Concierge Confidential

by Fazio, Michael

  I immediately went to make copies.

  She had all these attachments that I tried to make sense of. There were some bad snapshots of herself that were poorly Xeroxed, so that you could barely make them out. In one she looked at the camera and then in another she was in profile, like mug shots. They were meant to prove her resemblance to the Russian dynasty. Then she had different photocopies of every passport she ever had, from childhood to the present day. I recognized the barrettes that she had been wearing that morning.

  There were pictures of her pointing to barely visible marks on different parts of her body. It was hard to tell if they were bug bites, bruises, birthmarks, or absolutely nothing. What is she pointing to? I wondered. I referred back to the text.

  “In 1984,” she wrote, “when I became the bride of Osama bin Laden…” This was before 9/11, and he was hardly in the public consciousness. Mrs. Kinezevich claimed that she was going into the Vatican and there was some controversy. She was kidnapped by conspirators who were working with the Pope, who poisoned her with a scorpion. She was pointing to the marks where it had stung her.

  After I finished with the copies, I put the papers back in the envelope. I got a key to her room and I brought her belongings upstairs. I made it a point to fold up her wrap nicely, and put it next to the envelope on her bed. “I’m sorry if there was confusion,” I wrote on a notepad, “but your limo driver brought this back and I wanted to make sure it was with you.” Then I left a message for her on her voicemail to let her know that her things were in her room, and that we had tried to find her. “I’m sure it was a misunderstanding,” I said, sounding very apologetic.

  Now I was curious. The next day I looked into her guest folio, checking to see if other hotel employees who dealt with her had had weird experiences. But there wasn’t anything remotely strange written in there. Quite the contrary. They were all quite positive and glowing: “Six Continent Club Member” “VVVIP” It wasn’t that much of a surprise. The basic mentality of hospitality is to never be suspicious. I don’t know why I was always the one wondering if things weren’t what they seemed. “Wife of Dr. Kinezevich,” I read on, “esteemed practitioner of Beverly Hills.” I rolled my eyes. I could almost hear her dictating to somebody to write that in her file. (Any mentions of bin Laden, the Pope, or Tsar Nicholas were curiously absent from her guest folio, probably on orders from the CIA, the Care Bears, or the Trilateral Commission.)

  I couldn’t feel completely comfortable until I touched base with her again. I wanted to be sure that she got back to her room and that she had received her papers. But the next day there was neither hide nor hair of Mrs. Sofiya Kinezevich. Instead, the limo company sent over the reconciliation with the charge for her daylong adventure. The bill came to over $1,500, and I didn’t know what to do. I worried about losing hundreds of dollars for the commission, and I worried about having to haggle with the car company about settling the bill, and I worried about having to deal with Russian royalty, exiled or otherwise.

  The next morning she called down to the concierge desk while I was working, and I was relieved when I saw her name on the caller ID. “Good morning, Mrs. Kinezevich. This is Michael, how may I be of service?”

  “You peasant,” she snarled.

  I was too confused to even respond. Did she just call me a peasant? “Excuse me?” I said, wondering if I had misheard her.

  “I need you to send housekeeping up here immediately.”

  There were always problems in the old hotel, like toilets backing up or pipes leaking. “Of course,” I said. “Is there any problem?”

  “I think you know,” she said, scolding me and sounding very alarmed.

  Now I had no doubt that she was taking me to task because of something shoddy with the plumbing, that I should have known what kind of hotel I was working in. “I’m so sorry,” I told her. “Is there anything that I can do?”

  “I just want you to know that I’m fully aware of your attempt to poison me last night. I took your recommendation to dine at Planet Hollywood. The bathroom is full of towels that have cleaned my vomit and bile up from the floor. I haven’t decided how I’m going to handle this.”

  * * *

  PLACES I WOULD ADVISE A GUEST TO DINE BEFORE ADVISING THEM TO “DINE” AT PLANET HOLLYWOOD

  Sonic Drive-In—save room for the cheesecake bites

  50% off Sushi—go on a Monday

  Pluck U—they deliver!

  Taco Bell—we all mourn the retired bacon cheeseburger burrito

  No. 1 Chinese Restaurant (the one in Bensonhurst)—chicken with garlic sauce

  The Bucknell Bison—get the grilled ham hero

  * * *

  “I’m aware of your connection to them,” she concluded.

  It was like I had called ahead and said, “I’m sending you Sofiya Kinezevich. You must poison her. Just give her bigger portions of your regular menu.”

  Now I was starting to get it. The guy with her wasn’t her shy, awkward son. He must have been her dealer, and she was totally on drugs. The lady is whacked, I thought, as she hung up the phone. I immediately sent up housekeeping to take care of the towels that had cleaned her “vomit and bile.”

  Then I started to get scared. I had the limo bill to deal with. I hadn’t followed up that much on her Russian swords and books. If she wanted to make trouble, it would have been very easy for her. These were things that really could escalate. I started to do my homework to try to mitigate any havoc that she might wreak.

  The first thing I saw in the system was that she had about 190 room nights that year; half the calendar year she had spent at an InterContinental Hotel somewhere in the world. It wasn’t like she was just some loony off the street. I wanted to know if anybody else had any crazy stories so that I could start to build my case.

  I started calling other properties around the world where she had stayed. It was still morning, so there was plenty of time to call London.

  “InterContinental Hotel, this is Cyril speaking. How can I help you?”

  “Hi, Cyril. It’s Michael Fazio from New York. Listen, I need you to do me a favor. Can you look up Sofiya Kinezevich’s file in your local database and tell me if you found anything unusual in there?”

  “Sure.” I could hear the clacking of the keyboard as he entered her name into the computer. “Oh! She’s a Six Continent Club member!”

  “I know. But isn’t there anything?”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know. She’s quite an interesting person.” Did she walk through the lobby naked? Something like that?

  “No, I’m sorry. She stayed here, but I don’t have any record of anything like that.”

  “Thanks anyway,” I said, hanging up the phone. Where else do I know the staff? I wondered, scanning the list of cities she stayed in. Bingo! Chicago. It must have really hit the fan in Chicago. Please please please let it have hit the fan in Chicago.

  “InterContinental Hotel, this is Stephen speaking. How can I help you?”

  “Stephen, it’s Michael. Can you look up Sofiya Kinezevich— K-i-n-e-z-e-v-i-c-h—and tell me what you have in her file on her?”

  “Huh.”

  I held my breath. “ ‘Huh’? What do you mean? What, what is it?”

  “Well, she’s a Six Continent Club member.”

  “Yes, yes. I know that!”

  “There is nothing here about her. I mean, I can tell you how long her stays were but you should be able to access that yourself.”

  “I can. Thank you very much.” I hung up the phone and looked into the empty lobby. Nobody could corroborate anything that I was learning. Nobody could help me in any way. Hell, nobody even knew who she was other than in her files. It’s not like the Russian embassy would be filling out an affidavit against her.

  Then it hit me. I dialed 310-555-1212 to get her husband’s number. I wondered if he knew what she was up to. Frankly, I was most concerned about the car service charge. Money drama would bring scowls
from management, instead of muffled laughter if I told them about any alleged poisoning attempts.

  I called up Dr. Kinezevich’s office. “Hello,” I said. “My name is Michael Fazio. I’m the concierge from the InterContinental Hotel and I’ve been dealing with Mrs. Kinezevich.”

  “Yeah,” he said, very lackluster.

  “I’m afraid I have a little bit of a problem.”

  “Yeah?” he repeated, wanting me to just get to the point.

  “It seems that she was using the car service and she didn’t come back. It amounted to a pretty significant bill.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Well, uh, she mentioned that she wasn’t exactly feeling well today.”

  “Oh God,” he sighed. “Yeah, you know what? Just ignore her. I’ll pay the bill.”

  I felt so relieved. “Do you think I should call a doctor?”

  “No, no. No, it’s fine.” He hung up the phone.

  That’s when I felt a little bad for her. Her husband knew that she’s a total loony, and didn’t even want to be bothered. Maybe I wouldn’t have been as sympathetic if she caused me headaches with my job, but the husband paid the bill and I never had to deal with her again.

  She wasn’t a bad woman but a crazy woman, and the man with her was probably a handler to make sure she kept out of trouble as she spiraled out of control all over the world. There was fun-crazy and then there was crazy-crazy, and she was definitely the latter.

  Julian, on the other hand, was definitely the former. He was fun-crazy. A frequent guest at the hotel, Julian was “out there” in the best possible sense of the term. He always challenged me to see what I could come up with next. There was some hot club in Vegas that he wanted to be absolutely sure he could get into.

  “Well, you could do the paparazzi trick,” I told him.

  “What’s that?”

  “I had a client who wanted to get into Marquee, so I hired a paparazzo to follow him. He cut through the line like it was nothing.”

  I could see the gears turning in Julian’s mind. “I love that! I could use it to get in everywhere in Vegas. Can you arrange it?”

  “Sure,” I said. Paparazzi weren’t always guaranteed a paycheck for their photos anyway. I was sure there would be plenty who would be amenable to a flat fee for easy work, taking pictures and not having to worry about trying to sell them.

  “How many can I get?” Julian said. “Do I get them all night?”

  The answers were: eight and yes. He got in at every single club and it went off without a hitch—and now he had a hilariously absurd anecdote to tell people. So when Julian came to the concierge desk one day and wanted to do something special for his wedding anniversary, I knew I had to get creative. His wife loved white roses, and dinner at a nice place was fine, but those things weren’t going to cut it by themselves. It was a few weeks away, so I knew I could really go over the top if I planned it right.

  “How did you meet?” I asked him. “Maybe we can revisit it and do something with that.”

  “It was actually on the train, of all places, from Washington, D.C., to New York. We were on the same car and struck up a conversation. Now that I remember it, it was two cars down from the dining car. Wow, I haven’t thought about that in years! Anyway, we ended up talking the whole way. It was almost like a movie. But a train ride isn’t very romantic.”

  “Well, we can make it romantic,” I insisted. “You can take the train again, and I’ll have musicians waiting for you.”

  “Where, in Penn Station?”

  “No, like on the platform. She obviously would never expect that. Talk about a movie! It’d be this big huge gesture and make a spectacle like when the credits begin to roll and our hero and our heroine finally get together.”

  “I love it,” he said. “Then we can go to dinner at someplace fancy.”

  “Oh, that’s easy. I’ll have the white roses waiting on the platform and the musicians can hand them to her. So what do you think?”

  He smiled. Now I could see that the gears had stopped turning. “Just go for it. This is it, this is totally it.”

  “I’ll take care of everything.”

  “Thanks.” He passed me a tip and left. I watched the smile on his face grow larger and larger.

  That afternoon, I went to Penn Station to get permission for the performers. There’s a police precinct right there, adjacent to the escalators that go down to the tracks. They probably control the whole thing, I reasoned. I’ll go and ask them first. I opened the door and three cops looked up at me. I didn’t seem particularly aggrieved, so right away they seemed to be on guard—they could tell that I was probably some sort of nuisance and not a crime victim. “I’ve got a crazy request,” I told them, in an icebreaker that I regretted immediately. “I’m a concierge at the InterContinental Hotel, and one of my clients would like a string quartet to meet him when he gets off the train.”

  I totally fell flat. The energy in the room turned to total poison. “What are you talking about?” one of the officers finally said.

  “It would be really romantic. He’s recreating the route where he met his wife. Do you think there’s some way?”

  The cop rolled his eyes, not interested in parsing what I was telling him. “Go talk to the guy at the head of the escalator.”

  “Which guy?”

  “The Amtrak guy who’s in charge of tickets. You’ll see him,” the officer said, wanting me to be out of there as quickly as possible.

  I took the hint. I found the guy the cop was talking about. He had on his Amtrak hat and was watching over the entrance to the platform. I meandered up to him as he watched me approach out of the corner of his eye. “Hey there,” I said.

  “Can I help you?” he replied immediately, in a tone that didn’t sound like someone who actually did want to help me.

  “Okay. I bet you’ve never heard this before.” I explained the whole scenario to him, while he stared at me with no change in affect whatsoever. “This would be so great. Isn’t it such a crazy idea?”

  “I’ll give you that,” he said, chuckling to himself.

  One of the tricks that often works in cases like this is to act nice and beg for mercy. It definitely helps to present yourself as a peer, who is in danger of getting in trouble at work. “If I can’t say yes to this person, it’s going to make my life miserable. You know how that is.”

  “I guess.”

  “Come on. It’s good PR for Amtrak.”

  He shrugged and looked away. “Maybe so.”

  It was that awkward moment where I should have walked away and bought tickets for the musicians to get them access to the platform. But even if I did that, I wasn’t assured that they would be able to bring their instruments—let alone play them by the trains. “Look at how cool this would be,” I insisted. “This is bringing the romance back into train travel!”

  He looked me right in the face, and now he started to crack a little bit. Clearly bringing the romance into train travel was not one of his priorities, and we both knew it. He started to laugh at me, but in a friendly way. “You’re nuts.”

  I knew that I was winning him over. “When do you work? What’s your schedule? This would be on a Thursday at six P.M.”

  “I don’t work at that time,” he told me.

  “Do you know who does?”

  He gave it the least possible amount of thought. “Nope.”

  “Can I give you a call and maybe you can find out for me?”

  “I’ll try to find out,” he said.

  “Can you give me your number?”

  “Just come back and I’ll see what I can do,” he said. He wouldn’t give me his phone number but I knew I had made the slightest bit of an ally.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’ll find you another time.” I didn’t really feel like he was good for it—and he wasn’t.

  I went back three or four times, chatting him up and checking to see if he had done any research for me. “How’s it going?” I asked him. “Did
you have any luck? I’m sorry, I know I’m bothering you.”

  I thought that I should call human resources and simply just go over his head. But at that point I was too afraid that if I did that and went outside of his circle, I would be screwed. All he would have to say is, “There’s some crazy person that wants to get on the platform,” and it would be all over for me. He had to be my guy.

  Instead it was me asking, “Do you want a coffee? How are you doing today? Do you like candy?”

  Eventually, I was in the right place at the right time. “That’s Elipto,” he told me. “Go talk to him. He’s got that shift.”

  I went up to Elipto and introduced myself.

  “So you’re the guy that keeps coming here,” he said, laughing.

  I gave Elipto my whole spiel. I didn’t take credit for the plan; it was the “wacky client” who wanted to do this. It was amusing for him that there was a person out there who was willing to enlist this much effort to pull something off. Now it was like we were on the same team. I could tell that he felt invested in seeing this through.

  “I don’t really know what to tell you,” he finally said.

  “I just want to make sure that there aren’t any issues.”

  It wasn’t like he could give me some certificate in writing. “Just tell them to come and see me. It’ll be fine.”

  “Thank you so much!”

  Now all I had to do was find a string quartet that would be willing to do this.

  * * *

  HIRING PERFORMERS FOR CHEAP

  There are obviously far more “artists” of every kind than there are paying jobs for them. The supply far outweighs the demand—which makes it a buyer’s market of sorts. The problem is that many self-described “artists” are not very good, and many of the good ones charge a premium as coaches, consultants, and the like. Just as with any other service, the ideal scenario is to the get the best possible person at the lowest possible price.