The Hotel Detective

by Alan Russell

  The reporters' thoughts ran along those lines. They voiced their speculations in baying voices. Could the woman have been a prostitute? Were drugs a problem at the Hotel? Did criminal elements frequent the place? Am tried to hide behind the flag of the Hotel being on the National Register of Historic Places, but the media weren't visibly impressed. Their attitudes seemed to suggest that this was a hotel, and despite the purported vintage of the inn, it was just another outlet of a business that smacked of sex, and licentiousness, and a general laxness of morals. Scant hours had separated a suicide from a double murder. The reporters wanted to know what other terrible things were going on at the Hotel.

  Even after Am finally freed himself from the reportorial questions, there was still the deluge of staff and guest inquiries. Extra personnel were assigned to cover the phones, and Am had Brown's Guards send as many uniforms as possible to present an image of ample security. Additional staff was also called in, with the end result of much trumpeting but little in the way of cavalry. A special room had been set up to try to handle the crisis, a place only for Hotel staff. It wasn't so much the setting for strategy sessions as a fire auxiliary.

  Public Relations Director Ben Cooper had been putting the Hotel in the society and travel pages for years, but when asked by Am to try to keep the Hotel out of the spotlight, or at least to soften the lighting, Ben announced that the only thing worse than bad publicity was no publicity at all. Am's double take went unnoticed.

  “The biggest knock from the locals is that we're so old,” he said, “so staid. San Diegans think that nothing exciting ever happens here. This might wake them up.”

  Ben rubbed his aquiline nose thoughtfully and looked rather pleased with himself. There had to be a correlation between permanent brain damage, Am thought, and too many public relations releases. He could just imagine the tone of Ben's proposed piece: “The Hotel California, voted one of the hundred best hostelries in the world by the Travel Writers Association, located on the famed Riviera of the west, the La Jolla Strand, and situated in San Diego County, which American meteorologists have labeled as the only 'perfect climate in the country,’ was host to an exciting double murder yesterday.”

  “I’d like to clear whatever you send out, Ben.”

  “Certainly, Am. No such thing as bad publicity, you know.”

  What about a hepatitis outbreak in one of the restaurants? Or a convention of child abusers? But Am let the rebuttals die in his throat. Ben had probably been repeating his catechism for forty years. It wasn’t the time to tell him about the emperor’s clothes.

  Phones kept ringing, and staff kept yelling questions at Am, most of them unnecessary. Few people were willing to make decisions themselves. Sharon was Am’s biggest help, willing to use her own judgment. When she called out to him, he knew to listen.

  “I think we ought to look into this one,” she said, hanging up the phone. “It’s the Bob Johnsons.”

  Huns. Mongols. Vandals. Congress. Words that invoke fear. Bob Johnsons now had that same hold on Am.

  “They’ve organized into what they call posses. They’re going around the Hotel trying to solve the murders.”

  Instead of wearing silver stars, they had on their My Name Is Bob Johnson name tags. Am would have prayed to St. Julian, or even Procrustes, but he had the feeling neither was listening.

  XXIX

  Most actors think there’s little to the travails of the postal credo. They believe that delivering mail through rain, and snow, and dark of night pales when compared to delivering lines through the same. And mad dogs seem of little consequence when stacked up against chronic coughers, sadistic audiences, incompetent staging, and abysmal direction. When not on stage, journeyman actors sound much like battle-hardened marines. They’ve seen and lived through it all and stand proudly as living examples of perseverance. To a seasoned actor, giving up on a performance is unthinkable. But eight veteran actors, four women and four men, did just that.

  From the first, their show had not gone well. The bellman had made his surprise announcement, and then the security director had excused himself hurriedly. The staging had called for the production to begin right after the hotel dick’s exit. The unexpected circumstances of his departure had left everyone in the audience buzzing. Nonetheless, the company had proceeded as planned. One of the actors, guised as a banquet waiter, had spilled a glass of wine onto another actor. A loud argument ensued. The script then called for other actors to intervene, with the intended result of general chaos. There was chaos aplenty, but it turned out that little was of their own invention. The actors called out their lines, pounded their chests dramatically, and waved their hands, but the Bob Johnsons ignored them. The attention of the audience was already taken by news of the actual murders. The Bob Johnsons found that topic infinitely more interesting than their acting.

  For a while, the murder mayhem production continued, the actors performing mostly for themselves. There were a few occasions when the audience actually seemed to be showing a glimmer of attention, but those moments were always dashed whenever a self-appointed Bob Johnson news courier would race into the room and breathlessly yell out the latest information about the murders. Thespians who had out-roared planes and trains and thunder lost their voices, and their audience, to the murder updates. There was a Frank Capra feeling to the setting: the waiting crowd, the exciting news, the popular responses. Desperately the actors tried to continue. The show, by God, had to go on. That's what they had been taught. Those were the words to their religion. But at last they realized they were upstaged and gave up.

  The Bob Johnsons started speculating aloud on what could have occurred. Tablecloths were pulled from tables and tacked up on the walls. Markers and pens were produced; table linen quickly became ink-ridden (the banquet manager walked in, saw what was going on, and ran out screaming hysterically—only the actors noticed). Information was collected and shared, and suppositions followed: it was a drug deal gone bad; the mob had done a hit; the deaths were from a love triangle. The amount of conspiracy theories began to rival the JFK assassination. Instant experts appeared, their main qualification a loud voice. There was a carnival atmosphere to the room, with Bob Johnsons circulating around and listening to the best pitchmen.

  Bull Johnson quickly drew the biggest crowd, the result of his voice and his tactics. When information about the murders dried up, Bull primed the pump for more details, generously tipping hotel staff for any and all news. Jimmy Mazzelli became a favorite of Bull's. The bellman ran a table and an extension phone into the room and provided diagrams and layouts of the Hotel.

  The actors, huddling together in a corner, watched the goings-on with attempted cool contempt. Every so often there were giveaways to their studied postures, quick head movements, a nervous shaking of their legs. The phenomenon going on around them was something they had never witnessed before, something almost combustible. There was a frenzy, a sensibility, that was moblike. Pandemonium occurred when a new rumor started circulating and took hold of the room. Suddenly everyone was talking loud and mean: other murders had been discovered in the Hotel. There was a serial murderer loose. He was in hiding. The mood of the Bob Johnsons turned ugly, changed to that of a lynching mentality.

  “I think some western justice is in order,” Bull Johnson shouted.

  The crowd agreed.

  “Isn't this exciting?” asked Bobbi Johnson, holding on tightly to Carlton's arm as if he were her protector. Carlton didn't demur. He found Bobbi's holding on to him exciting.

  “I'm a member of the police reserve in Barstow,” said Bull. “Seems to me it's time I invest in all of you the power of a posse comitatus.

  “Latin,” he said a little less loudly. “Means something about being a force of the county. Now why don’t everyone raise their right hand and swear after me.”

  There was a rustling in the crowd and a raising of hands. Bobbi Johnson reluctantly disentangled herself from Carlton and raised her arm. Carlton did the same.
<
br />   Bull cast his red eye around the room, saw that every Bob Johnson hand was up, then said: “I, Bob Johnson…”

  The echo followed.

  “…vow that I will do my best to find this murderer…”

  Out of synch, but gamely, the voices repeated the words.

  “…and see that justice is wrought.”

  Bull’s sentiments concluded by all, he shouted, “Let’s form into posses and get that son of a bitch!”

  XXX

  Being told that there were vigilante Bob Johnsons roving around the Hotel was a frightening thought for Am. He kept imagining wannabe Dirty Harrys moving around in packs, looking for a murderer.

  “Now, who was it,” Am asked Sharon, “who told you about the Bob Johnsons?”

  They were hurrying forward in a southwesterly direction. Am hoped that most of the Bob Johnsons were still in the proximity of the Spindrift Room and could be contained, isolated the way you would a cancerous growth.

  “A man identified himself as someone the bellman. I think he said Maury.”

  “Cory?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  Am groaned. Cory Corrigan wasn’t exactly known for his accuracy. His nickname was “Wrong Way.” He’d been a bellman at the Hotel for about twenty years, and it was a foregone conclusion he’d get lost at least once during his shift while helping a guest to his room. Cory was the Hotel’s version of the United Way, a charity case, but there was a sweetness to him you rarely found in the human species. Cory wasn’t slow; he was scattered. He’d ask the guests where they’d come from or what had brought them to La Jolla, and he’d be so engrossed in their conversations that he’d forget what room they were going to or exactly where they were.

  “What’d he say?” asked Am.

  Sharon wrinkled her brow and tried to remember his exact words. “He was excited. He said he was outside the Spindrift Room when the Bob Johnsons came out. They were talking about posses and justice, and they were brandishing forks, knives, and spoons.”

  Am groaned again. It wasn’t as if they were storming the Bastille. He motioned for Sharon to continue with her story.

  “Then Cory told me he’d followed the largest of the posses, and that they’d ended up at some room.”

  “What room?”

  “It didn’t make sense. I thought he said the T. P. Room.”

  Am nodded and redoubled their pace. He didn’t bother to explain that the T. P. Room was the informal name for the Hotel’s paper storeroom. Every hotel staff seems to think it is their duty to apply alternate names to everything on the grounds, to essentially create a second language. To help alleviate confusion, the keys were often labeled two ways, on one side the proper name and on the other the Hotel vernacular. This was done to maintain the sanity of new employees. In the presence of guests a supervisor might dispatch a new busboy to the “restaurant supply room,” a location seemingly unknown to the busboy, but when handed a key the busboy would find two names, one at least familiar to him: the Roach Motel. Housekeeping storage was called the Doghouse, with spare mattresses found in the Corral. The gardeners usually ate, and hung out, in the Taco Shop. In some instances the Hotel nomenclature didn’t seem to make sense, but if anyone dug deeply enough, the roots to the naming emerged. Am had never been able to figure out why the utility room was called the Smoke Shop, until resident guest Wallace Talbot told him that in the sixties half a dozen employees had been busted for smoking marijuana there.

  “T. P. Room?” asked Sharon.

  “Toilet paper room,” Am explained. “It’s really the paper storeroom. Hotels will never get an Esperanto award.”

  She gave Am a quizzical look, one that called for an explanation. “Just consider the word double,” he said. “Every hotel offers a different definition. In some, a double represents two people; in others, two beds; in still others, just a double bed.”

  “Double trouble,” she said.

  “And then some,” said Am.

  They passed several room service trays on the way to the T. P. Room, Am clucking at every one. “They multiply,” he said. “That seems to be the only explanation. In every hotel I’ve ever worked, the morning and evening room service waiters claim ‘the other’ shift shirks their pickup duties. Hotels are famous for their border wars.”

  “I don’t think I’m familiar with that phrase.”

  “Every department has borders with other departments. There are always gray areas as to who should be doing what, so the departments snipe at each other. And there are always plenty of civil wars, with A, B, and C shifts doing finger pointing every which way. I think of the Hotel as a microcosm of the world; the departments are like nations, with temporary allegiances, nonaggression pacts, and surprise attacks. And just as countries sometimes sever diplomatic relations with one another, departments do the same. You should try running a banquet when the catering manager’s not talking with the chef, who, in turn, is mad at the convention director.”

  “Do you play the role of ambassador?”

  “No. Usually a more important role: fall guy.”

  Am held up his hand. They were nearing the T. P. Room, and he heard voices. There had been a number of additions to the Hotel over the years, and the paper storeroom was part of what was referred to as the old section, a general term that denoted about half a dozen buildings and a number of stucco structures that had once been guest bungalows.

  The Bob Johnsons had ignored the Hotel Personnel Only signs, had squeezed by a chain barrier down a path supposedly reserved for staff, and were now grouped behind the T. P. Room. Two men, encouraged by the onlookers, were using their hands (their spent and bent forks and knives had been thrown on the ground) to tear apart the back wall. A plywood board had been nailed over a hole in its stucco exterior, a board that was gradually giving way. The wooden obstacle had been secured in enough places that it resisted coming out in one piece—that or the Bob Johnsons just liked the idea of breaking down a makeshift wall.

  “New nails,” announced Bull Johnson, holding up one of the loosened spikes for everyone to see. “No sign of rust whatsoever.”

  His announcement was met by excited chatter, cries, and talk that got even louder when the board gave way. One of the Bob Johnson heads breached the opening. “Give me a light,” he yelled.

  Am and Sharon had made their approach without being noticed. “If you’d gone through the front door,” he said, “you would have found a light switch.”

  The Bob Johnsons turned around. Am was disappointed that they didn’t even have the decency to look sheepish, appearing more annoyed than anything else.

  “Besides vandalizing,” asked Am, “and illegally breaking and entering, what do you think you’re doing?”

  Bull took the measure of his cohorts. They still seemed to be behind him. “Doing your job,” he said.

  “Oh,” said Am. “My job is to tear holes in an old building?”

  His sarcasm didn’t draw the blood he wanted; the Bob Johnsons were already too awash in their imaginary blood.

  “We heard about the serial murderer,” said Bull. “Tell me this isn’t a good place to hide out.

  “Or hide a body,” he added darkly.

  As corpse dumping grounds went, it wasn’t a bad spot. The T. P. Room was off the beaten path, secluded from view. Because of its remoteness, repairing the crumbling stucco hadn’t been a priority.

  “Seems strange that a bedboard was used to cover up this hole,” said another of the Bob Johnsons. “Not the kind of patching material you’d expect from a fancy hotel.”

  “If you’d like a tour of some of our more unsightly patch jobs in restricted areas,” said Am, “I’d be glad to make arrangements. But this is not King Tut’s tomb.”

  Am touched the stucco, even got a little dramatic and crumpled some of it in his hand. “This hole has been gradually widening over the months. There was a water leak. You don’t even have to look closely to see the discoloration. So rather than leave an open invitat
ion to vermin, we decided to stick up this board until a more permanent repair could be made.”

  Most of the Bob Johnsons looked deflated. Their hidden passageway, the secret burial ground, was suddenly revealed as a moldering paper room. Am led them to the front of the building and used a key to open the door. A few of the Bob Johnsons made a point of looking into every corner of the room, but most just listened as Am announced there was no serial murderer and there had been no other murders besides the unfortunate couple. The police were investigating, he said. Any other efforts would be counterproductive and would only hinder their work.

  The Bob Johnsons seemed to take Am's word to heart. Heads downcast, they began to drift away. Only Bull Johnson remained defiant. Aiming a little kick at the stucco, he announced, “Wouldn't be surprised if you had something to do with this red herring.”

  XXXI

  Am made yet another entry in his notepad: “Board up hole in rear of T. P. Room, but not until Monday.” The repair was deferred so as to not offer temptation to another group of roving Bob Johnsons before their scheduled checkout on Sunday.

  While he was writing, Am took two peeks: one at his watch and the other at Sharon. His high school basketball coach had said that only a team that was tired, or losing, or both, looked at the clock. Whenever he acknowledged the time, Am felt he was close to defeat. It was almost six o'clock, depressingly early for the work that still had to be done. Sharon was a better sight than the hour. The intern was holding up surprisingly well, better than most of his seasoned staff. Still, she had to be tired.

  “Why don't you go home?” asked Am. “Get a good night's sleep.” The words were offered almost wistfully.