A Key to the Suite

by John D. MacDonald

  He knew he had slept, and was surprised that he had. The sun had moved through a long segment of its arc. Most of them were gone. Cory was gone. He thought of her and felt the heavy weakness of the convalescent. The fever had broken for a time. He walked to the pool and swam four slow lengths. There was a bad taste in his mouth, and his arms and legs felt leaden.

  He walked back and was standing, toweling himself, by the sun cot when Connie Mulaney came over, a tall rum drink in each hand. “If you say no, Floyd, I’ll have to drink them both, and I’ll make a spectacle of myself.” He took the drink, realizing she was holding herself under careful control, that she was considerably drunker than she looked.

  She sat on the cot and patted the place beside her and said, “I want to get to know you before this whole damn thing is over, dear.”

  He sat down and she touched glasses clumsily and said, “Here’s to sin.”

  “To sin.”

  “Everybody going. Host and hostess stuck till the dirty end. Look at my Jesse over there, snowing Jud Ewing. Both telling brave lies to each other. You know what?”

  “What, Connie?”

  “If this time you’d called me Mrs. Mulaney, I’d give you a hit right in the head. You got an instinct for those things, haven’t you?”

  “For what?”

  “For what to call people to get the right effect.”

  “Do I seem to plan everything that carefully?”

  “No, dear. You do it cute. I’m old enough to be your mother. You know that?”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “Not if I was from Kentucky, believe me. I don’t know if I’d want a son like you. It would scare me, a little.”

  “Why would it scare you?”

  “You’ve got all your ducks in a row. That’s an old expression.”

  “It may look it to you, Connie, but believe me, my ducks are scattered around every which way.”

  She peered at him. “What’d I want to say to you anyhow?”

  “I guess you’re telling me I’m tricky.”

  Her white hair looked slightly unkempt. The drinks had sagged her face. “Y’know, dear, there’s a new kind of people in the world,” she said. “Can’t understand them. Smooth quiet people. Exactly so many drinks. Right clothes and right car and right opinions. Don’t you get bored with yourself?”

  “Doesn’t everybody, Connie?”

  “Me? Four kids married, three grandbabies. I don’t get bored with me. Or Jesse.” She leaned closer and looked at him with a slurred challenge. “You know I still like to go to bed with him? You young ones, you think there’s something nasty about that, don’t you?” She patted her stomach. “Stayed nice for him. As nice as I could. You know what it is, dear? It’s … it’s a giving sweetness. It’s cozy. It’s like saying all the years are right. Will you have that, when you’re an old hulk like my Jesse?”

  “I hope so.”

  “I’m still his best girl. That’s a good thing … isn’t it?”

  “It’s a good thing, Connie.”

  “Ah, how well I know him, Floyd! How well! He wants to be a tricky son of a bitch. He wants to be cute too. But it doesn’t work for him. He’s trying something now. Do you know that? I do. I don’t know what it is, but he feels guilty about it. It could have something to do with you. He’s scared of you, dear. We both are. You’re one of the new kind of people.”

  “I don’t want you to feel like that.”

  “You watch out for my Jesse. What was I saying to you? There was something I wanted to … oh, it’s him and Jud telling lies to each other as if everything was all right. I love him. I told you that, didn’t I? But he has to keep tearing himself apart, because no one will tell him. I shouldn’t talk to you. But it’s in your hands, isn’t it? You could be my son, and it’s in your hands and nobody knows what you’re thinking. I shouldn’t say these things to you. I’m an old drunken woman, and I don’t know how to handle the new people. I say the wrong things. Hell with it. So I can say the wrong things to you. What’ll happen to my Jesse?”

  “I don’t know, Connie.”

  She looked at him with a great intensity. “What’ll you say should happen? The new kind of people never tell you anything. It all comes out later on punch cards. You got the guts to tell me?”

  He looked out across the ramps and terraces, the pools and plantings. The sun was low, and the slant of its golden light accentuated the tan of the few who were left, the last ones who were leaving. The pale flanks of the hotel structures rose toward the graying sky. His heart felt like a stone, but somewhere within him was a pride without mercy.

  “I don’t know what they’ll do,” he said, making himself look directly into her eyes. “But I’ll report what I believe. That’s what I’m paid for. I’ll say that due to the seniority policies of AGM, he got about three big steps higher than he could have gone on merit. I’ll say the job he holds is so far beyond his capacities, he makes wild swings in the dark. I’ll say that the whole structure, personnel, policy, recruiting, control methods, needs a complete revamp, and it will be facilitated by getting him entirely out of the picture as soon as possible.”

  She looked at him and tried to speak, moistened her lips and tried again. “I … I’ve known that. He has too, I think.” She brought her hands up to her face and sat with her chin lowered.

  “He won’t be told that way,” Hubbard said.

  “Did I have to be told that way?”

  “Maybe I was wrong, Connie.”

  She dropped her hands and snuffled once. “Oh, you couldn’t be wrong, dear! You new people are always right. There’s always a reason. It’s never evident in the beginning.” Her face twisted. “You know what I miss? Kindness. There used to be a lot of it around. When there weren’t any reasons for it, I guess. But now it’s a different kind of thing. You don’t want kindness from somebody who won’t bring their own troubles to you. Because if it goes just one way, it’s like pity. It’s like social workers or something. We’ve got to find our way through a maze, and you people look down through the glass and turn the current off and on to sting our feet, and you smile at us when we come out right.”

  “Connie, it isn’t like that.”

  She gave him a smile almost of triumph. “But that’s the way it feels, dear. To us. So what the hell difference does it make how it feels to you? There’s a chart someplace where you can look Jesse up, and there’s a footnote to turn to page seventy-eight, paragraph four, and there I am. You see, dear, if it kills him, there’s nothing I can do to you. Nothing.”

  Jesse and Jud Ewing came strolling toward them, laughing at a joke. Jesse said, “Well, honey, we bombed them all, and you too, it looks like, and the party is over. What have you been bending Floyd’s ear about?”

  Hubbard felt sudden tension. “Oh, I’ve just been rambling on and on, boring Floyd with stories of the old days.”

  “It’s been very interesting,” Hubbard said.

  “Well, let’s all get prettied up, and we’ll see you in the suite, Floyd. You drop in too, Jud.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Mulaney headed off toward the hotel.

  Ewing said, surprisingly, “I was so damn bad off in love with her a whole damn lifetime ago.”

  “You were?”

  “I worked for him in Nashville. I was single, and I used to get asked over for dinner. She was beautiful then, in that way they have when you can tell they’re going to stay beautiful until the day they die. Without her, Jesse would still be making sleeper jumps and lugging a sample case. I married twice, pretending I was marrying her, but those things don’t work out. And do you know something? This is the first time in thirty years I ever saw her get tight. Jesse always did enough drinking for two.”

  “She’s a fine woman, Mr. Ewing.”

  Ewing gave him a long shrewd look. “But there comes a time when finally there just isn’t any last string left on the bow. See you around, Mr. Hubbard.”

  Hubbard picked up his towel, lotion and sunglasses an
d followed slowly. Waiters moved through the dusk light, picking up glasses, moving furniture back where it belonged. A muscular boy was folding the trampolines and hooding them for the night. Sweeping crews were moving across the sun cot area. Other crews were vacuuming the pools. The outdoor bars were closing.

  It was easy, Jan, he said to himself. Nothing to it. Like falling off a log. Like falling off the top of a sixty-foot log. Why, with the edge on my little hatchet, I could shave with it.

  Eight

  ROOMS 852 AND 854 were interconnecting, but the door was closed and locked between them when Dave Daniels led Fred Frick into 852 and shut the door.

  “Now we’ll have a nifty little drink,” Dave said.

  “Damn it, Dave, I’ve been telling you, I got a lot of things to do. Unless I keep on top of things every minute …”

  “Stop flapping around, for Chrissake! Here’s your drink.”

  “I’ve had enough, and you’ve had enough,” Frick said, taking the glass and sitting on the bed. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, Dave, for your own good.”

  “Yes, father.”

  “Take it seriously, boy, because it is serious. You’ve got the Chicago setup, and you’ve done a good job, which I’ll be the first to admit, but the way you’re acting around here, you can bitch the whole thing. People are talking about it, Dave.”

  “Screw them all, every one.”

  “But you’re not doing Jesse any good. Don’t you have any loyalty? He’s given you your break. Maybe you don’t care what you do to yourself, but you’re hurting Jesse in front of this Hubbard.”

  “Screw that little Greek too.”

  “Who says he’s Greek?”

  “He looks Greek. And you look like a Swede pimp. You know that, Freddy? Just like a Swede pimp.”

  Frick stood up. “You’re too drunk to make any sense. I didn’t come in here to …”

  “Sit down or I’ll sit you down!” Dave Daniels roared. His voice softened. “Okay. So maybe I’ve been a little bit out of line. I’m willing to admit it.”

  “So?” Frick said warily.

  “What’s got me so all messed up, old buddy, is that little Barlund broad, and that’s what I brought you in here about. She keeps brushing me off, and I want her so bad it makes my teeth ache. You’re in charge of arrangements, Freddy, and this is one arrangement you’re going to help me make, by God, or I’ll spread pieces of those big yellow teeth of yours all over this goddam hotel.”

  “But …”

  “I don’t care how we work it, just as long as we work it. If I could just get her into this room and get ahold of her before she turns to run, I’ll carry on from there, and she’ll love every minute of it. But what you got to do, you got to think up some kind of story conference on this thing she’s writing, and then …”

  “You shouldn’t get yourself so worked up about that little prostitu …”

  “What was that, Freddy? What was that you said?”

  “Just a manner of speaking, Dave. Honest. That’s all.”

  Daniels stared at him. Frick looked uneasily at the bloodshot eyes, and at the long, heavy, leathery face and the brute hands. Daniels said, “That little girl wouldn’t be a whore, now would she?”

  “What’s the matter with you, Dave? That’s a silly question.”

  A big hand grabbed the front of Frick’s suit, lifted him lightly off the bed, and ran him backwards into the far wall. He hit so hard it dazed him. Daniels’ big face was inches from his. “You don’t lie worth a damn, Frick. What do you know that I don’t know?”

  “Honest, Davie, there’s nothing at all that …”

  The big fist slammed him in the stomach. Frick fell onto his hands and knees and gagged helplessly. Daniels picked him up and stood him against the wall again.

  “Are you nuts?” Frick shouted. “I’m not a well man. I got an ulcer. You could kill me doing that, you silly bastard!”

  Daniels hit him again, picked him up again and held him against the wall. He grinned at Frick and said, “Honest to God, Freddy, I’m so drunk I don’t know what I’m doing. I just might stand here and belt you until I’m worn out.”

  “Wait! Hey, wait!”

  Daniels lowered his big fist. “Going to talk?”

  “Okay. Yes. But let me sit down. Damn you! You ought to be locked up.”

  “You start kidding around, Freddy, and you get it again, maybe a little lower.”

  Fred Frick sat on the bed and made a grimace of pain. “You better not tell Jesse I told you. Cory is a call girl. We lined her up through an old friend of mine and Jesse’s. She’s as high class as anything you can find this side of New York. This story thing is a fake. We sicked her onto Hubbard.”

  “Onto Hubbard?”

  “The idea being that she gets him to make an obvious damn fool of himself, and if he doesn’t, she’ll pull one hell of a scene in front of everybody that’ll give him a different kind of reputation with AGM than the one he’s got. Then he won’t be so anxious to slip the knife to Jesse, and if he does, they’re going to maybe take it with a grain of salt, because word will get back about how he got a little carried away at the convention.”

  “What makes you think that’ll do any good?”

  “What else is there to try?”

  “Remember that auditor in St. Louis? They gave him a mickey and stripped him raw and turned him loose in the lobby, and it didn’t do those boys at UFA a damn bit of good. All they got was a new auditor.”

  “Jesse thought it was worth a try.”

  “So Hubbard is getting it? I get near him and get a little kicking room, and he won’t want any more of it for a long time.”

  “Now, dammit, Dave, you stay the hell out of this.”

  “Dave Daniels doesn’t get brushed off by a whore.”

  “Dave, listen to me. This girl isn’t any twenty-dollar trick. I know all about her. She’s as choosy as if she was a debutante. She takes the business she wants to take and that’s all. You knowing the score won’t make any difference to …”

  “Freddy old Frick, it’s going to make a lot of difference, a hell of a lot of difference.”

  “Please, Dave, don’t mess it up. You don’t need her. Listen, fella, let me line you up something that’ll make her look like …”

  “No thanks.”

  “She’s a scrawny kid, Dave.”

  Dave grinned at him. “Yeah. Isn’t she though?”

  “Don’t mess me up with Jesse. And don’t mess Jesse up. And there’s another thing, Dave. If you give Hubbard a hard time, how long do you think you’ll stay with AGM?”

  “You’re scaring me. I got a place I can go any time, for more money. In fact, pal, I’m sending in my resignation as soon as I get back. So what do I owe you, or that slob Jesse Mulaney, or that Hubbard shit?”

  “I took a hell of a chance telling you all this, Dave.”

  “You would have taken a worse chance not telling me. You would have been carrying your guts in a hand basket, Freddy.”

  Frick got up hastily, moved out of Daniels’ reach, and sidled to the door. “Just be reasonable,” he begged.

  Daniels laughed at him. “I know why you’re in a big hurry. You want to find her and warn her. It won’t do any good.”

  “You ought to be locked up. You go crazy when you drink.”

  Daniels faked a lunge toward him. Frick popped out into the corridor and slammed the door and ran a half dozen steps before slowing down. He wiped the palms of his hands on his handkerchief. With each deep breath he tried to take, his stomach hurt, and he felt slightly nauseated.

  He stopped and leaned against the wall and wiped the sweat off his face. In a few minutes he was able to think more calmly and logically. He went to one of the bedrooms of the hospitality suite, found a number in his notebook and called it.

  “Al, boy? Fred Frick. How’s everything with you? That’s good to hear. Al, I’m at a convention at the Sultana, and I’ve got a little problem maybe you can help me on
. One of our crowd is heading for trouble. A nice guy, but he doesn’t drink good, you know? So I want him taken out of the play before he can do himself some real harm. No, I think he might talk himself out of there too fast. He looks like he’s handling it better than he is. I was thinking in terms of that ward at the hospital, and some shots to keep him quiet until … maybe Sunday? What’s that? Oh, sure, you clear it with the hotel people. I understand. They don’t want a fuss any more than I do. Dave Daniels, his name is. Chicago, Illinois. Al, one thing, he’s a big son of a bitch. Yes. And use an ambulance? Sure. Do it any way you think best. Not until when? Al, I was hoping for a little faster service on this. It’s seven-fifteen now. Well, I guess all we can do is keep our fingers crossed until ten. I’ll make it a point to be right here in the suite at ten o’clock then. Eight sixty. You fellows come right on up. Yes, I’ll take full responsibility. Dave will thank me when it’s all over. Thanks loads, Al boy.”

  When Hubbard went into his room after coming from the cabana party, he was becoming increasingly curious about Cory Barlund. He could not quite believe she had given up. Dusk had brought shadows into the room. He turned the lights on. The maid had turned both beds down. He tossed the towel in a corner of the bathroom, pulled the swim trunks off, kicked the sandals off, and adjusted the shower to his liking. A few moments after he was under the hard spray, without any warning, slim arms clasped him around the waist. He made a reasonable attempt to jump out of his skin. “Guess who?” she called gayly.