The Fat Innkeeper

by Alan Russell

  “How soon,” asked Janet, “before the accidents occur in their meeting rooms?”

  “About as quick,” said Am, “as you can say, ‘Coitus interruptus’.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cotton Gibbons had a lot of rules in his life, one of them being that he never talked with management unless absolutely necessary. The maintenance man (he thought the term “engineer” much too highfalutin, and would be damned before he followed the suggested personnel—no, human-resources—guidelines, which suggested maids be called housekeepers, dishwashers be referred to as stewards, and front-desk clerks be called guest service agents) didn’t trust anyone who wore a tie, figuring that a tool belt was the only proper adornment to any wardrobe. It wasn’t that Cotton was a friend to the masses; truth to tell, he was generally surly to all. But he had decided, after ten years of avoiding talking with Am, that they should now be friends. It was not a friendship which Am actively cultivated. Cotton’s sudden congeniality was promoted by what he perceived as Am’s “raw deal.” The line between offering sympathy and voicing self-pity can sometimes be a thin one, and it was a line that Cotton often crossed over. Am’s demotion fit well into Cotton’s perception of the universe, where the non-tool-users in ties tried to screw over the oppressed. That the new chieftains were Japanese was probably the greatest thing that could have ever happened to Cotton. They were the culmination of his finger pointing, the visible demons to his grasping theories. There was a new bumper sticker on Cotton’s three-quarter-ton Chevy pickup: STOP THE WHALE KILLERS! BOY-COTT JAPANESE GOODS. It was not a bumper sticker in keeping with the others plastered to the vehicle, most of which had been supplied by the NRA and John Birch Society, nor was the conservation message easily squared with Cotton’s rifle rack. “I was going to get a bumper sticker that said, ‘Buy American,’ “ he confessed to Am, “but I didn’t think that would piss them off enough.”

  Them was the ownership, and anyone vaguely resembling the ownership. There were many orientals on the Hotel staff, including Koreans, Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cambodians, countries that historically have little love for Japan. That didn’t make a difference to Cotton. To him, they were all the same. Am tried to explain that most oriental cultures were very different, and that he might as well try lumping Americans with Bulgarians as Koreans with Japanese.

  “They’re all the same,” Cotton had repeated.

  Am remembered a joke, one he hoped had a didactic theme. “Two men at a bar,” he said. “Mr. Chang and Mr. Steinberg, the one oriental, the other Jewish.

  “Mr. Steinberg is clearly bothered. He starts muttering to himself, and gets angrier and angrier. After chugging down a few drinks, he comes to a decision. Raising himself from his barstool, he walks over to Mr. Chang, punches him in the face, and knocks him to the floor.

  “Wagging his finger in Mr. Chang’s face, Mr. Steinberg righteously announced: ‘That’s for Pearl Harbor.’

  “ ‘But I’m not Japanese,’ shouted Mr. Chang. ‘I’m Chinese.’

  “ ‘Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese,’ said Mr. Steinberg. ‘What’s the difference? You’re all the same.’

  “Mr. Steinberg turns around and walks back to his end of the bar. Picking himself up, Mr. Chang once more sits at the bar, but this time he’s the one muttering to himself. He orders a few drinks, and with each one becomes angrier and angrier. Finally, he walks across the bar, faces Mr. Steinberg, and decks him with a single punch.

  “Standing over him, Mr. Chang said, ‘That’s for the Titanic.’

  “ ‘What do you mean?’ asked Mr. Steinberg. ‘It was an iceberg that sank the Titanic.’

  “ ‘Iceberg, Weinberg, Steinberg,’ “ said Mr. Chang. ‘What difference does it make? You’re all alike.’“

  Cotton was a little slow to laugh. By Am’s reckoning about two weeks slow and counting. Rednecks, he thought, they’re all alike.

  Am heard Cotton before he saw him, his grumbling preceding him. They had agreed to meet at the Seal Wishing Well. There were three wishing wells on the property, one of many multiple landmarks at the Hotel that had confused and averted many a rendezvous.

  “Painted whore,” mumbled Cotton. “Heart of dry rot.”

  Cotton’s terms of endearment were addressed to the Hotel, the same Hotel that was generally referred to as a “Grande Dame,” or a “Stately Queen.” By the nature of their job, the engineering department usually sees the Hotel at its worst. Cotton took the physical failings of the Hotel as a personal affront, as if he were being personally spited.

  “Problem?” asked Am.

  “Problem? Nothing more than the fucking Hotel’s falling down.”

  Cotton had studied under Chicken Little. He was thin and tall, around fifty and a long way from mellow. His hair was still more black than gray. He didn’t have a red neck, but he did have plenty of nose and ear hair that, to Am’s knowledge, had never been harvested.

  “Got some lighting that Edison must have put in that’s gone bad.”

  Chronologically, Cotton wasn’t off the mark by much.

  “And got some clogged scuppers that I’d like to drop a couple of depth charges on.”

  Scuppers. One of those magical words that the engineering department could talk about for hours on end. There was a general fascination over such inanimate objects that Am thought bordered on the ridiculous. Scuppers. It was a subject Am needed to nip in the bud.

  “I need your help,” he said.

  Cotton looked disinterested. Engineering hears “help” yelled more frequently than a 911 operator.

  “It has to be done on the sly.”

  Things were sounding better, judging by Cotton’s expression.

  “I need you to take out two meeting rooms: the Neptune Room and Sea Horse Hall.”

  “Take out?” asked Cotton.

  It sounded like a hit. “With extreme prejudice,” said Am, intoning CIA emphasis.

  Am offered Cotton the background, and the reasons why the rooms had to be temporarily put out of service. Cotton didn’t need the reasons—he needed to be restrained.

  “It has to look like an accident,” Am cautioned, “and you can’t cause any injuries. And no real damage, nothing that we can’t fix up in a day or two.”

  “Leave it to me,” said Cotton, a look of rapture on his face.

  “ ‘Never make a toil of pleasure,’ “ quoted Am, “ ‘as Billy Ban said when he dug his wife’s grave only three feet deep.’“

  Cotton suddenly looked serious. Am figured it was his talk of graves.

  “Scuppers,” he announced. “First I’ll take care of them, then I’ll get on to the other.”

  Cotton left a happy man. Am wasn’t quite so cheerful. Maybe there was a Mrs. Billy Ban in Kingsbury’s life, someone not only glad to dig his grave, but motivated enough to kill him. Am needed to know those kinds of things, and felt a sense of failure that most of the morning had passed without his having been able to delve into the doctor’s death. He had been waylaid by a pretender to the throne, a decomposing whale, and an impending orgy.

  Scuppers, Am thought. Given the alternatives, maybe he could understand their attraction after all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ideal bellman is a Boy Scout grown up, but still in search of merit badges. Jimmy Mazzelli had never been a Boy Scout, nor was he an ideal bellman (or even “bell captain”—his preferred and self-appointed title).

  Jimmy assumed his job was a license to hustle. He ran the Hotel football pools (“administrative fees” five percent), and was willing to take any bets on the side. Jimmy made it a point to stick his nose into everything going on at the Hotel, figuring it was to his advantage to keep up on all that was going on. In that way, and that way alone, he was like the Japanese, who firmly believe that information is power.

  So just what information, Am wondered, was Jimmy passing on to Marisa Donnelly?

  He moved closer to hear their conversation, but didn’t even get within listening range befo
re being noticed. Jimmy was the ultimate survivalist. One moment he was talking and combing his long, slicked-back hair, and the next he was running off, comb in hand, as if he were the anchorman on a baton relay team.

  There are certain professions that cause a momentary reflection, even nervousness, to the average citizenry. The sudden appearance of law-enforcement officers, the IRS, the clergy, and the Fourth Estate tend to make even the upright take stock of their failings. The presence of Marisa Donnelly made Am think about the nearness of the Neptune Room. She was less than a hundred paces away from her sexposé.

  Marisa approached Am. “Tit for tat,” she announced. Or had she said, “Tit for tattle?”

  Regardless, she had said tit. Dammit, he thought, she knows about the impending group grope. “It’s being taken care of,” said Am.

  Her full, dark brows furrowed and became one. “What’s being taken care of?”

  Then again… “Uh, the whale.”

  “The big story of the day, right?”

  She had used that same intonation earlier in the morning, a slight mocking that announced they knew that wasn’t the real truth. He shrugged, not yet willing to play along.

  “It’s not even the first whale to make headlines in La Jolla,” she said somewhat imperiously.

  La Jolla, often touted as “the American Riviera,” is a coastal enclave for the wealthy. It is the kind of city where even the local McDonald’s takes on airs (the village wouldn’t allow a McDonald’s, but they did allow a boutique McSnacks). In La Jolla, whales do not make headlines nearly as often as fat cats.

  “There was another beached whale here?” he asked.

  “Not exactly. In 1918 a fishing boat was perched off the La Jolla kelp beds. The boat bumped into something, and then there was an explosion. It rained whale. The victims made it sound like a Texas gusher, except in this case it was rancid oil and blubber that poured down onto the deck of their boat. The smell, they said, made everyone sick. When the fishing party docked their boat, the stink cleared the pier.

  “The exploding whale was the talk of San Diego. There was only one possible explanation for what had happened. During the first World War, a schooner had been commissioned to hunt whales around San Diego. There was a national shortage of fats and oils, so whales were targeted to give their lives to the cause. To expedite the slaughter, the schooner’s harpoons were rigged up with bombs that were supposed to detonate on impact. Thousands of whales were taken in that way.”

  “But one got away.”

  Marisa nodded. “They figured the harpoon must have eventually killed the whale. It likely drifted into the kelp beds, where it became entwined. The bomb finally went off when the fishing boat jarred the whale.”

  “Score one for the whales,” said Am.

  “Now two,” she said.

  Am offered a wry smile. He was tempted to blow the dust off one of his old whale song LPs and ask Marisa if she wanted to come over and listen to it. He was even willing to bet she had a few of the same albums.

  “Most people don’t know it,” she said, “but there was a time when the gray whales used to come to San Diego Bay to do their breeding. They say the bay was full of whales, that is, until whale hunting became a way of life around here. For over thirty years, from the 1850s to the 1880s, whaling was a San Diego industry. On Point Loma and North Island, whales were regularly towed in, butchered, and boiled.”

  Am had always thought of American whaling as something that had taken place in the Atlantic, something that was distinctly eastern. Maybe, he hoped, if the whales weren’t bothered for a few more decades, they’d start using San Diego Bay as their nursery once again.

  “Is San Diego’s whaling history going to be in your story?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “You’ll make a lot of people feel guilty,” he said.

  “That’s the point of most good stories,” she said.

  He heard the double meaning in her tone again. “Somehow,” he said, “I don’t think you and Jimmy Mazzelli were talking about whales.”

  “We weren’t.”

  He didn’t say anything for several seconds, and neither did she. “I’m investigating some rumors that are going around,” Marisa finally said.

  “What rumors?”

  “If you couldn’t give me an honest answer about how your guests felt about the beached whale, I don’t figure you as a reliable source.”

  Am responded defensively. “I was looking out for the Hotel’s best interests.”

  “You were lying,” she said.

  Am didn’t like her words, but she was right. If you can’t be honest about a dead whale, then what can you be honest about? He thought of offering several excuses, but didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  His apology surprised her. She regarded him with new interest. It’s been a while, he thought, since anyone’s looked me over like that.

  “One hundred and eighty-two pounds,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what I weigh. I haven’t been appraised by such gimlet eyes since going up against the weight guesser at the Del Mar Fair.”

  “I’m trying to weigh more than pounds.”

  “I hope you have better luck than he did.”

  “Oh?”

  “He made the mistake of assuming I was lighter than I am.”

  Am didn’t tell her that the prize he had won cost the carny barker less than the price of his guess, that the booth was set up as a no-win situation for the consumer. Maybe she already knew.

  “For the record,” he said, “many of our guests have felt discommoded by the whale.”

  “You’re saying there’s something rotten at the Hotel California?” she asked.

  She offered Shakespeare, and her undertone. He wanted more than her cryptic dance. “I said what I said,” allowed Am, “which is more than you have.”

  The prodding worked. “I’ve heard,” she said, “that Thomas Kingsbury’s death is suspicious.”

  The silver lining, he supposed, was that she didn’t know about the Swap Meat. “I can’t comment on that,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  He noticed she said would instead of could. He also noticed she was walking away. Am studied her escaping form; in it, he saw a professional threat and a personal interest. For a moment he weighed the situation, and then he followed her. When he caught up with her he asked, “Is that how you end all of your conversations?”

  “I’m late,” she said.

  “Sure you’re not the one doing the evading this time?”

  “No,” said Marisa, “I’m doing my job. Part of which is to cover today’s featured speaker.”

  It was the other part of her job, the one she wasn’t elaborating upon, that interested him.

  “Detective McHugh is in charge of the investigation,” Am offered.

  “As if that wasn’t obvious hours ago,” she said. “He and a few of his shadows have been nosing around none too unobtrusively. If they wanted to keep things under wraps, they haven’t done a very good job of it.”

  “I’m worried about a premature newspaper article,” he said.

  “I’m worried about a dated newspaper article.”

  That settled, they walked into Halcyon Hall. It was one of the largest of the Hotel meeting rooms, could accommodate up to five hundred people. Almost that many were already assembled.

  “Damn,” said Marisa, “we’ll probably have to sit in the front row.”

  The stage was right on top of the seats, which meant that the front rows had the same limited appeal as up-close movie-house seating. Am followed Marisa down an aisle. He noticed a few familiar faces, placed them with the Kingsbury room the night before, and belatedly remembered that Marisa was covering the UNDER Convention. One of her predictions, at least, proved to be only too correct. They ended up in the front row. Observing the speaker would require their chins to occupy that space usually reserved for their noses.

  “All
right,” said Marisa, speaking in a voice only he could hear. “I won’t run any story until the autopsy is concluded. In turn, I expect complete cooperation from you.”

  “What kind of cooperation?”

  “For starters, access to any and all Hotel information.”

  Violation of privacy, he thought. The cardinal sin in the hotel business. Not to mention transgressing an Amendment or two.

  “Go on.”

  “And free run of the property. With your master key, and my curiosity, we can go far.”

  Maybe as far as San Quentin Penitentiary, he thought. Am didn’t get a chance to answer her demands and end their partnership even before it began. The lights in the room dimmed. Music started to play, softly at first, then louder. Am tried to place the music, then remembered: it was Brahms’ German Requiem.

  The curtains opened. Spotlights played down on the podium. A figure walked up to the microphone. Or did she glide? She was wearing white, had on a gossamer gown that, kitelike, unfurled around her. Her complexion was whiter than her outfit, her cheeks that faintest of pinks, only hinting at a coming spring. Her hair was a blond that was almost white, her eyebrows a fine translucent sand.

  The Requiem played on.

  “Who is that?” asked Am.

  “Why,” said Marisa, “that’s Lady Death, of course.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I am the speaker for the dead,” she said.

  The music had stopped. Halcyon Hall was preternaturally quiet. The apparition, the Angel of Death, had everyone’s attention. And she knew it.

  “I have walked through the valley of the shadow of death,” she said. “I have seen into that great beyond, and Chief Seattle was right: There is no death. There is only a change of worlds.

  “I will tell you about the other world.”

  She did. Eloquently, beautifully, even passionately. She spoke of the world where, medically dead, she had journeyed. She talked of following a great white light, described the surreal landscapes she had encountered, and remembered her disappointment in being told by an unseen force that it “was not her time to die.” It was clear that many in the audience were recalling their similar near-death experiences as she spoke. The more she talked, the more the crowd responded. She worked the room better than a revival-meeting preacher.