The Hotel Detective

by Alan Russell

  Carlton almost winced at the name. “Good night,” he said.

  Teresa closed the door softly behind her.

  People keep coming to the room and giving me things, thought Carlton. He had never been religious, but he thought that if there were a heaven, it should be a place like this. For a moment he was happy, but then he remembered what he had done.

  He gave his teddy a troubled squeeze.

  VI

  She was an ant, Am decided. Definintely an ant.

  As a child he had watched a cartoon version of Aesop’s fable of the hardworking ant and the devil-may-care grasshopper. Am found the grasshopper a much more appealing character than the self-righteous prig of an ant. What might have played in Peoria didn’t translate to the Golden State. He figured the grasshopper’s big mistake was not living in San Diego, where winters equated to an occasional sweater, not a grim outlook on life.

  At least Sharon wasn’t an ant masquerading in grasshopper’s clothing, a condition Am feared was overtaking him. It had been months since he had waxed his surfboard. And he couldn’t remember the last time he had downed a margarita in Old Town, or cracked open a lobster in Puerto Nuevo, or unpacked a picnic basket in Balboa Park, or taken in a sunset off Sunset Cliffs. A friend had once told him that not having fun in Southern California was a felony charge, and if convicted, you were sent to live in New Jersey. Maybe he could plead temporary insanity.

  He doubted whether Sharon would disagree with that assessment. Am sneaked a glance at his passenger. She was less than pleased to be accompanying him to the security hut. When he had commandeered a utility motor-cart and announced their destination she had responded, “I can hardly wait to learn the anatomy of a missing hotel towel.” Am was pressing the cart forward at full speed, all of fifteen miles an hour, causing enough wind to push a few of Sharon’s hairs out of place. The sight wasn’t unappealing. He could almost picture her in dark glasses, ornamenting a convertible. Maybe she was an ant who given a chance could be a grasshopper, sort of like that thin person who was always supposed to be screaming to get out of a fat body.

  “Annual event tonight,” said Am.

  Dumb, he thought. I’m even beginning to sound like that goddamn ant.

  Sharon looked over, the slightest interest in her face.

  “Staff party,” he said. ” ‘Come as a Guest.’ “

  “Come as a guest?”

  Am nodded and decided to give her a tame description. “We dress, and act out the characterizations, of our most memorable guests. You might consider coming.”

  A smile breached Sharon’s solemnity. “I’m afraid I don’t know your guests.”

  “I can help you in that,” said Am. “I was in charge of the sign-up sheets and know which guests were taken and which are still available. A couple of plum roles are still open.”

  “And you say this is an annual staff party?”

  Am nodded. “One of two. We also gather for the Feast of St. Julian the Hospitaller on January twenty-ninth.”

  She looked suspicious. Nothing she had seen so far indicated any piety in hotel life. “St. Julian?”

  Am looked incredulous. “You mean Cornell didn’t teach you about the patron saint of innkeepers?”

  She shook her head, and then Am shook his, feigning great sorrow. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Why advertise to students that their professional patron saint was a murderer? Might make you wonder about your chosen field.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Saint Julian, to whom I frequently pray.”

  “What’s this about him being a murderer?”

  “That happened in his pre-saint days,” said Am. “One day Julian was away when his wife received a tired couple at their door. The man and woman asked for food and board, and Julian’s wife gave them both. She left them in the one household bed and went to market, and in her absence Julian returned.

  “When he saw the man in his bed, Julian assumed the worst. He grabbed a knife and stabbed the couple to death. Then he ran from his house, only to meet his wife on the road coming from the market. To atone for what he had done, Julian decided to spend the rest of his life tending to the needs of strangers.”

  “Saint Julian,” Sharon mused.

  “Our remembrance isn’t exactly reverential,” admitted Am. “Hotel staff being what it is, you can imagine the menu for our St. Julian feast: ladyfingers, Bloody Marys, and deviled-made-me-do-it eggs.”

  Her smile grew. “What’s the menu at tonight’s party?”

  “Everything but the usual eating crow. Coming?”

  She was clearly tempted but didn’t answer immediately. Then, as if determining what her boundaries should and should not be, she finally shook her head. At least she didn’t offer a lame excuse.

  “If you change your mind…” But Am knew that she wouldn’t.

  He pulled the cart into a well-worn path. Guards didn’t walk except at the point of a gun. The security office was about as far from the gardens, and marble, and ocean as anything on the Hotel California’s forty acres. To call it unprepossessing would have been an overstatement. The office was a surplus World War II Quonset hut hidden behind shrubbery.

  The guard on duty was more interested in the sports section than in greeting visitors. He put down the paper reluctantly. Am noticed it was three days old. He wondered if the guard had made that discovery yet.

  “Control post,” said Am. “We try to maintain a presence here twenty-four hours a day. The guard stationed on this post acts as a dispatcher to the rover on patrol and also checks pass keys in and out.”

  Sharon was already taking her own tour, her attention captured by a wall lined with dozens of photographs. “Rogues’ gallery?” she asked.

  “Mostly vagrants,” said Am. “Everyone up there was found trespassing on the property and warned not to return. They were given the speech usually reserved for the sheriff in westerns: Get out of town by sundown or else. If you want the rogues’ gallery, just keep walking.”

  Three steps brought her to a bulletin board. Dossiers were attached to the mug shots. As police blotters went, there wasn’t anything too bloodcurdling. The crimes ranged from credit card fraud to drunk and disorderly.

  “Welcome to the Hotel California?” she asked.

  “Knock wood,” said Am. He looked around to follow through on those words, but none was at hand. “We’ve been damn lucky in the past few years to have only experienced the penny-ante stuff you see in front of you. Not like what some other hotels have had to deal with.”

  He pointed to another bulletin board that featured investigative reports, police bulletins, and FBI posters. “Visitors we hope never to host,” he said.

  Sharon started reading aloud from the reports. What began as a cavalier tone quickly changed. The crimes that had been committed were anything but trivial. Together they examined the faces that had murdered, and assaulted, and raped, and burgled. Most of the criminals specialized in hotel crimes, foxes all too familiar with the ways of their hens.

  “Not the stuff of hotel brochures,” Am admitted. “This industry has its mean streets, even if they are flower lined.”

  Next to the criminal corner was a large display map of the Hotel California. Am started tapping at the many red marks on the map, enough so that his finger sounded like an outof-control flamenco dancer. “Entrances and exits,” he said. “Security is a matter of control, and this place is a security director’s nightmare. Controlling access and egress is difficult, and the guests usually don’t make it any easier. They don’t like their midnight walks on the beach impeded, or some polyester figure questioning their right to leave their doors or windows open. Who the hell are we to deny them their ocean breeze?”

  Realizing how impassioned he sounded, Am reddened slightly. Chief Horton had used that same sermon a number of times, but Am had only half listened. Funny how when someone else has the responsibility, the priority doesn’t seem as pressing. Still, he didn’t like sou
nding like Chicken Little. To his surprise, Sharon looked more engrossed than amused.

  “I didn’t realize the property was so—immense,” she said.

  “Four restaurants, six lounges, fourteen meeting rooms, seven hundred and twelve guest rooms, and over forty acres of worries,” Am recited.

  “And Visigoths at the walls,” she said.

  They both allowed each other a small smile. “Would that the enemy was so defined,” said Am. “On a busy day there are more than ten thousand visitors to the Hotel, clientele we have little control over. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 tells hoteliers that they can’t discriminate against any guest desiring accommodations. That means if Charlie Manson ever gets paroled and comes to the Hotel asking for a room, by law we have to rent it to him. And while Charlie hasn’t come a-knocking yet, we’ve had a few guests who probably would have fit in real well with his family.”

  They walked by several storage closets that housed emergency supplies that seemed sufficient to handle everything from flood to famine. Beyond the disaster relief area were the key lockers and cabinets. Just to get to some of the keys you needed a key. Sign-in and sign-out sheets marked the comings and goings of the keys.

  “Key control,” said Am. “Did Jack the Ripper stay in one of your rooms and neglect to return a key? Is there a master key that hasn’t been accounted for? I keep pressing for electronic locks, but Kendrick has declared those an unnecessary expense. Not that he’s the only GM who thinks that way.”

  Smiling to himself, Am shook his head. Sharon asked for an explanation.

  “The other day,” Am said, “I heard about a couple celebrating their golden anniversary. As part of their trip down memory lane, they visited their honeymoon hotel.

  “They asked for, and got, the very same room where they had begun their married journey half a century ago. As a memento, the honeymooners had kept their key to that special hotel room.

  “Imagine their surprise when they found their keepsake key still worked fifty years later.”

  Sharon’s laughter, a sound Am found very much to his liking, was interrupted by his beeper. Roger, in a panicked voice, wanted him to call.

  Roger Gifford’s alarmed tones weren’t anything new. The front office manager was always in a panic over something. Most of the staff referred to him as Casper, which was short for Casper the Friendly Ghost. Roger disappeared whenever there was trouble.

  “What’s up, Roger?”

  “There’s been a theft, Am.”

  For a moment Am experienced amnesia. “Why call me?”

  “Mr. Kendrick just announced that you are the acting security director. And you know how Chief Horton always liked to visit the scene of a crime in person.”

  Am sighed. “What was taken?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “And I suppose you didn’t happen to mention hotel liability laws?”

  “That slipped my mind,” Roger said.

  “What a surprise,” said Am, hanging up the phone.

  In California an innkeeper’s liability for stolen or damaged goods is limited to a thousand dollars. That doesn’t mean hotels are obligated to compensate guests for their losses but merely refers to the property’s liability. As a rule, hotels don’t pay for any items declared missing from guest rooms. From experience, Am knew that was the last thing guests ever wanted to hear. They expected the hotel to admit blame, then hand over the money for their loss.

  “I hope it’s not jewelry,” he said. “Women always cry when it’s jewelry.”

  VII

  “A hotel thief,” Chief Horton had often said, “is as sneaky as a fart in church.”

  Am had never pursued that conversation with the Chief, had always let his remark stand, but now that he was confronted with a potential theft, he was almost tempted to make that same announcement to Sharon, mainly because he didn’t know what else to say. The Chief (staff called him that—his real title had been security and safety director) had enjoyed colorful metaphors. Most of them, Am realized belatedly, revolved around flatulence.

  “The job’s not easy,” the Chief had told anyone who would listen. “Sometimes you’re given a choice between taking a crap in public or going blind. So you gotta learn how to close one eye and fart.”

  Reality stepped on Am’s muse in the form of one closed eye. At the front desk, T.K. Washington was offering him a none-too-subtle wink. There are more winks offered in movies and on the tube than are played out in real life. This was one of those Hollywood suggestive “we’ve got a secret” winks. Am didn’t try to divine T.K.’s wink. T.K. was the Hotel comic who aspired to a larger forum. Every week he tried out new material at the Comedy Store’s amateur night. His real name was Cornelius, T.K. being an invention of his own, a setup for guests to ask him what his initials stood for, a chance for him to say, “Toooo Kool.”

  And the funny thing, he said, was that most guests believed him. “Hello, Tooquol,” he’d mimic in what he called “white voice.” “Good afternoon, Tooquol.”

  Am made brief introductions, then asked, “Who, what, when, and where?”

  T.K.’s astigmatism reappeared. “Kris Carr,” he said, showing all of his teeth. “Don’t know what was snitched, don’t know when, but do know you can find her in room four forty.”

  “Where’s Roger?”

  “Left for the night.”

  Am sighed. It figured. Roger’s escapes were legendary. He was the Teflon front office manager, never letting anything stick to him.

  “If you want,” T.K. said, “I’ll be glad to go up and take the report from the lady in distress.”

  Again that wink. Something was supposed to be obvious to Am, but it wasn’t, and he didn’t feel like showing his stupidity by asking. Besides, Sharon already had the floor for questions. She was asking T.K. about the front desk operations, and he looked as if he were ready to go into his P. T. Barnum mode. It was evident that Sharon would be happier learning at the front desk than helping with a hysterical guest. Who could figure her preference?

  Am didn’t hurry up to the room. Too many times guests had cried wolf. They were quick to claim losses, quick to point a finger at a suspected maid or lurking hotel employee, until they remembered how they had hidden the item in question under the mattress, or in the corner of the closet, or in the lining of their coat. On several occasions Am had had to restrain guests from acting like prosecutors at the Spanish Inquisition. There was usually an inverse correlation of the loudness of their entreaties for justice and compensation with the quietness of their admitting fault, even after the “stolen” property turned up in their room.

  Am knocked on the door. Kris Carr. There was something familiar about the name.

  “Who’s there?”

  Clenching his teeth, Am said, “Hotel security.”

  The door opened. Kris Carr was wearing a terry-cloth robe. It didn’t fit very well, and Am suddenly remembered who Kris Carr was. Whenever she visited the Hotel, her halter and bikini top exhibitions paralyzed a good part of the male work force. If she hadn’t made some plastic surgeon rich, she was in the process of redefining Newton’s laws of gravity. Just the day before, one of the Hotel painters had fallen from his ladder and broken his collarbone. Guess who had been out at the pool?

  “My name’s Am Caulfield,” he said, doing his best to maintain eye contact. “I’m the, uh—acting security director here.”

  “Kris Carr,” she said, extending her hand. “Did you say your name was Am? That’s an unusual name.”

  “Nickname,” he said, reluctant to say any more.

  She motioned him into the room, and he followed behind her. There was a pleasant perfume smell in her wake. “Am,” she said, giving his name a special deep-throated intonation, “I feel a little silly for having called you, but I’m missing some articles of clothing.”

  Clothing. Thank Julian, he thought. At least it wasn’t jewelry. “Which articles?”

  She gave a wry smile. “Some of my brassieres were
taken.”

  “Your what?”

  “My bras.”

  Am tried to maintain a stoic face. Not knowing what else to do, he pulled out his notepad and made an entry: Missing Bras.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “And how many bras are missing?”

  “Four. Two were left.”

  Am stopped writing. The strange disappearance was getting stranger. “If,” he emphasized, “your bras were stolen, why do you think four were taken and two left behind?”

  “I think he liked the frilled models.”

  “Frilled?”

  “He took the ones with embroidery and lace. They weren't exactly Frederick's of Hollywood, but they were sexier than the plain ones that were left.”

  Am kept writing. It seemed like the safest thing to do. “Anything else distinguishing about the missing bras?”

  She laughed, and Am felt stupid. Was there anything distinguishing about the World Trade Center?

  “They're not padded,” she said.

  This time Am laughed. Few males on the staff had ever really talked to Miss Carr. They had just gawked.

  “Would it be presumptuous,” he asked, “if I were to ask the size of the missing bras?”

  “Why? Do you plan to put out an all points bulletin?”

  Am tried to regain control of the interview. “The size would help for identification purposes.”

  Kris smiled. She had a pretty face. It was probably the least noticed part of her anatomy, which was a shame. Am guessed she was in her early thirties. She had long lashes, and her chin had a slight cleft. Her tinted hair reached down just past her shoulders.

  “Fifty-eight double F,” she said.

  Am forgot about her face for a moment and peeked southward. He made another entry on his notepad, remembering not to include an exclamation mark.

  “Whoever stole my bras,” she lamented, “probably doesn't realize what a pain it is to get them replaced.”

  “When did you notice they were missing?”