Lemons 03 Stroke of Genius

by Grant Fieldgrove

  We exited the surveillance room and made our way back out to the lobby, crossing the secretary’s desk and telling her we would be back shortly. She said there would always be someone here, as this was a 24 hour racket. We thanked her and made our way out into the land of hopelessness and desperation, the casino.

  Elise told me to follow her and we once again wove our way through crowds of idiots dropping their family’s Christmas money on a roll of the dice and entered a small souvenir store. Elise purchased a bottle of Southern Comfort.

  “Here is the solution to your elevator problem.” She removed the cap and handed me the bottle. “Take a shot. I’ll keep the bottle in my purse for all your elevator needs.”

  I did as I was instructed, though slightly against my will. I took two swigs. “This is stupid,” I said. “This is NOT going to work.”

  It worked.

  My head felt a little lighter when we got back to my room. I’ve been drunk before but never in public (last night doesn’t really count, as Elise was the sloppy drunk one, not me.) Fact was, I wasn’t really a big drinker at all. I’ve had a few vodka-Redbulls while staking out some joints from time to time, but nothing that would really intoxicate me. I needed to be alert and on my feet at all times. But what the hell, it’s Vegas.

  Elise went into her bedroom to call the kids and talk to Jamie. We decided we couldn’t spend too long on this case and we needed to ensure Jamie that we wouldn’t be pulling another Beach Trip on her. School would be getting out for Christmas Vacation soon and we certainly didn’t want to miss the holidays at home with the boys. Apparently, everything went well and Elise exited the room with a smile on her face. It was my turn to call Vince and let him know we may have found a lead, but to not get his hopes up. It was still a long shot.

  I called and he seemed pleased. As pleased as could be, I suppose. His heartbreak was evident.

  We decided to call it a night on the investigation and head down to the casino to hang out for a bit. I agreed. Elise pulled the bottle of SoCo from her purse and waved it back and forth for me. I took three quick drinks then we made our way to the elevator, taking three more chugs upon arrival. By the time we hit the ground floor and I handed a half-empty bottle back to Elise, my legs felt wobbly and I’m pretty sure I was speaking gibberish.

  I had my secret money in my wallet and was ready to go play some cards when Elise’s cell phone rang. We stopped so she could answer it. She didn’t recognize the number.

  “Hello…Oh Hi!” She covered the speaker with her palm and mouthed JIM to me, then went back to talking.

  Jim. Elise’s blind date.

  That little pimple.

  That little thigh-chafe.

  That speck of food stuck between your teeth that cuts and bloodies your tongue because you can’t stop trying to flick it out.

  That stupid…guy! Ugh!

  I didn’t want to hear it. I stumbled out on my Jell-O legs onto the casino floor and found a table with a few empty seats. I threw down two hundred bucks and the dealer gave me eight green chips in return. I placed a fifty dollar bet and the dealer flipped over a 21. God damn it.

  I played for a few minutes more, losing every hand, and noticed everyone seated at the table with me had picked up their chips and departed. Fine, who needs “em. I’ll play by myself.

  Two more losing hands later and a woman comes and sits next to me. She leans into my ear and says Hey.

  “Hey” I say. That’s about as wordy as I get with females I don’t know.

  “Winning?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Oh, too bad. You want to get out of here? Maybe go have a little fun?”

  I turned my attention from my cards to the woman sitting next to me. I noticed she didn’t have any chips out and had no idea what she was doing.

  “What the hells it look like I’m doing right now, lady?” At least that’s the way it sounded in my head.

  “It looks like you’re losing, hon. How about you come with me and start winning?”

  “Are you good at cardths or thomething?”

  “Yeah, or something.”

  My brain, swimming in a pool of booze, came up with a brilliant idea. I’d be seen hanging out with this girl, thus making Elise extremely jealous. I’m pretty sure that is how jealousy worked. It was brilliant. That’ll teach her to take phone calls from stupid Jim. Jim the…Dim! Yeah, more like DIM! Up yours DIM! I stood and realized I was quite a bit more drunk than before. My legs nearly gave out and I leaned into the woman for whom I was to be hanging out. She caught me and said something along the lines of EASY. I felt like a bobble-head. I looked up at her and said “Whasss your name, lady?”

  “Gena, honey. My name is Gena.”

  “Hi Gena Honey. My name is Gena.” I laughed at my clever joke. She did not. “I’m hungry. You hungry? I hungry. Leth’s get food.”

  “That’s not really what I had in mind, babe.”

  “Need food. Restaurant. Buffet. Lesgo. Fuggin A!”

  “You’re the boss, Sugar.”

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later we are sitting at a booth at a 24-Hour buffet in our hotel. The very same buffet Elise had suggested earlier. For some reason it wasn’t bothering me. I thought of it as progress. I could feel my head finding its footing upon my neck as I began to sober up. I thought. I checked my phone. I had several missed calls from Elise and several texts. She didn’t seem happy with me. I wrote her back telling her where I was.

  “So Gena, huh?”

  “Yep, that’s me. Thanks for the dinner.”

  “Yeah, no thweat. Be right back.” I got up to stumbled to the bathroom. Hitting the water at the bottom of the toilet bowl proved to be far more difficult than I remembered. Shit got pretty wild in there. When I left not even the flush handle was dry. Oops. I was gone five minutes and returned to Gena still sitting there.

  “I’m back!” I proclaimed.

  “I see that. Again, doll, thanks for the dinner. I don’t usually eat this much. Ya know, always on a diet…”

  “Psh, diet shmiet. Did you know I invented my own diet?”

  “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

  “It’s the Archie Lemons Diet.”

  “Okay, doll, but what does the diet consist of?”

  “Oh! Well, you see this t-shirt I am wearing?”

  “Yes…I don’t know what Dharma means, but alright.”

  “It’s from Lost. Not important. Anyway, this shirt, I’m pretty well known for wearing it. In fact, I usually wear pretty much the same ten or fifteen or so tshirts.”

  “What’s this have to do with a diet, babe?”

  “The point is, people recognize my tshirts. So, let’s say I pack on a few pounds, or am supposed to be dieting, or whatever the case may be. The Archie Lemon’s Diet consists of me going out and buying these same shirts…in a larger size. So next week, let’s say I buy an extra-large Dharma shirt and wear it and people notice it’s a little loose on me. That’s when I say, ‘Oh yeah, ya know, I’ve been workin’ out…watching what I eat.’ See, booya! Diet success!”

  “Wow…that’s actually…genius.”

  “Thank ya! Oh look,” I said, and Gena turned her head to see Elise walking up to us. She looked not-happy. Not happy at all.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?!” she snapped at me.

  “Oh god,” Gena said. “I didn’t know he-‘

  “Don’t worry, I’m not his girlfriend.”

  “We were just playing cards together and dethided to get thome food. Elise, this is Gena, Gena, Elise.”

  “Hi,” Gena said as she extended her arm out for a friendly shake. Elise backed up like Gena was waving a stick with dog poo on it.

  “Sit down, E. Please.”

  She did, and she sat down next to me, which I took as a good sign.

  Silence.

  I tried to start some friendly banter. “So, Gena. I once met a girl named Gina.”

  “Oh yeah?” she replied, with genuine
excitement in her eyes.

  “Yeah, she worked at The Gap down in Beverly Hills. We were there a few years ago. She rang me up for my underwear.”

  “And you remember her?”

  “I remember everybody. Hey, Gena, have you ever noticed on sitcoms whenever a new character is guest starring or introduced and they have the same name as a pre-existing character, there will always end up being some whacky misunderstanding concerning to two same-named people?”

  Gena’s eyes shot wide open again and she exclaimed, “Oh my god! You are so right! That is so true!”

  “Yeah, it’s kinda what I do,” I say, with no modesty whatsoever. “I spot these sitcom cliches all the time. Like, whenever a sitcom character gets an important phone call, they always act like it’s bad news but then they hang up and yell that they got the job, or whatever. ‘

  “Wow. Just wow.” She looked at Elise, “Right?”

  Elise answered with a silent, blank stare.

  “Oh,” I continued, enjoying my moment in the spotlight, “I have a million of them. I’m actually thinking about writing a book. Whatta ya think? Sitcom’s Greatest Cliches!”

  “Oh man, wow, I would totally buy that book!”

  “Oh yeah?

  “Fuck yes, for sure! It sounds amazing!”

  “Oh, it totally would be. Like, you ever notice that every character owns a tuxedo? Whenever the situation calls for it, boom!, they have a tuxedo. Always. Or like, you ever notice in sitcoms whenever there is a gang or a group of the bad kids, they always have to have at least one member of every major race? Right?”

  “Oh my god, that’s so true! So true!” She was laughing so hard I heard a snort. She slammed her palm down on the counter, rattling the glasses, from her fit of hysterics. Emotions have never been my strong suit, and jealously was confusing to me, as I could never figure out, exactly, how it felt. It was the one the emotion that confused me the most and I hated it. But right now my mission was to make Elise jealous. So jealous. As jealous as I perhaps was. I’m pretty sure I was succeeding. How could I not be? This attractive woman sitting across from me was hanging on my every word. I decided to press on.

  “Or like, how there are never any normal births on sitcoms? They always have to be whacky! Like, in a cab or they’re snowed in, or they’re all dressed like a bunch of assholes from The Flintstones. Always something ridiculous. And why is everyone getting trapped in elevators, too?” (One of my top fears, but no need to share that right now.)

  The laughter continued. She was totally intrigued.

  “I can go on and on. That’s why I want to write a book about it.”

  “Wow, that is fascinating.” She looked back at Elise who was still sitting silently with a bitchy look on her face. “Isn’t he fascinating?”

  Elise answered in a rather flat, sarcasm dripping tone, “Yeah. He’s real fascinating. He can also spot a panty line from a hundred yards away, go weeks without pooping and tell you every major motion picture that shows wiener. Fascinating.” She leaned in close to my ear and whispered, “What’s with the whore?”

  “WHORE?” I say louder than I should, completely stunned! I look towards Gena, expecting her to be just as shocked. She’s not. She smiles and nods her head. Like, duh.

  God damn it. Gross. I never even understood the allure of hookers, anyway. I always imagined it would be like fucking a hallway. Ugh.

  That night was one of the longest nights of my life. The vomiting. Oh my, the vomiting. Every new step to soberness made me vomit more. First I vomited up the thoughts of hanging out with a Vegas whore, then I vomited when I was sober enough to remember I just ate at a buffet, then I vomited when I realized I was holding on to a disgusting toilet seat while doing all the previous vomiting.

  14.

  I was pretty worried about what would transpire the following morning, but it turns out my concerns were for nothing. Elise was too busy making fun of me to have time to be mad at me. I’m pretty sure she realized that it was all her fault, anyway, by forcing the booze on me. I think she figured if she kept me occupied with her insults I would be too distracted to realize this small fact. I didn’t care though. The last thing I needed was a fight with Elise. My night was shitty enough without this capper.

  I showered and got ready then we made our way to the elevator. Funny girl here decided to take the bottle from her purse again and offer me a little nip. I whole-heartedly declined and decided I would just try to man up and make the trip alcohol and drug free in “93, ya’ll.

  We stepped on the lift and I made my way to the far corner and stood there perfectly still with my eyes closed the entire way down. The thoughts of the unfortunate alternative of whore-cooties helped me stay calm until we reached our destination. We stepped off. I was quite proud of myself.

  We stopped in one of the little souvenir shops, a different one from last night, and bought a couple of Rockstars for our fun-filled day of staring at cameras. Caffeine in-hand, we made our way to the security offices of the Myra Hotel and took our seats in front of the wall of screens again.

  Our task for the day was to eliminate all those who couldn’t have done it. From the time Leslie stepped on the elevator from the time she was found in the field gave us a timeframe of three to four hours. That meant, in order for us to eliminate suspects, we would have to account for every single person who used that whole bank of elevators, not just the people who used her specific elevator. There were stairs we had to account for, it would be too easy to take the elevator to a higher floor then take the stairs down. Elise remembered something, though.

  “That guy, Whatshisname, said there were security cameras at the stairwells though, remember? He said they were motion censored and would only flick on if they were tripped.”

  “Shit. Okay, so where does that put us, then?”

  “Well, if we can rule out the stairwell then that’ll make it a hell of a lot easier to start eliminating people. We can just focus on one elevator instead of the entire bank of six.”

  “Good idea, so we need to see if there was any activity at all that morning from the stairwell. Should be easy enough.”

  “Righto, I’ll start looking.”

  “Great. I’ll keep looking at these assholes then.”

  It took Elise all of ten minutes to locate the correct camera and about ten seconds to discover that there wasn’t even a seconds worth of footage from that entire day. The motion sensor had never been tripped.

  “Well, look, solves that problem, right?”

  “Um, not really, E,” I said. “Not quite yet.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “You remember that old Robert Redford movie Sneakers?”

  “Yeah! With River Phoenix.”

  “Yeah, from back in his non gutter days.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Anyway, my point is, remember that scene where they’re trying to beat the motion sensor in the office and ol’ Butch Cassidy has to move something like less than one inch every few seconds or something like that?”

  “Robert Redford was the Sundance Kid. Duh. Sundance Film Festive.”

  Ugh! She’s right. I’ve really been slipping lately.

  “Anyway, butthole, remember what I’m talking about?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Okay, then I think we need to test this out. I’m assuming the attackers would take at least a few precautions to not get caught. If he has even a mild knowledge of security systems then he would know what a motion sensor looked like.”

  “Okay, hold on. Are we operating under the assumption that Balthazar-‘

  “Balls.”

  “Sorry. Balls. Are we under the assumption that Balls was involved in this or are we still treating these cases separately?”

  “Still separate. As of now we have nothing to link the two things together aside from it happening in the same hotel around the same time.”

  “Seems like a pretty big coincidence. To me…”

  “
Yeah, but not big enough. If Balls was one of the attackers, then who was the second? It was just him and Vince in town for vacation and Vince never left the tables the entire time Balls was upstairs killing himself. And if Balls was one of the attackers, why would he just give up, go back into his room and masturbate? It doesn’t fit.”

  “Okay, we’ll come back to that, then. Right now let’s find us a dirty rapist.”

  “Agreed. So who wants to be Robert Redford?”

  “I’d say you but that would be a pretty big compliment on your appearance.”

  “Argh! Hate you! I’m Redford! How do we do this?”

  “Just go up to the stairwell and trip the camera so I can find you, then when it flicks off again, try and get through the door undetected.”

  “Okay, I’m just going to do this on the first floor so I don’t have to go-‘

  “Oh no no no,” Stupid Elise interrupted. “You’re doing this on the correct floor Mister. It has to be exact.”

  God damn it, I hate when she’s right. Shit shit shit.

  “Fine” I reluctantly agree. “What floor was she attacked on?”

  “Hold on.” Elise opened up a folder and rummaged through a bit. “Floor thirty-seven. Your lucky number.”

  “Are you kidding me?!”

  “Nope, why, what’s up?”

  “What floor was Balls found on?”

  “Thirty sev-Oh shit.”

  “Yeah, oh shit is right. We should have been asking that question from the beginning.”

  “We Suck!”

  “We totally do.”

  “Well, crap. Let’s get goin’. Good luck up there.”

  15.

  I finally reached the thirty-seventh floor after the world’s longest elevator ride up. I was alone. And frightened. As silly as it sounds, Elise being with me really does help calm me and hinder my fears a bit. But this time it was just me versus scary elevator and I didn’t like it. I was armed with a kick ass walky-talky from the security room to keep in contact with Elise. It was fun to play with. While I walked to the stairs I pretended I was a cop from E.T. who had his shotgun erased by Spielberg and my walky-talky was just a digital insert.