by Alan Russell
The boisterous group started milling around the lobby, announcing themselves to the Hotel California with the refrain: “Bob John—Son, Bob John—Son, Bob John—Son.”
Bob Johnson, Carlton thought. What a nice name. So different from his. He was probably the only Carlton Smoltz in the country, if not the world. How convenient it would be to join a ready-made fraternity just by having the right name. And they seemed like such a fun group, too.
Finishing his coffee, Carlton decided to walk through the lobby to get a closer look at the curious gathering. As he stepped through the double glass doors, one of the Bob Johnsons bumped into him.
“ ‘Scuse me,” said Bob. “Little too long in the hospitality car.”
He winked at Carlton conspiratorially, patted him on the shoulder, and rejoined his milling brethren. It wasn’t until he left that Carlton noticed the man’s name tag had fallen off. He picked it up and looked around for his Bob Johnson. Spying him, he set off to return the name tag.
The main goal of any front desk is to make order out of chaos, but on any given day the objective sometimes is less lofty. There are some days where staving off anarchy is a major accomplishment.
Am could see that Casper and his crew were clearly overwhelmed. They resembled actors in the throes of stage fright, Kim’s instructions forgotten in the face of the onslaught of the Bob Johnsons. The staff was prepared for fire, theft, and earthquakes; could deal with the loud, the obnoxious, and the drunk; were versed in evacuation procedures, CPR, and hospitality law. But nothing had prepared them for the Bob Johnsons.
Entering the fray, Am stepped behind the front desk and took a deep breath. He had friends who got their thrills from parachuting and bungee jumping, but Am had always found hotels free-fall enough.
“Bob Johnsons,” he yelled, “form seven lines.”
Am shouted the instructions several times, and gradually the Bob Johnsons heard, or chose to hear, and began forming lines. Carlton was in the middle of the lobby when the queing up began, and he found himself gradually being herded into a line. His search for the elusive Bob Johnson interrupted, Carlton took a few moments to study the name tag he was holding. It comforted him somehow.
“My name is Bob Johnson,” whispered Carlton, reading, and thinking. Could he do it? he wondered. Wouldn’t he get caught? But wasn’t he going to be caught anyway?
Carlton stuck the name tag on the lapel of his new sports coat. I am Bob Johnson, it announced. Ahead of him, a dozen Bob Johnsons were waiting to check in, and behind him were a dozen more.
“Remember Kim’s instructions,” shouted Am to the line of shell-shocked desk clerks.
He welcomed the first Bob Johnson: “Will you register, please?”
To the staff, in sotto voce: “Middle names. Everyone get middle names.”
Am heard the staff voices start up around him, autopilot taking over for them. In his lifetime Am figured he had checked in around fifty thousand people. He had speculated that one day his larynx would surely break like a worn elastic, stretched thin over the words “Enjoy your stay.”
“Am,” said one of the desk clerks, her voice strained, “this Mr. Johnson doesn’t have a middle name.”
A moment of thought, a loud announcement: “Are there any other Mr. Johnsons without middle names?” A few hands. Am repeated himself, this time even louder, which resuited in more hands. “Any Bob Johnson without a middle name please come to the front of the line.”
There were seven, prompting Am to a quick decision. He announced the need for the Hotel to have middle names for all Bob Johnsons and quickly christened the seven as Happy, Doc, Dopey, Sleepy, Grumpy, Sneezy, and Bashful. “Ignorance is bliss,” announced Bob “Dopey” Johnson. Everyone but Bob “Grumpy” Johnson appeared amused with their new middle names.
Whistling “Heigh-Ho” (until Am shot him a critical glance), T.K. finished checking in Bob “Sleepy” Johnson and signaled for the next man in line. For a moment Carlton considered bolting. This was surely the time he would be discovered. It wasn’t too late to walk away, as the lobby was noisy and full of people. Even though half the Bob Johnsons had already registered, none of them appeared to be in a hurry to leave.
An alarm sounded. Carlton certainly would have run then, save that he found himself pressed in on all sides, the milling about at a momentary standstill. Heart racing, he turned his head. It wasn’t an alarm, he saw, but a cow bell being clanged vigorously by a woman.
“Hospitality room’s open,” shouted Mary Mason.
Her announcement was met with cheers and was followed by a minor stampede. It was his chance to escape, but…
“Sir,” said T.K., offering Carlton a fountain pen and pushing forward a registration card.
Writing “Bob Johnson” was the easy part for Carlton. Then he had to come up with an address. He remembered a street and city from his youth, then filled out a few more boxes before pushing back the card to the clerk. He almost expected to be graded.
“How many in your party?” T.K. asked.
The inquisition begun, Carlton tried to keep his voice firm. “Just myself.”
“We need your middle name,” said T.K.
After a long pause, or at least it seemed that way to him, he said, “Carlton.”
“I’ll just need a credit card imprint, Mr. Johnson.”
Carlton had been afraid of that moment. “I’m afraid I don’t have one,” he said softly. He was ready to give an explanation about how he didn’t believe in plastic, but T.K. was already mouthing his rote reply.
“In that case, we’ll need you to pay for the room and tax in advance, as well as leave a two-hundred dollar deposit. Any incidentals are to be handled on a cash-only basis.”
Carlton offered up the money, his deposit paid in crisp hundred-dollar bills. Normally the clerk would have asked Carlton for a driver’s license also, but not when there were another dozen Bob Johnsons waiting behind him to register. T.K. handed him a receipt, a room key, and a map of the hotel. He quickly drew an arrow and circled Carlton’s room location. “Room two oh eight, Mr. Johnson. Enjoy your stay.”
Here it comes, T.K. thought. Can’t you get me a room higher up? But that whine didn’t occur. The man accepted the key and thanked him. T.K. didn’t have time to contemplate the miracle. “Please register,” he said to the next Bob Johnson in line.
Carlton left the desk in a daze. He was in possession of a new name, and even better, he was on vacation. He let out a long breath. Then he was almost knocked over. Snaking through the lobby was a rumba line, the participants chanting in rhythmic beat, “Bob—Bob—Bob—Bob—Bob—Bobbbb, John—John—John—John—John—Sonnnnn.”
Laughing faces were pulled along. Carlton didn’t have long to play the spectator and admire the spectacle. Grasping arms pulled him into the promenade. He didn’t resist. Shimmying and shaking and shouting, the Bob Johnsons, and Carlton, danced their way forward. In the lead was Mary, her cow bells clanging, the call of the pied piper to the hospitality room.
Within fifteen minutes of Carlton’s departure, Hurricane Johnson totally passed, leaving no Bob Johnsons in the lobby. The front desk crew was left to deal with their aftermath, but at least the room assignments had been made. The hard part was supposedly over, even though for the next hour the clerks tried to make sense out of what they had done.
When Am finally left the desk, he was relatively satisfied that the Bob Johnson situation was under control. Only one thing nagged at him. A preliminary guest room printout showed that the front desk had exceeded the Johnson room block by one room. Mary had been adamant about only one thing: there were one hundred and twenty-five Bob Johnson rooms and one hundred and seventy-five Bob Johnsons. She claimed to have checked, and double-checked, her rooming list (the same list with one name on it). That still didn’t jibe with the desk having given out keys to one hundred and twenty-six rooms, and the one hundred and seventy-six Bob Johnsons who had registered.
It was a minor detail, Am was
sure. Mary might have miscounted. It was also quite possible that one of the Bob Johnsons had decided to pick up an extra room. It really wasn’t anything to worry about, he told himself.
All things considered, the check-in had gone much more smoothly than he would have imagined, rumba line and all.
XXII
Am returned to his office, hoping for a little peace and quiet. He had been too busy to realize how tired he was from the night before. Paul Revere was beginning his horseback ride through his head, crying, “The headache is coming, the headache is coming!” Am liked to call major headaches “mythological encounters.” He knew that the aspirin he was taking would ultimately fail him, just as his rotating his head, and rubbing his temples, were measures designed only to stave off the pain, not to conquer it. The reckoning would come, and when it did, Am would think of Zeus, who had found headache relief in a manner unique to the gods. To stop the pain, Zeus had called for lightning to split open his own skull, and out had popped Athena, the goddess of wisdom.
Not that a goddess of wisdom would pop out of his head. Far from it. Am wondered what would. Maybe his vision of the ultimate hotel, the carrot that was always dangling in front of him. With a few mirror tricks in his mind, the Hotel California could almost be that place.
He wanted that, wanted to be part of the world’s greatest caravansary, an oasis where mankind could stay and be refreshed. Every large hotel announces itself a city within a city, but the Hotel was more than that. It was a country within a country. Much like at the United Nations, the flags of the world flew in front of the Hotel, the flagpoles planted between the swaying palms. The staff enhanced the international flavor. Someone in human resources had told him that the thousand Hotel employees hailed from over sixty nations. And then there were all the international guests. His landlocked ship took him everywhere, and every day was a new voyage. Some days the seas were rougher than others.
Sharon walked into the office, saw the aspirin bottle on his desk, and picked it up. Without water, she swallowed two of the capsules. Neither one spoke. Two sets of eyes looked at each other, and there was the recognition of battles fought and lost.
“Let’s get some road kill,” Am finally said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Come on.”
In the employees’ cafeteria they were both served heaping platefuls of spaghetti. At first they didn’t say anything to one another, just went about eating methodically. Am was interrupted periodically by other employees who came by to clap him on his back and say, “Great party.” He found it difficult to believe the Come as a Guest party had occurred only the night before.
“Two condoms,” Sharon said at last, breaking the silence between them.
“Two condoms,” he repeated.
She nodded. “If I understood correctly, and I’m not making claims that I do, Angel raked up two condoms from the beach, both near to one another.”
Sharon pronounced Angel’s name as if he were a winged messenger instead of using the Spanish pronunciation, but Am didn’t bother correcting her. Back in the days when only doctors wore pagers and most hotels summoned their workers by intercom, Am had worked at a hotel that had hired a temporary worker from the Bronx to handle the switchboard. In her one day on the job the woman never mastered the pronunciation of “Jesus,” which in Spanish is “Hey-SOOS.” All day long the intercom had blared, “Jesus, you’re wanted in housekeeping,” and “Jesus, go to room three-two-two for a check-out,” and “Jesus, I need you.” Guests and staff had laughed uproariously at those periodic New York calls for Jesus.
Jesus, thought Am, two condoms. That complicated matters. It was like having two guns. Well, sort of.
“Where were they found?” he asked.
“Angel said they were around rooms one oh five or six.”
As the crow flies, not that far from room 711, thought Am. Or as the condom drops.
“How far apart?”
“Not more than a few yards.” She paused, unsure as to whether she should continue, then, with red face, said, “I asked him if he noticed the condition of the condoms.” She hesitated, pride interrupting her speech. “He seemed to find that amusing.”
“I’m sorry,” Am said softly.
Sharon shook her head as if it didn’t matter, but she was pleased that he wasn’t laughing. “Angel didn’t look closely at either condom, but apparently one was shattered and the other—more intact.”
“Used?”
She nodded. “Angel seemed to be of the opinion that he died a happy man. That is, if I judged his pantomime correctly.”
“Sure he wasn’t propositioning you?”
“Not at all sure.”
They both offered the other a little smile. “You can’t say I didn’t try to bring Detective McHugh his smoking condom,” she said. “I did some sifting through the Dumpster that Enrique said usually got most of the beach garbage, but I didn’t come up with anything.”
Am gave her a look of disbelief, which she misinterpreted. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I did wash.”
“That’s not it,” said Am. He thought of this patrician presence sorting through garbage. “I was just overwhelmed by your going that extra yard.”
“I wish I’d had better luck,” she said, then reconsidered and made a face. “Or maybe not.”
Both faced their spaghetti again and did a little more eating and a little more puzzling over their cundum conundrum.
“Are we going to let a sleeping suicide lie?” Sharon finally asked.
Am shook his head. “Not yet. This whole thing is playing on my mind. It’s tickling me like—like…”
“Like a French tickler,” she said.
The Breakers was the Hotel’s racier lounge. It exploited the ocean view, and the view of calf and thigh, more than the other drinking holes. Tim Kelly had spent his last hours there, reason enough for Am and Sharon to go there with questions. To Am’s surprise, Cat Ross was already working on the floor. Usually she didn’t come in until five o’clock.
Cat believed in big smiles and friendly hands. She usually patted her male customers on the arm after they gave her an order or after saying anything that approached cleverness. Pavlovian reinforcement. There hadn’t been a complaint from a male guest yet. Cat had a nice figure and knew it better than anyone. Her hemline challenged company standards. Am had once heard Cat announce to some customers that she was a “high-stepping hussy.” Apparently she prided herself on her strut. Most of the time she looked as though she were carrying a baton instead of a cocktail tray.
She approached Am without acknowledging Sharon, gave him a big smile, then touched his tie lightly. “Haven’t seen you in a while, stranger.”
Am felt slightly uncomfortable. He and Cat had attended several company events together. Cat had teased him into agreeing that he would take her out on a real date some night, an outing Am had avoided. She was reminding him of his promise by standing uncomfortably close to him. Feeling awkward, if not compromised, Am made introductions, then asked if Cat had a minute to sit with them. The three found a booth, and Am found himself sitting in the middle.
“You closed last night, didn’t you, Cat?”
“Yeah, but they called me in early today because they needed LeAnne to help out with a banquet. Don’t worry, Am. Overtime’s already been approved.”
“I’m not here about overtime, Cat. I wanted to ask you about last night. You were waiting on two men, a Steve Daniels and a Tim Kelly.”
“I was waiting on lots of deuces,” she said. “What’d they look like?”
“Kelly was hitting on you,” Am said.
“So do half my customers.”
Cat’s smile appeared as much for Sharon’s benefit as Am’s.
“Kelly and his friend closed the bar. He left you a twenty-dollar tip.”
“Bingo,” she said. “I remember. Good Time Charlie in search of a better time.”
“Did he find it?” asked Sharon.
Cat gav
e her a look of umbrage, and Am quickly interjected, “Mr. Daniels told me that Mr. Kelly was under the impression that you might visit him for a drink after your shift.”
“That’s what Mr. Kelly wanted to believe,” Cat said. “Before he left, I made it clear I wouldn’t be seeing him.”
She patted Am’s knee, glad of the chance to clarify matters. “Did Mr. Kelly seem sad to you?” Am asked. “Despondent?”
The waitress did a double take at the question, shook her head to emphasize the ridiculousness of it. “Far from it.”
“He wasn’t disappointed that you weren’t coming up to see him?” asked Am.
She laughed and shook her head. “He told me I didn’t know what a good time I was missing. If I had a dollar for every man who’s ever said that to me…”
Sharon’s editorial comment could be heard in her cough behind her hand.
“Your impression of him,” said Am, “wasn’t that of a man ready to kill himself?”
“Kill himself?” Cat sounded surprised.
“Yes,” Am said. “The police believe Mr. Kelly jumped to his death from his balcony shortly after he left the lounge last night.”
“Wow.”
“That surprises you?”
“Sure does.”
“Why?”
“It seemed like all he wanted to do was make love. Not make death.”
“He didn’t say anything,” Sharon asked, “to make you believe he was contemplating such an act?”
“There was only one act he seemed to be contemplating.” Cat gave her answer in such a way as to imply that Sharon might not know anything about that.
“Did you notice any professionals at the bar?” Am asked.
Cat gave a sidelong glance at Sharon. “They don’t usually let them in here.”
Am hurriedly produced the police bulletin that pictured Conchita Alvarez. “Was this woman at the bar?”
Cat took her time looking at the picture. “No,” she said.
