The Fat Innkeeper

by Alan Russell

  “Have you received any other threats?” Am asked.

  “One,” she said in a small voice. “Just yesterday. I was doing a radio show. After we finished I was told I had a call. I identified myself, and this voice said, ‘Speaker for the dead? Dead will be your first language very soon.’ And then he hung up.”

  “He?”

  “Yes. The voice was muffled but it was male.”

  “Do you have any enemies?”

  “None that I know of.”

  Am called the Rover on his walkie-talkie, told him to come to the Crown Jewel Suite to rekey the room, then turned back to Lady Death. “Would you prefer sleeping in another room tonight?” he asked. “I can assure you total anonymity. No one will know where you are.”

  She ran a hand through her platinum-blond hair, sighed, then shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s hard for me to think clearly.”

  “Why don’t we sit down?” Am suggested.

  The suite offered too many choices of where to sit. Angela hesitated, and then steered him over to the bar area. “Can I get you anything to drink?” she asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  “It was such a long day,” she said. “All I wanted to do was get some sleep. Now I’m afraid to sleep.”

  She walked behind the bar, found a glass, and started looking through the bottles.

  “How’d your signing go?”

  “I have writer’s cramp.”

  “Isn’t that good?”

  She nodded. “But if it’s going to be like this for the next three months, I think I’ll be referring to my publishing contract as a pact with the devil.”

  Lady Death poured from a familiar bottle. Am took a closer look. “Goldschlager,” he said.

  “Yes. Funny, first time I tried this was a few days ago. I had never even heard of it. But I enjoyed it so much I had room service bring me up a bottle.”

  In a courtroom, lawyers don’t like to ask questions of witnesses when they’re not already sure of the answer. “How’d you happen to try it?” Am asked, knowing that Dr. Kingsbury had been seen drinking with a younger blond woman.

  “Tom Kingsbury,” she said sadly. Angela looked at the drink as if she should be questioning its heritage, sighed, then took another sip. “I was… unprepared for his death,” she said. “He was so vital.”

  Anyone else would have said they were upset to hear about his death, but that sentiment wouldn’t have gone with the philosophy Lady Death preached.

  “How did you happen to know him?”

  “I met him for the first—and last—time the night I arrived. I had filled out one of his questionnaires and he wanted to speak to me, but with our schedules it was tough finding a time good for both of us. We arranged to meet the night before the conference began. I had a late flight in, but he said that was okay, because he was a night owl.”

  “What kind of questions did he ask you?”

  Lady Death didn’t appear comfortable with the inquiry. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Tomorrow,” said Am, “we suspect the coroner will be announcing that Dr. Kingsbury did not die a natural death.

  ” She didn’t immediately react. When she did, it wasn’t as Am would have expected. “I should have known,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “He wasn’t a man on his last legs. Far from it. I got the distinct feeling he was less interested in my out-of-body experiences than in my body itself.”

  Lady Death shifted slightly on the barstool. She had on a black jumpsuit that closely followed the lines of her trim figure. If the doctor’s academic interest had waned, Am could certainly understand why.

  “What made you think that?”

  “Looks, comments. You don’t need to be a mind reader to see the obvious. He asked me the appropriate medical questions, but I think he would have much preferred playing doctor to being interviewer.”

  Norma with the Bette Davis voice had alluded to the same thing. The doctor appeared to be an incorrigible flirt—or worse.

  “What medical questions did he ask you?”

  “Specifics about my near-death.”

  Just as he had done with his other UNDER interviews. Am gave her an inquiring look, asked Angela in his glance to elaborate. “I can see you haven’t read my book yet,” she said.

  As if there had been time. “A real death has taken precedence,” he said.

  “Without any of the medical jargon,” she said, “I fell and struck my head. It was a severe blow. I was in a coma, and the prognosis was that I was going to die. The doctors were right in that—I did die. Dr. Kingsbury wanted to know about the particulars, and I gave them to him.”

  Am asked her to remember as much as she could of their conversation. She said they hadn’t been together all that long, no more than ninety minutes. The doctor had spent some of the time “filling in his blanks,” some of the time “eyeing her speculatively,” and the rest “just talking and drinking.” She remembered that he had “at least” four shots of Goldschlager to her two. The drinks had loosened him up for some freer talk.

  “He got on his soapbox and played the skeptic,” she said, “claimed that death was the end of the human organism, save for some residual recycling. He knows better now.”

  When Am finished with his questions, Lady Death had a few of her own. They talked for a while, each getting more comfortable with the other. Am told her about the investigation and couldn’t help but sound pessimistic. There were so many trails, he said.

  Lady Death tried to appear unconcerned, but she didn’t quite pull it off. “Do you think there’s a connection,” she asked, “between the threat left for me and Thomas’s killer?”

  Am reached out a comforting hand, lightly placed it on her shoulder, and offered some reassuring words. Kingsbury had enough of his own enemies, he said. It was likely she had just riled up the indignation of some zealot. He told her that people who threatened rarely followed through, and that it was the quiet ones you had to watch out for. Am didn’t know if that was really true, but she seemed to appreciate his words. She put her hand atop his, placed him in a position where he couldn’t easily remove his hand from her shoulder.

  “This is all new to me,” she said. “The speeches, and radio, and television, and the fancy hotel rooms, and the lines of people waiting to talk with me. New and somewhat disconcerting.”

  Not to mention the new death threats, thought Am.

  “I miss home already.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “A little town in Colorado. Paonia. Right now I just want to click my heels together and say, ‘There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.’”

  She was wearing black pumps, managed to ease them off her feet and let them drop to the thick carpeting. Her toes worked their way under Am’s pant leg and moved along his calf.

  “It will be difficult for me to stay in this room by myself tonight,” she said.

  Am considered her words. He wasn’t sure if her toes were actually warm, or whether it was his skin that burned wherever they moved.

  “We can move you to that other room…” he said.

  “I don’t want that bother,” she said, still massaging his calf.

  “I think I could use that drink now,” Am said.

  She took her time removing her digits, withdrew her fingers first, then her toes. While she was pouring his drink, Am called the Rover on his walkie-talkie and asked him to return to the Crown Jewel Suite. It would be his second visit in less than half an hour; he had already rekeyed the locks to the room. Angela slid Am’s glass of Goldschlager over to him, and finished pouring another of her own.

  “What was that last page all about?” she asked.

  “I’m going to assign you a private sentry tonight,” said Am. “He’ll be posted on your doorstep.”

  It wasn’t the solution she had proposed, and he wasn’t sure if it was the one he wanted to offer, but it was the right thing to do. Angela raised her
glass, albeit a little slowly, and Am did the same thing. Before they touched glasses, Am asked, “Did Dr. Kingsbury offer any toasts the night he was with you?”

  Lady Death thought a moment. “Yes,” she said. “He repeated the same one several times. ‘All that glitters is not gold.’”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “I appreciate your walking me to my room,” said Cleo, “but it’s really not necessary.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” said Jimmy.

  She was glad he was insisting, but didn’t want him to know it. Cleo felt a little guilty for leading Jimmy on. She expected to leave him at her doorstep, say good night, and never see him again. The thought didn’t appeal to her, but she had arrived at the Hotel with another man, someone until that very afternoon she had considered her dream man. That vision was slightly tarnished, but Cleo still wasn’t willing to believe that Bradford was part of the swinger’s group. There were some nagging questions, though. Why hadn’t he volunteered to go with her to the police station when he thought she was being arrested? And why hadn’t he insisted they check out if, as he said, their accommodations were so unacceptable?

  Jimmy said little as they walked, but he, too, had questions. Why was that yuppie even with Cleo? She wasn’t his type. He had carried the bags for thousands of Bradfords before, the kind of guys who lived for appearances, whose women were always stick-thin and ate only yogurt and fruit, and drank spring water. Jimmy preferred a woman with a little meat, and a little spunk—like Cleo.

  They arrived at room 212. There wasn’t any noise coming from inside, the mariachis, and the party, apparently long departed.

  “Thank you for everything,” she told Jimmy.

  “I’ll wait out here to make sure everything is okay,” he said. He wasn’t going to be dismissed that easily.

  She liked his answer. Cleo wasn’t sure what she wanted to see inside, she only knew that she had to go through the door and look. The room was dark and unkempt. Nothing had changed on that front. Cleo stumbled forward trying to see. Was that a figure in the bed, or just a lumpy bedspread? “Bradford,” she called, walking closer. She called out his name a second time, then patted the bedspread, confirming its rumpled state, and Bradford’s absence. Where was he?

  Cleo looked around for a note, but didn’t find one. What she did find was Missy’s Velcro underwear, a calling card she could have done without.

  “You okay?” Jimmy’s voice came from the door.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

  Cleo stood in the middle of the room considering her options. Maybe Bradford was looking for her, had gotten over his shock of seeing her being escorted away and was now raising Cain at the front desk trying to find out where she was. When she reappeared at the doorway she wasn’t carrying suitcases as Jimmy had hoped, but she did have a thoughtful expression on her face.

  “Do you have a pass key?” she asked Jimmy.

  “I can get one in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” he said.

  It wasn’t a lamb’s tail she was thinking about. Jimmy ran off to get the key. In his absence, Cleo started walking around the second floor, her movements tracked by the sex sentries. She reminded them of a robin, walking forward, pausing with a slightly cocked head, then continuing along. Jimmy proved almost as fast as his boast, arriving back at her side breathless. In the past, only the promise of a big payoff had made him move quickly. It had to be love.

  Cleo didn’t notice, or chose not to, his breathless state. “You say the Hotel segregated the swingers in certain sections?” she asked.

  “Second and third floors,” panted Jimmy. “Most of the rooms are connecting. You might have noticed the staff we have posted to make sure they don’t try wandering off and…”

  “Let’s go to the third floor,” said Cleo.

  Jimmy led the way. There were several parties on the third floor, or maybe it was one party spread along half a dozen of the connecting rooms. The noise was loud in several rooms, but Cleo kept walking forward, oblivious to the laughter and shouting, listening for something.

  “If all the people attending this orgy were laid from end to end,” said Jimmy, pausing for effect, “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

  Cleo didn’t look amused. Quite rightly so, he thought. No woman he was interested in should have been amused at such a remark.

  As they moved away from the party rooms, other noises became apparent. Someone’s smoke alarm was sounding, thought Jimmy. No, it was the fire alarm. But it wasn’t that either.

  “Ohhhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhhh, Gawddddddd.”

  “Open that door,” said Cleo.

  Jimmy would have opened it anyway. Someone was in pain. Someone needed help. He followed Cleo inside. And there, she saw what she had to see. Bradford and Missy didn’t notice them. They were busy.

  “I’ll need some help with my luggage,” Cleo said to Jimmy.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The insistent flashing red light of Am’s message machine wouldn’t let him pass by. He was thankful to see that there was only one message. Still, why did he always feel that pushing the machine’s “play” button was like playing the slots, with the end result usually bad news? Don’t be the Hotel, he prayed.

  “Am, this is Sharon. It’s about midnight. Maybe I should call the Hotel. No, I guess not. If you get in, call me. And if you’re asleep, sweet dreams.”

  He looked at his watch, saw that it was a little past one o’clock. It was unusual for Sharon to call this late. Hell, it was unusual for her even to be calling. He dialed her number. She picked up on the third ring.

  “Hajimemashite,” said Am, doing his best to sound Japanese, and give Sharon cardiac arrest.

  “That means ‘Nice to meet you,’” she said.

  Wrong greeting, thought Am. But at least she sounded a lot more awake.

  “I think the Japanese are better at relationships than we are,” she said.

  “We?” asked Am.

  “Americans,” she said, then after a long pause: “Us.”

  He wondered what was coming. Sharon was usually direct, but tonight she was rambling. “Giri takes place over ninjoo,” she said. “Duty over feeling. They always think of the ie, the household, or social organization. The ie is a basis, a framework, where they know their positions, and roles, and obligations. You know what makes a Japanese person more guilty than anything else? It’s when they fail to behave as expected.”

  In an intuitive flash, Am asked, “And what makes you feel guilty?”

  There was a long silence. “I went on a date tonight,” she said.

  It hurt, but not as much as it would have five hours earlier. She’d been ending their relationship for months now, or at least trying to change it.

  “The Japanese don’t trust love,” she said. “I think I’m the same way. Romantic love is mono tarinai—lacking something. It doesn’t have the concrete foundations of the family, and business, and the outside world. That’s why Japanese don’t understand western romance. They think it’s unreasonable for two people to believe they can get so much out of a relationship. Love is not enough for them.”

  “Did your date tonight have those same passionless views?”

  “We have many of the same goals.”

  He felt compelled to play devil’s advocate. “Are goals enough?”

  She didn’t answer, at least not directly. “Is it so wrong to try and look down the road ten or twenty years? Relationships, like businesses, need to take that long view. By some accounts, half of Japanese marriages are omiai, arranged. Their divorce rate is far lower than ours. The marriage prospects are discussed and considered among the family. It isn’t just a man and a woman entering the marriage, but families, and extended families, and even society.”

  “You keep forgetting you’re not Japanese,” Am reminded her. “Was your date?”

  “No.”

  “So you went on one date and decided you needed to plan the rest of your
life?”

  “No,” she said, “I went on one date and decided it was time to get on with my life. What’s between us isn’t settled. It needs to be.”

  “Got a silver stake?” asked Am. “When you’re killing love, or the undead, you have to pierce the heart.”

  “I know,” she said.

  She did know. Am decided to make it easier on both of them. “I went on a date tonight, too,” he said. “You’d probably be happy to know it started as business, but that’s not how it ended, at least I don’t think it did.”

  The news was a relief to her. She wanted to know details, which meant Am had to tell her about his day, a telling which took quite a while. Sharon had advice for him, as usual, revealing background about the Fat Innkeeper he didn’t know. When she finished, there was the silence of the hour.

  “You weren’t good for me, Am Caulfield,” she said. “There were too many nights you kept me up like this.”

  “I was good for you.” Even as he said it, Am knew he was speaking in the past tense.

  “I’d go to work the next day and be tired.”

  “It was a good tired.”

  “You’re a hopeless romantic. You’re a dreamer.”

  “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

  “I tried it,” she said wistfully.

  Another silence between them. Their words were said, and passing under a bridge, flowing, flowing, to wherever the spirits of lost love go.

  “Tell me a Japanese folktale,” she said.