by Alan Russell
“All right,” said Marisa. “What did you say to him?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Don’t play cute.”
Am picked up a spoon, looked at it, milking the scene for all it was worth. He saw Marisa start, as if she had just remembered something, but she didn’t say anything, merely waited for his explanation.
“I’m not so brave,” said Am. “I had some insider information which I was willing to gamble on. The local restaurant association recently circulated a flier on our Dr. Joseph. His girlfriend, former girlfriend, that is, wrote a quite damning letter about him. She said that whenever he went out to restaurants he made a point of never paying. According to her, this behavior first surfaced when they went out for dinner a year ago and he realized that he had forgotten his wallet. Rather than explain the situation to the manager, he decided to complain about the meal. Getting everything comped gave him a rush. She said that after that evening, whenever they went out to eat, the doctor always made it a point of leaving his wallet at home so as to ‘improve his performance.’ He said the meal always tasted that much better to him knowing it cost nothing. She apologized for going along with all of his deceits, but claimed that she thought it was just a passing, if sadistic, phase of his. Part of the reason for her leaving him, she said, was that he became more and more of a bully over time, browbeating servers and staff—and her.
“When I asked him for his watch, I was thinking about all those powerless servers and staff he had bullied. Many people don’t last in the hospitality business because they don’t like having to be a willing punching bag for the obnoxious. I pushed the moment, went against my training, because I wanted him to know how it felt.”
“How did you know she didn’t have money?” asked Marisa.
“I didn’t,” said Am. “I noticed her purse was rather tiny, but I was holding my breath when he tried to pass the paying off to her.”
“You still haven’t told me what you whispered to him,” said Marisa.
“I told him his game was over. I told him if he ever complained in a restaurant in this town again we would be serving up his ass as the special of the day.”
“Spoken like a true lawman.”
Am tipped an imaginary ten-gallon hat to her. Marisa didn’t curtsy. She was rather proud that she didn’t even know how to curtsy. Instead, she pushed a table tent over his way. Am picked it up. PRIME TIME IN BRINE TIME, it said. The promotions had been going on for the past year. The Hotel had revamped and expanded its Brine Time Lounge. It was now a forum for featured comedians, singers, and performers, for entertainers that had at least nostalgic appeal, the kind that still appeared on cable channels, or late-late night television, their routines the opening acts in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, or as headliners in such venues as the Hotel. According to the table tent, for a limited time (two weeks), world-renowned Skylar was appearing at the Brine Time. There was a picture of him, dark, brooding, and mysterious, which was all the more incredible because the man was staring at a spoon.
“You were posing a minute ago,” said Marisa, “and your pose reminded me of the promotional material.”
Am shrugged. He hadn’t been trying to imitate Skylar, didn’t even know enough about him to imitate him. From what he remembered, Skylar was a magician of sorts.
“I was also reminded,” she said, “of the enmity between Thomas Kingsbury and Skylar.”
She fished out several articles, handed them over to Am, who scanned the headlines. As Tommy Gunn the Magician, Kingsbury had done more than entertain. Sometimes he had revealed the unthinkable—showed what really was up his sleeves. He didn’t like his fellow “practitioners of the art” giving themselves exotic airs, putting themselves on mysterious pedestals. Tommy Gunn loved what he called honest magicians, those who performed sleight of hand, who could conjure through illusion or practiced method. What he couldn’t abide were those who claimed their powers came from sources other than the tangible or explanatory. He had taken on Skylar years ago, when the so-called “mentalist” was at the height of his fame and attracting an almost cult-like following. Skylar said he used the “potency” of his mind to perform his feats, but Doubting Tom went on record to declare that the only way Skylar was using his mind was for self-promotion.
The headlines reminded Am about the public feuding and triggered a few memories. He remembered how Tommy Gunn, dressed very much like Skylar, had demonstrated how he could bend keys and cause a timepiece to stop. Skylar said he did these things with the power of his mind; Tommy Gunn was of a mind to show differently. He demonstrated how friction could quickly and inconspicuously be applied to metal, how flesh could easily bend steel, and even stop time. (“This is one Timex,” he announced, “that took my licking and now isn’t ticking.”) He called Skylar a fraud, with the resulting lawsuit dragging on for a year or two until it was finally dropped.
“Thomas Kingsbury,” said Am, “would have used a bullhorn to tell the emperor he wasn’t wearing any clothes.”
“Yes,” said Marisa.
Am carefully examined the table tent, then looked at his watch. “Mr. Skylar still has another show to do tonight,” he said. “I sense we’ll be paying him a late night visit.”
“Did you divine that,” she asked, “or are you just guessing?”
He held up a spoon, looked deep within it. Marisa rolled her eyes, and then positioned a spoon and a knife in cross-like form as if she were warding off a vampire. They laughed at their ridiculous posturing, didn’t care that they were still being watched by the other diners.
The maître d’ approached their table. “No check for you tonight, Am,” he said. “I put your tab on management and promotion.”
“Thanks, Scott.”
“No,” he said, “thank you.” Then he lowered his voice so guests couldn’t hear: “You got to tell me, Am. What did you say to make that jerk disappear so quickly and quietly?”
“A magician,” said Am, “never reveals his secrets.”
That is, he thought, almost never.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Halfway back to his room, Bradford heard the music of a mariachi band in the courtyard. Maybe that was the ticket, he thought. Serenade Cleo with some music. That ought to put her back in good form.
He approached the wandering minstrels. All that their outfits were lacking, he sniffed, was neon. There were four of them, and they were going from table to table. Twenty dollars bought you two renditions of bad Herb Alpert. There weren’t too many takers.
“You guys do room service?” asked Bradford.
Their leader was the fattest guy in the group, a Mexican with a Pancho Villa mustache and a cerveza belly. His English was definitely north of the border: “It’s not out of the question,” he said, starting up the negotiations.
Bradford pulled out a twenty, but Pancho didn’t reach for it, didn’t even blink. He added another ten, but the leader still wasn’t biting. Bradford started slowly to put the money away.
“For fifty we’ll give you ten minutes,” said Pancho. “You and your lady come out to the balcony, and we’ll sing up to you. It’s a guaranteed success, man.”
Bradford didn’t want to be telling the help about the problem with their sliding glass doors. “Forty,” he said, “and I’ll want you playing in the room. We’ll get the true effect that way.”
Pancho acted as if he were thinking about it, and finally shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “But we’ll have to mute the horns. Your neighbors might complain.”
“You don’t know our neighbors,” said Bradford.
“What’s your names, and what’s the room number?”
Bradford told him, and was promised a visit within the next fifteen minutes. He handed the man a twenty, and promised the other twenty after their performance. “I want something romantic,” he said.
“No problem,” said Pancho.
There was something about that Cleopatra, thought Jimmy Mazzelli, something special. She didn’t belong
among those swingers, and she certainly didn’t belong with that stuffed-shirt boyfriend of hers. He was probably the one leading her astray. Something should be done about it. Something had to be done.
Nobility wasn’t usually Jimmy’s strong point. The bellman was a hustler, always in search of a quick buck. Perhaps instinctively, he sensed that Bradford was a fellow hustler, and maybe that brought out his competitive juices, but for whatever the reason, this was one time Jimmy wasn’t acting solely on the basis of money. There was a damsel in distress, and he was the one who was going to help her.
Jimmy had foiled the first champagne delivery by insisting upon seeing Cleo’s identification. He had figured she was under twenty-one, was trying to be older than her years. He had known that wouldn’t stop her boyfriend from getting another bottle, but it had bought Jimmy enough time to figure out a new scheme. It was the kind of plan he probably should have run through Am, or maybe even legal, but he didn’t have time. He was a man with a mission. Jimmy waited with two of the sex sentries, had joined them in watching what was going on. You needed a flowchart to figure out who had gone where, and who was with whom. No one, Jimmy was glad to see, had gone into Cleo’s room, that is, until her peacock preppie reappeared with champagne and two glasses.
He’s probably trying to get her drunk, Jimmy thought, and then make her do things she otherwise wouldn’t. That made him mad, made him want to act, but he knew that he had to give them a few minutes. He played out the scenario in his mind. By now the jerk had probably opened the bubbly. Jimmy couldn’t act until she’d had at least a glass. Then was the time to strike.
At regular intervals, doors opened and closed. The only common denominator between all the swingers seemed to be their libido. They looked and acted very differently, were of various shapes, sizes, and ages. Some wore costumes, leather outfits being the most common. Feathers were displayed, many of them creatively situated. There was makeup that would have looked out of place anywhere except at a Halloween party, and exhibitionists who wore nothing at all. Still, there were more business suits than birthday suits, and a lot of conservative dresses, even if some men were wearing those dresses, and some women the suits. Clothes-swapping seemed to be going along with mate-swapping.
“Geez,” said one of the sex sentries, a college student majoring in anthropology and getting to play Margaret Mead firsthand, “it’s like we should be beating drums.”
“They don’t need the encouragement,” said Jimmy.
He looked at his watch. It was time. Jimmy left his post and walked to the hallway, but he wasn’t the first to make it there. Ray Ortiz and his boys were scanning room numbers and evidently looking for a gig. Their mariachi outfits put most of the swinger costumes to shame. They were wearing large black sombreros with red tassels, and had on black-and-gold vests that were embroidered with Aztec designs. Their black leather boots were shined to a fine finish (it was a tradition of theirs to have Felipe the shoeshine man give them a once-over), and they wore billowy white shirts with ruffles. Mariachis with an Elvis flair. Jimmy knew only too well that Ray’s group couldn’t play for shit, but they always did look like a million dollars.
“Hey, Ray.”
“What do you say, Jimmy?”
The two had a long-standing business relationship. Jimmy got a five-buck kickback from Ray every time he sold some moon-eyed couple on the idea of a little mariachi serenade. The usual arrangement was for Ray and his band to walk out to the beach and perform, directing their tunes upward to some balcony like troubadours of old. Jimmy would provide the band with the first names of the couple, and then Ray and the boys would belt out some string and brass tunes about a-mor-e, weaving the names into their songs and making them a twosome for the ages. That always made Dick and Jane, or Barry and Linda, very happy. The tradition (as explained by Jimmy to the couple) was for the woman to reward the minstrels by throwing down money and roses from the balcony (Jimmy also got a kickback from the Hotel florist). On several occasions more than money and roses had rained down on the musicians, with garters, negligees and other intimate apparel being among the fallout. It wasn’t as if Tom Jones were performing, but love ballads always seemed to release the feminine passions. Ah, love, thought Jimmy. It made the world go round and made him some good coin.
“Which room you playing?” asked Jimmy.
Ray consulted his sheet. “Two-twelve,” he said. “Bradford and Cleopatra. Tough names to remember, let alone work with.”
“I got something else for you to work with,” said Jimmy.
Those damn mariachis should have been along by now, thought Bradford. He had spent the time cleaning up the room. So much for Japanese efficiency. No one had yet come to fix up the place, and he was tired of walking around in a sty.
Cleopatra had already had one glass of champagne, and it seemed to be having the desired effect. She was encouraging him to sit down with her, “and relax.” He had told her there would be time enough for “relaxing” soon, but that a surprise was coming. Cleopatra loved surprises. She kept asking him what it was, but he wouldn’t tell her.
There was a knock at the door. “The cavalry,” he said to Cleopatra, then told her to sit tight. As expected, Pancho Villa and his troops were there.
Cleopatra was beside herself. This was all too romantic. Bradford accepted her excited hug as his just desserts. They sat on a sofa and waited for their song. There was some competing music coming from the party next door, but it wasn’t as loud as the partygoers. Bradford was glad they’d be sending some happy sounds of their own back. Take that, he thought. The musicians took their places. The room was intimate, the lighting low (with a solitary twenty-five-watt bulb for the entire room, it couldn’t be any other way). An unseen signal passed among the band.
Ray Ortiz had never thought he would end up running a mariachi band for his livelihood. In his younger days, he had played around with several rock bands, had always prided himself on being an outlaw singer, a cutting-edge player. That was before the wife and kids. Desperate for a job, he had filled in as a mariachi. It was the longest temp job in history. He’d been playing the mariachi standards for over a decade, what he called Mariachi Muzak. People liked to hear the same songs, and that’s what they gave them. To be able to do something different, to deviate from the same old routine, excited Ray. He started the song. He hadn’t sung it for twenty years or more, but remembered the words. Or most of them. The Doors had been a favorite group of his.
The expectant smile on Cleopatra’s face stayed frozen in place. The song wasn’t quite what she had expected. It wasn’t lyrical, or soft, or lulling. And the worst sin of all—it wasn’t romantic. But then again, “Light My Fire” will never be considered one of the twentieth century’s great contributions to romance songs.
Ray wasn’t crooning, he was howling. If he was supposed to be emulating a dog in heat, he was doing a good job. He moved closer to Cleopatra, started gyrating his rolls of flesh in her face. He looked like Elvis in his last days.
Bradford’s mouth was open. This spectacle was not what he had paid for. This was obscene.
The mariachis were gamely trying to belt out the song, but they were a group that was hard-pressed to handle tunes they’d played a thousand times before. They weren’t about to give up, though. It wasn’t over until the fat man signaled, and Ray didn’t look as if he were anywhere near doing that. He was into it, really singing, asking for his fire to be lit. Asking over and over, as if imploring the gods.
Bradford wished he had a fire extinguisher. He would have loved to have sprayed it on the caterwauling tub of lard. Who did he think he was, Chubby Checker? He tried to shout for silence, but the man was making too much noise to hear him. Bradford was tempted to kick him right in his jiggling stomach, but restrained the urge. There were four of them, but every second the music continued made those odds less and less daunting.
The song ended moments before the brawl would have occurred. Bradford didn’t trust himself to move. Cle
o weakly clapped. There were others who were more appreciative. Applause could be heard from next door, along with ribald yelling.
In a voice meant to freeze, wither, frostbite, and kill, Bradford asked, “What was that?”
“‘Light My Fire,’” said Ray.
“That is not what I meant,” he said. “What you just did was not mariachi music.” Just what it was, Bradford’s voice insinuated, was a bit lower than dog doo.
Artistic pride surfaced. “I don’t like to limit our art form, man. We take lots of request.”
“Silence being the most frequent of them, I’m sure.”
Jimmy was right, thought Ray. This guy was a jerk. He looked at his watch and said, “If that’s what you want to hear for the next five minutes . . . ”
They weren’t going to get away that easily, Bradford decided. He had paid for them, and they were going to play. He would even choose for them. “You will play ‘La Bamba,’” he demanded.
Ray looked at his fellow troupers, then shook his head. “We don’t know that one.”
“You don’t . . . ” started Bradford, then realized the man was putting him on, trying to get him mad.
“How about ‘Guantanamera’?”
“Don’t know that one either.”
“Guantanamera” is the ultimate staple of Mexican mariachi. Not hearing it performed during any given set would be a modern miracle. But Bradford wasn’t going to lose face and insist.
With heavy sarcasm, he asked, “Do you know any songs besides ‘Light My Fire’?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then by all means, grace us with one of them.”
The band had known all along what their second song was going to be. They had more than a passing familiarity with it. That’s what happens when you need cash and you’re willing to perform at bachelor parties. They really didn’t have the right instruments, but they played anyway. Loudly.
It took a few seconds for Bradford to name that tune. Gypsy Rose Lee probably could have named it in one note. Among universally recognized songs, it has few peers. The mariachis played “Stripper.” When played correctly, there is an almost comic element to the tune, an exaggerated musical bump and grind. For once, the band caught that moment, the mariachis hitting just the right inflection and rhythm.
