by Mike Faricy
I was at the Gresham a half hour early. The circular drive was made of red brick pavers and wrapped around a very nice garden filled with flowers and precisely pruned bushes. The entire area was boarded by a three-foot trimmed hedge of green, leafy plants with little black berries. A broad sidewalk ran right up the middle of the garden and in the exact center of the garden, two wooden park benches sat opposite one another.
I sat on one of the benches, a couple, apparently overserved, sat on the other bench discussing if they should get a room. From what I could pick up, they’d been attending a wedding in one of the ballrooms and now their intentions had progressed to the consummation part of the evening. I’d taken their photo for them with her cellphone maybe five minutes earlier.
I held a newspaper attempting to look like I might be reading, but I was scanning the area nonstop. Thus far, I had discovered absolutely nothing. I probably checked my watch every minute for twenty-five minutes, from about ten minutes before eight until eight-fifteen when Ashley finally arrived.
Idiot Tony was driving her in that sporty blue thing that had been in the blurry image posted online the other day. He stopped across the street from the hotel and I watched while they seemed to argue in the car. I couldn’t make out what was being said, but I could hear the tone from where I sat. More than one couple walking past gave a brief glance toward Tony’s car then sort of picked up their pace.
After a few minutes of dramatics, Ashley got out of the car, stuck her tongue out at Tony then slammed the car door. Tony sped off down the street causing one car to slam on the brakes and lean on his horn, so much for a subtle entry.
Ashley pranced up the sidewalk in an exaggerated manner, placing one foot directly in front of the other like some fashion model strutting down the runway. Once again all heads were turned, including the guy seated across from me, at least until his date hit his arm and whined, “Gary.”
Ashley paused in front of me, looked down and said, “Get anyone, yet?” which pretty much ended my efforts out in front of the hotel.
“No, not yet. Why don’t you go keep your appointment and I’ll follow you in, you’re already twenty minutes late.”
“It’s magic,” she scoffed. “Works like a charm every time, they’re so revved up by the time I knock on the door, they’re usually only good for about five minutes. Sometimes I don’t even have to get undressed.”
Charming, I thought, then folded my newspaper and followed a discrete distance behind her.
The mood seemed to have changed decidedly with the couple seated across from me. He appeared to be pleading and she had her arms crossed and continued to shake her head from side to side. A reaction to Ashley’s personal brand of magic, unfortunately I was very familiar with the body language.
We entered the hotel, past a fawning valet and concierge both of whom greeted Ashley with a “Good evening, enjoy your time at the Gresham, madam.” It made me wonder if perhaps they knew her on sight or at least were familiar with her particular line of work.
She waited for me to catch up with her at the bank of elevators then said, “I can take it from here. I’ll be down in about a half hour.”
“I thought you had an hour appointment?”
“Like I said, it’s magic.” The elevator door opened and she stepped in then looked past me, seemingly emotionless as the doors closed and the elevator rose up to the sixth floor.
Chapter Eighteen
Tony stepped in through the revolving front door a moment later and made a beeline for the bar. I waited a couple of minutes looking for I don’t know what in the lobby then followed. On my way to the bar I glanced out the front door to the benches in the garden. The guy was still sitting there, talking to someone on his cellphone, and his date was nowhere to be seen.
Tony was seated at the far end of the bar, staring into a pint of beer. Not surprisingly, no one was seated around him. I figured anyone with any sense had gotten up and left the moment he’d arrived.
“Mind if I join you, Tony?”
“Not like I can stop you.”
I didn’t feel like it, but I pulled out a stool anyway.
“So, how’s it feel being a big movie star?”
“That’s pretty old news, Tony, where’d you ever hear about that.”
“I got my sources.”
“Sure you do.”
“You see anything, catch some guy taking pictures?” He asked in a tone suggesting there wasn’t a chance in hell I would have.
“Nope, sorry to disappoint, Tony, but so far the only guy I’ve seen taking pictures tonight was me, right out there in that front garden.”
He sort of smirked and then shook his head like he couldn’t believe how stupid I was. I’ve maybe done the same thing before too, and to tell the truth I was thinking about doing it now after dealing with him and Ashley.
“Hey, I thought you were going to pull into the circular drive tonight and drop Ashley off right at the front door.”
“Yeah, she was bitching about that, but what a pain in the ass. I didn’t feel like doing it.”
“Here’s the thing, Tony. If you did that, and there was someone outside waiting to take her picture, that might have forced them to run and catch up, or at least done something that could have caught our attention and we may have been able to figure out who’s behind this. Since you decided not to do that, we really didn’t have much of a chance.”
“So you’re saying it’s my fault you can’t nail the guy, that it? All of a sudden it’s my fault?”
“No. What I’m saying is, if you keep on doing the same thing time after time, you’re probably going to get the same result. If we have a plan, maybe we could all agree to work together and see if we can’t nail the individual who has been photographing Ashley.”
“Yeah, right, so all of a sudden it’s my fault. Fuck you,” he said, then took a long sip of beer and stared at me over the rim of his glass.
The bartender stepped over to us at this point, laid a circular mat for a glass down in front of me and said, “What can I get you, sir.”
“Nothing for me, I was just leaving.”
Tony sort of snickered and took another long sip.
The juke box was playing some sort of nineties number I recognized, but I couldn’t come up with the name. I glanced around the barroom, it was barely half full, still, I figured there were too many witnesses and so I left.
Chapter Nineteen
I waited in the lobby with an eye on the elevators. I was sitting in a comfortable leather chair reading my newspaper when I wasn’t watching people walk past toward the elevators. The foot traffic seemed to have a definite flow, people coming into the hotel were either picking up their key at the front desk then heading toward the elevators, or coming into the hotel and heading directly toward the elevators. Not a lot of folks seemed to be leaving the building.
I was seated in one of three groupings of brown leather couches and chairs. The lobby was wide and very long with white marble floor tiles covered by large, thick oriental rugs and period floor lamps. The walls were paneled in dark oak to a height of about five feet then painted a sort of gold color with stencil designs running just above the paneling and just below the elegant plaster molding bordering the fourteen-foot ceiling.
At the far end of the lobby, closest to the bank of elevators, a large marble fireplace had a nice fire blazing. Maybe a half dozen people were gathered around it drinking glasses of wine, laughing, and chatting.
Ashley exited the elevator some hours later. By now the lobby was quiet, the crowd by the fireplace had dwindled down to just two people. I watched Ashley as she made her way to the barroom, oblivious to me almost asleep in a chair. I scanned the lobby, but couldn’t see anyone paying any attention, well, except for the guy by the fireplace, but he only gave her a passing glance. She didn’t appear quite as well put together as she had when she arrived. I glanced at my watch before I followed her into the barroom, it was after midnight.
She
hadn’t been more than a minute ahead of me and was already locked in an argument with Tony when I entered the bar.
“Look at you, God, you’re high again, all screwed up,” he said. Then took a sip, he’d apparently switched from beer to bourbon or Scotch somewhere during the past three and a half hours.
“You don’t know,” she said then ran a hand through her hair and steadied herself by grabbing hold of the back of a bar stool.
“Ash, you still got some blow on your lip, please don’t tell me that’s how you got paid, again, Jesus.”
“Well, you’re drunk.”
“That’s because, your thirty-minute little love-fest with the boss man went on for about four hours,” Tony said then focused on me just coming into view behind Ashley. “What the hell do you want? I thought you left.”
Ashley turned and attempted to focus on me, her pupils looked dilated and idiot Tony was right, she did have powder under her nose. She seemed to weave back and forth in place for a moment then said, “Did you get the bastard?”
“He didn’t get shit. Didn’t get the guy. Didn’t see the guy. Nothing, just like I told you.”
She spun around and half shouted, “Shut the fuck up, Tony.” Then she turned back toward me. “Tell me you got him.”
“Nope. Didn’t see a thing. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t here. Maybe he still is for all we know.”
Tony glanced around the room. There were only four other people in the place, a table of three involved in an animated conversation and a guy sitting off by himself in a distant corner focused on some college football game on the flat screen.
“You gotta be kidding. You didn’t see him, nothing?”
“Not that I could determine.”
“What in God’s name have you been doing all night? What the hell am I paying you for?” Ashley snapped.
“Yeah, what are we…?”
“You’re not paying me, either one of you,” I said looking directly at Tony. “You didn’t do what I told you to do. Simple as it was, you didn’t follow the plan. You arrived almost a half hour late, Ashley. And Tony, you didn’t drop Ashley off where we planned, and now you’re wondering why I couldn’t spot some individual who probably got fed up about the same time I did, only he could leave. Unfortunately, I’m stuck here talking to the two of you.”
Tony started to move off his bar stool, but his foot was wrapped around the leg and he sort of did a slow motion tumble into Ashley. She fell backward shrieking, and they both went down on the floor.
“You bastard, you did that on purpose,” Tony yelled at me from down on the floor.
The three people at the table had stopped their animated conversation and stared at us. The bartender remained at the far end of the bar. Ashley had rolled over and was up on all fours, but couldn’t seem to move past that point. What you could see of her black thong was directed at Tony’s face. The lone guy watching the college football game sighed as he stood up and slowly made his way over to us. He helped Ashley up off the floor then glanced down at Tony. “Can you get up?”
“What’s your problem, asshole?” Tony asked from the floor, looking like he might have some trouble focusing from that distance.
“Hotel security, I think it might be best if everyone headed up to their rooms. Let’s keep it a nice quiet night, okay folks?”
“This bastard here….”
“Sir,” he said to Tony. “This probably isn’t the best time, or the best place. Maybe sleep on it and we could discuss this in the morning.”
Tony gave him a look.
“Or, we could call the police and you could sort it out down at the station. I would prefer not to do that, but I will.”
“Come on, Ashley, get your ass out of here,” Tony said standing up. He set his face with a determined look then staggered out of the bar. When he reached the door he turned around and yelled, “You’re fired, Haskell. You hear me, fucking fired, man.”
“I’ll say, ditto that,” Ashley said then strutted out the door after Tony.
“Whoa, you work for those two,” the security guy asked.
“No, thank God.”
“Maybe wait a minute or two and then you should probably leave too, sir. Have a pleasant evening.” He smiled then turned and followed Ashley and Tony out of the barroom.
Chapter Twenty
That’s what they said, “You’re fired,” Louie asked. He was wearing a wrinkled, blue pinstripe suit and he’d already managed to dribble coffee down the front of an otherwise clean, starched shirt. It wasn’t quite ten in the morning.
“Yeah, and get this, I’m not even working for them. Royal Baker hired me to check them out, see if I could find out who the hell has been taking her picture and posting it online.”
“And you never saw anyone?”
I’d been attempting to peer in the third floor apartment windows across the street, but thus far I hadn’t had any luck. I put the binoculars down and spun around in my office chair to face Louie.
“Not only did I not see anyone, now I want to take a picture of her looking shitty and post it online, or at least get a dartboard-sized copy. Not a nice lady and man, does she ever deserve that jackass guy she’s with.”
“They both sound like a real piece of work. You think she makes money doing that stuff?”
“Who knows? I mean, yeah she could theoretically be making some dough, but if she usually works the way she was operating last night, she probably ended up paying whoever her customer was, or took the payment in nose candy.”
“Charming.”
I placed a call to Royal, actually I phoned and spoke with Marilynn who said, “Mr. Baker is unavailable just now. Who may I ask is calling?”
“It’s Dev Haskell, Marilynn.”
“Oh,” she said sounding more than a little disappointed.
“Can I leave a message to have him call me when he has a free moment?”
“Yes, I’ll see that he gets the message. Will there be anything else?”
“No, thank you.”
My phone rang before I could refocus the binoculars.
“Please hold for Mr. Baker.”
“Hello,” Royal said a moment later.
“Hi, Royal, Dev Haskell.”
“Yeah, any new developments, Dev? Did you get our man?”
“Yes and no. I didn’t see anyone, and Tony and Ashley informed me that I was fired last night.”
“What?”
I went on to explain the previous night’s events. How the two of them were possibly incapable of following the simplest of plans. I mentioned Tony’s confrontational nature and Ashley’s rather unprofessional attitude, although I wasn’t quite sure, given her line of work, that unprofessional was the word.
“I’m sorry to hear all this, Dev. And you didn’t see anyone fitting the bill. No guy following her, maybe lurking in the bushes or the lobby?”
“No, sorry, nothing like that, Royal. But, to tell the truth, they both seemed oblivious to any sense of security. And Ashley’s entry from the time she stepped out of the car until the elevator doors closed and brought her up to I think it was the sixth floor, we’re only talking a minute, maybe a minute-and-half. With any luck, your guy wasn’t around. Who knows? Maybe your security sweeps have finally done the trick.”
“We’ll see, for the time being, let me smooth things over with the two of them. Tony can be difficult, but he’s got Ashley’s best interests at heart. And Ashley is nothing if not headstrong, but the poor thing has been under a lot of stress lately with all of this.”
“Well, keep me posted. In the meantime, if you could email me your list of disgruntled former employees I’ll be doing some research in that area.”
“It sounds as though that may just be our best bet, at least at this point. I’ll have Marilynn email the list to you this morning. Let’s stay in touch,” Royal said and hung up. It wasn’t ten minutes later when the list arrived in my email.
Chapter Twenty-One
Royal’s list of
disgruntled employees was less than I had hoped for, a lot less. There were just three names on the thing. One guy was located in India, another in the Philippines, and the third was in Denver. Maybe I was missing something, but at least on the surface they didn’t seem to be very likely suspects to be following an escort around St. Paul and taking photographs.
The list had contact information, including phone numbers. I attempted to phone the guy in India first. It took me three tries, but I finally got through or at least it was ringing.
“Hello?”
“Hello, I’m calling from the United States, I’d like to speak with Chetan, please.”
“What is this in regard, to?” he asked. His accent was heavy and I had to focus to understand what he was saying.
“Is this Chetan?”
“Indeed it is.”
That seemed good enough for me, if the guy was at home in India he wasn’t taking pictures of someone in St. Paul. “Thank you,” I said and hung up. I had the same result with my call to the Philippines, although the guy I called, Nick Santos, sounded a lot crabbier. Then again, I’d called at a quarter to one in the morning, his time, so I had probably gotten him out of a sound sleep.
The Denver call went to a guy named Mickey Cray. After the crabby response I’d gotten from the Philippines, I checked the time difference first, just an hour behind. I dialed and a recording came on the line, “This call may be recorded.” Then the phone rang and a woman answered on the third ring.
“Hello,” she sounded nice, even with just the one word.
“Hi, I’m calling for Mickey Cray.”
“Speaking,” she replied.
That caught me off guard. “Oh, Ms. Cray, I’m sorry to bother you. I received your name from a friend of mine, actually. Do you work with computers, website design that sort of thing?”
