What's The Worst That Could Happen? d-9

by Donald E. Westlake

  Not that there weren’t shops, stores, boutiques. The lobby was ringed by them, like a necklace of paper clips, each with its own display windows to show the enticements within, each with the names of other cities in gold letters down at one corner of the display window, to suggest that this shop had branches in those cities. But why? Why have a store full of this stuff in Milan, in London, in Paris, in Beverly Hills? Well, okay, Beverly Hills. But in those other cities, what these citations must mean is that they’ve got a shop like this in a hotel like this in those cities. So the argument was, why travel?

  With the shops closed and foot traffic in the lobby sparse, Kelp eased himself into boutique after boutique, hoping there might be something toward the rear of the place different from what was visible through the window, but it was always more of the same, and the key word was shiny. Shiny leather, shiny men’s watches, shiny furs, shiny pink glass vases, shiny covers of shiny magazines, shiny purses, shiny shoes, shiny earrings. It was like being in a duty-free shop for magpies.

  Midnight, and no score. Kelp knew John and May didn’t like him to burst in unexpectedly, and he might maybe have been doing it a little too often lately, so he would definitely not go to their room before the 1:00 A . M . appointment, which meant, what now? Whereas the New York City outside this building was still jumping, just getting into its evening surge, the N-Joy was down and dark, all except for the cocktail lounge, tucked away in a far corner. So Kelp went there.

  The cocktail lounge was a long low-ceilinged lunette curved around a massive bar. The principal color was purple, and the principal lighting was nonexistent. The candles that guttered on every table were encased in thick red glass. The main light source, in fact, was the shiny black Formica tops of the round tables, each of them surrounded by vast low overstuffed armchairs that to sit in would be like trying to sit in a jelly donut. Three of the tables were occupied, by murmuring, whispering, muttering couples, all dressed up with nowhere to go, drinking stingers or something worse. At the bar were two women, one of them a waitress in a black tutu, the other a customer with her elbows on the bar, her lumpy old shoulderbag on the stool next to her, and a tall glass in front of her that, judging by her bleak expression, was definitely half-empty and not half-full.

  The bar stools were tall and wide, with soft purple vinyl tops. Kelp took one equidistant from both women, put one forearm on the bar, and watched the bartender, a dour workman with a mustache, finish building two stingers. The waitress took those drinks away, and the bartender turned his attention to Kelp. “Yes, sir,” he said, sliding a paper napkin onto the bar.

  “Bourbon,” Kelp said.

  The bartender nodded and waited, but Kelp was finished. Finally, the barman said, “And?”

  “Oh, well, a glass, I guess. And an ice cube.”

  “That’s it?” A faint smile appeared below the mustache. “We don’t get much call for that kind of thing here,” he said.

  “You’ve got bourbon, though,” Kelp suggested.

  “Oh, certainly. But most people want something with it. Some nice sweet vermouth? Maraschino cherry? A twist? Orange slice? Angostura bitters? Triple sec? Amaretto?”

  “On the side,” Kelp said.

  “You got it.”

  The bartender went away, and the woman to Kelp’s left said, “Hello.”

  He looked at her. She was probably in her midthirties, attractive in a way that suggested she didn’t know she was attractive and therefore didn’t try very hard. She was not in a holiday mood. The sound of her voice when she’d said hello had made it seem as though she hadn’t particularly wanted to speak but felt it was a requirement and so she’d gone ahead and done it. “And hello,” Kelp said.

  The woman nodded; mission accomplished. “Where you from?” she asked.

  “Cleveland, Ohio. And you?”

  “Lancaster, Kansas. I’m supposed to go back there . . . sometime.”

  “Well,” Kelp said, “if that’s where you live.”

  “I believe my husband has left me,” she said.

  This was unexpected. Kelp didn’t see a second glass on the bar. He said, “Maybe he’s in the men’s room.”

  “I think he left me Monday,” she said.

  Ah; today being Wednesday. Kelp thought about that while the bartender placed a glass and an ice cube and some bourbon on the paper napkin in front of him. “Thanks,” he said, and said to the woman, “Here in New York? Just disappeared?”

  “Not disappeared, left me,” she said. “We came here Sunday, and on Monday he said, ‘Anne Marie, it isn’t working out,’ and he packed his bag and went away.”

  “That’s rough,” Kelp said.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s rough because it’s here. I mean, he’s right, it isn’t working out, that’s why I’ve been having an affair with Charlie Petersen for three years now, and is he gonna turn white as a sheet when he hears the news, but I do wish he’d done it, if he was gonna do it, I do wish he’d done it in Lancaster and not here.”

  “More convenient,” Kelp said, and nodded to show he sympathized.

  “What it was,” she said, “this trip was our last try at making the marriage work. You know how people say they wanna make the marriage work? Like they wanna give it a paper route or something. So we came here and we got on each other’s nerves just as bad as we do at home in Lancaster, only here we only had one room to do it in, so Howard said, it isn’t working out, and he packed and took off.”

  “Back to Lancaster.”

  “I don’t believe so,” she said. “He’s a traveling salesman for Pandorex Computers, you know, so he’s all over the Midwest anyway, so he’s probably with some girlfriend at the moment.”

  “Any kids?”

  “No, thank you,” she said. “This damn glass is empty again. What’s that you’re drinking?”

  “Bourbon.”

  “And?”

  “And more bourbon.”

  “Really? I wonder what that’s like.”

  “Barman,” Kelp said, “I think we got a convert. Another of these for me, and one of these for the lady, too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hate to be called the lady.”

  “Sorry,” Kelp said. “My mama told me pronouns were impolite.”

  “The lady sucks.”

  “That’s good news,” Kelp said. “From now on, I’ll refer to you as the broad. Deal?”

  She grinned, as though she didn’t want to. “Deal,” she said.

  The barman brought the drinks, and the broad sipped hers and made a face. Then she sipped again, tasted, and said, “Interesting. It isn’t sweet.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Interesting.” She sipped again. “If you get tired of calling me the broad,” she said, “try Anne Marie.”

  “Anne Marie. I’m Andy.”

  “How you doing?”

  “Fine.”

  “You see, what it is,” she said, “it’s a package, a tour, we paid for everything ahead of time. I’ve got the room until Saturday, and I got breakfast until Saturday, and I got dinner until Friday, so it seemed stupid to go back to Lancaster, but in the meantime what the hell am I doing here?”

  “Holding up the bar.”

  “I certainly don’t want to get drunk,” she said. “I’ve been pacing myself.” She frowned at the half-empty glass in front of her. “Will this get me drunk?”

  “Probably not,” Kelp said. “Unless you’re one of those rare people with the funny chemistry, you know.”

  She looked at him as though she might begin to doubt him soon. She said, “How long are you here for?”

  “Oh, for a while,” he said, and sipped from his own half-full glass.

  She thought about that. “You like this hotel?”

  “I’m not staying here,” he said.

  She was surprised. “Why would you come in here,” she asked, “if you’re not staying here? You couldn’t have been just passing by.”

  “I’ve got an appoi
ntment in the neighborhood,” he told her, and looked at his watch, and said, “pretty soon. So I’m killing time here.”

  “So we’re ships passing in the night,” she said.

  “Possibly,” Kelp said. “In this hotel, do they have that little refrigerator in the room full of stuff?”

  “Beer,” she said, “and champagne, and macadamia nuts and trail mix.”

  “That’s the one. Does it have bourbon?”

  She considered, then pointed at her empty glass. “This stuff? I’m not sure.”

  “I could come around later, take a look,” Kelp suggested. “I figure, my appointment, I’m probably done by three, maybe earlier, something like that.”

  “That’s some late appointment,” she said.

  “Well, you know, New York,” he said. “The city that never sleeps.”

  “Well, I sleep,” she said. “Though not so much, actually, since Howard left. I suppose he isn’t coming back.”

  “Doesn’t sound it,” Kelp said.

  “I’m in 2312,” Anne Marie said. “When your appointment’s done, you know, you could try, knock on the door. If I’m awake, I’ll answer.”

  20

  When Dortmunder woke up, he had no idea where the hell he was. Some beige box with the lights on and faint voices talking. He lifted his head, and saw an unfamiliar room, with a TV on, all the lights on, himself sprawled on his back atop a king-size bed with its thick tan bedspread still on it, and May slumped asleep in a chair off to his left, one of her magazines on the floor beside her. On the TV, people covered with blood were being carried to ambulances. Wherever it was, it looked like a real mess. Then, as Dortmunder watched, the people and the ambulances faded away and some candy bars began to dance.

  Dortmunder sat up, remembering. The N-Joy Broadway Hotel. Max Fairbanks. The lucky ring. The service elevator. Andy Kelp coming by, later; one in the morning.

  There was a clock radio bolted to the table beside the bed; its red numbers said 12:46. Dortmunder moved, discovering several aches, and eventually made it to his feet. He sloped off to the shiny bathroom, where he found his own personal toothbrush and toothpaste, plus the hotel’s soap and towels. When he finally came back out of the bathroom, feeling a little more human and alive, May was stirring in her chair, looking for her magazine, coming awake just as fuzzily as he had. Seeing him, she said, “I fell asleep.”

  “Everybody fell asleep.”

  They’d checked in late in the afternoon, hung around the room for a while to unpack and think things over, then had a pretty good dinner down in the hotel’s restaurant. Then May had gone back to the room to read while Dortmunder did a preliminary walk-through of the hotel, getting to know the lay of the land, then went back to compare what he’d seen with the floor plan placed on the inside of the room door in case of fire. “You Are Here.” “Use Staircase A.” “Do Not Use Elevator.” Still, they were marked, the elevators, on the floor plan.

  The layout was simple, really. The hotel was basically a thick letter U, with the base of the U on Broadway and the arms of the U on the side streets. The space in the middle was occupied, down below, by the theater and by the hotel lobby, with a glass roof at the top of that lobby on the sixteenth floor. The U started with floor seventeen and went on up that way, so all the hotel rooms could have windows.

  “I don’t sleep well in chairs,” May said, getting to her feet.

  “Well, you didn’t mean to,” Dortmunder said.

  “Doesn’t help,” she decided, and went off to the bathroom, while Dortmunder crossed to the room’s only window and drew the heavy drapes open partway. The window wouldn’t open, so he pressed his forehead against the cool glass in order to look as straight down as possible.

  They had an inside room, meaning no city vistas but also no traffic noise, and the view below, just visible with your forehead flat against the windowpane, was the glass roof of the lobby. Earlier this evening, that glass dome had been very brightly lit, but now it was dim, as though some sort of fire had been banked down there.

  12:53.

  Dortmunder crossed to the door to once again study the floor plan in its little frame. He leaned in close, peering, figuring it out.

  The floor plan was mostly little rectangles of numbered rooms, with a central corridor. In the middle of each of the three sides was a cluster of service elements: staircase, elevators, ice machine, and unmarked rooms that would be storage for linens and cleaning supplies. Of course, Max Fairbanks’s apartment didn’t show on this simple floor plan, but Dortmunder already knew it was above the theater and below the hotel and that it faced onto Broadway. So the service cluster on the Broadway side must be the one that contained the special elevator. Dortmunder’s room was around on the south side, so when Andy got here they’d—

  The door whacked Dortmunder sharply on the nose. He stepped back, eyes watering, and Andy himself came in, saying, “I hope I’m not early.”

  “You’re not early,” Dortmunder said, massaging his nose.

  Andy peered at him, concerned. “John? You sound like you got a cold.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Maybe the air-conditioning,” Andy suggested. “You know, these buildings, it’s all recycled air, it could be you—”

  “It’s nothing!”

  May came out of the bathroom, looking more awake. “Hi, Andy,” she said. “Right on time.”

  “Maybe a minute early,” Dortmunder said. His nose was out of joint.

  May said, “A minute early is right on time.”

  “Thank you, May.”

  Dortmunder, seeing no future in remaining irritated, let his nose alone and said, “We got this little floor plan here,” and showed Andy the chart on the door. He explained where they were, and where the service elevator to the apartment should be, and Andy said, “Can it be that easy?”

  “Probably not,” Dortmunder said.

  “Well, let’s go look at it anyway,” Andy said.

  May said, “John, where’s the control?”

  “The what?”

  “For the TV,” she said. “The remote control. I thought I’d watch television while you’re away, but I can’t find the control.”

  “Maybe it’s in the bed,” Dortmunder said.

  “Maybe it’s under the bed,” Andy said.

  They all looked, and didn’t find it. May said, “This is only one room and it isn’t that large a room and it doesn’t have that many things in it. So we have to be able to find the control.”

  Andy said, “Are you sure you ever had a control?”

  “Yes. That’s how I turned it on in the first place. And, John, you were changing channels one time.”

  “So it ought to be in the bed,” Dortmunder said.

  “Or under the bed,” Andy said.

  They all looked again and still didn’t find it, until Andy went into the bathroom and said, “Here it is,” and came out with the control in his hand. “It was next to the sink,” he said.

  “I’m not even going to ask,” May said, taking it from him. “Thank you, Andy.”

  “Sure.”

  Dortmunder, who didn’t believe he was the one who had carried the control into the bathroom in the first place, but who saw no point in starting an argument, said, “Can we go now?”

  “Sure,” Andy said, and they left.

  The corridor was long, not too brightly lit, and empty. Here and there, room service trays with meal remnants waited on the floor. Dortmunder and Andy went down to the end of the corridor, turned right, and here was another identical corridor, with identical carpeting and lighting and room service trays. Midway along, an illuminated green sign on the right, up near the ceiling, said EXIT . “Down there,” Dortmunder said.

  Halfway along the corridor, under the green exit sign, were the elevators, on the right, the inner side of the building, away from the street. Next to the elevators on their left was the staircase, and next to them on their right was the room containing the ice machine. Opposi
te the elevators was a blank wall decorated with a mirror and a small table and a chair with wooden arms. Opposite the staircase was an unmarked door.

  Unmarked and locked. Andy spoke to it, gently, and soon it opened, and they stepped through into a square room filled with rough wooden shelves on which were piled stacks of linen, of toilet paper, of tissue boxes and boxes containing soap and shampoo and body lotion. To their left was an open space in front of two sets of elevator doors.

  “One of these,” Dortmunder said, nodding at the elevator doors. “Ought to be, anyway.”

  “Maybe the one that’s coming,” Andy said.

  Dortmunder listened, and could hear the faint buzzing whirr of an elevator moving upward through its shaft. “Not to this floor, though,” he said.

  “Well, maybe,” Andy said. “Let’s wait back here.”

  Dortmunder followed him, and they faded back into the rows of supplies, just as the whirring stopped and they heard the elevator doors open. Andy lifted an eyebrow at Dortmunder—see?—and Dortmunder lowered an eyebrow at Andy: yeah, I see.

  Looking through mountains of clean towels, they watched a guy in a black-and-white waiter outfit push an empty two-tiered gray metal cart out of the elevator. Its doors closed behind him as he opened the door to the main corridor, pushed the cart through, and disappeared.

  Speaking softly, Andy said, “Gone to pick up those trays.”

  “So we’ve got a few minutes.”

  They left the supplies, went over to the elevators, and Andy pushed the up button. The elevator that had brought the waiter was still there, so its doors immediately opened. Andy held them open while he and Dortmunder studied the simple control panel inside. It was just black buttons with numbers on them, 31 the highest number (they were at the moment on 26) and 17 the lowest number, with two more buttons below 17, marked KITCHEN and LAUNDRY .

  “So it must be the other one,” Andy said.

  “Or,” Dortmunder said, contemplating the control panel, and thinking about how his luck tended to run, “we didn’t figure it right.”