by Alan Russell
“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 crumbled 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 invitation 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.”
Chapter Thirty-One
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 check-out 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.
“What are you going to do?”
“Try to talk to McHugh and see what he’s learned about the murders.”
She didn’t hesitate: “Count me in.”
The day before, Sharon hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with security, and now she was willing to work into the night. Am was torn between teasing her about her change of mind and praising her for being so conscientious. His hesitation to act conspired with the call of his pager.
“Am,” said a cloying voice, “this is Mary Mason. I wonder if you could come help me out in the Spindrift Room. We have a minor situation. Thank you.”
“Shit,” said Am. He took off with a trot. Attempting to keep up with him, Sharon said to his back, “Mary indicated it was minor.”
“And she said the Bob Johnsons were an eensie problem.”
Despite his fears, Am slowed to a fast walk. “With Mary,” he conceded, “it could be anything. She makes fiascoes festive, or vice versa. The staff calls her ‘Typhoid Mary,’ and believe me, the nickname’s deserved.”
“So why don’t you fire her?”
Am had to think about his answer. “It wouldn’t be quite fair,” he said. “Believe it or not, most of the time she’s just the lightning rod that attracts disaster. Unforeseen things invariably go wrong. When Mary organizes a parade, it’s sure to rain. When Mary books a fishing expedition, everyone gets seasick. The way I heard it, the whole boat was throwing up their guts and Mary was trying to get them to sing ‘Kumbaya, My Lord.’ And you know how they have those fire-walks across coals? The organizer assured us that no one had ever gotten burned, but it was hot-foot central that fateful night, with all the Hotel limos full of burn victims. The group leader couldn’t understand what went wrong. But he couldn’t exa
ctly blame Mary. Because she’s so nice, people continue to like her even when everything goes to hell.”
His facial expression was a cross between a smile and a grimace, and Sharon called him on it. “What brings on that look?” she asked.
“Last month’s luau on the beach. Mary went the whole nine yards. There were hula dancers, and tables of food, and Don Ho on the loudspeakers. There were mock coconut trees, and banana plants. There were Hawaiian shirts and grass skirts and puka shells and leis. There was even a pig roasting on a spit. Everything looked great.” He shook his head, lost in the reverie.
“So what happened?”
“She planned everything perfectly,” said Am, “save for one thing. Mary never consulted a tides table. And no one noticed until too late how the water was coming in. The last anyone saw of the pig, it was floating off to sea, apple in mouth.”
Sharon laughed, then considered the ramifications. “Did the group demand a refund?”
“For that kind of entertainment? They couldn’t have asked for a better show. That’s how it usually works for Typhoid Mary. The guests somehow leave happy.
“Maybe the staff, too,” Am said, after a little reflection. “We had a pig vigil for a while. We called it our wild boar hunt. There were watchers and search parties. There were T-shirts made up and rewards offered. We kept it up for about a month. The lifeguards put out an A.P.B., an all pigs bulletin, on their towers. There were purported pig sightings everywhere. He was spotted surfing. He was seen driving a stretch limo. He was sighted dining with the mayor. The reports got more and more absurd. It was almost as though everyone expected the porker to really show.
“Who knows,” said Am, opening a door into the Spindrift Room. “Maybe today’s our lucky day. Maybe the pig’s finally come home.”
If not the pig, then at least the pigpen: the Bob Johnson tablecloths-turned-displays lined the banquet room walls. Bloodied virgin sheets were never exhibited so proudly. The felt-tip-markered tablecloths featured drawings of where the bodies had been found, diagrams of where the murders had supposedly taken place, and lists of purported clues.
“Looks like an Amway sales seminar,” Am said with not a little amazement.
Near the dais were the actors and Mary. She was encircled by the thespians, who at the moment didn’t look like audition material for The Sound of Music. Am was familiar with most of the troop, having seen them in other Murder Mayhem Weekend productions. There seemed to be two ringleaders: an older man with a handlebar mustache who usually played the British colonel and an artsy-looking younger woman with red-hennaed hair and a pageboy cut. Her chosen role at the moment was the aggrieved artiste.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” the woman said in a stage whisper. “When I wrote this play, the gestalt is what made it. It’s not mix and match.”
“Breach of contract,” said the colonel. “Pure and simple.”
Through the surrounding bodies, Mary noticed Am and Sharon. She motioned for them to come forward. “This is our assistant general manager,” she said, “Am Caulfield. And this is Sharon.”
The colonel stepped close to Am, but not to shake his hand. The only prop he was missing was a monocle. He inspected Am with a dubious stare, then announced, “I thought you were supposed to be the house detective.”
Am considered saying, “And I thought you were supposed to be an actor,” but his hotel training stayed his purer instincts. He replied diplomatically, “Like you, I am called upon to play many roles.”
Good cop, bad cop time. The hennaed woman stepped in front of the colonel. Sotto voce, the playwright said, “Mr. Caulfield, Ms. Mason is asking us to do the impossible. She wants us to reconvene the production in the morning, believing that our audience’s homicidal madness will have passed by that time.
“I was raised in the theater,” she added, one hand raising itself majestically. “I was weaned on the commandment that the show must go on. But we can’t perform for uninterested groundlings, and we can’t truncate the first and second acts into some new and bowdlerized version. We’re professionals. We don’t do the hodgepodge.”
Seven heads behind her nodded emphatically, but Am appeared unmoved. Having worked in hotels his entire adult life, he considered himself versed in theater.
“Open tab tonight,” he announced, as if that were the only question in dispute. “Dinner is on the house. And one complimentary glass of wine. Rediscover your collective muse. Regroup so that you’ll be prepared for the early matinee.”
“I suppose,” the director said with grudging, albeit whispered words, “we could work on revisions over dinner tonight. Mind you,” she added, “much will have to be extemporaneous.”
“That’s in keeping with the theater of hotels,” said Am.
The theater of the absurd.
He offered them a nod that was almost a bow. For his parting lines, he closed with his avuncular mein host: “Mary will be glad to see to all of your arrangements. Enjoy your evening.”
After motioning to Sharon, they exited the banquet room. When they were out of sight of the actors, Sharon commented, “That was fast.”
Am nodded, an answer not good enough for her.
“How did you know their complaints weren’t of a truly artistic nature?”
“I’ve seen them perform before.”
She digested that for a moment. “And how did you know what compensation to offer?”
“I’ve seen them eat extra banquet food.”
“They were quick to accept your offer. That usually means you started too high.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But since we have pressing matters to attend to, I knew better than to start with the traditional nickel.”
“Nickel?”
“The man asking the woman if she’d go to bed with him for a million dollars, and the woman thinking about it, and deciding that for a million dollars, yes, she would. Then the man asking if she’d go to bed with him for a nickel, and she responding indignantly, ‘A nickel! What kind of a woman do you think I am?’ Then the man replying, ‘We’ve already established that, now we’re just quibbling over price.’ Thus, the traditional nickel.”
“You’re cynical.”
“Some might say experienced.”
“I suppose,” Sharon said, “we’re just quibbling over semantics.”
They smiled at one another. In the midst of a hellacious day, they kept discovering each other’s smiles, and each other.
“Nickel for your thoughts,” said Am, his voice huskier than he intended.
“You buy off the actors with dinner and a drink, and then offer me only a nickel?”
“Dinner and drinks, then.”
She had encouraged him in his offer; they both knew that. But now, not for the first time, she backed away. “Maybe tomorrow night,” Sharon said. But the tone of her voice sounded a more permanent deferment than twenty-four hours.
Was she a tease? Am wondered. Why her sudden ambivalence? Neither spoke to the other while walking to room 605. The quickness of their pace wasn’t enough to mask their uncomfortable silence. This time they were stopped not by police tape, but by a police officer. He stood with the pose of a seasoned bouncer, his considerable bulk positioned so that the only way through the door was through him. Patton’s army might have paused to consider that advance.
Approaching the cop, Am felt like a kid trying to pass off a bogus ID. He offered his business card and asked to speak to Detective McHugh. With a pointed finger, the officer directed Am and Sharon to remain outside the room until he passed on the message. Being told to cool his heels in his own place of work didn’t improve Am’s mood, and neither did the bouncer’s reappearing with the message that it would be a few more minutes before McHugh could see them. The minutes passed, and a few more, before the detective finally emerged.
“You got some more theories?” he asked, his tone irritable, his face a sneer.
“You need some?” asked Am, upping the animosity ante.
“Not likely,” McHugh said, “after your last one. Sex, drugs, and a missing condom. And when two young, bright, attractive people come on so persuasively, it does make you think. So, against my better judgment, I made a call to the ME. I red-flagged the case as a priority, and I told him what I wanted looked at hard. And you know what? Just before a couple of real murders brought me back to this hotel, I heard from the pathologist. No drugs. No sex. But a blood alcohol level that was about two point four. Maybe it wasn’t suicide. Maybe you were right about that. Maybe our jumper thought he was the Great Wallenda performing on his balcony. But his death sure as hell wasn’t murder.
“Now,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the opened door, “I suppose you’re going to tell me the two bodies we took out of there weren’t murdered, but committed suicide.”
McHugh looked at Am, then at Sharon, with pretended interest. He opened his hands as if imploring them to respond.
“We came in the hopes of being briefed about what’s going on with the case,” said Am, his lips barely moving, his face red.
“You mean you didn’t come to me with all the answers? You don’t have a murderer for me?”
Sharon saved Am from having to respond again. “We have a hotel full of concerned guests. We have demands being put upon us by the media. And we have a lot of fear and confusion all around us. We are trying to respond to all of that with staffing, and security, and reason. Your cooperating might help us to deal with that.”
An articulate woman with a well-reasoned response is a male cop’s worst nightmare. He can’t crack heads or go male ego mano a mano. Shuffling slightly, McHugh said, “I already held a press conference.”
“Where your main comment was ‘No comment,’” said Sharon.
“That, and his brandishing a Hotel California knife as if it were Excalibur,” said Am, “and telling the world a similar knife was the supposed murder weapon.”
“A Hotel California steak knife was the murder weapon. And I wasn’t brandishing it. The press wanted it raised so they could get some photos.”
“They wanted the Hotel insignia on the front page of every paper in California, and you gave that to them.”
