by Chris Ewan
‘Maybe I go find janitor.’ The voice was male and the speech deliberate, laced with an East European accent. ‘Maybe I give them some money.’
‘Good idea,’ the soprano replied. ‘Give ’em twenty bucks and tell ’em to spring the lock on this door.’
That was all I needed to know. Our bashful guests were planning to get inside, come what may, and it wouldn’t do for them to find us.
Backing away from the peephole, I fumbled in my jacket for my spectacles case, meanwhile hustling Victoria beyond the glass dining-table to the double doors that connected with the neighbouring suite. Victoria groaned when she saw what I had in mind but I didn’t have time to reassure her. I armed myself with one of my more reliable picks and a short-bladed screwdriver and then I crouched down and addressed the spring lock.
I guess it helped that I’d duped the same variety of lock on the communicating doors to Victoria’s suite downstairs, but even I was surprised by my speed. I’d barely had time to hang my tongue out of the side of my mouth before I heard the muted tinkle of the internal pins lifting up and the snick of the bolt withdrawing.
I steadied my gloved hand and eased the door open a fraction. The room was in darkness. I reached inside my jacket for my pen-light and shone the beam through the crack. I poked my head through after it and swept the torch quickly around – one pass, like a lighthouse. There was nobody to be seen. I edged the door fully open, gripped Victoria around the wrist and dragged her in behind me, closing the door softly after us.
The knocking sounded again. I scurried through the blackness towards the front door of the suite and pressed my ear to the wood.
‘Come on, Josh,’ the squeaky voice whined. ‘You know you’re going to have to talk to us. Why don’t you just let us inside?’
I put my eye to the peephole but all I saw was more corridor. I cursed and shone the torch beam against the wall. There was no key card in the plastic receptacle. I mouthed a silent prayer of thanks, and then I turned and cast my torch into the darkness. The penlight revealed a mirror image of Masters’ suite. We’d entered the room just behind the dining-table, and Victoria was standing over it with her palms flattened against the glass surface and her head bowed. Leaving her to her own devices, I raced past the black leather sofa and the flat-screen television to the bedroom.
I made sure there was no one sleeping in the bed, and since I didn’t want to be accused of failing to learn from my mistakes, I checked the bathroom too. There was nobody inside it, alive or dead, but there were two wash bags beside the sink and several items of underwear, male and female, scattered on the floor amid some damp towels. The shower looked as if it had been used in the not too distant past, and the hairdryer was unhooked from its bracket and resting on the toilet cistern.
On my way out from the bedroom, I opened the closet and sorted through the clothes hanging from the rail until I found a hotel robe. Then I rushed back through the sitting room, the beam from my penlight slashing Victoria’s face. She appeared stricken, rooted to the spot. I held myself back from approaching her and hurriedly undressed behind the breakfast bar. Once I was down to just my boxer shorts, I ripped away my plastic gloves and climbed into the robe. I was just knotting the tie cord and ruffling my hair when I heard more knocking coming from outside Masters’ suite. It seemed like a good moment to stick my head out into the corridor and ask what all the fuss was about, so I yanked down on the door handle and did just that.
‘What’s all this fuss about?’
It wasn’t until I’d delivered my line and added a yawn for good measure that I chanced a look at Masters’ tenacious visitor.
At first, I didn’t see him. I blinked, trying to adjust my vision to the light in the corridor. I glanced to my left and to my right, and then I gazed down and finally understood why I hadn’t spotted him through the peephole. He hadn’t been hiding with his back to the wall – he was no more than four feet tall.
I did a double-take – I couldn’t help it – but he definitely wasn’t resting on his knees. He was a little person, or vertically challenged, or however you care to say it. It was a hell of a surprise, let me tell you, but when he turned his neckless head and began to speak, the high pitch of his voice made a whole lot more sense.
‘Hey, I’m sorry,’ he said, his larynx sounding constricted. ‘I’m just calling on my friend.’
‘Well, he obviously isn’t there,’ I growled.
The little guy gazed up at me uncertainly, and for the first time in my life I felt like a giant among men. His face was sort of squished, and his complexion was ruddy. He had a very large and prominent nose (at least for a chap his size) that looked as if it had been broken and re-set badly in his youth, and his front teeth were gapped and crooked. His dark hair was thick and bristly, grown long over his stubby ears, and his eyebrows were creeping towards one another above the bridge of his nose. It was hard to gauge how old he was with any accuracy, but once I’d factored in the bright yellow sneakers, faded jeans and Death Metal T-shirt he had on, I would have put him somewhere in his mid-thirties.
I looked at my watch – the cheap digital one, not the antique I’d swiped from next door.
I said, ‘I saw a man leave that suite half an hour ago. I’ve just arrived from a transatlantic flight and I was trying to sleep before you started hammering on his door.’
‘You’re sure it was Josh?’
I sighed, heavily, and spoke through my teeth. ‘I saw a gentleman leave that room. He was an American. He said goodnight to me. He was wearing a brown leather jacket.’
‘That sounds like Josh. Anyone with him? A girl with red hair, say?’
‘Look, I’m sorry, but I’m tired and I need to get some sleep. Can I suggest you telephone him, or leave a message at the concierge desk – and that you stop banging on his damn door.’
‘Er, sure. I’ll do that. Thanks.’
I offered him a stern look, willing him to make his exit, but before I managed to send him on his way his companion came back around the corner. I suppose the good news was that I didn’t feel like a giant any more. In fact, I tend to think that if Goldilocks had happened upon the three of us, she might have been so kind as to say that I was just right. Because just as the man alongside me could be said to be a little on the short side, so his companion could be said to be a trifle tall.
I can’t tell you how high the guest corridors are in the Fifty-Fifty, but I can tell you that this guy’s head was skimming the ceiling. If I’d been so bold as to lift his pint-sized buddy up onto my shoulders, I dare say the two of them could have held a conversation eye-to-eye. But it wasn’t simply his considerable height that made the man memorable – it was also his physique. He was wearing sports clothes – a pair of huge white gym shoes, dark blue jogging pants and a pale blue vest top – and his biceps and triceps and pecs looked like an advertisement for anabolic steroids. He had the appearance of a basketball player crossed with a wrestler crossed with a male model, and if I really had been woken from a deep slumber to find him and his knee-high pal outside my hotel room, I probably would have thought that I was having a very strange dream indeed.
The man-mountain was carrying a key card in his meat-slab hand. He barely frowned when he saw me, displaying all the concern a bull might show a fly, and then he held the card out to the little guy as if he was handing a ticket stub to a child.
‘Oh swell. Did Josh give you his card?’ The little guy squealed the line insistently, in the most awkward of prompts. Even so, his friend didn’t pick up on it in the most seamless fashion imaginable.
‘Huh?’
‘I said,’ added the little guy, motioning at me with a nod of his head, ‘did Josh give you his card so we could wait in his room.’
‘Oh. Yes. That is right,’ the man replied, in his awkward Euro-English. ‘Josh give me his card so we could wait in his room.’
‘Well, that’s great.’ The little guy showed me just how many teeth were crammed inside his gums. ‘Say, tha
nks for your help. We’ll just go ahead and wait inside.’
‘And you’ll keep the noise down?’
‘Sure thing.’ He waved a doll-like hand. ‘Don’t even worry about it.’
THIRTEEN
‘Have they gone?’ Victoria whispered.
‘Sounds that way.’
‘They weren’t inside for very long.’
I separated my ear from the glass tumbler I’d been holding against the communicating doors to Masters’ suite and checked my digital watch with a pulse of torchlight.
‘Just under five minutes.’
‘What do you think they were up to?’
‘Mischief, I imagine. But it wouldn’t hurt to check.’
Setting the glass down, I took my pick and my screwdriver from my spectacles case. Turning the lock for a second time was simple, and I didn’t bother asking Victoria to shine the penlight over my shoulder. I worked by touch alone, and I doubt I’d have been any faster with a key.
The lights were still on in Masters’ suite and his key card was still in the receptacle by the door, but it hadn’t seemed to tweak the curiosity of the little man and the gym giant. So far as I could tell, they hadn’t been concerned by the unwound coat hanger I’d left on the kitchen counter, either. Who knows, maybe the little man hadn’t been tall enough to spot it, and perhaps his gym buddy had been too distracted by the wonders of a room that looked to have been built to his exact proportions. Either way, I was grateful that they hadn’t stayed for too long, and after snatching up the coat hanger, I conducted a quick search.
So far as I could tell, only one thing had altered. A note had been left on the desk over by the picture windows. The message had been written in blue ink on a sheet of hotel stationery and it had been printed in a rushed, slanted hand.
CALL MAURICE, OK? HE’S KIND OF PISSED.
I knew just how Maurice felt, but sadly, I had no idea who he was. I guessed Josh did though, because no contact details had been added to the note.
I asked myself which one of the men had left the message, and I had an inkling it was the little guy. He’d taken the lead role out in the corridor, so it made sense that he would have penned the message. I also thought the use of capital letters could be significant – perhaps he wrote that way to make up for his height.
Since I didn’t have my gloves on any longer, I used the tie-cord of the robe I was wearing to carry the note across to Victoria. She was standing on the threshold of the rooms, one foot in each suite, as though she was unsure which space she felt more uncomfortable in. She scanned the note, and shrugged and frowned in much the same way as I had, and then I returned the note to the desk and nudged Victoria back into the darkened suite. I gently closed the communicating door and allowed the snap lock to engage. The blackness seemed complete all of a sudden.
‘So who’s Maurice?’ Victoria asked, as I fumbled for her hand and pressed the coat hanger into it.
‘No idea.’
‘One of the twins, maybe?’
‘I doubt it. Masters already knows they’re looking for him, and why would anyone mention just one of them in a note?’
‘Neither one of them looked like a Maurice to me.’
‘They’re both identical, Vic.’
Through the darkness, I heard the distinct note of a raspberry.
I felt my way over to the kitchen area to put on my clothes and had ditched the robe and was zipping the fly on my trousers before Victoria spoke again.
‘Charlie, was one of those men really a . . . you know?’
‘Short individual? Why would I make something like that up?’
‘You wouldn’t. It’s just a bit surprising.’
I buttoned my shirt and put on my jacket, then reached for my socks and began to hop around as I pulled them on.
‘It’s reassuring in a way,’ I told her. ‘It’s good to know that crooks come in all shapes and sizes.’
‘You think they were crooks?’
‘They didn’t exactly have permission to be next door.’
‘Maybe they really are Josh’s friends.’
‘Yeah, his crook friends.’
I ducked behind the breakfast bar to tie my shoes. While I was crouched there, I collected the Houdini biography from the floor and slipped it back down into my trousers. I straightened and flattened my hair, then gathered together my surgical gloves and blew air into them.
‘Are you putting your gloves back on?’
‘Yup.’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘Because we’re not done yet.’
‘But I thought we were just hiding in here?’
‘We were. But you know what they say about gift horses.’
‘Leave them alone and get away while you still can?’
I snapped the plastic of my left glove against my palm. ‘Relax. This won’t take long.’
‘It’s funny. You wouldn’t believe how many times a man has said those words to me after slipping a pair of surgical gloves on.’
I clicked on my penlight and shone the beam at Victoria’s face. The room was blue-black around her.
‘Humour in the face of danger? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a natural at all this.’
Victoria covered her eyes with her spread fingers. ‘A momentary slip. Can you hurry up?’
‘Funny,’ I said. ‘Women very rarely say those words to me.’
I breezed past Victoria towards the bedroom and returned the robe to the closet, then started to feel my way through the clothes that were hanging from the rail, checking the pockets. I didn’t find anything useful, so I dropped to my knees and parted a few skirts until I located the room safe. I shone my penlight on the keypad and summoned some inspiration. I began with 111, then 1111, then 999 . . .
‘Why bother?’ Victoria asked, from just over my shoulder.
‘We need the money.’
‘Not if we find Josh.’
‘Finding him isn’t going to be easy. It looks like he’s running from a murder. We don’t know where he went. We don’t know the city.’
‘But we have this Maurice clue. We have this . . . little fellow, and his muscular friend.’
I softened my tone. ‘I really think we need to focus on our second option, Vic. At least for a little while.’
‘But you’ll never be able to steal the kind of money we need.’
‘Maybe not directly.’
The safe wasn’t opening. The codes I was punching in were having no effect whatsoever. I aimed the torch beam at the credit-card reader beside the keypad and growled to myself.
‘Can’t you pick it?’
‘If I had some of the kit I keep in my bag downstairs, then yes. But not with the gear I have on me.’
I reached out a finger and began to punch in some new codes. 911, 1234, 9876 . . .
‘Charlie, what did you mean when you said you might not be able to steal the money we need directly?’
‘Oh,’ I replied, shooting for carefree. ‘I figure I can at least steal a good stake.’
‘A stake? For what?’
2222, 3333, 4444 . . .
‘Oh no,’ Victoria said, cracking me on the back of the head. ‘That’s a terrible idea.’
‘You haven’t let me explain.’
‘I don’t need to. You think you can win the money. At poker.’
Her voice was laced with scepticism. I didn’t like the way it sounded.
‘I’m better than you think. Honestly.’
‘You lost a fortune earlier tonight.’
‘I made an error of judgement. I know what to do differently now.’
‘Too right. Don’t sit down in the first place.’
I rocked back on my heels and rested on my buttocks, then wrapped my arms around my knees and hugged them to my chest. There was a question I’d been thinking about posing, and now seemed as bad a time as any other.
‘How much money do you have in your bank account?’
Victoria cracked me on th
e back of the head again. ‘I can’t believe you’re asking me that.’
‘I’ll pay you back, you know.’
Victoria paced to the far side of the room. I heard her flick the finger of one hand into her gloved palm. Maybe she was picturing my forehead where her palm happened to be.
‘It’s nowhere near enough. And I can’t get at it anyway. It’s Saturday night, Charlie. Sunday tomorrow.’
‘You can pull something out though, can’t you?’
‘The maximum I can withdraw is two hundred and fifty pounds a day.’
‘Close to four hundred and sixty dollars. What about credit cards? I don’t have any.’
It might have been dark, but I had a fair idea of the expression on Victoria’s face, and was glad that I couldn’t see it.
‘I have one,’ she said, in a terse voice. ‘But my credit limit isn’t as big as you might like.’
‘But it’s a start, right?’
‘A pretty measly start. And set against the money we’d need? Frankly, it’s ludicrous.’
‘Which is why I was trying to get inside this safe. Plus some others. If I can steal a big enough stake, I could maybe get us somewhere.’
Victoria glanced towards the illuminated display on the bedside clock. ‘In twenty-two and a half hours?’
‘Hey, if you have any better suggestions, I’m willing to listen.’
We looked at one another in the dark and I felt the room grow even blacker around Victoria. Eventually, she crossed her arms and let go of a sharp breath.
‘Blackjack,’ she said, as though she was tossing the idea carelessly aside.
‘Sorry?’
‘Statistically, you have a better chance of winning. The house edge is reduced.’
‘But if I can find a no-limit poker game . . .’
‘You could lose all your money again.’
I hummed, and for good measure, I hawed. ‘To tell you the truth, Vic, I’m not all that great at blackjack.’
I waited for her to tell me the same could be said of my poker, but instead she dropped onto the bed alongside me and stared at her hands in her lap. She didn’t say anything for a long moment, and I punched another code into the keypad. Same result. I was beginning to think it was time to check the suitcases and bedside drawers.
