“Shit. What about J.J.?”
I shrugged. “He might not take her out as collateral damage, but he could.”
“Collateral damage. Christ, what a term.”
“File it away. Might make a decent movie title. Look, I need to check your hotel room. I mean, now. Right now.”
He frowned again. “J.J. may be asleep.”
“Wake her up. We spoke at the set, and she thinks I’m some kind of troubleshooter trying to protect you from death threats. So she’ll understand. Art, we have to go up, so I can have a look around.”
He sighed. “Okay.”
“And there’s one other thing.”
“What?”
“I need a key to your room. Go to the desk right now and get me one.”
“All right.” He was past arguing, but he did ask, “What’s the point of that?”
“If I don’t find anything in your room now, our man will probably rig whatever he’s rigging tomorrow, while you’re at the shoot. I assume your wife won’t be in the room, during the day-she’ll be on set, too?”
“Yes. Her big scene’s tomorrow.” He closed his eyes and rubbed them. “Gonna be a big day, very elaborate, and challenging conditions.”
“How so?”
“We’re shooting on the casino floor at the Four Jacks.”
All roads seemed to lead there. Was that significant?
“Well, I’m going to spend tomorrow in your room,” I told him.
This confused him. “All day tomorrow?”
“How long, I have no way of knowing. My hope is that, at that some point or other, our man will enter to do his thing…and I’ll do mine instead.”
Stockwell looked out at the shimmer of underlit water. “I don’t want to know anything about what you do or how you do it.” Now he risked a glance at me, so quick he might have feared becoming a pillar of salt. “Are you okay with that, Jack?”
“I am… if you understand that you may hear about something nasty that happened at the hotel, and if so, you’ll need to react with the correct indifference. You know-‘isn’t that something,’ or ‘what a shame.’ As opposed to, ‘Oh my fucking God — what happened?’… Are we cool?”
He sighed. “We’re cool. I’m not going to come back to a… mess in my room am I?”
“Not my intention. But this isn’t scripted, Art. I’m improvising here. Have to run with what I get.”
“I know. I get that.”
The director went to the front desk while I waited at the elevator. We went up together-no reason not to, since I was the unit publicist. At his room, I let him go in first, to warn his wife of my presence and needs. Less than a minute later, he came out and nodded me in.
Joni was in a white dressing gown, semi-sheer, over some kind of matching nightie, her long hair brushing her shoulders, tousled; under layers of wispy fabric, nipples and pubic triangle were vaguely visible, but I didn’t stare. I’d seen them before. If this interruption threw her, she didn’t show it. Her arms were folded but her attitude wasn’t negative. More neutral, I’d say.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I really wasn’t. But I checked every electrical outlet in the place. Checked the light fixtures and the air conditioner. The most elaborate thing I did was remove the bedding on the big kingsize number-could have been a poisonous spider or scorpion in the sheets or blankets, something fatal and indigenous to the region. Joni actually gave me a hand with this process, and when I started putting the bedding back in place, she said she’d take care of it.
Special attention was given to the bathroom, since that’s where most accidents occur at home, and this hotel room was home for them right now. But I found nothing. The Percodan bottle was in there, and I noted that it was prescription. Not that you had to buy shit like that from a drug dealer in Hollywood, not with a Dr. Feelgood at every strip mall.
I apologized as I looked through the dresser drawers and their suitcases, finding nothing but clothing. No drugs or anything embarrassing, unless you count the Jackie Collins paperback.
At the door, I said, “I apologize for the intrusion.”
“No problem,” Stockwell said. He looked hangdog as hell. He was a fifty-something guy in the midst of an incredibly draining project that would have been plenty to handle without the threat of murder hanging over him.
“We appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Joni said to me with wifely warmth. Not ex-wifely. Current wifely. It was his side she was at, not mine.
“Tonight and tomorrow morning,” I said to them, “don’t answer this door for anybody but me. Not even for anybody on the production-talk through the door and make an excuse-and certainly not housekeeping or room service or anybody from the desk with a message.”
Stockwell nodded. So did Joni, who had her arm through his now. I’d forgotten how beautiful her eyes were. Big. Brown.
“I know you haven’t been taking breakfast at the restaurant here,” I said. According to Jerry’s notes, anyway. “But tomorrow morning’s no time to make an exception. Get up, shower, get dressed, get the fuck out.”
“There’s a light breakfast on set,” Stockwell said absently.
Joni asked, “What about our car?”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “It’s possible your car could be tampered with, yes. Art, you usually drive yourself and your wife to the shoot. Tomorrow, can you go with somebody else instead? Travel with other crew in one of those vans, maybe?”
“No problem,” he said.
“Do you have an extra set of car keys?”
“No.”
“Give me yours. I’ll go down now and check it out. I used to be a mechanic.”
That made Joni wince, just faintly, no doubt because of the memory it stirred.
Her late boyfriend Williams had been a mechanic, too. That was something that had irritated me at the time, in addition to the cuckold thing. And when, after the publicity, I’d been unable to find work as a mechanic, all I could think of was, Well, there’s one position at least that needs filling…
Anyway, Stockwell handed over the keys and I went down to the parking lot.
Stockwell was driving a rental Buick LeSabre. An argument could be made for me spending the night in its back seat, waiting to see if Varnos showed up to fuck with it. But according to the Broker’s file, Varnos was strictly a specialist in accidental death, at home and on the job; to my knowledge, he had never done a vehicular homicide.
So I would not camp out in that backseat. What I would do instead is check the interior and under the hood. Which I did, and found nothing. Since the parking lot was at the rear of the building-beyond some shrubbery at the open part of the hotel’s U-there was little risk of being seen by Varnos.
Then I went up to room 313, knocked and said, “It’s Reynolds,” and Stockwell peeked out. He was in brown pajamas now. There were men who still wore pajamas? Fucking kidding me?
I stepped in, closed the door and said, “Car seems fine. Doesn’t mean some tampering couldn’t happen in the wee hours. I still don’t want you driving it to the set.”
Joni was in bed, nightstand light on. Reading the Jackie Collins. She’d always had questionable taste.
I went on: “It’s also possible an accident has been planned that involves running you off the road or something. Strikes me as a thin possibility, but you never know. I doubt with you in a different vehicle-particularly a van with a bunch of other people in it-that our guy would carry such a plan out.”
Stockwell gave me a weary smirk. “I thought you said this was all improv.”
“Oh no- I’m improv. This guy is on script. We just don’t know what that script is…Get some sleep.”
“I still have a little work too. My goddamn job never lets up.”
“I know the feeling,” I said.
The next morning my wake-up call came in right at six; when I said I wanted to order breakfast, the operator transferred me to room service. I showered, shaved and got dressed, then the little
breakfast arrived-scrambled eggs and toast and orange juice-and by six-thirty I was standing at my cracked door, watching Mr. and Mrs. Stockwell depart for work.
The director was in jeans and a black t-shirt with the supporting player in jeans and a frilly cream-color blouse. He had a clipboard and notebook, but she carried only a little purse. If they saw me watching, they were sensible enough not to acknowledge it.
I knew that housekeeping would start its run at eight a.m., and that my room would come before the director’s, and that mine would come before Varnos’-at least based on the end of the hall they’d started at yesterday.
So I stretched out on my bed and watched game shows at very low volume, waiting for housekeeping to interrupt me, which I knew they would, since I hadn’t put a do not disturb on my door.
The heavyset Hispanic maid barged in just before nine a.m., and I went over and said, “ Perdoneme,” and she backed out saying the same thing, over and over, while I belatedly hung that do not disturb sign on the knob.
I finished my game show, since I knew it would take the maid a good fifteen minutes to clean Stockwell’s room, and she was conscientious and spent twenty on it. I was no expert on staging accidental deaths in hotel rooms, but I knew that Varnos would not want housekeeping coming in on him in room 313, and even a do not disturb sign was no guarantee, since you never knew when some brat or smart-ass would steal it or reverse it with make up room now facing out.
When the maid and her cart were safely down the hall and around the corner, I slipped across the hall and used the key Stockwell had provided, entering freshly cleaned room 313. I did not put a do not disturb sign on the door-I wanted to be disturbed…
…but not by housekeeping.
I was wearing a polo shirt with my sport coat over it plus jeans and running shoes, looking very much like Jack Reynolds, publicist. But I carried with me a rolled-up towel that had in it my nine millimeter, with sound suppressor attached; and the stiletto was in my jacket pocket. Also, the western paperback was in my back jeans pocket-might be a long day, and there’d be no turning on the TV in here.
In fact-and here’s the unpleasant part-I would have to camp out in the john. Had there been a coat closet with some kind of door, sliding or folding or anything really, I would have had some place to slip into, and momentarily hide.
But there was no door on the closet-it was just an open recessed space with a horizontal pole and clothes hangers with a little shelf where extra blankets and pillows lived.
So the shitter it was.
I kept the door ajar enough to hear, and keeping the light on wasn’t suspicious-a lot of people leave bathroom lights on-so I sat on the toilet, lid down, of course, reading Valdez Is Coming, wondering when Varnos was coming.
Well, I finished it in two hours and-after another hour passed of me staring at white tile walls and yellow-andwhite floor tiles and the nubby glass of the shower stall- I got almost desperate enough to risk going out there and looking for that Jackie Collins.
Almost.
Then, fifteen minutes later, the sound of a key in the lock snapped me to my feet. My silenced Browning was on the counter next to a hair dryer, a brush, and a glass with toothbrushes in it. I had the gun in my hand by the time Varnos was all the way into 313, before he’d even shut the door behind him. I knew the bathroom would not be his first stop-and if it was, he wouldn’t likely have a gun in hand.
Varnos did exactly what I thought he’d do: take the time to put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outer door-knob. So when he closed himself in, and I came out of the bathroom, right on top of him, his back was to me.
He didn’t even see it coming. The extended barrel of the nine mil slapped him on the back of his head and sent him down, hard, in an ungainly pile, slumped against the door he’d just closed.
This was the dodgy part-I wasn’t trying to kill him. I needed him knocked out. But a blow to the head, with any power in it at all, can do one of three things: knock you out; kill you; or not knock you out.
If Nick was down there playing possum, I might have a rough time of it, even with a gun on him.
There was no blood on the back of his head-that was a lucky break-so I turned him over gently with my left hand, the silenced weapon poised to do what was necessary. The mustached hitman’s eyes were half-lidded, unblinking and glassy, and he was either knocked cold or a much better actor than Stockwell could have afforded on Hard Wheels 2.
I gambled on the former.
As I’ve said, Nick Varnos wasn’t a big man. He was wearing a sport coat today, a rust-color polyester one, over a yellow sportshirt, with tan jeans. I patted him down and found no weapon. That did not surprise me-what he’d come here to do wouldn’t require one. If he’d been caught by a hotel employee in the wrong room, the last thing Varnos would want to have on him was a weapon.
What he did have was a key to room 313-I had no idea where Varnos got it; possibly he finagled it out of the desk pretending to be Stockwell. But this was an actual room key, not a dupe or a passkey or a skeleton job. That was interesting but I was too busy to give it much thought.
He had another room key, of course-his own.
And something else, something very interesting, and most telling: a small sealed envelope, about thank-you note size; but its bumpy surface told my fingers what it contained, and I knew at once how Jerry’s partner had intended to stage Stockwell’s accidental death.
So there would be no need for conversation.
Varnos must not have weighed more than 140, because I had surprisingly little trouble hauling him to his feet with just my left arm around his waist. I’m not saying it wasn’t awkward, but I was able to hold his limp frame alongside me as I opened the door and-finding the coast clear-dragged him, sort of drunk-walked him, to his own room, just a short trip down, on the same side of the hall.
The hardest part was keeping one arm around his waist, to keep him from falling to the floor, while I worked his room key in its slot. If he was faking, I could well be fucked here…
But Varnos still seemed to be out when I hauled him into his room and from there into the bathroom, where I dumped him gently on the floor.
I felt like leaning against something to catch my breath, but even though I would have a chance to tidy up after, leaving fingerprints remained a concern. Why make work for myself? So I just stood there heaving, hands on my hips, the nine millimeter in my waistband.
That was when he woke up.
Varnos had no idea what was going on. He had never seen me before. He had no clue what had happened, his lights had gone out, and now they were back on, and he was on a bathroom floor, as far as he knew the bathroom in Stockwell’s room, but that was irrelevant, it was all irrelevant, because he was a killer for hire who had just woken up.
And that meant he would be up and on me before I could even draw my weapon, and anyway I didn’t want to use my weapon on him, this needed to go down a whole other way.
So when he tackled me, I had to take it. Then he was on top of me, halfway out in the room’s entryway, and his hands were on my throat, which is where I would have put my hands in his place, but as badly as he wanted to be alert, he was still groggy, and as much as he wanted the advantage, I still had thirty pounds on him, and when my right fist jabbed him in the nuts, reflex made his hands loosen, and it was my turn to drive him back, through the open doorway into the bathroom, where I was on top of him and he was flailing, the punched-in-the-nuts pain an impossible thing to shrug off, and his eyes were wide, not with hate or hysteria, but with the knowledge that he was about to die, as I grabbed his head like it was a melon with ears and bashed his skull into the rim of the porcelain crapper with as much force as I could muster.
The crack of bone was unmistakable and the life went out of his eyes almost instantly-at least his ball-sack pain was over, hell, everything was over now that you mention it, and I rose and let him slide to the floor naturally, leaving a smeary dripping red trail along the edge of the bowl ti
ll the porcelain downslope gave way.
He lay on his back with lifeless eyes staring up into death but without recognition, his arms spread Christ-like, which I would bet was about the only Christ-like thing about the bastard.
I paused for a moment to catch my breath again, then I took a damp towel from where it had been hung on a metal rod to dry and I put it under his feet, giving the reasonable impression that the moist towel had been down there on the bathroom floor where he’d slipped on it and-tragically-fell backward and hit his head. More accidental deaths in the bathroom than anywhere else, I hear.
I regarded the scene with some satisfaction. Staging accidental deaths was hardly my specialty, but I’d pulled this one off under fairly difficult circumstances. I hadn’t touched much at all, but used a handkerchief I’d brought along to wipe anything it seemed remotely possible my fingers had met.
Such as the key to room 319 that I’d taken off him, which I put back in his pocket. And the inside knob, which I then turned with the hanky-in-hand to crack the door.
Lady Luck-alive and well in Boot Heel, it seemed-dealt me an empty hallway.
I had to take the time to wipe down the outer knob as well, of course. Varnos had already hung a DO NOT DISTURB card there, and that would aid in his body not being found right away. Although when it was found didn’t concern me much. No need to wipe the little plastic hanger of my prints because I had never touched the thing.
Anyway, I slipped down to my own room, just catty-corner across the way, and ducked inside, where the first thing I did was open the little envelope I’d liberated from the late Nick Varnos.
Its contents looked like Percodan. Very possibly the twenty or so little tablets were Percodan, but if so, they were either poisoned or bore a much higher dosage than Stockwell could have handled.
Swap these out for whatever pills remained in the director’s prescription bottle, and my ex’s current hubby would ease his back pain once and for all. Just another Hollywood type, dead of a drug overdose.
Which struck me as pretty slick work on the part of the late Nick Varnos, if some pretty cold-blooded shit.
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