“Fine, fine,” Hubbard said, and hoped the lad wouldn’t collapse with joy.
A soft chime summoned a bellhop who led Hubbard to the proper bank of elevators. They walked a long way down the total silence of the eighth floor. A housekeeping cart stood outside the open door of 847. A brawny monochromatic woman in white was stripping the twin beds. She looked at them with total hostility.
“This was supposed to be ready,” the bellhop said.
“So who says suppose? So who knows about ready? Do forty-seven she says, so I do it.”
“So do it,” the bellhop said.
“It’s all right,” Hubbard said. “It doesn’t matter.” He tipped the boy. The room smelled of stale cigar and a faint pungency of perfume. He took off his hat and jacket and loosened his tie. Sliding a glass door aside, he stepped out onto a tiny triangular terrace, just big enough for the chaise fashioned of aluminum and plastic webbing and one small metal table. The vertical sawtooth construction of the side of the building gave the terraces the illusion of privacy. A tall glass containing a collapsed straw, an inch of pale orange liquid, and a poisonous-looking cherry stood on the railing. He leaned on the railing and looked down at orderly arrangements of acres of sun cots, at two pools, one Olympic and the other larger and freeform, at a thatched bar and a pagoda bar, at the empty alignment of outdoor tables and chairs, and the lush calligraphy of the planting areas. The sun was behind him, shining on tall pale distant buildings, leaving the area below him in blue-gray shadow.
The woman came out and snatched the glass, looked around for other debris, snorted and went back into the room. “Now it’s done!” she bellowed a few minutes later. As he turned, the corridor door slammed shut.
He unpacked. Jan had done well. But there was no fond funny note, no silly present for him. Of course, he told himself, she had no time for such nonsense. Not this time. The room had the sterility of a place where no one had ever lived. The little stains and abrasions and scars had been cleverly added to make him believe he was not the last living man in the world. The machines did not want him to be too lonely, so they added these subliminal clues.
He ordered up juice, eggs, cocoa and a morning paper. After he finished, he pushed the cart out into the hall, closed the terrace door, pulled the draperies shut. He turned a bedlight on, showered, put on his pajamas, got into bed. By then it was late enough to place the call to Jan.
“Was it a good trip, dear?” she asked. Her voice was dimmed by the humming distance, flat and uninvolved.
“They tried to cut us off at the waterhole, but we fought our way out.”
“What? I couldn’t hear you, dear. Mike was bellering.”
“It was okay. I got some sleep.”
“That’s good. Mike wants to talk to you.”
“Daddy! Daddy! You know what, Daddy! I’m limping!”
“Now how about that!”
“When you come home I’ll be limping! Are you coming home now?”
“Pretty soon, boy.” When Jan came back on the line he said, “What’s with the limp?”
“It’s very convincing, when he doesn’t forget which leg it is. He turned his ankle and demanded a bandage. How’s the weather there?”
“Tropical. By the way, I’m in eight forty-seven.”
“Have a truly hilarious convention, dear.”
“Thanks so much. This won’t be a picnic. You know what I have to do.”
Her voice was inaudible for a moment. “… not many picnics for anybody any more. I miss them. Thanks for calling. Keep in touch, dear.”
“I will. I will indeed. Love you.”
“Also, of course. Rest up, if they give you the chance. ’Bye.”
After he hung up he had a premonition of what could happen. The district man, whichever one had been stuck with the mechanics of the arrangements for the AGM group, would be over to check everything out. And he would find Hubbard was already registered and in, and he would feel terribly anxious to make certain that Mr. Hubbard was ecstatically content with everything.
He picked up the phone again and said, “This is Floyd Hubbard in eight forty-seven. Put a no-call on this line, please, and take it off at noon.”
He set his travel alarm for noon, turned out the bedlamp, and nestled himself into the whispering chill. The new womb for the new man, he thought. No sounds intrude. This chilled washed air is the same in Boston, Houston and Washoe. And darkness is standard issue everywhere. Here you are, Hubbard, with your invisible hatchet and the ineradicable mark of the assassin. This hurts me as much as it does you, Jesse. He burrowed his grateful way down into sleep.
Two
FRED FRICK, Assistant District Supervisor, arrived at the Sultana at ten A.M., accompanied by one of the road men, a mild round swarthy young man named Fayhouser. Frick was in his early forties, a lean sandy jittery man with pale restless blue eyes, a sharp, high-pitched voice, a rather ugly and feral mouth full of oversized yellowed teeth. He always gave the impression of being too sharply dressed, too dapper, yet taken item by item his clothing was always in good conservative taste. There was something about the shape of him and his manner which gave the casual observer the impression that his underwear, at least, had to be of lavender silk to match concealed sleeve garters.
They walked to the Sultana from a large parking lot a block and a half away. Frick stopped and looked at the big banner just being fastened in place. “Welcome to the Joint Convention of COLUDA and NAPATAN.”
“Pair of belly dancers,” Fayhouser said.
Frick turned and fixed Fayhouser with a cold glare. “Bobby, that kind of crap is okay between you and me because I know your attitude is generally good. But don’t you start making any smart cracks in front of the wrong people.”
“Sure, Fred,” Fayhouser said uneasily.
“There’s a lot of guys, and we work for some of them, take the National Association maybe a little more serious than they do their daughter’s virginity, and you come out with any cute remarks, they mark you some kind of a Communist. This is your first convention, and about the whole thing, Bobby, your attitude is you got to be eager and reverent.”
“All right, Fred. I didn’t mean anything.”
“Let’s get some coffee and get organized.”
They went into the hotel and down to the lower level, past the shops of furs and jewels to the Persian Grill and sat in the swivel armchairs at the low counter.
Frick opened a small leather notebook and uncapped a gold pen.
“About the Hospitality Suite, Bobby, I am going to go over it one more time with you. I am in charge of all the arrangements for our team, and you are my deputy in charge of the suite. You know the other road men you’re going to have to work with. You keep them in line. Every man comes into the AGM suite, he gets a drink in his hand fast. You and the other boys can drink, but keep them weak. A mild buzz is okay, but nothing more. You all keep smiling. You introduce everybody to everybody, and you do more listening than talking, and you laugh at the jokes.”
“Eager and reverent,” Fayhouser said.
Frick looked at him narrowly. “Exactly. Keep the opened bottles out and the full ones in a bedroom closet. Spread cigarettes around. Keep the ashtrays clean. What’ll be a help, line up one bellhop and hit him pretty good to start, with a promise of more at the end if he takes care of you, which means checking all the time without being called to make sure we got ice and mix and so on. Do the same with a maid on eight, so she can come and hoe the place out whenever it isn’t busy.”
“Right!”
“You’re getting a hell of a break, Bobby, because this way you get to meet AGM brass that wouldn’t know you’re alive otherwise. I’ll be around a lot of the time, of course, but there can be special problems you got to watch. One is, of course, any of the boys we picked for this job getting out of line in any way. It could hurt me and it could hurt you. Once in Atlanta, at a NAPATAN regional convention, one of Federal’s road men helping out in the suite goosed the
wife of the executive vice-president down from New York. Federal cleaned out that whole regional organization.”
“No goosing. Got ya!”
“Dammit, Bobby, if you’re not going to take this seriously …”
“I’m taking it seriously, honest, Fred.”
Frick sighed. “Okay. What I was saying, if one of our boys gets plotzed, we run him off the team fast before any damage is done. Another problem, the guy who has hit too many suites and is a drunk nuisance by the time he gets to ours. Check the badge. If he’s brass, all you can do is handle it the best way you know how. Maybe he’s a lousy road man from some other outfit. Then move him out, firm and fast. Send him along. Tell him they got broads at the Federal suite, or at United. Let the competition worry about him. Which brings up a new problem. Broads. I got a bedroom set aside for you boys working the suite, and there’s no real need for more than two of us to be in the suite at the same time. If you get something lined up, okay. So long as you handle it with good taste. Don’t bring broads into the suite. And don’t let anybody get so carried away, he can’t take his turn in the suite. This is a case of just using horse sense.”
“I understand.”
Frick studied his notebook intently for a few moments, then put it back in his pocket. “Now you go check when we can get the suite, and I’ll go see how Tommy’s coming with the exhibit.”
The Sultana had been planned and constructed as a resort-convention hotel, and the huge convention hall was a separate structure, joined to it by an umbilical corridor eighty feet wide and over two hundred feet long. This corridor was adjacent to the Arabian Room, the main dining room of the hotel. When no convention was in progress, or when the convention hall was being used as a sports arena, the corridor could be blocked off by an intricate accordion-door system. When a convention was in progress, the corridor formed an ideal place for exhibits. The lighting, electric outlets, floor covering—had all been planned with this use in mind.
Most of the exhibits were up, and a hundred people were adding the finishing touches. Many of them had a look of total exhaustion. The deadline for removal of the APETOD exhibits had been ten o’clock the previous evening, and many of the people had worked straight through.
Fred Frick walked swiftly through the noises and confusions to the AGM exhibit. Tommy Carmer was opening cartons of color press literature and stacking them on a narrow table just inside the blue velvet rope. A pair of pretty twin blondes in tight plaid pants and sheer blouses watched him with a marked lack of interest. A man in coveralls was sitting on the floor working on a small electric motor. Carmer was a sallow man with a hollow chest, a great naked dome of forehead, and very little chin.
“How’s it look to you, Freddy?”
“Goddam, it looks great! For once we don’t get stuck over in a corner someplace. What’s he doing?”
“Oh, that’s the motor that makes the parts move in the big cutaway display. It quit a minute after I turned it on.”
“Can he fix it?”
“He says so.”
Frick turned toward the blondes. “How are you today, girls? Ready to go?”
One shrugged. The other one said listlessly, “Any time.” They had show girl figures rather than model figures. They looked sulky and bored.
“Which is Honey and which is Bunny?” Frick asked.
“I’m Honey, with the mole,” one of them said, and touched her cheek.
“You going to dog it, girls, or you going to give it the paz-zazz?”
“You’ll get what you’re paying for,” Bunny said. “You got any beef, you call the agency, okay?”
“Let’s hear the spiel, girls.”
They shrugged simultaneously, moved into position. The sudden change in them was electrifying. They became alert, vivacious, with sparkling eyes, big media smiles, arched backs and thrust breasts. They took the alternate lines of the demonstration talk they had learned, and came in on the punch line in unison. Then they immediately lapsed back into sullen boredom.
“That’s great!” Frick cried. “It’s exciting!”
“You pay for pros, you get pros,” Bunny said.
“They all clear on the questions and answers, Tommy?” Frick asked.
“Check them if you want.”
He asked them the questions usually asked about AGM products and installations, and got the right answers. He threw them one he knew was beyond them, and got the proper referral to “our Mr. Carmer.”
“Yeah, Tommy, this ties in perfect with the promotion. Girls, you know the hours you’re going to work. You take your orders from Tommy. And I don’t want you spelling each other. You’re either both here or both gone. One of you has to go to the can, you both go. No drinking, and no dating the guys that’ll sure as hell make a try.”
“Any time we can’t brush off a bunch of crummy convention …”
“Okay. Now what’ll you wear? I want to see plenty of ba-zoom, kids.”
“You’ll see more than you can handle, pops,” Honey said.
“That’s all set,” Tommy said.
“And don’t you kids be standing around like you are right now, looking like you hated the whole deal.”
“When we’re on, we’ll be on, friend,” Bunny said. “You’ll have no complaint.”
Bobby Fayhouser came up behind Frick and said, “Fred, can I see you a minute?”
“You girls be back here at two o’clock sharp, ready to go,” Frick said. They nodded and walked away, side by side, in perfect unison. Frick watched the synchronous clench and roll and swing of the plaid fannies and shook his head wonderingly and said, “Like seeing double, huh? Tommy, maybe there’s our little celebration when this damn thing is over.”
“I doubt the hell out of that,” Carmer said. “That Honey one has a two-year-old kid and is married to a musician, and the other one has a county cop for a boyfriend. That’ll be okay on this job, Freddy, but the reason they’re a little sour, it’s on account of they’ve been singing and dancing since they were three years old, and now they’re twenty-three, and I guess they think they should have made it a little better than being in a convention display.”
“It might be important, what I want to tell you, Fred,” Fayhouser said.
Frick moved off to one side with the younger man. “A delay on the suite?” he asked.
“You were worried about a man named Hubbard coming? Floyd Hubbard? And you asked me to tell you right away if …”
“Is he coming?”
“He’s already here. He’s in 847. He checked in before seven o’clock this morning.”
Frick looked beyond Fayhouser, looked toward the huge shadowy cave of the convention hall beyond the display ramp, and exposed his unlikely teeth in a mirthless grin. “Well, well, well! So he made it.”
“What’s the bit on him anyhow, Fred? I know you put him on the AGM list, but you seemed nervous about him. Is there anything I should know?”
Frick stared at Fayhouser with an odd indignant contempt. “You? What should you know about him? He’s home-office brass, isn’t he? So you treat him like home-office brass. What does a kid like you have to worry about? They test all of you these days, don’t they? Your marks are on file in some goddam computer, aren’t they? You got papers like a pedigree dog.”
“But …”
“Don’t stand too close to this Hubbard, or you’ll hear all the little relays clicking and it might make you nervous.”
“Why get sore at me?”
“I’m not sore at you, Bobby. When do we get the suite?”
“Noon at the latest.”
“So go do something useful.”
Bobby Fayhouser walked away. He glanced back once and then quickened his pace. Frick walked slowly toward the main lobby, glancing at the exhibits. He phoned 847 from the lobby and was told there was no answer—which could mean that Hubbard was out or was blocking all incoming calls.
It was eleven o’clock, too late to get in touch with Jesse Mulaney and tip him o
ff about Hubbard. Maybe Jesse knew it anyway. But, as the local representative, the man on the scene, it was his job to keep Mulaney advised. A rich territory, but he wished to God this convention was somewhere else this time, not in his back yard. Poor Jesse, too old-time for the new hot shots.
He walked out a side door and down an outside staircase to the pool area. The sun blazed down on the ranked battalions of sun cots, more than half of them occupied. By the cabanas the people who paid the fee for more privacy were sunning themselves. He walked to the thatched bar, sat on a shady stool, ordered a Screwdriver and felt his morale improve as he watched the bartender slice the fresh oranges. After his first deep swallow of the drink, he looked through an opening of the bamboo framework around the bar and watched a hard-faced blonde with a lithe youthful body oil herself with most tender care, then stretch out and become another anonymous sun-stricken corpse amid the acres of browning, gleaming flesh.
Jesse, he decided, would have some operational plan. He wouldn’t tattoo a dotted line on his throat and then kneel down to make it handier for this Hubbard. Where it puts me, he thought, is right the hell in the middle. I ride with Mulaney, and I go out when he does, which could be a soon thing. If I should back off from it and Mulaney wins, then he would delight in throwing me out, because he would notice that kind of thing sooner than any man I’ve ever known. Mulaney will at least get pensioned. What the hell will I get?
Suddenly he thought of one safe move he could make, one that might look good to Mulaney, and wouldn’t be known to anyone else. Hell, he thought, Jesse might go for it and it might work, even. He finished his drink in a hurry and went into the hotel, to the pay booths on the lower level. He looked up an unlisted number in the back of his pocket notebook.
After the sixth ring, just as he was beginning to wonder if she was out of town, a woman answered, her voice sulky and blurred with sleep, asking an angry question which came out sounding like, “Wharrawah?”
“Alma? Alma, honey? This is Freddy. Freddy Frick.”
A Key to the Suite Page 2
