712 and it was ready. When I asked if that was a nonsmoking room, she said no. Callie insisted she'd requested nonsmoking. Gloria said she hadn't. We argued back and forth with her, and the vibes became less pleasant with every passing second. Life in Vegas was becoming as difficult as life in L.A. Finally, Callie stepped in front of me, partially blocking my view of Gloria, and addressed her directly.
"My friend has had a very trying day, and I wanted this experience to be relaxing for her. So far it's not turning out that way."
"I can't help that." Gloria's harem veil sucked in and out with each breath.
"I really need a nonsmoking room." Callie's tone remained even. Gloria paused and locked eyes with Callie. There was silence, and then Harem Girl Gloria's fingers smashed down on the computer keys as if she were cutting the heads off chickens.
"I will be happy to upgrade you to a suite free of charge, and the hotel is sorry you've experienced this inconvenience," she said in a decidedly unsorry tone.
Callie thanked her. Harem Girl Gloria yanked the printout off the machine, slapped two room key cards down on the desk, and rang for the bellman. We were headed to suite 1142.
"Gotta get one more piece of luggage," I said.
"What's in it? Can't we get it later?"
"Elmo." I grinned.
"You brought Elmo?" She lit up. "How are you going to get him in here?"
"Can't tell you or I'd have to kill you!" I teased.
"Don't say things like that. Words have power," she said, somewhat shocked.
"Sorry, meant to say that information is classified," I replied. "Be right back."
Borrowing a luggage cart from the lobby, I wheeled it out to the Jeep, opened the empty suitcase with the air holes I'd cut in it and said, "Okay, guy, hop in." Elmo jumped in just like I'd taught him. I carefully removed the suitcase from the Jeep and lifted it onto the cart. "No barking, no moaning," I ordered as I pushed the cart across the parking lot, handed the doorman my car keys, and asked him to have someone get the remainder of my luggage from the Jeep and bring it to my room before valet-parking my vehicle.
I joined Callie and the bellman and the three of us, plus the incognito canine, stepped into the elevator. Two golden rams on the elevator doors came together butting heads, and the elevator swept us silently up eleven floors.
Elmo got wind of Callie's perfume and began to wiggle and make a very tiny sound of excitement. I coughed to cover it, but Elmo moaned incessantly and Callie giggled uncontrollably.
The bellman unlocked the door to 1142. It was a gorgeous bedroom with two king-sized beds and off to one side a sitting room with swag curtains pulled back on either side of a huge chaise lounge. Everything was desert brothel motif. Callie and I moved through the room, grinning at our good luck. A wonderfully stocked refrigerator, the mattresses were so new you could bounce a quarter off them, and the view of the Strip was breathtaking. The bellman started to lift Elmo in his suitcase from the cart.
"Whoa, leave that one, please. I'll take care of it in a minute, and I'll push the cart outside." He paused, but I tipped him generously and to the point that he left not caring what I had in the bag.
I closed the door on the world and put my arms around Callie Rivers and felt her soft, warm, full lips slide effortlessly over and around my mouth. We held each other gently, just our fingertips touching each other's waists, a space between our bodies, so that only our lips met, only the softness of our mouths greeted one another as if any other pressure might take away from this most sensual of hellos. It was hypnotic, and I swayed slightly from the amazing heat that spread down my neck, across my chest, and into my groin. It was the unquenchable hunger of ten weeks. It was the insatiable lust often weeks. It was the moment I had envisioned endlessly—for ten weeks!
"My God, I just want to devour you," I whispered.
Suddenly the suitcase began to move and Elmo whined, battering at its sides to get out.
"Elmo, sorry, here, honey." I unzipped the bag and he escaped into Callie's arms, his tail wagging furiously. He let out a large bark and we both tensed and shouted, "Shh!" at the same time, giggling like teenagers.
"How will we disguise him to get him up and down stairs to walk him?" Callie asked.
"He can wear your clothes. You won't be needing them." I grabbed her and began unbuttoning her shirt, burying my face in her breasts.
"Stay right where you are. I'm going into the bathroom for just a moment..."
"Based on the size of this room, there may be a swimming pool in the bathroom." I kissed her again, unable to let her go.
Callie disappeared into the bathroom for only a second and then, shrieking, backed out of the room and crashed into me. "Call security!" She slammed the bathroom door shut. "There's a dead man in the tub!"
Chapter Three
I pushed the bathroom door open and saw the man lying there, wearing a tuxedo, his head jammed back under the faucets, his arm dangling over the side of the tub. On his little finger a gold signet ring bore the image of a bird, its leg poised in the air, its claw extended to do battle.
"Teague, close the door, please. I don't want to look at him," Callie whispered, and Elmo growled in agreement, seemingly ready to attack the corpse for the intrusion.
Security had said they'd be right up. We stood outside in the hallway, waiting. A maid scurried up to us with a load of linens on her arm.
"I forgot the towels, sorry." She reached around me to put her master key in the lock.
"Don't go in there!" I nearly shouted.
The maid jumped back, apparently startled. I took the towels from her, saying we'd put them inside for her. I laid them on the floor as Callie fidgeted. We were both in a state of shock. There's something about seeing a dead body, even if it's only for a few seconds, that imprints on your mind. A gray, thick-skinned, rubbery corpse lying in state at the local funeral parlor is upsetting enough, but freshly killed bodies, stiff but still pink, blood still oozing, are enough to give you the creeps for months. I'd seen a lot of bodies during my brief stint as a police officer, and like snakes, I was okay with them as long as I wasn't surprised by them. If I went to a crime scene, I expected to find bodies, but finding one in the bathroom of our luxury hotel room was an entirely different matter.
Like a kid wanting to cut and run, I told Callie we could speed this whole process up if we went down to security ourselves. Callie said maybe we should guard the hotel room door. I assured her that the dead guy didn't need guarding, and the two of us headed down the long corridor toward the elevators with Elmo in tow. We quickly spotted two hotel employees in bright red jackets heading back in our direction. The older, shorter man had his sparse white hair sheared into a flattop and moved in the strained way of a pudgy person in a hurry—his creased pants tugging with each step. His jacket had the word Security emblazoned over the left pocket. I was comforted that his name tag simply stated Roy. Not Harem Guard Roy or Tent Tender Roy, just Roy. The younger man looked like he could lift an SUV with one arm on any given afternoon and wore the name tag Ted. I skipped the introductions and told them to follow us.
"You say he was in your room when you got back?" Roy asked.
"We weren't back from anywhere," Callie said. "We'd just checked in."
Roy let me know how seriously the hotel was taking our call when he drew his gun, popped the lock with his master key, and he and brick-shit-house-Ted slipped inside alone. Seconds later, Roy pushed the door open and beckoned us to enter. The bathroom door was open, the tub clearly visible. There was no body in it.
"The guy was in the tub, you say?" Roy sagged into an adrenaline low.
Callie and I stared at the pristine bathroom. Nothing out of place, certainly no dead guy lounging u
nder the faucets. I went into action opening closets, looking under beds, checking balconies. There was no one there.
"Wearing a tuxedo," I said. Ted shot Roy a look that said these ladies may just be bonkers.
"Could be some drunk stumbled in here while the maid was cleaning, you know, behind her back and fell into the tub. We've had stranger things happen." Roy let out a sigh of relief on behalf of hotel security, legal, and public relations.
"This man was dead," Callie said.
"You seen a lot of dead people, miss? I mean, excuse me for saying so, but when you're upset, you know..."
Roy was giving her the dumb-blonde dismissal.
"The guy was dead," I said, backing her up. "And we weren't out of this room two minutes. Just the time it took us to walk down the corridor to the elevators and meet you. So somebody's been rehearsing a two-minute drill on removing dead guys."
Roy decided not to argue. He said he'd fill out a report and file it with the hotel and with the LVPD so there would be an official record. There wasn't much else to be done. Having been a cop, I knew—no body, no crime.
"We'd like to move you to another room. You know, so we can keep an eye on this one and to let you get on with your vacationing. Ted, help the ladies with their luggage, and by the way, no dogs allowed in the hotel," Roy said.
"What do you think, Roy? Would the maid rather deal with a decomposing body in the bathtub or a little dog hair on the porcelain? We're not talking psychological damage and suing the hotel. All we're asking for is dispensation for our.. .police-trained drug-sniffing dog." It was a stretch, but I did have some interaction with drug-sniffing dogs in my former line of work. Granted, drug-sniffing dogs usually had longer legs and came when you called them, but other than that, Elmo could fill the bill.
Security guard Ted chose not to press the point and scooped up our luggage, putting it under one arm as he held the door for us with the other, while large sweat droplets fell off his forehead, landed on his jutting chin, and plummeted onto his shirt front. We followed him to the elevator. He used his free hand to radio the front desk. There was a great deal of static as he spoke into the radio.
"I got 1142 moving to 611, over," Ted said in a businesslike manner.
Someone on the other end okayed 611 and we were back in the rams' head elevator heading down to the sixth floor. Ted opened the door to 611 with his master key and said someone from the front desk would bring us new electronic keys right away. We thanked him and he hulked off.
"Not as nice as our upgrade," Callie said.
"Yeah, but the bathroom's not being used as a morgue," I said, checking to be certain.
Callie and I plopped down on the bed in a heap. The events of the evening had taken some of the wind out of our desert sails. I wanted to know if someone put that guy in the tub for our benefit, but then, why would someone do that and how would it even be possible? After all, we didn't know what room we'd be in until minutes before we got on the elevator. Nonetheless, it just seemed uncanny that out of 126,000 hotel rooms in Las Vegas, ours was the one with the dead body.
"Must be our energy together," Callie mused, somewhat unconcerned. "Very high sexual energy draws other energy to it."
"Like dead guys who miss having sex?" I asked.
"I try to explain and you start that negative humor. Are you going to stop it?" Callie's voice had a playful lilt to it.
I swore I would. Of course, I was swearing to anything these days to make Callie happy. She was unquestionably the center of my universe.
I kissed her and her mouth radiated heat and longing, and I felt myself about to dissolve. Elmo shook himself loudly, jangling his dog tags, and I paused just momentarily to tell him to "settle." The mere mention of Elmo sent Callie into swoons of adoration toward my large satchel-shaped companion.
"I'm so glad you brought him." She recited our agenda for the next few days, telling it directly to Elmo. "I see lots of good food, short walks and"—she looked up at me—"hours of mad, passionate lovemaking." She slid into my arms and kissed me. It was almost physically impossible for a human mouth to be that hot. I dropped all interest in what happened to the dead and focused entirely on what could happen to the living. She ran her hands up my sides and let them travel down the curve of my waist, and the sensation it created on my skin disconnected my mind from my body. I was floating against my will, the way one floats in heavy salt water, happily unable to sink to the bottom. My body was shaking slightly and involuntarily as if it had been exposed to extreme cold, and yet, I was so molten hot that I was about to erupt. The anticipation of falling into her silken breasts and cupping her small buttocks in my hands, and being inside her, had created a laserlike focus on my senses, driving me through ten weeks of wanting, to this moment, and now that I was here, I was almost immobilized by the intensity of the sensation.
She stopped kissing me long enough to lock eyes with me, those celestial blue eyes that saw through me to my very core. "I have ached night after night wanting you," she said.
"Then what in the world took you so long..."
"Anticipation isn't always a bad thing." She teased me with her mouth, starting to kiss me but pulling back, brushing my throat with her lips, then pulling away.
I placed my hands on her waist and in a move that surprised even me, I lifted her up and sailed her backward onto the bed as she gasped, her eyebrow raised in amused surprise.
"I will not be toyed with," I said in mock-macho fashion.
"You're very strong." She laughed. "You don't look that strong."
"I didn't know I was." I laughed. "Maybe you're just little."
"The best gifts come in—"
"Small packages," I completed the well-worn phrase and slid her suit jacket off her shoulders and pushed aside her silk blouse. As if on cue, Elmo put his nose to the lock on the suitcase and sniffed and squeaked.
I decided to ignore him, and I focused on Callie's phenomenally soft breasts, putting my face in them and breathing in her perfume, loving the sounds of pleasure she emitted. Elmo's high-pitched squealing continued. "Elmo, be quiet!" I demanded, but Elmo was unusually disobedient. Moments later, he moved up an octave and let out a sustained violin sound. Callie giggled.
"Elmo!" I barked. "Quit it!" He glared at me and then deliberately punched the suitcase with his nose, backed away from it, glared at me again, and threatened to go up yet another octave.
"He's unhappy. Maybe he's a neatness freak. You have to unpack anyway, or your clothes are going to look like they were pressed in an accordion," Callie took up for him. I was less enthused since I had no desire to ever put my clothes on again. However, I crawled out of bed and tossed the luggage up on the spare bed and clicked open the latch. Inside, right on top, was a small manila folder with the hotel logo in the upper left-hand corner. Elmo sniffed at it as if it contained a bomb. As I wondered aloud how this had gotten into my luggage, Callie tore into it and removed a scrap of yellowed paper torn from some larger document. She flipped the delicate, faded piece of paper over and stared at it intently, her mind seeming to wander. She placed the scrap of paper on the writing desk and sank down into the straight-backed, elaborately scrolled chair and gently rubbed her hands back and forth across the symbols on the page as if transporting herself into them. I watched her without making any sound, wondering what this gorgeous woman was thinking, or doing, and why this scrap of paper seemed to mesmerize her. When she spoke it was quietly and from a faraway place, as if by speaking softly she could keep the details of that place in her mind and not scare them away.
"How did you get this?" she asked.
"I didn't put this in here. Someone's been in my luggage!" I rummaged through the suitcase and then opened the other bags to make sure there wasn't more than just an envelope stashed in my belongings. "It had to have been put there by the bellman or someone who helped unload them in valet parking."
"But how would they know to put something astrological in your bag, when it's meant for me?" Call
ie asked.
"Someone must have seen us together in the bar and knew we'd be sharing a room," I replied.
"I pulled up this astrological chart almost two decades ago for the builder of this hotel," Callie said, fixated on the yellowed piece of paper.
"You were here with the builder? How did that happen?" I held my shirts up to the light and checked the pockets, for what I wasn't sure.
"I was in my early twenties at the time, and I had just met Robert Isaacs. He brought me to Las Vegas to impress me."
I hated any sentence with Robert Isaacs's name in it, the smarmy Marathon Studio executive who had married Callie Rivers years ago. Their marriage according to Callie lasted roughly "ten minutes" and went something like I do, I did, I'm done. She'd tried to explain the reasons she'd accepted his proposal, and the lessons it had taught her, and the fact that marrying him was somehow in her personal growth chart, but I still could not grasp the idea that Callie, who was so in tune with the cosmos, could have tuned out and married a creep like Robert Isaacs.
"I was this young, blond psychic telling the builder about the stars. I remember that I had just begun to think about everything in the world as having a birth chart, because a birth is nothing more than a beginning. Everything has a beginning, middle, and an end—a life span, in essence—and of course I believe lives recycle," she continued a dialogue with herself. "I told the owner that this hotel had a birth chart. This is a piece of that chart..." Her voice trailed off.
"How do you know it's from the same chart?" I asked, leaning over her chair and kissing her shoulders, not really caring all that much about the chart.
Callie smiled at me as if I'd asked how she'd recognized one of her own children. "I know where the planets were...right down to the minute. It's a birth. You don't forget a birth."
A piece of the birth chart of a hotel and casino, I thought in my usual jaded fashion. I am absolutely mad about a woman who creates birth charts for buildings.
"I know what you're thinking." She focused on me for the first time. "He felt the same way. He asked what kind of hotel it would be, and I told him the hotel would be an overly sexual place, even for a hotel, with Scorpio being ruled by Pluto, and Mars in Scorpio in the Eighth House. It would attract money to it, perhaps money from the Underworld, another Plutonian connection. Of course I had no idea that Mo Black had mafia connections. I was so naive, and that amused him."
